Evie had been practicing cartwheels beneath the maple tree.
Most of them were less like cartwheels and more like energetic disagreements with the ground. Then, without warning, one worked.
Her hands landed. Her feet sailed overhead. She came upright without sitting on anything accidentally.
Evie threw both arms into the air.
“Yes! I did it!”
She felt ten feet tall.
Then she looked toward the house. Nobody was watching.
Her smile faded. Papa had missed it. Amelia had missed it. Even the neighbor’s cat had chosen that moment to inspect a flowerpot.
Suddenly, the cartwheel did not seem quite as important.
Evie considered repeating it, but her next attempt ended with one knee in the grass and a sneaker pointed toward the fence.
“Wait no, no....That wasn’t it,” she informed the garden gnomes.
As she brushed off her jeans, Evie remembered how happy she had felt before noticing that nobody had seen her. The cartwheel had not changed. Only one new thought had appeared: It doesn’t count unless someone watches.
She looked at the flattened patch of grass where she had landed.
It had counted to her a moment earlier.
Seeing that helped. Her excitement had not arrived from applause. It had come alive while she was tumbling through the air, before she had checked for an audience.
Evie still wanted to show Papa. Sharing something wonderful could be fun. But she no longer needed his reaction to make the first cartwheel real.
She took several steps back and tried again.
This one was crooked, fast, and finished facing the wrong direction.
Evie bowed anyway.
One garden gnome had tipped onto its side.
“Tough audience,” she said.
Have you ever enjoyed accomplishing something before wondering whether anyone else noticed?
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