In the gym, school stops at the thick, fireproof doors, held back by air that tastes of chalk, turns spit into paste, cakes the inside of nostrils, and packs under fingernails in a white powder. Buzzing halogen lamps, hanging from the thirty-five-foot-high rafters, turn everything the pink-orange of a beach sunset. Wall-to-wall foam mats forgive my mistakes, offering no judgment, only a cushion when I fall.

“Gentlemen,” Coach Nelson announces as the team starts warm-up stretches on the thin tumbling mats, “we’re running sets today.”

“Sets” are when my teammates and I throw ourselves through the air, battle gravity like X Games superchamps, and occasionally crash and burn. Drop a so-called real jock in here and watch them assume the fetal position while we blast through circus tricks they can’t even figure out. The jungle of toys waits patiently for our arrival after school lets out. High bars, parallel bars, rings, pommel horse, vaults, and springboards. Here my secret plan—revealed to no one, not even Bruce—hatches:

Number four is the one that really counts. Number four makes it legit. Number four turns virtual daydreams into a lotto jackpot, lets me laugh at everyone thinking “Danny who?” while I start a new life in a man’s body really fucking far from this place.

Full-ride scholarship. Full-ride scholarship. Full-ride scholarship.

I whisper the phrase three times every day while stretching, sending it out to the gymnastic gods, hoping they’re listening.

“Danny?” Coach Nelson gets my attention. He sits among us in a hurdler’s stretch, both arms reaching out to touch his toes. Coach Nelson knows way more about rock climbing than gymnastics but he does his best to offer tips and advice and makes a good spot-catcher if one of us is about to crash. He keeps his long hair pulled back into a ponytail and the weathered skin around his eyes is spiderwebbed with squint lines. Vance nicknamed him “Uncle Jesus” but he looks more like a retired special ops officer who’s renounced all things military, because that’s exactly what he is. He served over in Afghanistan, though he won’t discuss it. Bruce told us that when he was a freshman—Coach Nelson’s first year coaching and teaching at Oregrove after returning from the war—he had a buzz cut. Coach just never bothered cutting his hair again.

“You going to try that suicide catch again today?” Coach asks me.

“Yeah,” I say, grinning, liking his description.

“Look, squirt. I don’t think my heart can take watching you miss that bar again.”

Cool, I think. My new trick must be pretty nasty if Coach’s actually worried about me. He’s the only adult I don’t mind calling me squirt, either. He calls everyone on the team names like kid, squirt, half-pint, headache, peanut brain or—if he’s in a really good mood—little shit.

“You’re tough, Coach,” I say. “You can handle it.”

Just like Bruce is our team’s master on the rings, I’m the team’s master on high bar. I convinced my dad to pay for private club practice during the off-season, so, unlike most of the other guys, I train all year. Now, I’d never say this out loud, but ... I’m pretty good. Of course, no one outside the gym has any idea, including, I think, my dad. It’s okay. All that matters is the scholarship. That’ll make it official.

“You’re up, Danny,” Coach Nelson calls to me. “It’s okay if you want to skip the trick.”

“No it’s not,” Bruce says more to Coach than to me. Bruce and Coach are standing below me on either side of the high bar. If I miss the catch, they make sure I don’t do a head-plant into the mats. We have a spotting harness attached to ropes and pulleys that hang from the rafters, but the ropes get in the way for this trick. It’s not the floor I’m worried about smacking, anyway. Crashing into the high bar feels like being hit by a baseball bat. If you’re lucky, it’s not your face.

“Make it!” Bruce barks at me like a drill sergeant. I nod to him—message received—and kick up to a handstand on the high bar. Then gravity takes over. I help it by jamming hard through the bottom of the swing and looping back up around the steel pipe. The leather grips only partially dull the bite of the chalky metal digging into the thickened skin of my fingers and palms.

“You got it,” Bruce encourages as my legs whip past him and Coach Nelson on my way back over the bar. “Hit it!”

I kick my legs harder, tighten my belly, feel air breeze past my ears and ankles. The torque is pulling at my grip, tearing at my hands, itching to rip me off the bar. I crank even faster.

“Easy, Danny,” Coach cautions. Too late. I whip around the bar until I can feel my fingers about to peel off. At the top of the arc, I let go. I’m weightless, feeling my thighs powering me up toward the rafters, body fighting hard to break orbit while my neck cranes backward. I’m searching, searching as the world spins around me once, twice, I’m searching and throw my hands out, feeling, hoping, reaching ...

My hands slap the chalky steel. My fingers instinctively grab tight and hold on. I caught it. I caught it! I’m back on the bar swinging down and up around again. I did it! My legs snap me up and over the pipe for a smooth follow-through loop.

Bruce howls for me.

“Hot damn, Danny!”

“I’ll be an SOB.” Coach starts clapping. “Pigs are flying somewhere.”

I hear Fisher whistle and other guys clapping. I do one more loop and then let go, tossing off a lazy flip before floating down from the sky onto my feet. Bruce reaches me first, raising both arms for high fives. Two powdery chalk-clouds pop out from our slapping hands.

“Outstanding!”

“That was sweet, bro,” Fisher adds. Chalk powder settles over his raven-black hair, turning it old-man gray.

Coach Nelson offers me a small salute. “You could clean up in state on high bar if you keep that up.” Then Coach turns to Fisher. “Vance, you work a little harder, like Danny here, and stop worrying about your fake ID and maybe we could count on some consistency in your pommel horse routines.”

Ronnie, one of two freshmen on the team and the only guy actually smaller than me, approaches as I’m pulling off my leather grips.

“That’s one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen,” he offers.

“Thanks,” I say, feeling too good to ignore him like I usually do because he’s so shy and small and sometimes the sight of him irritates me in a way I’m not sure I understand.