Courage to Soar: Chapters 14–17

As I walked away, I overheard another coach commenting to someone behind the stage curtain about my lackluster performance.

“Why would anyone want a belly piercing?” he asked, genuinely appalled.

Whatever she meant, her comment sparked instant pandemonium in the gymnastics community.

Together, we googled around and figured out what the whole dustup was about.

“Simone has moved on,” my dad told them. “She’s not fazed by it.”

But even as Carlotta was trying to apologize for the whole affair, a spokesperson for the Italian Gymnastics Federation released a statement on Facebook that just made the situation worse...

I marched into St. James the Apostle Church that Sunday in a line of teenagers with solemn faces.

It was a few weeks after Worlds, and in a way, our procession reminded me of a medal ceremony, except that no gold, silver, and bronze medals would be given out.

I was thrilled with my silver belly ring, but now my doctor was telling me that if they had to use a defibrillator to revive me during surgery, the metal in that belly ring could lead to electrocution.

“All right, Simone,” the doctor said before discharging me later that afternoon, “you’ll probably feel some pain and soreness around that ankle, so we’re sending you home with pain medicine and an orthopedic boot. You’ll be on crutches for about three weeks.”

By now you know that whenever I feel anything strongly, whether that’s fear, sadness, anger, or joy, my default is to cry.

Mom was levelheaded, as she has always been.

After letting Tomas know we were leaving, I drove Adria and myself to church for catechism class.

I didn’t take all that natural light for granted because, before we were able to move into our beautiful, spacious, light-filled training center in 2015, Adria and I had been working out in a dingy warehouse over by the railway tracks.

They had a hole cut in the wall between the two adjoining warehouses so we could easily get from one side to the other.

No matter how much sprucing up we did, that warehouse was not pretty.

One day, when I was being a little sulky during practice, Aimee came over to me.

Coming back from a shoulder injury, I’d managed to turn in a polished performance on bars, my nemesis.

Later that evening, as I waited with the other winners to be called to the podium for the medal ceremony, I thought about all the upheaval and change I’d just been through.

With great composure—much more than I’d shown—Kyla laid her bouquet delicately at the edge of her podium and climbed onto my podium with me.

But in Glasgow, leading up to the meet, our training days were so rigorous and long that I began to feel exhausted.

We did get to rest up a bit before the meet, but by then I’d started to obsess over my routines in a way that’s never good for me.

Now, as I sipped my Orange Fusion concoction, I felt several sets of eyes studying me.

“No, but maybe they know you,” Adria said, indifferently slurping her Strawberry Whirl.

For a fleeting moment, I wished I could see the hugeness of that achievement from the perspective of other people.