Page 6 of Let the Games Begin
“Oh, so you’re not familiar with…her?” said Camille as she picked up the magazine and handed it over to him.
The July cover ofAmerican Voguewas a group photo of the stars of Team USA’s gymnastics team. There was Sade Ambrose, a nineteen-year-old from Michigan who’d nailed a flip that only two other gymnasts had ever been brave enough to do before; Ming Zhang, a twenty-year-old from Maine whose vault routine was unparalleled; Kristen Lewis, a twenty-three-year-old from Arizona who was a marvel on the beam; and Ava Johnson, an eighteen-year-old New Yorker whose floor routines went viral.
The headline on the front cover wasTHE FEARLESS FIVE, and Ava, Ming, Kristen, and Sade were all standing in the middle of an orchard wearing beautifully ornate gold-leaf crowns. But at the center of the photo, staring directly into the camera with piercing dark-green eyes, her long brown hair curling over her shoulders, was the girl that everyone wanted to know more about: Valentina Ross-Rodriguez. She was the five-time-medal-winning star captain of Team USA’s women’s gymnastics team. At twenty-four, she was already acknowledged as one of the greatest athletes of their generation.
And she was Zeke’s ex-girlfriend.
The head coach of Team GB walked to the front of the line,faced the athletes, and said, “Okay, everyone smile and say ‘team’ in three… two… one!”
Zeke, ignoring his teammates’ questions, looked directly into the camera and smiled. It was going to be a very interesting summer.
Athens, GreeceSummer 2024
5Olivia
ONE DAY BEFORE THE OPENING CEREMONY
“Olivia, you need to readDirecting the Montage of Your Life!” Aditi insisted.
“Aditi, I love you. But I’m not reading something calledDirecting the Montage of Your Life.” Olivia was deeply skeptical of her best friend’s “life-changing” self-help books. Mostly because they had corny titles likeThe World’s Your Oyster (Bar)and…Directing the Montage of Your Life.
“Right, so since you never take any of myvery goodrecommendations, the idea is that everything’s exciting if you look at it that way.”
“How do I romanticize this?” Olivia positioned her phone camera toward the vending machine next to the bus stop where she was about to catch a bus to the Village.
“It’s a Greek vending machine! Have you ever seen that brand of chocolate before?”
“No. I’ll take a photo for my scrapbook,” Olivia said dryly. “Okay, how about this phone box?”
“It’s an ancient artifact of a time before the Uber app.”
“You’re ridiculous,” Olivia said, amused by her best friend’s unflinching commitment to magical thinking.
“I’m a storyteller.” Aditi grinned from Olivia’s phone screen. She moved through life with a sense of ease and wide-eyed wonder. She saw magic in everything, and while Olivia didn’t, her best friend never stopped making her want to. That’s probably why they’d stayed friends for so long. They were similar in all the ways that mattered but different in all the ways that made life fun. And Aditi was always trying to get Olivia to have more fun.
“I’ve been thinking about Summer Olivia,” she began.
“Not this again.” Olivia shook her head as she took a swig from her water bottle. The Athens heat was starting to get to her.
“Hear me out. What if that summer wasn’t a fluke?”
“It wasn’t a fluke, it was a mistake,” Olivia insisted, remembering how she’d allowed herself to fall so in love with Tiago that she’d considered deferring her final year to go traveling with him. But then she’d gone to his apartment one night to surprise him. There, she’d been greeted at the door by his gorgeous, incredibly angry,long-termgirlfriend. Tiago had been hiding them from each other all summer, and Olivia had been too caught up in her feelings to see the signs.
So, impulsive, carefree Summer Olivia wasn’t going to be making an appearance in Athens. But she did promise to immortalize that morning with a first-day photograph.
She walked over to a statue of the five Olympic rings and propped her phone on a fence to try to take a photo. After her third attempt, a guy came over to help her.
Olivia’s eyes widened. She’d known that she’d eventually seean athlete in real life; it was the Olympic Village after all. But she hadn’t expected to meet one so soon after arriving. He was wearing a white-and-red tracksuit and had the kind of tall, strong build that made it obvious he was there to compete. But Olivia would have recognized him in the middle of a crowded supermarket. Because he wasn’t just any athlete, he was Haruki Endo, the star of the Japanese swimming team. He’d won a gold medal at the last Olympic Games, just done a big fashion campaign with Louis Vuitton, and was on track to win even more medals that summer. Olivia was completely starstruck.
“I can take a photo for you if you want,” he said, walking over to her with a smile.
“Thank you. My best friend would kill me if I didn’t take a good picture,” said Olivia.
“You’ve got to get the first-day photo. You never know what it’ll mean to you in five years,” he said.
Olivia smiled at the camera and tried not to think about the fact that she was speaking to a multi-medal-winning Olympian.
“Is this all right?” he asked, coming closer so she could see the photo. Her braids were in a ponytail with two perfectly curled sections gently framing her face. She was wearing brand-new heels and the sleek green suit her parents had bought her especially for today. Olivia was glowing.
