At Risk Read Online Free

more nervous than she’d thought. When she woke up this morning her sheets were drenched with sweat. She wants to win this meet. She doesn’t mention the Olympics anymore because people like her parents get sappy, patronizing looks on their faces when she does. She knows hundreds of other girls dream of going to Texas and having Bela Karolyi as their coach, but Amanda is actually saving her money. All she wants is one audition. If he tells her she’s not good enough, she’ll have to accept it.
    ()f course the truth is, she can’t imagine him telling her that.
    “Knock them dead,” Polly tells her when they reach the door to the school. She hugs Amanda tightly, and when Amanda runs off to the locker room, Polly and Charlie head over to the gym. Charlie continues to read as he walks up the bleachers; it drives Polly crazy that he doesn’t watch where he’s going, but she bites her tongue. She’s learned to save her reprimands, to dole them out carefully, in the hopes that they might actually count for something.
    When they find a place in the bleachers, Charlie takes off his backpack and sits down, then unzips the backpack and gets out another dinosaur book. He is a Tyrannosaurus rex devotee. He can tell you how long a tyrannosaurus’s teeth measured and exactly where paleontologists have gathered his remains. Charlie is a lot like his father was at that age. Ivan always says that the sure sign of a budding scientist is that he carries books everywhere he goes so he won’t have to be bored by people.
    “Polly, I’m hearing strange things about you.”
    It is Evelyn Crowley’s mother, Fran. The Crowleys live across the street from the Farrells, and Evelyn is one of Cheshire’s top competitors, especially in the uneven parallel bars, around which she throws her small body with a vengeance. Fran sits down next to Polly. “The occult?” Fran says.
    Outside, the temperature hovers around ninety, but here in the gym it’s at least five degrees hotter, and the competition hasn’t even started. Polly hopes Fran will think her face is flushed with heat, not embarrassment.
    “If you mean I’m photographing Laurel Smith, you’re right,” Polly says, more coolly than she means to. “It’s pretty darned occult,” she adds with a laugh.
    “I wish I had had the sort of dedication these girls have when I was young.” Fran says as the locker-room doors are swung open.
    “Maybe they’re just stupid,” Charlie says without looking up from his book.
    Polly and Fran have been friends for years—which is probably why Amanda and Evelyn can’t stand each other—but Polly doesn’t mind that Charlie has insulted her, she isn’t even bothered by the fact that Charlie is clearly more interested in extinct reptiles than in his sister’s success. The girls have begun to file in from the locker room, and Polly can’t help it, she’s nervous. There are fifteen gymnasts from Amanda’s program, another fifteen from a school in Gloucester. In their leotards, the girls seem awkward and uncomfortable as the onlookers cheer. Amanda is easy to spot because she is the blondest and, at five feet two, one of the tallest. Some of the girls smile when they spy a parent in the audience, but Amanda, always conscious of her braces, keeps her mouth firmly closed. Polly knows Amanda hopes she won’t grow any more; the smaller the gymnast is, the better her chances of staying in the sport. Amanda is second in line to vault the horse and she does so easily, with real power and grace. Polly claps her hands so hard they hurt.
    “Don’t embarrass her, Mom,” Charlie tells her.
    Amanda is less sure of herself on the uneven parallel bars, but certainly she’s better than most. One poor girl falls at the very start of her routine, and she falls hard, turning one of her ankles so badly she can’t continue. Even Charlie looks up when she lurches out of the gym in tears. Polly is thankful that it’s somebody else’s daughter who’s fallen