The Go-for-Gold Gymnasts by Dominique Moceanu

Author:Dominique Moceanu
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction - Young Adult
Publisher: Disney Book Group

By the time I got home that night, my words to Jessie weren’t just an excuse. I really was tired, and cranky, and all I wanted to do was throw myself onto my bed and lie there on my stomach until I fell asleep. Even taking off my clothes first seemed like too much to deal with by that point.

But when I walked through the front door of our apartment upstairs, Radu was sitting on the couch, and he shook his head at me.

“What?” I asked. The serious expression on his face scared me. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen it—maybe not since Papu’s stroke. My first thought was that the bank was there to take everything away.

He put his finger to his lips and gestured to me to come join him on the couch. “Mihai’s in big trouble,” he whispered.

And then I heard it—the walls of the apartment weren’t that thick, and Mama’s voice cut right through them.

“How could you?” she was saying, at a decibel level usually reserved for when the twins were trying to play with electrical sockets. “We trusted you! We may not have been happy about you skipping out on your shifts at the store, but we figured it was just a phase, that you’d come back around when you were ready.”

There was a pause, and then her voice came again, only louder this time. “It is a big deal!” she yelled. “You could’ve gone to jail. Do you realize that?”

I raised my eyebrows. “What did he do?” I whispered to Radu. Had he been busted for trespassing on that empty lot behind the store? It made me shudder to think that I could’ve been caught for the very same thing only a few days before, but it also seemed like a relatively minor offense. Of course it wasn’t our property, but it wasn’t like anyone else ever used it, and Mihai went there to reflect on things sometimes. Where was the harm in that?

“He got brought home by a cop for trying to buy cigarettes with a fake ID,” Radu whispered back. “Now, be quiet; I’m trying to hear Tata.”

Then it was worse than I had thought. I’d kind of known that Mihai was smoking, from the stale smell on his clothes, but it was still jarring to get such clear confirmation. I didn’t get what would make him take up such a disgusting habit. I remembered that back in elementary school, a traveling troupe had done a show in our gym about the dangers of drugs and alcohol. I’d only been in second grade, but Mihai and Radu had been old enough to go to the performance. They’d both signed a pledge right there and then, promising not to make bad choices. I wondered if Radu remembered that. It appeared that Mihai didn’t.

There was a lower-pitched rumbling through the wall that was obviously Tata’s voice, but I couldn’t make out the words. He seldom raised his voice; he didn’t need to.

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