Page 39 of Off the Edge

I swallowed, but my mouth was wet again in the next second.

Dr. Varga opened the folder and said cooly, “We have received information suggesting that your conduct during these Games may require closer supervision.”

My stomach dropped. Instincts told me to lurch into a defense and argue, but that had never gone well. I needed to hear what they had so I could reasonably tell them it was bullshit. “What conduct?”

“That is what we’d like to discuss.”

She slid a photo across the desk to me as though I were in some kind of police interview. I turned the picture, and although it had been taken at night, through a car windshield, it clearly showed two men on a sidewalk outside a bar.

That fucking taxi driver. He’d taken the photos, probably thinking picking an athlete up from the Village at night to go find his drunk buddy would be worth something.

“Is that you, Mr. Navarro? And the second man is Ren Hasegawa?”

We were allowed to leave the Village. We hadn’t done anything wrong. But it didn’t matter. I glanced at Ishikawa, the deputy director of athlete services and Village conduct. Sapporo wasn’t Montreal. Two Olympic athletes drunk outside a bar was not a good look in this city. I hadn’t been drunk, but they’d assume I was. They’d assume a lot of things about that photo. Had they hauled Ren in front of a panel like this?

“Yeah, that’s us,” I admitted. “I wanted to see the city, and Ren volunteered to show me around. I uh . . . It’s allowed, isn’t it?” There was no way I was going to drop Ren in the shit. They didn’t need to know anything about why I was really there, or that he was the drunk one. They’d think it was all me, and I’d let them think it.

“This conduct is unadvised,” Varga said.

“It was just a few drinks.”

Coach Miles shot me the side-eye. The one that said, “Shut up, kid, if you don’t want to get your ass kicked out of the Olympic Games.”

“Reports say it was more than just a few drinks. One of you was highly intoxicated in public.”

“It was my idea. Ren didn’t want to go,” I added. “He said it was a bad idea.” I shrugged. Let them think what they wanted. They would, no matter what I said, anyway. It was just one photo and a taxi driver looking for drama. This was a warning to behave. I’d take it and make it so the shit didn’t touch Ren.

“You understand that you’ll be closely monitored going forward?”

“Sure.” I smiled. I didn’t mean to. It was one of those things my body did when I was cornered—smiled like I didn’t care, when really, inside, I cared so much it hurt.

“I suggest you take this seriously, Mr. Navarro. One more indiscretion and your place at the Games could be forfeit. This would have repercussions for you, your teammate, and the Canadian team as a whole. You’re here to represent not just yourself, but your country. I suggest you rethink your behavior.”

I swallowed my smile. “Understood.”

They dismissed me. I thanked them and left the room with Miles, walking fast beside him. I didn’t talk, neither did he. My footsteps on the carpet thudded in time with my heart. My blood raced, hot and sharp, through my veins.

I was being targeted because of who I was. I knew that. I should have expected it, but I’d thought the Olympics were different. Everyone was supposed to be equal here. Every athlete, every person. But I was a known wildcard, the troublemaker, the skater with tattoos, with a rough past.

“I uh . . . I’d like to go back to the rink,” I told the coach. I needed to get on the ice, to skate this out, or I was going to do or say something in the wrong place at the wrong time.

“Alright, but take it easy, Cam.”

“Sure thing.” I gave him the same shallow smile. Outside, we separated. I headed back to the rink, while he went off to find the team and get on with the gym work.

I couldn’t get back on the rink quick enough. I tucked earbuds into my ears, laced up my skates, and stepped out onto the ice. Hans Zimmer’s “Cornfield Chase” played on repeat in my ears, and I ran through the dance I came back to over and over when I needed to think, to calm my brain and body. The ice whooshed under me, the blades behaved, and I flew alone, far away from the hurt I’d been carrying, far away from it all. The other skaters on the ice around me didn’t exist, I just carved through them, as though they were ghosts. The music pulled me across the ice like a bird in the air. I swooped and dove, spun and wove. I dipped so low my fingers stroked ice shavings from the hard surface. My body was in goddamn harmony with the ice and the music and my heart.

I was free.

Nobody could take this feeling from me. Not Ren, icing me out. Not an Olympic committee who thought they knew me, and not a world that believed I wasn’t good enough to ice dance.

I was here, for this. Nothing else.

The dance was the way forward.

My dance would tell everyone the truth.

That I deserved this, deserved to be here.