Free Letters to Nowhere by Julie Cross Page A

that.” And yeah, I had left out Jordan’s part in the last few days, because Blair was slightly more interested in boys than I was and she’d exhaust me, asking for details. Plus, it seemed wrong to tell her about Jordan without him knowing. Maybe he didn’t want people to know about him going tampon shopping. It wasn’t only my secret to tell.
    “Karen,” Bentley said from the opposite end of the vault runway. “You’re up.”
    I kept my eyes on the apparatus in front of me and not on Bentley. The vault, which resembled a giant tongue from a distance, was insanely dangerous at my level. I had to focus on what I was doing or I’d break my neck. Today, we’d moved on from landing on mats stacked in the pit to real competition landing mats. I quickly visualized the Yurchenko double full vault, closing my eyes briefly, and then took off at a fast run. I had learned a Yurchenko vault when I was eight years old, but since then, it had evolved to include a layout backflip and not just one twist, but now two.
    It was scary because you had to do a round–off, which is like a cartwheel, but landing with both feet together on the end of the springboard. Then you dove backward onto the vault table (aka—giant tongue). The benefit of this style of vault—going on backward—was that it allowed smaller gymnasts like me to get a bigger push off the apparatus, which meant I could get much higher, which led to more flips and twists and essentially more difficulty points from the judges.
    My feet pounded the runway, adrenaline rushing through me, overtaking any trace of fear I’d had about landing on the regular mats instead of the soft safety of the foam pit. I hit the springboard in just the right spot and dove backward toward the vault table and got an awesome push, giving me all the power I needed to complete the one and a half backward flip with two twists. My knees bent at just the right time as I touched the landing mat, ignoring the sting traveling from my ankles all the way to my hips.
    I held the landing, not making a single movement, my insides screaming for me to jump up and cheer, maybe run a victory lap around the gym. But I played it cool, not even looking at Bentley as I walked off the mat.
    “Beautiful, Karen. Keep it up and we’ll work on adding an extra half twist,” Bentley said.
    Oh my God! My mouth twitched fighting a smile. Maybe Blair was right. Maybe I had acquired some superpowers recently. Upgrading my vault difficulty was not something I needed for UCLA, so maybe this was a sign? Maybe Bentley and I were on the same page.
    ***
    After practice, before I could get to the locker room to change, Jordan came stumbling through the gym’s front doors, red–faced and shivering.
    “What are you doing here?” I asked.
    He blew on his hands, rubbing them together before unzipping his ski jacket. “Uh, giving you a ride home except, I might not be able to do that.”
    “What happened?”
    “Car broke down,” he said through chattering teeth. “About a mile away. I guess my dad practices what he preaches with his rule of no cell phones on the floor. I really need to program the number for the front desk into my phone.”
    “Sorry.” I glanced at the door to the conference room, sealed shut to keep gymnasts and parents out. “He just started his staff meeting. We might be hanging out here for a while.”
    Blair came out of the locker room right then and I could feel her eyes on us, taking in the situation. She grabbed the strap of my leotard, yanking me into the opening of the locker room and away from Jordan. “That’s Bentley’s kid?”
    “Yeah.”
    “He’s so cute,” she whispered. “Like majorly gorgeous. I can’t believe you actually live with him.”
    “Live with who?” Ellen asked, appearing behind Blair. She poked her head out of the locker room and squealed. “That’s Jordan!”
    I shook Blair off my arm and rolled my eyes at both of them. “Jesus, you’d think he was some