Page 26 of Let the Games Begin
“I promise, I guess,” she said, noncommittal.
“I guess?” he asked, raising an eyebrow.
“Okay, I’ll let you back into your apartment,” she said.
He looked at her, took his backpack off, and undid the zipper.
“You dropped it on the day we met, then walked away before I could give it to you,” he said as he rummaged through his backpack and pulled out her iridescentI AM FEELING VERY OLYMPICTODAYnotebook. The one she had lost on her first day in the Village. She’d been determined to find it, but then she’d got so busy running around the Village that she’d completely forgotten about it. Usually, she couldn’t live without a notebook in her back pocket. Her lists and plans felt like such a fundamental part of who she was that she always needed paper handy to map things out. However, she could already feel the sun getting to her head. She could feel herself slipping into the carelessness of Summer Olivia, and the boy with her notebook in his hands wasn’t making it any easier to regain her focus.
“Here you go,” he said. She put her hand out to take it, but Zeke hadn’t let go yet. “Only if I get the keys,” he said, looking directly into her eyes as they both held the notebook. The notebook was big enough that there was no need to touch, but still, his fingers gently grazed hers. She felt a tingle spread across her body. A glimmer of something dangerous, something intoxicating. Standing in front of him made her cheeks warm and her mouth dry. Looking into his eyes made her want to walk around to the other side of the desk and lean forward until they were too close not to touch. Feeling the soft, sharp graze of his skin against hers brought what she wanted into sharp focus. But, after a moment, he let go. Then she heard someone clear their throat.
“Ahem, I look after the keys,” said Arlo. He’d been standing behind the desk with her all along.
“Here you are,” he added as he gave Zeke a new set of keys.
“Same time tomorrow, Olivia?” Zeke said.
“There’s nothing I want less than to see you again,” said Olivia as he fixed her with a gaze so intense it made her feel dizzy.
They both knew she was a bad liar.
23Zeke
DAY THREE OF THE 2024 OLYMPICS
Every competition at the Games unfolded before an audience of energetic fans from around the world. But that year’s athletics crowd was more fervent than ever, because watching sprinters in Athens felt like watching history unfold in real time. In fact, because running was one of the first sports in the ancient Olympic Games, the main stadium in the center of the Village had been built in honor of athletics. The exterior walls of the stadium were covered with a mural of some of the most legendary athletes in history. Majestic gold-lined silhouettes of sprinters and marathon runners in motion. As Zeke walked into the stadium that morning, he was awed by the magnitude of it all.
It was the day of the 100m heats, the races that decided who made it to the quarterfinals of the Olympic sprint, so Zeke had woken up early that morning to do his prerun rituals. He’d jogged around the perimeter of the park, journaled for fifteen minutes, eaten breakfast with the rest of the GB athletics team, and then headed over to the stadium. Usually, he went into a race day witha completely clear mind. He tried not to think about anything other than his run and how to get to the other side of the finish line as fast as he could. But Zeke’s mind was filled with thoughts of Olivia.
“All right, lads, I know it’s just the heats and you’ve all got further than this before, but you have to apply everything you’ve learned in training and treat today like it’s the final, okay?” said Coach Adam to the changing room full of athletes getting ready to go out onto the track. “There’s no final without getting through the heats. So don’t fall into the bad habit of saving your best performance for a bigger race, because the race you’re about to run isalwaysthe most important race, all right?” A few of the athletes nodded in agreement. “All right?” he said again, louder, and this time the whole room echoed him. They slowly started to get pumped up as Coach put on his signature playlist and went around giving all the athletes one final piece of advice. Zeke did one last round of stretches and tried to shift his focus away from Olivia and onto the race he was about to run.
“Ezekiel,” said Coach Adam, coming his way.
“Coach,” said Zeke. He still felt bad about embarrassing Coach in front of the BBC video crew in his mud-stained uniform.
“I’m going to put mudgate behind us because, frankly, I don’t have time for that. But your last run? It was sloppy.” Coach was referring to Zeke’s practice run the day before. Zeke already knew that, so he just nodded his head in agreement.
“I want you to improve your form because your kickoff yesterday was a bit poor,” began Coach Adam before giving Zeke an in-depth explanation of how he could improve. Once they weredone, Zeke and the rest of his teammates left the changing room and walked down the tunnel until they could hear the sound of the audience eagerly anticipating the competition ahead.
Zeke had already been in the main stadium a few times. He’d seen it lit up with color and costumes during the opening ceremony and run laps around it when it was completely empty during training sessions. But walking into the stadium on the first day of the athletics heats was a whole different experience. People were excitedly milling around, collecting their snacks, and finding their seats. Officials were pacing around the track making sure all the equipment was set up and ready for the day ahead. Athletes in multicolored uniforms were warming up around the field, and the perimeter was filled with production crew members adjusting their cameras and microphones to get ready to capture it all and beam it out across the world.
As Zeke walked onto the track, he looked over at the other sprinters getting ready to take their places. In the outside world, there was this idea that athletes only saw each other as competition. When it came to team sports like football and one-on-one matches like tennis, it oftenwaslike that. Fierce rivalries often made for even better results. But it wasn’t quite the same when it came to sprinting. It was the kind of sport where you set yourself up to fail the minute you took your focus off your own lane to see what someone else was doing. So, there weren’t the same intense rivalries on the track as people would expect. Zeke knew all of the other runners because they’d spent the whole year competing at the same international races. While they were all intensely competitive, they were pretty friendly with each other too. He nodded at Jesse, the American sprinter who he’d seen at the openingceremony after-party. Smiled at Hasely, the Trinidadian sprinter who’d sent him a handwritten card after his silver-medal win in Tokyo. And said hi to Arthur, the Jamaican sprinter he’d met at his first World Athletics competition. Sprinting could be quite a solitary sport, so they looked out for each other. But once they were in the stadium, it was every man for himself.
Zeke got into his lane, focused on his track, and tried to clear his mind of everything except the race ahead of him. He could feel the adrenaline pumping through his veins, the excitement at the tips of his toes, and the fear beating inside his chest. There was nothing more thrilling or terrifying than a race. Running had started out as a way to feel the wind blowing against his face and see the world moving in fast motion. As he’d grown up and begun doing it competitively, the hope of a medal, the fear of a loss, and the question of what came next had clouded the purity of it. But when he put his foot on the starting line, heard “On your marks” and then the loud bang of the starting gun, all of that disappeared.
He lifted one foot from the ground, kicked off with a level of precision that would make Coach Adam proud, and ran as if it was the most important race of his life.
Some runners sprinted with an absolutely clear mind, too high on the adrenaline of the race to think about anything except moving forward. Others repeated affirmations and sang the lyrics to their favorite songs. But Zeke’s mind was always flooded with thoughts, images, and ideas. His family, his friends, his favorite runs, and feelings he couldn’t quite capture.
Everyone was either running toward or away from something. And while the images he saw when he was running didn’t alwayshold the deeper meanings that dreams did, they always propelled him forward. Whether he was running toward the idea of the joy they evoked or away from the idea of the fear they triggered. As he ran that morning, he remembered one of the last international competitions his father had taken him to as a child. Then he remembered the feeling of walking into his first Olympic Village. And for a fraction of a second, he thought about how easy it would be to trip and fall. But, luckily, the last thought didn’t come to pass.
He ran along the track and sped past the competition, finishing in second place by just a fraction of a second. As he heard the sound of the audience’s applause, he tried not to think too much about his memories of his father. Or the fact that he would never be there to watch Zeke cross the finish line again. He tried to focus on the fact that he’d secured his place in the quarterfinals instead of dwelling on the low-level sense of dread he’d been feeling after all of his races lately.
Once he’d said goodbye to his teammates, Zeke walked out of the changing room and through the hallways of the stadium. He congratulated a few athletes who’d just qualified and watched playbacks of his teammates’ competitions as they were shown on the screens around the stadium. Then he did a doubletake as he walked toward the reception and saw a face he immediately recognized, but hadn’t seen for years.
“Coach Chikepe!” said Zeke. The man turned around and smiled in recognition.
“Ezekiel, it’s so good to see you,” said Coach Chikepe, the head coach of Team Zimbabwe Athletics. Zeke pulled him into a handshake and then a hug. Coach Chikepe was one ofthe many coaches who Zeke’s dad had befriended while they traveled around the world for competitions. Zeke and Coach Chikepe caught up and started talking about Zeke’s progress since the last time they’d seen each other. The World Athletics medals he’d won (five), the world records he’d broken (three), and the height he’d added (twelve inches… well, at least a solid ten).
