The plan was in place. The new one.
For the next twenty months, Devon would compete as much as she could, increase her ranking and improve her prospects and get better and better and better. It would mean out-of-town trips, out-of-state trips, invitationals, classics, all the state and regional and national competitions—which meant arrangements had to be made with Devon’s school, Eric pleading Devon’s case, pointing out this unique opportunity, her strong GPA, her immense promise. He would handle everything, get tutors, pay for private lessons. Whatever it took.
Then, in July of her sixteenth year, Devon would try for Senior Elite. The first qualifier of her sixteenth year.
Just knowing they were back on the Track, even if it was a new one, made everything better. Brought order back into their lives.
So Katie had forgotten about it, or tried to. The possibility that the foot injury could have been to blame for what happened at qualifiers, and everything that might mean. Until months later.
She hadn’t meant to do anything but deliver the laundry, the teetering basket of leotards and warm-up sweats, and change Devon’s sheets. Tugging the mattress pad, that awkward crawl to the corner that pressed too close to the built-in bookshelf, her hand hit something soft. The felt fabric of a fat diary—I Heart Everything across its crimson cover.
The idea that Devon kept a diary, and hid it between mattress and wall, felt so charmingly old-fashioned, or out of time entirely. Devon wasn’t ordinary or typical in any way, after all.
Katie, her hand on the cover, hesitated.
These are the things you just don’t do.
But your child’s privacy, what did it even mean after you’d spent so many years with your daughter’s body at the center of your life? So much energy focused on whatever hurt most—the once-sprained arm, the soft-backed left knee, the chest bruised after Devon drove her own knees into it. All the talk, the open talk, about bras and panties, which ones might show during meets and lead to deductions, and when it was time for bikini waxes. And all those nights: hard strokes on her calf muscles, ice on her bar-bruised pelvic bones, on the inside of her beam-bitten thighs, and, not in years, but still, rubbing Vaseline where the seams of her leotard rubbed and bristled.
Katie opened its pages.
Today: straddle jump ?, ? & full on the beam…Working on: Giant ? + front giant ?, giant full, toe-shoot, double layout dismount.
Entry after entry about gymnastics, chronicling the minutiae, and photos of her favorite gymnasts glued onto pages, silver-Sharpied arrows and circles over their poses, stance, muscles.
It wasn’t a diary at all. It was more like a training log.
6 a.m. workout before school. Stretch, run for 15 min. Half-hour of conditioning, 25 min stretching or ballet, then squat jumps and pull-ups, then start with beam. I had trouble with my front pike half, but the rest went ok. Coach says I am achieving. He pumped his fist at me three times.
Reading it, standing the whole time, leaning against the window for light, Katie was struck by how different it was from her own private ramblings at fourteen, all boys and song lyrics and fake IDs and where to hide the purloined pint of Jack Daniel’s for Friday night.
But then, closing the diary, her eye caught a photo pasted inside the back cover.
A snapshot taken in that very room, her bedspread visible. The boomerang of Devon’s mutilated right foot, close up.
Under the light, her desk lamp, it looked like it was glowing.
It was horrifying, and beautiful.
Why was it the picture felt more intimate, far more intimate, than a secret disappointment, a boy-crush confession?
And why did looking at it feel even more like a violation?
Beneath it, Devon had written:
I had the dream again last night. The one where I look down and my right foot is ten times its size with skin like scales. So I take a knife from the kitchen drawer, the one Mom has to use with both hands, and I chop it off. The blood is like a fountain.
But Dad sees me and runs up the basement stairs. He ties his belt around my ankle and pulls it tight. The buckle is shining.
You need this, he said, grabbing my foot, twisting and molding it like art-class clay. It’s your superpower.
And I know he’s right.
What is this, Katie thought, covering her mouth. It was like turning over a heavy rock and finding something alive there, wriggling. Prying something open and pulling at its hot wires.
That can’t be Devon, she thought.
Who was this girl?
Katie put the diary back into its tight wedge and vowed never to look at it again.
“Mom,” Devon said that night, calling out as Katie walked past her doorway, “were you in here?”
“What? No. Just cleaning. Why?”
“Nothing. I just thought maybe you were.”