Chapter 22 Drew
Drew
Drew usually spent a few hours a day trailing Luiz around the Village.
Luiz always knew where to find the most stunning wintry backdrops for Drew’s photo shoots and had intel on almost every team in the Village.
But while Drew’s assignment was to work through the list of Zeus-sponsored athletes and take photos of them in the lead-up to and aftermath of their competitions, starting the photo diary of Ari had inspired him to make one of Luiz, too.
MESSAGE FROM: Zeus BTS team
Key people: Athletes at their second or third Winter Games
Key sports: Emphasis on indoor sports
Assignment: We have plenty of content showcasing first-timers and multimedalists, so we want to hear stories from those who’ve been to multiple Winter Games and know the culture inside out.
When he’d broached the idea of following Luiz around with a camera for the day, he’d expected to be met with resistance.
Luiz was always busy fighting fires, hunting down tech equipment, and handling every minor emergency and major complaint the journalists in the press office directed his way.
But it turned out that the only thing Luiz liked more than helping the people who spent their days working behind the camera was being in front of the camera.
“I’m a multihyphenate, really,” Luiz said as he leaned against the doorframe and tried to strike a casual pose as Drew recorded their conversation.
“Press liaison officer, Olympic superfan, future world leader,” he continued as they took photos of his tour around the press office.
“Remember, I don’t have a good side. They all are,” he joked.
Drew shot candids of Luiz grabbing coffee for a team of journalists working at The Korea Herald, caught a photo of him running to deliver extension cords for the producers of a CBC Sports special, and then captured a stop-motion of him reorganizing the infamously messy spare tech room.
Once they had enough photos, Drew found an empty desk next to a group of broadcast news runners, opened Photoshop, and got to work editing hundreds of photos for the editorial team at Zeus.
There were a bunch of sports-specific photos he was proud of.
Skiers midair and ice skaters elegantly gliding across the ice.
But the photos he liked the most were those of the invisible moving parts that went into making sure the Olympics ran smoothly.
The facilities team that woke up early to grit the paths, the ice makers who meticulously maintained the ice rinks in each venue, the bus drivers who shuttled spectators back and forth between competitions.
People who the average viewer would either never see or notice onscreen.
But those were the people Drew kept finding himself drawn to.
He’d always been interested in taking photos of people on the margins of greatness.
The ones whose work behind the scenes made spectacles seem effortless.
In college, he’d taken a photo of one of the men who cut the grass at Dodgers Stadium and gotten a small story about him published in the back pages of the Los Angeles Times.
One of his favorite sophomore-year assignments was a photoset of ballet instructors holding flowers while they waited for their students in the wings.
He knew the team at Zeus probably wouldn’t want the photos he was taking of the random people he’d met across the Village.
But taking photos of them was the closest he’d felt to the excitement of carrying his camera across LA back in college.
He’d left it for good now, but he still missed the feeling of being in a busy city with stories at every turn.
So, he decided there was no harm in capturing the people who caught his eye between assignments.
He’d done it the night of the opening ceremony with some of the photographers in the press pit.
All their cameras had been pointed out at the stadium, but Drew’s had been directed straight at them.
Without putting too much thought into taking the photos, he’d managed to perfectly capture the atmosphere of the press pit.
The focus, sheer determination, and quiet thrill each journalist got from capturing something that would one day become history.
So, he’d made a habit of it. Each time he went to a competition or walked through a crowd in the Village and spotted someone interesting working behind the scenes, Drew quickly took a photo of them.
Promising himself that he would find a life for them outside of his camera roll.
He was checking his inbox to see if he’d gotten any feedback from the team at Zeus about the last photos he’d sent them when he saw an unexpected contact at the top of his inbox.
He read the subject line: SUSPENDING YOUR STUDIES—SUMMER SEMESTER.
Drew sat up in his chair, his eyes widening with each new line of the email.
“Why do you look like you’ve just seen a ghost?
” asked Luiz as he walked past the desk Drew was sitting at.
“Has Zeus asked you to find twenty reindeer for a photo shoot with a snowboarder or something?” Luiz joked, well aware of the errands Drew had spent the past few days going on in pursuit of a good photo.
But Drew just shook his head and angled the laptop so that Luiz could read it for himself.
“I thought you dropped out?” said Luiz in confusion.
“I did, at least that’s what I thought,” Drew said as he read and then reread the first line of the email.
We have processed your request to suspend your studies for the spring semester due to extenuating family/health circumstances. To reenroll for the summer semester, beginning May 18, please complete this form by the deadline stated above.
“You suspended your studies instead of ending them?” Luiz asked.
Drew nodded and stared at his screen, perplexed.
He was so sure he’d dropped out. He could still remember filling in the form and explaining his reasons.
But as he read through the email, it became pretty clear that, according to USC’s records, he’d just taken the spring semester off.
To them, he wasn’t a dropout, he was a student taking a break.
“Are you going to go back?” Luiz asked, curious.
“Of course not,” Drew said. It came out more defensively than he’d planned it to.
“So why did you click on the form?”
Drew looked over at Luiz and then back at his screen.
He paused for a moment as he imagined taking a flight back to California.
Moving back into a dorm and feeling the warm sunshine on his arms again.
By May 18, summer would have begun. His days would be filled with talks from lecturers who saw the world in fascinating ways.
Afternoons on the grass working with his classmates.
Weekend barbecues and late-night library sessions with friends he’d barely spoken to since leaving.
The memories of his time in college, and the vision of what life would look like if he went back, was alluring.
The daydream pulled him in for a moment.
But then he snapped back to reality. There was no way he could go back.
Not now after spending enough time at home to know his grandma’s condition was getting worse.
It would be selfish; he would regret it.
But the idea of what could be stayed with him as he edited the rest of his photos, then took a shuttle bus with Luiz to get lunch.
When they got to the restaurant they’d decided on, his sister was waiting for him at the front door.
“I think I’m going to die if I don’t eat a steaming hot bowl of pasta, some ribs, and a slice of cake in the next three minutes,” said Thandie, who he knew wasn’t going to order a single one of those things. Like all the other athletes, she was sticking to a strict Team USA–approved meal plan.
“Thandie Dlamini, lovely to meet you,” she said, smiling, as she reached over to shake Luiz’s hand.
“Luiz Souza, the pleasure is all mine,” said Luiz. He was all charm but reserved the best of it for his boyfriend, who worked on the anti-doping team.
“So you’re Drew’s press office bestie? You know he talks about you every time I call him, right?”
“I don’t talk about him that much,” Drew said.
But Thandie liked to make her brother squirm. Her favorite sport, after ice hockey, was teasing him.
“‘Thandie, Luiz is the best, he helped me find a spare set of batteries,’” she mimicked. “‘Thandie, Luiz is so nice and helped me get into the bobsledding quarterfinals,’” she said with a grin. “‘Thandie, Luiz is going to help me become best friends with—’”
“Hans Leitner,” finished Luiz, and the two of them started laughing, immediately bonded. He’d known they were going to get along.
As they ate lunch, Thandie talked about hockey practice and what life was like in the athletes’ side of the Village.
Luiz spoke about his childhood in Brazil and going to university in Canada.
And Drew talked about the photos he’d taken for Zeus and wanting to travel through the Alps on the Glacier Express.
But then, just when everything was going well, Luiz asked a casual question that turned things around.
“Thandie, I’m helping a BBC journalist with an interview she’s doing later with another ice hockey player, and I was wondering if you knew her,” Luiz said.
Drew had told Luiz about Ari, and he’d been gently teasing him for the smile that crossed his face each time her name came up.
But Drew hadn’t mentioned her to his sister yet.
They’d barely spent any time together since their last family dinner and Drew didn’t feel the need to tell her about a relationship that wasn’t even real.
But Luiz was curious to find out if they knew each other.
“Oh, I know everyone. What’s her name?” asked Thandie as she put her cutlery down.
“Ari Shumba?” Luiz asked innocently.
Drew glanced over at his sister, watching as her face screwed up.
“Arikoishe Shumba?” she asked in a venomous tone. “The girl who almost ruined my life?”
“What?” Drew asked, confused.
“She’s the one who tackled me and broke my leg,” Thandie said, shaking her head.
And in that moment, everything clicked. Drew hadn’t seen anything about that match when he’d googled Ari.
She wasn’t that well known, so none of the articles about Thandie’s injury included her name.
But Drew had been at the game his sister was talking about.
He could still remember watching in horror as his then seventeen-year-old sister was carried off the ice rink.
He’d been so focused on her that he hadn’t paid attention to the person she’d interacted with.
But as the pieces came together, it all began to make sense.
On New Year’s, Ari had told him about the guilt she felt for a mysterious event that had ruined one person’s life and improved hers.
Now he realized that ruined person was his sister.
“She’s a sorry excuse for a team captain and an even worse player,” said Thandie. “Wait, that’s not fair. She’s a brilliant player, she’s just a terrible person.”
“What happened?” Luiz asked, glancing between them.
“You know how people sometimes trash-talk before a big game? Try to get into their opponent’s head and mess with them a little?
It’s part of the culture, especially when we were kids.
So, when we competed against each other growing up we’d always toss small digs at each other, go back and forth a little.
It was harmless fun. But I knew all the other players in the league were a little jealous of my team, and who wouldn’t be?
We’re the reigning champions.” Thandie shrugged.
“After Canada,” Luiz teased. He’d spent four years in Toronto and was still patriotic about his temporary home.
“Give it a few years and we’ll outpace them.
” She smiled. “Anyway, back to the story. Team GB was doing well in 2021, much better than anybody expected. And, for a season, they seemed like they could become genuine competitors. And you know how sports media gets, everybody loves an underdog, but a good story isn’t enough.
At the end of the day it’s about who wins. ”
“And your team was killing it that year,” said Luiz with a nod. He followed all the winter sports in the lead-up to Olympic qualifications.
“Until Arikoishe turned up.” Thandie took a dramatic sip of her water, before putting it down and telling a story that Drew had forgotten a crucial detail of.
“It was a few months before the 2022 Games, and we had one of our final matches of the year. Right before it started, she skated past me, winked, and said, ‘Break a leg.’ Half an hour later in the middle of the game, she tackled me and pushed me into the wall with so much force that I … broke my leg.”
“Oh no,” said Luiz.
“So, because of her, I missed out on what was supposed to be my first Olympics.”
“Do you think she did it on purpose?” Luiz asked as Drew kicked himself for not connecting the dots sooner.
“No,” she admitted. “But I’m pretty sure she’s glad it happened.”
“So, are you and Ari friendly now?” asked Drew, hoping five years had been long enough to thaw the ice.
“Friendly?” Thandie said with a joyless laugh as she shook her head. “I hate that girl.”
Drew’s stomach dropped. He knew the depths of his sister’s grudges. Once her mind was set, there was no way to persuade her otherwise.
“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.