“But none of that matters,” she said.
“Why?” he asked cautiously.
“Because if I play against her, I know I’m going to win.” She shrugged. “Me and the girls have been training and strategizing for months. So, I know all my competitors’ flaws. Especially hers. I know the weaknesses I can attack and the strengths I can use against her on the rink.”
Drew knew what she was saying was pretty standard. All team-sport training included studying your opponents. But this felt different. This wasn’t just a match, it was Thandie’s way of righting a wrong.
“Revenge?” Luiz asked.
“No, I’m not that petty,” Thandie said. “I’m just a better player. So, if her team is unfortunate enough to make it to the quarterfinals and play against mine? I’ll make sure she regrets the day she tackled me,” Thandie said, her eyes twinkling.
Drew just took a sip of water and glanced over at Luiz. Neither of them needed to say a word to confirm what they both already knew.
Drew was completely and utterly screwed.
23Ari
DAY FOUR OF THE 2026 OLYMPICS
“She’s acting like I killed someone,” Anesu said from the other end of the phone.
“Well, betrayal is kind of like a mini death,” Ari joked as she walked across the Village through the snow. The call started with her sister giving her a ring to check in after her last match, but it quickly devolved, as most conversations with her sister did, into a conversation about their parents.
“He’s still my dad. You got to spend your childhood with him, so why can’t I take a two-week trip to see him?” Anesu said, disappointed. Ari wanted to say that her childhood hadn’t been a particularly happy one since their parents had spent the entire time fighting, but she quickly decided against it. Because Anesu idolized their father. He never called her first and rarely spent more than half a day with her when he came to London for work, but Anesu refused to read between the lines. She believed that if she tried hard enough, she could have the kind of father-daughterrelationship that her friends did. Because despite all the ways he’d disappointed her, Anesu still really loved their dad.
“You’re the only one she listens to. Can you at least try to reason with her?” Anesu asked.
Ari was in the middle of the most important tournament of her life. Mediating a family drama unfolding eight hundred miles away wasn’t even close to the top of her priorities that day. But she wanted to have both her mom’s and sister’s backs.
“Alright, I’ll talk to her,” Ari promised, adding it to her mental to-do list before saying goodbye and making her way over to the training building.
The one thing that surprised people when Ari talked about her schedule for the Olympics was how little time she and her teammates actually spent on the ice. While they’d dedicated the months leading up to the Games to intense, practical preparation, they were only on the ice for a couple of hours a day. They needed to preserve their energy for their matches and couldn’t risk injuring or overexerting themselves in the middle of a tournament. So, the rest of their time was spent doing light sessions at the gym, going to physio appointments, and making sure their bodies were in perfect shape.
Their priority off the ice was mental sharpness and making sure that, as a team, they were mentally in sync. Which was why Ari tried to be the first to arrive to all their locker room and meeting room sessions. As the captain, she set the tone. But after taking photos earlier with Drew, she’d made a stop at a café to grab one of the vitamin-rich teas she’d heard about from her teammates. They were spending hours each day breathing in winter air, and she knew the worst thing she could do was catch a cold. So, she ordered a lemon-and-ginger immune-system-boosting tea and let herself drink it in the café while looking out at the snow. They had a team practice that morning and she wanted amoment to think before preparing for their next game. The detour didn’t make her late, but instead of arriving her usual fifteen minutes early, she got to the meeting room at 8:57. Just three minutes before they were scheduled to start. It was a decision she immediately recognized as a mistake, because the scene she walked in on that morning was pure chaos.
“Face it, Yasmeen,” said Izzy, “it’s your fault all the pucks keep getting past the line!” Izzy, who was usually the most cheerful of them all, was practically shouting at Yasmeen as they stood face-to-face in the locker room.
“Oh, of course,” said Yasmeen, rolling her eyes. “Everybody blames defense when we lose, but nobody blames the forwards for barely scoring!”
“We’re killing it on the rink!” shouted Sienna, getting up from her seat. “I scored three times in the last game, but why did we lose? Because you didn’t saveanyof the goals Sweden scored,” she said, pointing over at the screen on the wall, set up for them to review their last match. Ari stood still in the doorframe as she watched it all unfold.
“Maybe if you were a little quicker and got control of the puck from the start, you would have scored more,” said Izzy. Pointing to a flipchart on the other side of the room that listed all their game statistics.
“Well, maybe ifyouapplied more energy to practice than your social calendar, you’d actually be able to do your job,” said Sienna with the kind of shrug that invited an escalation.
Ari had seen this play out before. Since Izzy was the goaltender and Yasmeen played on defense, in moments like this they quickly went from arguing with each other to forming a tight team against anyone who attacked their side of the team, which in this case was Sienna.
“You’re so predictable,” said Yasmeen with the terrifyinglycalm voice she used when she was ready to dress someone down. “You blame everybody but yourself. But we’re supposed to walk on eggshells and ignore the fact that you missed that penalty.”
“That’s bullshit,” said Sienna defensively. “You don’t have to tiptoe around me.”
Izzy replied by mocking her.
“Yes, we do. All we do is tiptoe around you so we don’t hurt your delicate little feelings. ‘Oh, Sienna is so stressed, be nice to her.’ ‘Oh, Sienna is worried, so don’t tell her the truth.’ ‘Oh, Sienna is listening to white noise because she’s overwhelmed.’ Who cares?” said Izzy with an uncharacteristic amount of venom. Ari had never heard her so angry or mean.
The women on the team had known each other for over a decade. They’d met in their early teens and gone through many stages of life together. Awkward hairstyles, first dates, stressful exam prep, and hundreds of ice hockey games. They knew one another inside out and felt more like cousins or sisters than friends. But knowing each other that well meant that they knew exactly what to say to hurt one another for the sake of making a point. At first, Ari stood back and allowed them to go back and forth. Arguments were a natural part of being on a team in a fiercely competitive sport. But things had been off with them ever since Gracie’s injury. The fractures from boot camp were getting deeper. So, Ari tried to step in before things could get any worse.
“How about we stop blaming each other and focus on what we need to do to get better?” said Ari, trying to defuse the tension. But in ending one argument, she made herself the target for the next.
