“Or I could break a pole. Or one of us could fall. Or get a terrible case of shingles tonight. Or break an ankle getting off theshuttle. Or a sink hole could swallow us up right before the finish line.”
Mara glanced up, her eyes wide. She was so superstitious, and it was too fun to needle her.
“If you choke, you choke,” Kirby said. “It would be okay.” They won as a team, they choked as a team. And sometimes, truly, the most important thing wasn’t winning.
“No, it wouldn’t.”
Kirby huffed a laugh at Mara’s cheerlessness. “It was fun. Practice today was fun.” They had both been grim-faced and way too serious, but every time Kirby tapped Mara’s shoulder, it feltright.
Mara nodded, as solemn and earnest as always. “Yes.”
Kirby was locked in. She’d slept well. Eaten well. There was that calm in her body that was rare, the calm she craved. She was usually jittery. Full of energy or anger. Full of some emotion that made her edgy and wound up and itching togo.
Mara hadn’t smiled once, her race face on. A mask. Armor.
She had on her silver sunglasses. The ones fromthat day. The ones Jordan had borrowed, and Mara had retrieved. The ones Kirby had placed back on Mara’s head after they’d had sex.
Kirby didn’t mention it.
In fact, she didn’t say anything. They hadn’t said a word to each other.
Kirby knew what most of her teammates needed before a relay or team sprint, but she didn’t know what Mara needed besides quiet. They pulled on their lucky relay socks, a symbol of unity.
As they got ready to enter the stadium, Mara looked over at her and frowned. “Do I need to insult you or something?”
“What?” Kirby asked, unable to hold in her smile.
“Should I make you mad? You race better mad, right?”
“Just being near you makes me mad. You’re good.”
Mara’s lips nearly curled at the edges. “Cool.”
Kirby couldn’t even hear the crowd as she and Mara came into the stadium. She could only hear the smile in Mara’s voice reverberating in her ears.
The team sprint opened with a qualification round with an interval start, each lead-off skier leaving in thirty-second increments. They would each do one lap in the qualification round, and the fastest fifteen teams would move on to a final heat consisting of six laps, three for each skier on a team.
For the qualification round, Mara took off at her signal with such power. It was beautiful to watch. Much like the sprint, they needed to qualify but also leave gas in the tank for the final heat.
Kirby moved into the relay exchange zone. In less than three minutes, Mara came back into view on the straightaway. She was flying. She tapped Kirby, a smooth exchange, just like practice.
And Kirby flew too.
CHAPTER
TWENTY-SIX
Mara had two minutes.
Two minutes of standing beside Kirby before being forced to move to the starting line. Two minutes to say something before the final heat. To say anything.
Kirby had her eyes closed and was moving from one leg to the other. She kept shaking out her arms. They had hardly spoken after they’d come in with the fifth best time in the qualification leg. Kirby had nodded at her. Mara had nodded back.
It had been silence since then.
One minute.
She could hear people in the stands chanting her name. There were a lot of American flags waving.
