The Favorites: A Novel(84)
So I packed them away and shoved them into a dark corner inside myself, one more thing I could deal with after I became the Olympic champion.
“Let me in, Katarina.” Heath touched my face, tender now. “That’s all I want.”
Let me in? I didn’t know whether to laugh or scream at him. Lee’s death was the least of the things we didn’t talk about. Why should I be the one to open up and make myself vulnerable, when Heath’s past was still a sealed vault?
We were less than seventy-two hours from victory. I couldn’t lose control. I thought back to that night when we were sixteen, when I climbed through his bedroom window.
Convince him. That I could do. The rest we could figure out later.
I kissed him, hard. He kissed me back harder. I pulled his hair, he pulled me down to the floor. Every second of contact felt like a dare, a challenge, a step closer to the edge of oblivion. We were punishing each other, telling ourselves it was passion.
It frightened me, but I was more frightened of what might happen if we tried to have this conversation with words instead of our bodies. We might burn down to ash. We might explode.
By the time it was over, when we lay sweat-soaked and scraped raw in the narrow space between our beds, bright morning sunbeams stabbing through the shades because we’d blown right past the start time of our practice session—I don’t know if I’d convinced Heath of anything.
But somehow I convinced myself that I had won.
Inez Acton: Everyone was talking about the interview.
Ellis Dean: It wasn’t just Kat going full Bad Bitch Mode. It was also the way Heath looked at her—and the way she didn’t look at him. They let the mask slip for a second.
Kirk Lockwood: Whatever was going on behind closed doors, they didn’t bring it onto the ice during the original dance. That program shut everyone’s mouths.
Jane Currer: The required rhythm for the original that season was folk dance. The International Skating Union assumed most teams would choose traditional dances from their own countries, to celebrate their culture on the Olympic stage.
Inez Acton: As you might expect in such a blindingly white sport, it turned into a carnival of cultural appropriation.
Ellis Dean: There were Hungarians dancing the hula and Brits doing bhangra and Germans in geisha getups. This was in the Year of Our Lord 2010!
Inez Acton: You could not get away with this shit today. At least, I fucking hope not. Amazingly, though, the U.S. couples all managed to choose relatively inoffensive themes.
Garrett Lin: Bella and I did a modern take on a Chinese sword dance. It was the first time we’d ever performed something inspired by our heritage. We even spent a few weeks working with a jian wu master in Tianjin. I loved that program, but it was more avant-garde than our usual style. The judges didn’t get it.
Ellis Dean: Fischer and Chan did a country-western line dance, complete with cowboy hats and bedazzled gingham. Let’s just say it did not make me proud to be an American.
Katarina Shaw and Heath Rocha take the ice for the original dance event at the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver. She wears a black dress with a sequin-covered tartan sash. He wears a shirt with a lace-up collar and, instead of trousers, a pleated leather kilt. Their music begins with a blast of accordion and fiddle: the traditional Scottish social dance tune “Strip the Willow.”
Kirk Lockwood: The Scottish ceilidh style made perfect use of their strengths. It was energetic, technically challenging, but also full of attitude.
Katarina and Heath perform an intricate step sequence with multiple changes of direction as they speed from one side of the rink to the other. The music transitions to a driving punk rock cover of the same song. They clasp hands and swing each other in a circle, the hem of Heath’s kilt flaring out to show the skintight shorts he’s wearing underneath.
Ellis Dean: Don’t get me wrong, it was a ton of fun. I’m just disappointed Heath didn’t fully embrace his inner Scotsman, if you know what I mean.
Francesca Gaskell: That program was infectious. You wanted to get up and dance right along with them.
As they launch into a gravity-defying combination, the camera zooms out to show the crowd in the Pacific Coliseum. They’re up on their feet, clapping along with the beat.
Kirk Lockwood: All Shaw and Rocha had to do was hold on to their lead from the compulsory dance, and they’d be in the ideal position going into the free.
Instead of losing steam toward the end of their program, Katarina and Heath seem to be building momentum. The final note plays, and they raise their arms in triumph.
Francesca Gaskell: They didn’t just hold on to the lead. They increased it.
Kirk Lockwood: After the original dance, Volkova and Kipriyanov were a distant second, and the Lins were basically tied with Pelletier and McClory for third.
Heath lowers his arms after a second, but Katarina keeps hers up as she soaks in the adulation of the crowd. She lifts her chin, looking supremely confident—or cocky.
Francesca Gaskell: The gold medal was theirs to lose.
Chapter 58
“Skate well. Do not embarrass me.”
This was what passed for a pep talk from our extremely German coach.
Lena gave us each a bracing slap on the shoulder and left us to finish our warm-up routine alone. The free dance was late in the evening; we would be the final team to skate, so we had plenty of time to prepare. As the lowest-ranked group took the ice, I moved through my usual flow of stretches, breathing into the lingering soreness in my legs and hips.