Max and the Magic Lens Ch.13

CHAPTER 13: Tryouts  
     
“C’mon, Max, I’m pretty sure the human spine isn’t supposed to bend like that.”
“How would you know?” he retorted.
Logan was getting thoroughly disgruntled the more she watched her brother displace his form into various positions. While he racked his limbs into anatomical impossibilities, she wondered just how good this Miss Belkins was at teaching gymnastics. Max had only been through a week of training and a couple of weeks later he had progressed from a Yoga master to actually walking with his hands. Of course, it was over soft grass and he usually landed on his rump. Where were the flips, the stunts, the tricks that made you go “oo” and “aww”?
Stretching was all fine and dandy, but Logan only saw circus freaks hold their bodies aloft off the ground and nearly touch their head against their butt. It just wasn’t natural. It was against the rules.
“Look, you’re not even a girl right now. How do you know if these exorcises aren’t hurting you?”
“I’ll be careful.”
“I mean in the long run, runt.”
    Max lowered his body with his elbows and uncoiled his back into a pushup stance.
“Why couldn’t you just do soccer?” Logan thought out loud.
“One word,” Max answered after he flopped himself (forgetting all modes of grace) onto the living room couch. “Night.”
Logan’s eyes widened in realization. Imagine how people would act when one of the team members suddenly grew burlier muscles and a vanishing bust line. It’d be funny, but it wasn’t the kind of funny you played around with in the Gardner family. Sure annoying the spit out of your sibling’s raging mouth was in the brother-sister job description, but you never ratted out a family member or subjugate them to public humiliation.
“But wait,” she began again. “Won’t you be performing at night with gymnastics too?”
“Nope,” the boy smiled. “Asked Coach Belkins about it. Said we do things differently in this state. We perform during the day.”
“Yes, but what about overnight trips? How’s that going to work?”
Max looked as if a brick wall had arbitrarily placed itself in front of the gerbil spinning his neurons around. “Um . . . well . . . Look, I’m sure something will work out.”
He was conquered. Though, oddly enough, Logan took little pleasure from it. “Well, at least go to the tryouts,” she offered.
“Yeah,” Max agreed. “See if I’m even good enough.”
“Oh, you are,” said his mother, silently infiltrating their conversation, armored in her cooking apron. “We’ve all seen you practicing. I remember my days in high school. Cheerleading was all the rage back then, and nobody practiced that often outside of regular after-school routines. You’ll do fine. But first you have to eat. Dinner’s ready.”

Max had, in fact, been very successful at camp. She never argued with any of the trainers, which could not be said for the girls that obviously knew what they were doing, nor did she complain. She didn’t have time to complain. There was too much to learn.
She did, however, squint her eyes or contort her face to deal with some of the more interesting stretches, as well as learn how to fall. She took it upon herself to learn how to fall quite well, because she knew there was going to be a lot of it. Gymnastics, for that first week, was nothing but falling. Falling from the asymmetrical bars, slipping off the balance beam, and tripping over the vault.
The next group practices that occurred twice a week showed some improvement, yet gravity was still everyone’s master. Max was thankful for the extra cushion her female posterior provided and wondered if it wasn’t the toughest part of her by now.  Finally, though, she began to notice progress with herself, and she could also see that she was ahead of some of the other girls. Sheer determination was a good weapon for ambition.
Then, a week after a successful bars routine (e.g. not falling on her rump), tryouts were upon her.
She was nervous, but no more than the rest of the girls, had she been paying attention. She only wished to make the team, to be with Coach Belkins, to be with Vicky, who was obviously fated to be a gymnast. Victoria Hearts was easily the Ace in this card deck of gym-queen-wannabes.
Quite typically, Pan was scheduled as the last person to perform and the whole time she was assaulted by contestants attempting to psych her out. After all, rumor was that Coach Belkins was only taking two, maybe three trainees, and Pan, though she barely realized it, was top on everyone’s pressure list.
“So I bet you’ve heard of Miriam Walker,” said one girl, while Max gazed at the flying (and falling) bodies on the bars, the balance beam, and the floor.
“Not really,” Pan said earnestly, locking her eyes on the balance beam, which was to be the final stage for her audition.
“She’s only the champion of the vault in over seven national events. She got third place in the world championships once. She gave me lessons when I was six.”
“Cool,” said Max, hardly listening because Vicky was spiraling double-backs on the bars. She looked angelic, like a twirling sylph . . .
“She’s nice,” said another girl, without really meaning it. “But I’m better at singing. I figure if I can be good at singing I can be good at this. Besides, you get to wear makeup and look beautiful and everything.”
Max cringed.
“Well that hardly matters,” said the other girl that could have been a champion weight lifter, “as I’m the prettiest one here.”
An argument followed but Max silently moved down the aisle of the bleachers and off to the mat to start stretching in the white leotard she had grown rather fond of.
It was her turn . . .

“So how’d it go?” asked Logan, meeting her ‘brother’ in one of the ICD’s more ambiguous alleyways. Max was wearing a change of clothes but still mopping sweat from her face with a towel. Her leotard was safely stashed away in her duffle bag, as well as the smell. She looked utterly wasted. “That bad, huh?”
To Logan’s surprise, she chuckled and said excitedly, “No, I actually did better than I thought I’d do. I didn’t fall down once, Sis. Not once!”
“So it went all right,” her sister confirmed.
“Yeah,” Max agreed, mopping some sweat off her cheek and smiling that signature grin. “I even had fun.”