Chapter 4
CHAPTER
FOUR
Janette Collins looked airbrushed. Her skin was perfection. No pores or blemishes even under the harsh lights. It was impressive.
“Once this interview is over, I’m going to have to ask for your skin care routine,” Kirby said, making small talk as they waited for Mara to arrive. “I’ll take notes.”
“Oh, his name is Dr. Tejura. He regrows me a new face every few months.”
Kirby grinned. “I love a miracle worker. Usually celebrities say, ‘Oh, I don’t have a routine, I just use SPF.’”
Janette laughed, and it was such a friendly, infectious laugh that Kirby’s shields immediately went up. It would be so easy to let her guard down around the journalist.
Kirby got more comfortable in her chair, trying to project confidence she didn’t really feel.
Mara walked in and froze when she saw them. Her hair was down, which was unusual, and Kirby stared at her for too long. Mara was a beautiful woman. She could have been as disarming as Janette if she would lose the stick up her ass.
They got Mara set up in the chair beside Kirby. She smelled fancy, and it kind of pissed Kirby off.
The cameras started to roll, and they were on.
“Mara, let’s begin with simple shop talk,” Janette said.
Because of course they would start with Mara.
“Okay,” Mara said.
“For your entire career, you have competed in almost all Olympic cross-country ski events and disciplines. You’ve done freestyle and classic. You’ve done sprints and distance races. But there are whispers that that will not be the case this time.”
Mara looked at Janette blankly.
Kirby got antsy after too many seconds of silence and jumped in. “That’s hardly a rumor. Mara didn’t compete in the sprint events at the last World Championships.”
“Your events,” Janette said.
Kirby shrugged. “I plan to compete in four events, a mix of sprint and distance races.” She did better without huge breaks between starts, so racing in as many events as possible was the optimal strategy for her. “I’m not just a sprinter anymore. I proved that four years ago.”
Kirby deserved to be in that fifty-kilometer race and the other events too. It irritated her that everyone treated the distance races like Mara May’s preordained due.
The press, US Ski and Snowboard, their teammates—they’d all done the same thing four years ago. They’d acted like that gold was already on Mara’s neck, and everyone else was table dressing at her coronation. And they’d all been wrong.
Mara let out an inaudible sigh but didn’t respond to Kirby’s needling.
Mara was so uptight in interviews. It was hard to play off her, to get a natural rapport going.
“Then is it true?” Janette asked Mara. “You’re not planning to do any sprint events.”
“It’s true.”
“What’s your reasoning?” Janette said, seemingly unfazed by Mara’s bland answer.
Kirby wasn’t unfazed. She wanted the spicy Mara. The Mara with bite. She wanted Mara to reveal her true self, to level the playing field.
Janette continued, “You are currently the sport’s preeminent and most well-rounded competitor. It’s amazing that you have managed to dominate in so many events for so long. Why have you made the change?”
Kirby couldn’t keep her scoff in, and Mara glanced at her. She looked like she was grinding glass with her teeth.
“I’ve gotten older,” Mara said. “I’ve juggled knee and hip flexor injuries off and on in recent years.”
“That’s true but not the truth,” Kirby said, infusing her voice with as much fake sweetness as possible. She didn’t understand what it was about Mara that made her feel so mean, but she suddenly resented this whole circus.
If the purpose was to set up Mara as cross-country royalty, Kirby wasn’t playing along.
“And what do you think the truth is, Bonham?” Mara asked blandly, and Kirby resisted the urge to fist pump. Getting Mara to acknowledge her at all was a win.
“You want your gold medal.”
“Of course.”
“So you’re putting your energy into the events where you have the best chance of medaling. Quality versus quantity. It’s a common tactic. It doesn’t make you special. It just makes you strategic.”
Mara didn’t respond. She went back to clenching her jaw and blankly staring at Janette.
“What do you have to say to that?” Janette asked, her voice soft and conciliatory, like she was trying to coax Mara out of her shell. It wasn’t going to work. Mara’s shell was made of steel.
“Nothing.”
Kirby almost laughed. Mara’s blandness was impressive.
“Maybe your motivation is something else. Redemption, perhaps?” Janette said.
The temperature in the room plummeted. Mara had already been all sharp angles and discomfort. Now with the roundabout reference to her losses in Beijing, she was even icier.
“Part of competing is learning from and letting go of your losses and mistakes. Focusing on the next race. Otherwise, it would be torture.”
It was a rote answer, straight out of a media training handbook, but Kirby couldn’t help but wonder if it was true.
She certainly hadn’t let go of her win against Mara. She held tight to it, treasured it as proof she was worthy. Sometimes she took it back out when the world tried to batter her down, to tell her she didn’t deserve to be there.
“This is the first Olympic Games where men and women are racing equal distances,” Janette said. “You’ll both be racing in the very first Olympic women’s fifty-kilometer mass start. Four years ago, your longest race was thirty kilometers. What do you think of these changes?”
“It’s about time,” Kirby said. “There should never have been a question that women are just as capable as men at longer distances. Other sports don’t have different distances for women and men. Swimming doesn’t. Track and field doesn’t. Why should cross-country skiing?”
Kirby believed that with her whole heart, but it was no secret she had struggled with the fifty-k.
Coming up in the sport as a sprinter, she’d had a hard time adjusting.
She always finished it, and sometimes she raced it well, but not like Mara.
Almost doubling the distance had been a cake walk for Mara.
It had made her even more dominant. She probably would have loved to add another twenty kilometers.
“Mara, what would it mean to you to be the first ever winner of the women’s fifty kilometer in the Olympics?”
And of course, Mara got that question. Not Kirby. Because Kirby wasn’t expected to the be the first ever.
Upset of the century, every sports page had said four years ago. No one anticipated a repeat.
“Umm.” Mara scanned the back of the room like she was trying to find an answer.
But all that was back there were faces they couldn’t see because the lights were shining so brightly.
Her gaze wandered until it landed on Kirby.
“It would be great, but I haven’t really thought about it.
Winning the race is important to me but not because I’d be the first to ever do it. ”
“Oh, I call bullsh—bull on that,” Kirby said before she could stop herself. “Mara, think of the Wikipedia entries!”
Mara shot daggers at her with her eyes. Kirby loved it.
“There’s a gravity around the race,” Mara conceded. “It feels big and important, but my goal is to do my best. It’s all I can control. Do you care about it, Bonham? Being the first to win gold in the fifty?”
“Aww, thank you for asking,” Kirby said sweetly, since she wasn’t getting the question from Janette Collins.
“First times can be so special, can’t they?
But ultimately, they’re rarely the most important.
It would be cool to win it but not because I’d be the first women’s fifty-kilometer gold medalist.”
“Why then?” Janette asked.
“Because it would prove everyone wrong about me.” Kirby met Mara’s eyes. “And nothing gets me going more than that.”
Mara twitched like she’d been zapped. Like the real Mara, the one she occasionally showed Kirby, was trying to escape.
“Have you always felt like you have something to prove?” Janette asked.
“I didn’t come up in this sport the way other athletes do. I’ve had to fight to belong, to have support, to continue to afford to ski.”
“I’ve heard you talk about your history with skiing and how you started. It’s a bit uncommon, correct?” Janette said.
“I was plucked out of a recreational, after-school skiing club when Coach Wu saw me at an event and thought I had potential. She took me under her wing and helped develop me as an athlete. I didn’t even own my own skis or boots.”
“And this unconventional start made you feel like you didn’t belong?”
“I’m queer, so there’s been a fight in my own life, in my own family, outside of skiing, to belong. I deserve to take up space. In life and in our sport. But cross-country skiing can be cliquey. It’s insular.”
“Do you feel accepted now? You’re an Olympic gold medalist.”
“It depends.” Kirby tried to borrow some of Mara’s steel spine.
“I love my teammates. I’m close to most of them.
Apollo James’s family has practically adopted me since I started training in Vermont.
I spend holidays with them. It’s not usually athletes or coaches who make me feel less than. Sometimes it is but not usually.”
“Well, on that note, I’ve heard rumors you two are close despite your past issues,” Janette said. “You’ve taken potshots at each other through the years, most notably right before the Beijing Olympics, but pictures of you training together came out just yesterday. So how is your relationship now?”
“We’re teammates,” Kirby said.
“Are you friends?” Janette asked. She’d so clearly been fed this line of questioning. It felt incredibly contrived.
“Yes,” Mara said at the same time Kirby said, “No.”
A long silence followed their answers.
Mara looked green, her eyes wide.
“Would either of you like to expand on that?” Janette asked.
“No,” Mara said quickly.
Kirby took a deep breath. She could tell the truth, or she could fake it.
She could burn it down.
Or she could play nice like she’d been asked.
She’d built her life brick by brick. She’d had helpers along the way, but she was the main architect. And she was going to be the only one to burn it down too.
“Let me just say, it was made clear to me recently that I was expected to say Mara and I are good friends,” Kirby said. “Which was news to me.”