Katie didn’t want Devon to see her face. She was worried her face would reveal something.
All she could think of was the photo, and Devon’s dream. The strangeness of the foot, the belt. But dreams were that way, weren’t they? And they were private, maybe Devon’s only private things.
Never again, she told herself. I won’t be that mom. She needs someplace to be herself. To be messy and sad and human. Real.
To be whatever she was becoming.
II
Necessity is what you do in life when there is only one path, choice, or desire.
—Nadia Comaneci, Letters to a Young Gymnast
Chapter Four
Eighteen Months Later
“Today, some of the most anticipated moments will be when Devon Knox takes the floor,” the play-by-play announcer said, voice hushed as if this were the Olympics. “Just shy of sixteen, Devon has proven one of the most formidable talents in the region who has not yet gone Elite. That may all change in six weeks, when she’ll take her chances at the Senior Elite Qualifiers.”
High in the stands, Katie and Eric watched. The purr-purr of Devon’s feet during her floor routine, the zinging violin strokes of “Assassin’s Tango” skittering through the air—she was excelling.
Katie had seen the routine a hundred times or more, but it looked different today. She couldn’t say why.
“She’s more confident,” Eric said, as if reading her mind. “That’s what it is.”
Katie wasn’t sure, but her daughter’s body—slithering on the mat, then rising—seemed alive in ways she had never seen before, her scarlet leotard like a flame, leaping and flickering and flaring hot.
“Now at the vault,” the announcer said, punctuating with dramatic pauses, “Miss…Devon…Knox.”
Grabbing for each other’s hands, Katie and Eric watched Devon wait patiently for her cue.
Standing at the foot of the runway, the massive Flip into Spring Invitational banner behind her, all the playfulness of her floor routine gone, Devon wore the face of a stone Artemis.
It was remarkable, when Katie thought about it. How her daughter, so strong already, her body an air-to-air missile, had metamorphosed into this force. Shoulders now like a ship mast, rope-knot biceps, legs roped, arms sinewed, a straight, hard line from trunk to neck, her hipless torso resting on thighs like oak beams. No one came close. Sometimes Katie couldn’t believe it was the same girl.
“She’s up,” Eric said, pointing to the judges.
“Stick it this time, Knox!” someone called out behind them, and Eric’s head swiveled around, red charging up his face.
Katie pressed her hand on his arm until he turned back to the floor.
A moment later, she snuck a glance behind her, but instead of the heckler, her eyes snagged on Ryan Beck, his delicate face in repose. Like a sculpture, Handsome Youth.
“Here she goes,” Eric said, face still flushed. “Here goes Devon.”
On the floor, Devon bounded down the runway, her knees churning like pistons, face impenetrable.
Leaping from the springboard, legs tight together, toes like arrows, she flew. Front handspring, double tuck, twist.
And landing, a hard slap on the mat. Because of course Devon stuck it, her legs like steel pikes, her arms flung elegantly above her head, wrists bent, a ballerina pose.
“Stellar performance,” the play-by-play man intoned, “which definitely bodes well for Miss Knox at qualifiers six weeks from today.”
And after, walking off the mat, she waved up at the crowd, at Katie and Eric.
Puffs appeared, like magician’s smoke, fairy dust. The chalk that never left her hands.
“You nailed it, champ,” Eric said as they walked through the parking lot, Devon moving slowly, punch-drunk. “When I saw that Yurchenko, my heart almost stopped.”
“I got it. I finally got it,” Devon said. Then she looked up at him with an expression that Katie had never seen, almost obscene in its pleasure. “That’s what it’s supposed to feel like.”
It almost made Katie blush, and Eric dropped his keys, flinching at the sound.
The triumph was short-lived. When they returned home, all the things postponed until after the meet—laundry, groceries, printer out of toner, wrapping paper for Lacey Weaver’s birthday present, rock salt for Drew’s fourth-grade science project—toppled back into their laps.
The evening blurred by and before Katie knew it, she was crawling into bed.
But a few hours later, a distant car radio, a radiator rattle, something, woke her at two a.m., bringing with it that unexpected, that tantalizing thing: waking to Eric’s hands on her, one in her hair. The surprising way he came at her, like the world might break to pieces if he didn’t have her. Her face pressing into the pillow. The way he shivered against her after, clutched at her before sliding away. The other side of the bed seemed so far. She loved him so much.