Page 22 of Let the Games Begin
Zeke looked at Olivia, and then Olivia looked at Zeke. Hetilted his head to the side, and she bit her lip. He saw a wave of emotions cross over her face. Shock and then guilt and then worry and then her lips started to tremble. She covered her mouth with her hands, and her eyes began to water. He was about to tell her that it was okay and he wasn’t upset with her, but he was completely misguided. Olivia wasn’t about to cry.
She did everything she could to try to hold back, but the impulse was too strong. So she let out a belly-aching, shoulder-shaking, full-body laugh. Her eyes scrunched up, and the laughter poured out of her like a warm bright light. The joy on her face was infectious, and soon enough he was laughing too. An uncontrollable laugh that left tears on his face and his whole body feeling a little lighter.
“I’m gladyou’rehaving a good time,” said Zeke, shaking his head.
“I am… so… sorry… I… mean… it,” she said between breaths of laughter. Zeke tried to squeeze the muddy water out of his shirt.
“If this was your payback for the green juice…” he said, wiping his eyes.
“I would never!” said Olivia, pausing her laughter. “If I wanted revenge, I’dhaveto be creative with it,” she said as if she was defending her honor. Zeke noticed the way the sun-kissed glow of her deep-brown skin glistened under the light of the bright Greek morning.
“I’d expect nothing less than expert-level revenge from you,” said Zeke.
“Don’t worry, I can pay for your dry cleaning,” said Olivia. “I’ll get it all pressed and folded too. My treat.”
Zeke was wet, muddy, and about to get into so much trouble with Coach Adam. But when he looked at Olivia, he realized that he’d end up soaked to the skin with mud everyday if it meant he’d get to see her again.
20Olivia
DAY TWO OF THE 2024 OLYMPICS
“I don’t think we’re supposed to be here,” said Olivia.
“We’re definitely not supposed to be here,” said Arlo.
“We should go,” said Olivia, looking at the sea of athletes milling around them. She still hated feeling out of place.
“Olivia, trust me. Nobody will ask you questions if you act like you’re supposed to be here. People think you belong somewhere until you give them reason to think you don’t,” he said, confidently striding into the athletes’ canteen and toward the lunch line.
The athletes’ canteen in the Olympic Village wasn’t your average canteen. Every once in a while, an athlete did an interview and talked about just how magical it was. Olivia had spent years reading about how it included a menu of foods from all around the world, and she’d heard stories of athletes from different countries becoming friends while sitting at these tables. So, when she mentioned wanting to see what it looked like inside, Arlo snuck her in.
As soon as she walked through the shiny glass doors, she was immediately hit by the smell of the most amazing food she’d ever seen. There were rows and rows of tables filled with appetizing dishes, shelves stocked high with delicious-looking snacks, and a series of long curved counters serving food from all around the world. The Olympics was an international event, and the menu was too. Each athlete and sport followed a very different nutritional regime, so they couldn’t just walk in and eat anything. There were big, bulky athletes loading up on carbs; lean athletes whose plates only included meat; athletes who’d just popped in, grabbed a smoothie, and left; and athletes in line for preportioned meals planned out by their team’s nutritionist.
Arlo was on a mission to try out as many Greek foods as he could, and Olivia decided to join him, so they headed over to the Greek counter and loaded their trays withmezze, mini gyros, courgette balls calledkolokythokeftedes, and a plate of baked moussaka. They found a quiet table on the outskirts of the canteen, and then went back and forth trying each other’s food as Arlo told Olivia about all the countries he’d traveled to over the past four years and Olivia told him about all the internships she’d done during the same time frame.
After Olivia talked him through the list of jobs she was planning on applying to when she got home that night, Arlo asked, “Have you ever thought about just letting go and seeing where life takes you at the end of the summer?”
“Not really. I like having a plan, it grounds me,” she said. What she didn’t say was that the uncertainty of not having a plan made her feel like she was opening herself up to every worst-case scenario. Her parents had made perfect, seemingly foolproofplans, but they’d still had to start again when they moved to the UK. So, she’d trained herself to be consistently overprepared. It was more practical to be driven by the fear that at any moment the bottom could fall out. At least that way she knew she’d always have a fire beneath her feet.
“What about taking a year off and going traveling while you’re still young?” Arlo asked.
She liked the way he saw the world; it just wasn’t the way she could. “I’ve thought about it, but I don’t have enough money in my savings and I can’t really relax when I don’t know when my next paycheck is coming,” she said, not mentioning the fact that it would probably take her years to get out of the debt she’d plunged herself into by self-funding one too many unpaid internships.
“I went on a silent retreat for a week, and it really helped me to figure things out. You should try it.” Arlo bit into a gyro.
“That would mean sitting alone with my thoughts for a week,” she joked.
“Gotta keep the existential thoughts at bay,” he said with a knowing smile and then changed the conversation. “What do you think yellow shirt over there does?” He nodded in the direction of a tall athlete who was walking past them wearing headphones and a bright yellow shirt.
Arlo liked guessing the sport of each athlete who passed them. And Olivia, who had a near-encyclopedic knowledge of Olympic athletes, could almost always tell him what they actually did.
“He’s got to be a hockey player, right? It’s in the arms.”
“Nope, he’s a cyclist on Team Ecuador,” said Olivia.
“That explains the tight shorts,” said Arlo. “Okay, how abouther over there? I’m thinking equestrian.” They watched a brunette girl in a blue-and-green jacket walk past them.
“She’s a Croatian water polo player, but the ponytail does look very horse-esque,” Olivia said, nodding. “Do you ever wonder what sport people would think you played if they looked at you?”
