Return to You (Letters to Nowhere Part 3) (3 page)

Jesus Christ.

I send my girls to get a drink and climb out of the pit to stand beside TJ. “You can’t kick anyone out of the gym,” I whisper. “The counselors are in training sessions right now. There’s no one to watch the kids outside of the gym.”

He frowns like this is really putting a damper on his coaching style.

“It’s summer camp,” I remind him. “You don’t have to take them to a competition.”

“They’re paying eight hundred bucks to work on skills they already know how to do?”

I shrug. “It’s not your eight hundred bucks, so I wouldn’t worry about it.”

TJ folds his arms across his chest and turns to his group. “Fine, if you’re planning on chickening out of throwing a double back, go get a drink. If not, stay in line.” He turns back to me. “Better?”

I shake my head and rub my temples. Is it lunchtime yet?

“Coach Jordan! It’s my turn, it’s my turn!” a girl in my group is shouting from up on the bar. Since it looks like she might combust if she doesn’t get to try the flip off the high bar before it’s time to rotate, I leave TJ alone with his one remaining gymnast. Everyone else opted for the drink break.

By the time I’m finishing up my fourth group of campers this morning, I’m exhausted and dying to go find Karen or Stevie and make sure she’s okay. TJ follows me out of the gym. “Why do girls cry so much?” he says. “I don’t get it.”

“Haven’t you coached girls before?”

“No,” he admits. “So, what am I supposed to do with them?”

“Don’t make them cry.” I pick up my pace after spotting Karen and Stevie heading toward us. Karen’s holding a bag of ice against her forehead. I leave TJ lagging behind and reach for Karen, lifting the ice and taking in the sizable bump that’s formed in the past couple of hours. “Are you okay? What did the trainer say?”

Her face reddens instantly. “I’m fine. No concussion. No anything.”

“Good.” I lean down and give her a quick kiss on the mouth. As I’m pulling away, I catch sight of the woman with the wild gray hair now standing behind Karen. Nina Jones.

She scowls at me and turns her attention to TJ. “If you’re going to loiter in our gym every morning you might as well make yourself useful and learn how to spot properly.” Her gaze shifts to Karen and Stevie. “Practice starts in two minutes.”

TJ’s scratching his head as Nina walks off. I have no idea if she was insulting his spotting or she actually wants to use him to help coach the elite girls. He looks Karen over and his mouth opens like he’s about to say something, but she grabs my arm and pulls me away, toward the gym.

“I think crawling in a hole in the middle of the woods and staying there for the next three weeks sounds like a great idea,” she says, before throwing her arms around my neck and hugging me. I tighten my arms around her waist. She brushes her lips against my neck, giving me instant goose bumps, then her mouth moves to my cheek. “I knew it.”

I pull back and examine her face. “Knew what?”

“You’re sick again, aren’t you?” She gives my other cheek a kiss. “You have a fever.”

I release her and step back. The last thing I need is Karen worrying about me. “It’s hot out here.”

She narrows her eyes, but Stevie’s beside her now, grabbing her arm and tugging her toward the gym. “Practice, remember? Nina’s waiting.”

Karen pats my cheek. “Get some rest, okay? Maybe go see the doctor?”

“Good idea, I’ve got a few hours to lie down.” That answer must have been enough to satisfy her because she takes off at a jog, trailing behind Stevie. I get inside my cabin, heading for my bunk, when Dad calls.

“Jordy, what’s going on?”

“Um… besides the usual?” I can’t tell if he’s got a purpose to this call or is just checking in on me.

“Karen,” he says. “I just watched a video of her peeling off the bar and I have no idea what happened and who the hell is that kid that snatched her out of thin air?”

“She’s not hurt. The trainer checked her out already. And that was TJ who caught her. He was in the gym working out.” TJ snaps around to face me, tuning into my phone conversation. “Who posted a video of that?”

“I don’t know, that’s what I was calling to ask,” Dad says. “Where’s Karen? Can you put her on the phone?”

I suppress a frustrated sigh. “Sure, because I’m here to follow her around twenty-four-seven. It’s not like I have other responsibilities.”

“Jordan,” he warns.

I flop down onto my bed. “She’s at practice, Dad.”

“Are you coaching right now? Do you think you could do me a favor and watch her workout today? Just in case there are any issues.”

Probably if anybody but Dad had asked me this, I wouldn’t feel the surge of anger I’m feeling at the moment. “I don’t think Nina would be too happy about that.”

Eventually, I end up telling him I’ll try to make it over to the gym in a little while, before making up an excuse to get off the phone. Of course I’m gonna check on her if he thinks it’s important, but I’d rather not let him know how compliant I can be.

I push myself up off the bed again and a wave of dizziness hits me so hard I have to grip the bedpost to keep from falling over.

“Dude, you look like shit,” TJ says.

That’s exactly how I feel. “Thanks.” I shake my head, attempting to stop the room from spinning, but of course that only makes it worse. “I’ve been ordered to spy on Karen’s practice.”

TJ presses a hand against my chest, pushing me back down onto the bed. “Stay here. I heard you tell Karen you were gonna rest. I’ll watch practice. That crazy lady told me to anyway, so…”

“You sure you don’t mind?” I’m not up for arguing.

“It’s no problem.”

Right before I allow my eyes to close, I search for the video of Karen’s bar routine on my phone. Even though I know it’s coming, I flinch the second she peels off the bar, right before smacking her head into it. And damn, TJ really did move fast to snatch her out of thin air practically. She would have had a broken arm for sure, if not worse, had he not come to her rescue.

I lift the covers up to my shoulders and fall into a restless sleep.

“Why the hell is TJ’s ass planted in the bleachers like he’s never going to leave?” Stevie whispers over the chalk bowl.

He’s been watching our workout since halfway through stretching. I felt his eyes on me during dance and beam.

“Don’t know.” I reposition my grips and stand in front of the low bar. I’m shaking. Like really shaking. I close my eyes, draw in a slow deep breath, and begin the process of releasing it over ten counts. But when I get to number seven, the image of my head crashing into the high bar replays. I gasp and my eyes fly open, my heart racing.

“Let’s go, Karen,” Nina says from her position on the side of the uneven bars.

One skill at a time. You can do this.

I go into autopilot mode and nail skill after skill. But as I’m prepping for my dismount, it’s like a panic switch flips back on and a voice inside my head is screaming: don’t let go. Don’t. Let. Go.

I can’t let go. But the result of hanging on too long causes my hands to peel and before I can process what’s happening, I’m flat on my back on the mats below, the wind completely knocked out of me.

I don’t move until I can feel air entering my lungs again. This fall wasn’t like earlier, where everything shifted into slow motion and I could foresee the coming danger. Slowly, I pull myself up to a sitting position, to find that both Nina and Stevie have moved closer.

“Sorry,” I say instinctively.

Nina’s face is calm, but there’s something in her eyes that indicates she may have had a concerned moment of her own. “Okay?”

“Yeah.” I roll out my neck, give my arms a shake, and then I’m up on my feet again. “I’m fine.”

“Good,” she says with a nod. And because she’s not lecturing or ignoring me, I can assume that she’d been satisfied with my bar routine. At least up until the dismount. More like the not-dismount.

Stevie’s studying me as I walk over to the chalk bowl, but Nina calls her up to the bars before she can say anything. My gaze is glued to the chalk bowl—I’m not in the mood to make eye contact with concerned or curious teammates. But I do glance up for half a second and catch TJ letting out a breath and sitting back down like he might have jumped to his feet after I fell.

My cheeks heat up, remembering the breakdown he witnessed earlier from me. I turn my back to him, whipping around to watch Stevie’s bar routine.

“Tighter,” Nina instructs. “Handstands!”

Stevie’s not a bad bar worker, but it isn’t her strongest event. However, she’s really pushing herself on any and all weak areas. I can see her alter each movement as Nina shouts corrections, her leotard even more drenched with sweat than anyone else’s, including mine.

Stevie really wants to win Nationals. Both of us are here training head-to-head with our biggest competition and she’s coming out ahead.

I bite back the semi-jealous, semi-anxious feelings and close my eyes, mentally working through my routine. But the second I attempt to visualize my dismount, my head is slamming into the high bar again. I can’t envision a proper outcome.

By the time Stevie finishes and Nina’s turned her attention to me again, waiting for me to redeem myself from the last turn, my heart is flying again and nausea and muscle weakness invade my body.

I can’t do this. I Can’t. Do. This.

“Can I…” I start to say, grabbing Nina’s attention, “can I have a break? I mean—I need a break. Fifteen minutes. There’s something I really need to, um, take care of.”

Nina folds her arms across her chest and stares me down. Needless to say, everyone is staring me down. Breaks are dictated by coaches, not gymnasts. After what feels like an eternity, she sighs and gestures toward the door, indicating that I can go. My body is numb while I grab my small gym bag and head out.

What am I doing? Where am I going?

I need to talk this through with someone who gets it, but Jordan is resting and he needs to be resting. I remove my cell phone from my bag and roll it around in my palm. If I call Bentley, he’ll probably be on the next flight here. Blair’s at practice right now so she won’t answer her phone and calling the gym to ask for her would tip off Bentley.

My finger is already scrolling down the contact list in my phone, pausing on one number. I glance back at the gym to make sure no one is coming outside before hitting the call button.

“Doctor Carson’s office,” a familiar voice says after only one ring.

“Hi… um…” I check the door again. “I need to speak with Jack—I mean Doctor Carson. If she’s available.”

“Are you a current patient or prospective patient?”

“Current,” I say lowering my voice when a small group of campers passes in front of me on their way to Gym II.

“One moment, please,” the secretary says.

Before I can even tell her who’s calling and mention that I’m not having a mental crisis or anything too severe (even though I kind of am) she’s transferred the call and Jackie’s picking up.

“It’s Karen Campbell,” I say quickly. “I’m sorry to call you, especially if you have an appointment right now—”

“Hi Karen, how are you? Is everything okay?” Her tone is warm and free of any sense of urgency or that careful code-voice people sometimes use when carrying on a conversion with someone else in the room who isn’t supposed to hear said conversation.

“I’m okay.” I walk around the building, hunting out a shady spot where I can sit down. “It’s just that… this morning…”

“What happened this morning?” she prompts. “I’ve got time.”

I give a nervous laugh and then proceed to explain the drama of my first fall and how I ran from the gym crying with over a hundred campers watching. By the time I finish the story, my voice is shaky and I’m on the verge of tears again.

“First of all,” Jackie says after I finish, “you need to separate your fear of hurting yourself on the uneven bars from that feeling of emptiness you experienced when the one boy…”

“TJ,” I fill in, finally locating a spot of shade in the grass where I can lean against the building.

“When TJ mentioned your parents.”

Now that I know about Jackie’s past, about her own parents’ deaths, the door seems to be open for me to ask a whole new set of questions that I’d assumed she couldn’t answer before. “Does it ever go away? That feeling like someone just punched you in the gut when you realize that you’d forgotten they’re gone and then suddenly remember?”
The hollowness, the carved-out insides—please say that it will stop someday.

She was silent for several long moments before saying, “It gets better.”

My gut twists again. “Just better? Not gone?”

“Right now, you need them so much and their role in your life hasn’t been replaced with anyone else, or even with yourself. So of course it’s not only incredibly painful, but also really scary—all these decisions to make on your own…”

“Like whether I should get my own apartment,” I mumble, another wave of anxiety rushing over me as I’m reminded of yet another current problem.

“What was that?” Jackie asks.

I take a few minutes to explain the situation of Grandma suggesting it would be “more appropriate for a young lady of my age to live on her own rather than with her forty-something-year-old coach.” When I finally finish explaining all this to Jackie, I notice a pair of dark feet on the sidewalk beside me. I glance up and Stevie is standing there looking as if she can’t decide if she should turn back.

“I think my break might be over,” I say to Jackie. Before hanging up, we quickly agree on a time to have regular phone sessions over the next three weeks. I tuck my phone away in my gym bag, feeling about ten percent better even though we didn’t really create a plan of action or accomplish anything. But it’s not the first time that merely speaking truths out loud has lifted some weight off my shoulders.

“Nina sent me,” Stevie blurts out when I stand and brush grass off my butt.

“I figured.”

I glance sideways at her a couple times on the way back to the gym. She looks like she wants to say something, which makes me wonder how much of my phone conversation she’d overheard. I clamp my mouth shut because I really don’t want to talk to Stevie about my therapist at the moment. Blair, Coach Bentley, and Jordan were the only ones who knew about Jackie. Okay, and Tony knows.