Page 3 of Let the Games Begin
“Just one foot in front of the other,” said Zeke.
“But faster than you ever have before,” his brothers said, echoing the words their dad had always said to them when they were growing up. Zeke could feel a rare sting in his eyes, but he blinked back the tears before they could fall. Takunda glanced over at him with the same concerned look he’d been giving Zeke since he was fourteen. But it had been ten years, and Zeke still wasn’t ready to really talk about his dad. Thankfully, Masimba was good at changing the conversation,
“Also, I should probably tell you to be responsible and that, but…” Masimba said with a knowing smile.
“What happens in the Village… stays in the Village,” Zeke said.
“Stop corrupting my sweet son!” said their mum as she walked across the living room to scold them. She had a handy way of forgetting that Zeke was always the one egging his brothers on.
“If only your father could see you now,” Mai Moyo said with tears in her eyes.
Zeke was a solid foot and a half taller than her, but next to his mum he felt small again. Like he was still the fourteen-year-old boy he’d been when his father died, completely helpless in theface of grief. So, he did the only thing he knew how to do, the only thing she ever expected him to do. He put his arm around her shoulder and gave her a hug. For her, that had always been more than enough.
“He would have been so proud of you,” she said quietly.
Zeke nodded, but he could feel the familiar sense of guilt that came back to him now and again. Yes, his father would be proud. But it would be a complicated kind of pride. His father would cheer and celebrate, but there would be a flicker of imperfectly concealed disappointment in his eyes too. He was keenly aware of the small choices that had compromised his integrity and all the ways he’d fallen short of becoming the kind of man his dad would be proud of. But he also knew that a life lived on his own terms would never quite fully line up. So, the one promise he lived by was to always cross the finish line knowing he’d done the very best he could.
As Zeke left the house he’d grown up in and drove back to his apartment, he watched the sunset and began to let himself imagine what the next three weeks of his life would be like. The races he would run, the old friends he would see, and all the memories he knew he was about to make. Getting to compete in the Olympics for the third time was his greatest achievement. He’d spent his childhood dreaming about it and most of his life training for it. He was the bookies’ favorite to come first in the 100-meter final, and everywhere he went people told him they knew he could bring home that gold medal. And Zeke wanted to bring home that gold medal. To hear the crowd erupt into applause ashe crossed the finish line and to know that he’d finally reached the pinnacle.
But as he stood in front of his suitcase checking that he had everything he needed, he could no longer deny the sense of dread slowly building up in the center of his chest. Now that he was alone in his room, where there was no one to impress, he could feel his doubts rising to the surface.
There was so much riding on these Games. A gold medal to win, a personal record to break, and a country to make proud. He knew that he could run the race, but he was terrified of what came after he crossed the finish line. When he’d won the medal that hung above his mother’s mantelpiece—a stunning silver reminder of his last Olympic Games—he’d felt more joy than he’d ever experienced before. But once he’d left the stadium, the crowd, and the applause, that joy had quickly faded into something darker, something more difficult to explain. A wave of emotions that had brought him to his knees. For the first time in his life, he’d truly fallen apart.
And Zeke couldn’t fall apart again.
2Olivia
FOUR DAYS BEFORE THE OPENING CEREMONY
“Can you tell me about a challenge you’ve experienced and how you overcame it?” asked the man on the other side of the video interview.
Olivia Nkomo was perfectly composed as she maintained eye contact through the screen. She looked up for a second as if she was deep in thought. But the reality was that she’d rehearsed her answer to this question a hundred times before. She had a more successful interview-to-coveted-internship record than anybody she knew. So, she was an expert at delivering exactly what the person on the other side of the table wanted to hear. And if she was honest, the question was easy to answer, because Olivia Nkomo had experienced more than her fair share of challenging moments at work.
She’d spent her time at university trying to add as many things to her CV as she possibly could. Even if it was uncomfortable sometimes. Like when she’d found her investment banking supervisor sniffing a line on the sink of the ladies’ bathroom lessthan ten minutes into the company-sponsored welcome drinks. Or the strange summer she’d spent working at a crisis PR agency for musicians whose problems ranged from leaked private photos to criminal court cases. In the second week, she’d been asked to drive her manager’sincrediblyexpensive Mercedes across London to hand-deliver a parcel to the home of a celebrity who’djustnarrowly avoided a prison sentence for third-degree murder.
“Innocent until proven guilty,” her manager reminded her.
“But the only reason the evidence got dismissed was because—” Olivia started.
“Innocent. Until. Proven. Guilty,” her manager said.
Olivia tried not to think about which cover-up had paid for their Michelin-starred £200-per-person team dinners. She’d quietly sent in her resignation and donated a small chunk of her savings to charity. But all the donations and long hot showers in the world couldn’t cleanse her from the dark whispers she’d heard while waiting for the office kettle to boil.
Then, in the summer of her second year of university, Olivia interned at a major tech company. Yes,thattech company. They’d given the interns free catered breakfasts to distract them from the fact that it was four weeks of unpaid work. And reminded them that the prestige the month would add to their CVs far outweighed the toxic culture they’d have to experience while they were there. When the date of their “not mandatory” but definitely mandatory office summer party came around, Olivia found an excuse to leave her team so she could go and play snooker with the other interns. She’d admitted that she didn’t know the rules of the game, but instead of one of the other interns giving her tips, she’d felt the presence of a man who worked in accounts hoveringover her. He was taller than her, older too. Maybe in his forties. He’d slowly put his hand on her shoulder and muttered that he would “teach her how to play.”
Before she could politely say no, he’d placed the snooker stick between her finger and thumb. Her whole body had frozen as he’d covered her fingers with his sweaty hands. She’d glanced around the room for an escape route, for an excuse to leave. But instead found reasons to maintain her composure. There were way too many important people in the room to risk drawing attention to herself. The head of her department was a couple of steps away, talking to the company’s bigwigs. The other interns just watched, taking in her discomfort and standing in it like it was their own. The man from accounts pressed his whole body up against hers, squeezed her fingers with his clammy hands, and leaned closer. His vodka-and-lime-scented breath condensing on her shoulder.
But Olivia couldn’t make a scene.
So, she’d just stiffened up, counted to ten, and then said that she needed to go to the bathroom. At which point he’d finally let her go.
As she stood in the toilet cubicle, she told herself that if she’d been out in the real world, she would have said something. She would have done something. If a creepy older man had pressed his body against hers at a bar, she would have shaken him off, shouted at him, and left. But in a room full of people who could give her a glowing recommendation or a prestigious job after she graduated, she knew she would gain nothing from causing a scene. Instead, she’d splashed some water on her face, pretended it had never happened, and moved on.
Because unusual, expensive, and sometimes uncomfortableexperiences were just the price you paid to work at prestigious companies when you were a couple of months away from graduating into a recession. So, when the interviewer asked her, “Can you tell me about a challenge you’ve experienced and how you overcame it?” she gave her most polished answer, talked up an internship she’d done last summer at an NGO, and dropped an obscure sports reference that made him sit up and smile. Olivia left the call knowing she’d done pretty well, but even she was surprised when she saw an email with the subject line “Congratulations!” in her inbox. She’d spent hours in the library, interned during every university break, and meticulously plotted out her career in the hope that it would lead to what she’d been dreaming of her whole life. And now she’d finally done it: Olivia had landed her dream job at the Olympics. A dream she’d been working toward since she was eight years old.
It had all begun during the summer of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games. Her parents had made three big bowls of popcorn, turned the television on, and joined millions of people around the world to watch the opening ceremony. Olivia had a vague memory of a teacher telling her class about the Olympics, but it wasn’t until her eight-year-old self sat on the sofa in front of the TV and watched it for the first time that she began to understand why her parents were so excited for it. She’d watched the opening ceremony performers fill the stage and tell a story through song and dance, completely mesmerized by what was unfolding before her eyes. She’d tuned in the next day to watch the synchronized swimmers and stared at the TV in awe as she realized how much discipline and practice it had taken them to get there. She’d watched a documentary about one of the cyclists who’dgone from growing up in a slum to winning gold, and marveled at how sports could change somebody’s life. That summer, Olivia spent hours in front of the TV watching different competitions every day, going to the library to read up on the sports, and then trawling the TV guide to find documentaries and films about the most legendary athletes. By the time she and her parents gathered back around the TV to watch the closing ceremony fireworks, Olivia had become so swept up by the magnitude of it all that her vision for what she wanted to do—or more specifically, where she wanted to work—had become crystal clear.
She couldn’t help but be pulled in by the magic of it all and covered her walls with posters displaying the official artwork for every Summer Games in the last fifty years. Her parents trawled vintage shops and online auctions to buy her Olympic memorabilia for her birthday. And ever since that first Olympic opening ceremony, she had dreamed of a life spent traveling around the world to follow those five intersecting rings. She wasn’t an idealist in her normal life, but something about the way the Games crossed borders, languages, and political lines gave her something to believe in. A belief strong enough to plan her life around. And now, she was finally about to see it come true. Because she’d landed an internship at the Games, and in just a couple of days she’d be heading off to Athens to watch her dream come to life. She just needed the perfect outfit for it.
