Preview of The Happiest Girl in the World
Preview of The Happiest Girl in the World by Alena Dillon
In the beginning, we flitted around the gym like dandelion seeds in the wind. Skipping. Cartwheeling. Somersaulting. Leaping. Arching our spines the wrong way and tumbling through a back walkover. Our bodies were lean and limber. Generous and forgiving. They didn’t know limitations, only what they couldn’t do yet. They didn’t know injury, only elasticity, amusement, and wonder. They didn’t know starvation, only hunger. They didn’t know the wrong kind of touch, only the guidance of a spotter. The pull of being hoisted up after a fall. A celebratory high five. This was before our voices were stripped. We’d spend decades restoring our diaphragms, larynxes, lips, tongues, and teeth.
Back then, when we felt whimsical, we pranced the mats like nymphs. When we were dogged, we strutted the perimeter as if we owned the place. Like we were child queens, the fantastical kind that jointly, harmoniously ruled over the same land. But instead of from robes, our long legs stemmed from sweaty leotards that were sometimes too small. Instead of crowns, we wore buns and barrettes, our hair secured with pins and enough hair spray to light up the place. The gym was our kingdom, our playground, our altar. The sport was our discipline and our ministry. It was how we rejoiced, Lucy and I.
We loved gymnastics in a way other girls didn’t. This arrogance, combined with the sheer amount of time we spent at the facility, afforded us authority over those who considered gymnastics an after-school activity, not a lifestyle. We called them pretend gymnasts. We were the real things.
Only we knew where Coach Jennifer stored the extra chalk. Only we knew the exact spot on the vending machine to pound when the Gatorade stuck. Only we knew 2008 Olympian Shawn Johnson’s middle name (Machel).
Shawn Johnson. Peanut. America’s Sweetheart. Adorable but powerful. Approachable but accomplished. She soared higher and spun tighter than we thought possible. But when she exhaled through pursed lips before a routine, and when her face broke into a smile after she nailed it, we imagined her as a normal girl, drumming a pencil as she worked through a math equation or chatting with her family in a Dairy Queen booth.
When it wasn’t our turn on the equipment, we re-created the wrap-up interview with Shawn Johnson after she made the Olympic team, alternating who got to be Peanut. As the journalist, I stuck an empty toilet paper roll near Lucy’s mouth and asked, “What’s it like to be Shawn Johnson right now?”
Lucy bit her lip the way we’d practiced in front of the bathroom mirror. “It’s amazing. I feel like the luckiest girl in the world.”
“Happiest,” I corrected.
It was important, as two future Olympians ourselves, that we got it right. We were young dreamers who thought it possible, if we just believed strongly enough, if we just worked hard enough, that we could both triumph in an arena where so few did. Where so few survived at all. After I landed my first back handspring on the beam, Lucy’s knees popped in and out as if she were doing the Charleston while her fists punched the air. Her face opened with delight and turned up toward the rafters, like she was Snoopy from Peanuts. She was maybe nine years old at the time, almost a year older than me, as our birthdays bookended\ 1999. Her hair was the color of fox fur, her freckles prominent, and her teeth banded in patriotic braces. It’s one of my memory’s most genuine examples of bliss, even all these years later.
From that point on, we performed her dance whenever we progressed onto a more challenging movement. I did it when she stuck a layout stepout on the high beam. She did it when I perfected a front aerial. I did it when she was first invited to the Talent Opportunity Program camp, known as TOPs, down at the Balogh Ranch, and she did it when I was accepted the following year.
At Elite Gymnastics in Indianapolis, a city home to the headquarters of USA Gymnastics, we were among the few girls Coach Jennifer believed had that special quality. She knew if girls, even at six years old, had what it took by the way they held themselves, the fearlessness with which they bounded into new movements, and the grace with which they leapt. Either you had it or you didn’t, and Lucy and I had it.
Since we both lived an hour from Indianapolis in opposite directions, we had gymnastics to thank for our friendship. The girls at school were poor fools who weren’t in our secret, who hadn’t found what we’d found, who didn’t speak our language. Lucy and I were soul sisters, pure and simple.
But in an unclean world, nothing pure remains that way for long.
From The Happiest Girl in the World by Alena Dillon, published by William Morrow Paperbacks. Copyright © 2021 by Alena Dillon. Reprinted courtesy of HarperCollinsPublishers.
Preview of The Happiest Girl in the World by Alena Dillon
