Page 55 of Let the Games Begin
After passing the phone around to a dozen relatives and calling his aunties over to interrogate him about his love life, Zeke’s mum was finally convinced to let him hang up. Then he and Olivia lay back on the grass, laughing as they talked about the summers they’d both spent with their grandparents back inZimbabwe, and swapped the wildest stories from both of their family trees.
“What’s your family like?” Zeke asked.
“Quiet? I don’t have siblings, but I’ve known Aditi long and deep enough that she feels like my sister,” Olivia said, thinking about how lucky she’d been to find her.
“And your parents?”
“They love me a lot,” said Olivia, remembering all the texts they’d sent asking about her internship.Andthe calls she’d avoided and blamed on time zones. “They’re not stereotypically overbearing Zimbabwean parents, but sometimes I feel like they’ve put too much hope in me,” she said.
“How so?” he asked.
“They have the classic immigrant story, you know? Came with a dream, got disappointed, think their daughter is going to be the one that makes it. And I will,” she said.
“Of course,” Zeke nodded, looking at her with affection.
“But I don’t know. Sometimes I wonder who I would have become if wanting to be their success story didn’t matter so much to me.” She shrugged. “I wonder if I would have put so much of who I am into becoming the person I’m trying to be if I didn’t want to make them happy.”
“You know that they’ll be proud whatever happens, but you still want to do right by them,” he said thoughtfully.
“Exactly. And I want to do right by all of the past versions of myself who wanted the things I’m getting closer to achieving,” she said.
“I have a younger cousin named Rumbi,” said Zeke. “And every couple of days she sends me a new article about somethingproblematic one of my sponsors has done or some issue I’m supposed to be speaking out on.”
“How old is she?” asked Olivia.
“Seventeen,” said Zeke.
“Tough crowd,” said Olivia.
“It’s that age when you finally have your adult values but haven’t had the adult experiences to make you lose sight of them yet,” Zeke said, staring out into the distance.
Olivia nodded in agreement. “When I was seventeen, I figured out this whole vision for my life. For who I wanted to become, what I wanted to do, and what I believed in. And I’ve basically spent all the years since then trying to become that idealized version of myself.” She paused. “But I’ve made all of these small compromises along the way to get there.”
Her mind flicked through all the times she’d averted her eyes—from the toxic environments to the whispers about bad people in high places. She’d accepted the uneasy gut feelings as an occupational hazard.
“But sometimes you’ve got to make compromises, right?” Zeke said softly.
“Yeah, but when does it stop, you know?” Olivia said, thinking of how much her personality had shifted since she’d left school. “When I was Rumbi’s age there were so many lines I thought I would never cross. But sometimes I can feel myself moving the net, getting more comfortable with small compromises if they get me to where I want to be.”
Ever since she’d seen Lars at the diplomats’ dinner yesterday, she’d been thinking of ways she could maneuver the situation to get to where she wanted. She’d thought about marching straightto Noah’s office and highlighting the conflict of interest that had clearly got Lars the job over her. She’d toyed with the idea of having an anonymous, on-the-record conversation with a journalist about how convenient it was that the son of a billionaire sponsor in the midst of serious legal proceedings magically got a job at an organization that so loudly and publicly praised themselves for bias-free hiring. But the fact that she could want something enough to happily burn someone in her way made her feel like she’d already strayed too far from who she’d once thought she was.
“When I was seventeen, I had this airtight, unshakable sense of right and wrong and knew everything I didn’t want to be. And now a part of me is likeYeah, of course you did, because you’d never experienced anything that pushed against your belief system. It’s easy to be idealistic when you’ve never had to compromise. But then the other part of me is likeIf you’re willing to make all those compromises just to get where you want to be… did you ever actually value the things you thought you did?”she said.
“Me too,” said Zeke. “Sometimes I wonder if I would have mapped out the path I did if I’d known all the ways it would change me.”
Olivia felt the same way. She’d always believed that she could get to where she wanted and keep her hands clean. But maybe she’d have to get a little bit of dirt in her nails to get into the boys’ club and climb to the top. The clarity of that thought—and the realization that she was more than willing to make those compromises—shook her up a bit.
“I’m terrified of gradually losing sight of who I once was, but being so far gone on my road of compromises that I don’teven realize I’ve turned into the kind of person I didn’t want to become,” she finished.
“Have you become someone you don’t like?” There wasn’t any judgment in Zeke’s eyes, just a question.
She paused to think about it. “No, not yet. But sometimes I can feel myself chipping away in small chunks, losing myself in real time. Like, even here in the Village, there are things I could do to get ahead,” she said, thinking about all the ways she’d imagined getting back at Lars and Noah. “And doing those things would get me where I want to be but…”
“But at what cost?” he said with a nod. And then he turned around with an uneasy expression.
“I hope Rumbi never changes, because me and you, Olivia…?” he said with a chuckle.
“We’re way too far gone,” she said, grateful for a moment of lightness in the weight she’d been carrying all day. A part of her wanted to just stay there and sit next to him until the sun went down.
