Read Blind Landing (Flipped #1) for Free Online

he found out, guy has the intuition of a psychic.
    “I was just joking around …”
    “By trying to throw a Gienger? Are you trying to rip your arm clear off your body this time?”
    My shoulder still throbs from the asinine skill I tried to put it through today. But I don’t need Jared ragging on me.
    “All right, I get it, Dad . Just drop it.”
    But he won’t. “Spence, what happened, it sucks. But it doesn’t mean you don’t have a great career of coaching ahead of you. That is, if you don’t cripple yourself for life.”
    The fury and anger begin to simmer in my veins. “I fucking get it, Dr. Phil. You don’t have to be on my fucking case all of the time.”
    I don’t feel like sitting in the same room, much less listening to the two of them anymore. So I get up and walk briskly out, into the dim green hall that smells like body odor and gym sweat. I don’t even know why I’m still staying here. I could grab a room in one of the coaches buildings. Or even an apartment somewhere nearby the campus.
    But deep down, I want to be right here. In the action, a part of this mystical madness, the training process where people go from ordinary gymnasts to Olympic athletes. That hadn’t changed in the four years I’d been here. In the four years I’d had to realize my dream of standing on the medal podium would never come true.
    It was days like today, though, that I wanted to hang it all up. Call it a day. And move on.

Seven
Natalia
    T here are no such things as tears and no such thing as injuries in gymnastics.
    I’ve seen bones sticking out of girls arms, legs and knees bent the wrong way backwards, teeth that have come through girls’ front lips. And typically, those girls have been back at practice the next day after they’ve been stitched up, shot up and wrapped up. They spend their time in the gym doing anything and everything they can, working around their injuries in ways most normal people never would. Most normal people wouldn’t leave the couch for five months with some of the injuries I’ve seen. But elite gymnasts … we are not the normal kind of people.
    There is a slight bump on my tailbone from a stress fracture on my spine that I had as an eleven-year-old. It never properly healed, and I never gave it the time to. Fractures, sprains and bruises aren’t even classified as injuries in the gymnastics world, so I was up and at it, fully practicing the next day. After a particularly hard fall, directly on my ass while trying to learn a new vault, I felt something pull so hard it felt like my back was on fire. And I never told anyone. Thus, the thousand cracks that can be heard round the world when I get out of bed each morning.
    What I’m saying is … fear, injuries, crying, we don’t talk about them. It would make us weak. And the one thing that will immediately disqualify you from making the Olympic team … weakness .
    It’s why I’ve been getting up each morning at five thirty a.m. To come down to the beam gym and stand, frozen and scared, at the opposite end of the four inch piece of wood that I’m supposed to fling myself down.
    “Come on, you’re not a scaredy cat!” I slap my legs, the smack of my hands against flesh reverberating through the empty gym.
    And still, something in my head will not click. Some part of my mind has a hold over my body, it won’t allow me to power through the mental block and just do the skill. Some gymnasts have the ability to feel the fear and do it anyway . I wouldn’t know. I’ve never been afraid of anything in this sport.
    Until now.
    I take a few steps, letting my toes grip the squishy leather padding under my feet. I feel centered, at home. This is where I paint, sculpt, carve. This sport is my art, and my body is the canvas. I put on a show; I dazzle and excite.
    Moving my arms in a flourishing motion, I do a couple of the artsy dance moves that have been choreographed into my beam routine. When I get about halfway down the beam, I stop,