Mara had gone to a Super Bowl party once in high school. She remembered her friend’s mom being so into one of the teams that she couldn’t even watch the game. She had paced between the kitchen and her bedroom, occasionally peeking at the TV to see the score. Mara had asked her why she wasn’t watching if she cared so much.
She’d responded that it was too stressful. Every play felt like torture.
That was how Mara felt right then. It was torture watching Kirby ski.
Mara had been clocking incremental changes she would have made if it had been her racing. Monday morning quarterbacking. And her heart was pounding harder than when she competed, her whole body going haywire with anticipatory excitement and stress.
People said hi to Mara as she left the stadium. Someone asked Mara where she was going, but she didn’t respond.
Then suddenly she was free and relatively alone. She took a shuttle back to the Olympic Village.
On the ride, she closed her eyes and tried to breathe through the turmoil in her body. She wanted to check her phone. By now, Apollo would have raced in his semifinal heat, and she felt bad for not being there to cheer him on. Which was ridiculous. She had never even had a conversation with him that didn’t involve topics like the weather or protein powder.
When she got to the Olympic Village, rather than putzing around her room or pulling up the results of Kirby’s race, she went to the gym and did as much weight training as she could without overextending herself. Then she ate dinner alone. And finally, hours after leaving the Tesero Stadium, she felt calm.
Worrying about Kirby shouldn’t have affected her like that. It was a distraction, one that had wasted a whole day when she should have been preparing. It was scary.
She needed to get a grip. She had a race in two days. The interval start freestyle ten-k. She had a bronze medal in that event from Pyeongchang. That was what she should have been focusing on. Rather than letting herself get worked up over Kirby Bonham.
Two days to the ten-k. Twelve to the fifty.
Lindsey was in their room reading a paperback when Mara returned.
“Hey!” Lindsey said, sitting up in bed. “Are you sick or something? I was worried about you.”
“No. I’m fine.”
“So you rushed off becausewhy? You don’t give a shit about Kirby, Jordan, or Apollo?”
The accusation surprised her. Not because the perception of her was a surprise. She knew her teammates grinded against her status as the top skier in their sport. Her persona as a sweetheart and team leader versus the reality of her personality.
But it was a surprise coming from Lindsey.
“No. I do.”
“Apollo made the finals. And you weren’t there to cheer him on.”
“Did he medal?” Mara asked.
The glare Lindsey gave her could have melted a medal. “That’s not the only important thing in the world, Mara.”
“Right. How did, uh, Jordan and Kirby do?”
She really only wanted to know about Kirby but admitting that was too revealing.
“Look it up yourself.” Lindsey shook her head and went back to her book. It was a murder mystery with a cat and lots of baked goods on the cover.
Mara stood there awkwardly. She felt like she shouldn’t stay there, but it was her room. She had nowhere else to go. She felt kind of sick again. Like she’d just wrecked something very important.
CHAPTER
TWENTY
Kirby madeher way to the exchange zone where the press was waiting after the sprint final. She was buzzing.
There was an Olympic doping officer following her, waiting to collect a drug testing sample. That was a fun little novelty she’d forgotten about since her medals in Beijing. They would take a sample as soon as she made it through the exchange zone and back inside the Tesero facility.
She walked down the line of press. In Beijing, there had been a complicated dance of microphones, masking, and social distancing because of Covid. But now it was a free-for-all.
