CHAPTER ONE

opening ceremonies

IT WAS BRIGHT — that's all Emma could think as she hurried through the airport, her fencing bags being pushed behind her by Ben. They were late.

It wasn't their fault, Emma was trying to argue to herself in her head. The customs lady had taken a very long time and only once they had confirmed that they were apart of Team USA, did she let them go. So, that left Emma and Ben praying that their extremely important Team USA bus ( aka the one chance she'd ever get of being in the same breathing space ( or rather, not breathing space due to masks ) as Megan Rapinoe and Simone Biles, so it was of the utmost importance that she be there as they were half the reason she even signed on to do the Olympics ) hadn't left yet. 

"Wait!" she heard someone call behind her and she whipped her head around to see a very tall someone with bright red Beats and a couple of large Adidas bags, running towards them. "You're on Team USA right? I saw the Team jackets!"

"Yeah, we are!" Emma affirmed with a smile as she turned towards them, not stopping as she did. "Fencing. I'm Emma, this is my coach, Ben."

"Pleasure," Ben greeted as he huffed slightly from pushing the cart full of her fencing gear. 

"Agila," the person said as they caught up to the pair. "Volleyball. My coach couldn't come, so do you mind if I stay with you two? I have no idea where I'm going!"

"Of course!" Emma exclaimed as they hurried towards the exit where they could see multiple crowds of people, each separate crowd in matching jackets. 

However, all three of them stopped short at the sight of multiple groups with white team jackets. 

"Shit," Agila and Emma said in unison before looking at each other and bursting out into laughter. 

"Well fuck," Ben grumbled as he scanned each of the jackets. He saw various insignia of the countries and various people in red, white and blue, however, it was the crowd of photographers and the flashing lights of cameras surrounding a woman that told him that was where they needed to go. After all, Simone Biles was iconic. 

"This way," Ben instructed as he lead the two young people towards the massive Team USA bus. Certain that they weren't going to miss it, Agila and Emma relaxed into a pace next to each other while trailing after Ben.

"I'm Emma," Emma repeated before blushing madly. "I already said that. Sorry."

"No need to apologize!" Agila said with a laugh. "I'm nervous too!"

"You don't seem like you're thirty," Emma blurted as she blushed once more at her commentary.

"I'm actually 20," ze replied with a half smile. "You don't seem like you're thirty either."

"I'm 18," she confessed.

"No shit," vae breathed out as she looked Emma up and down before looking ahead once more. "A lot of pressure, huh?"

"I'm not in a very popular event," Emma said mirthlessly with a shrug. "Don't really receive a lot of the heat." 

"I mean, not normally," Agila said carefully as he looked at her ever so often. "But after, you know ... "

"They let a sexual assaulter stay on the team?" Emma asked bitterly, before widening her eyes. "I didn't mean it like that ... well I did ... but you made no mistake — "

"I understand," they said with a hearty laugh as the two of them reached the group of athletes. "I'll see you around, Emma from ... "

"Atlanta," Emma replied with a smile as Ben pulled her away while handling how her equipment was being loaded onto the bus. "And Agila from ... "

"Houston," Agila replied with a smile as vae handed their bag to a bus attendant and disappeared into the crowd of identical athletes. 

"Well look at you," Ben teased as he turned towards her with a cheeky smile. "Already making friends." 

"I'm not completely social inept," Emma grumbled as she walked towards the woman checking off names.

"Just mostly," Ben teased as he boarded before her, giving the woman a wink. 

"I hate him," Emma grumbled as she approached the woman and her frown turned into a smile. "Emma Valentine, Women's Fencing." 

"Thank you very much, Ms. Valentine," the woman said as she checked off her name. "Have a wonderful time in Tokyo."

"Thank you!" Emma exclaimed quickly as she ran up the stairs of the bus. 

There were massive cameras in the front and she saw the distinctive purple hair of Megan Rapinoe almost immediately as she chatted away with her partner, Sue Bird. Emma held her breath as her eyes darted to Megan ever so often as she pushed her way to the back — as far away from the cameras as possible. 

On her way back, she saw Agila once more sitting with Jordan Thompson and waved, receiving a wave from both people before they turned back to their conversation. Emma, however, lit up at the sight of her fellow female fencers — they'd met, briefly, over Zoom, so they weren't complete strangers when they all first met in person. 

"Jackie!" Emma called out quietly as she saw the girl's eyes squint under her mask.

"Hey Emma!" Jackie motioned for her as she moved over to make room for Emma. "How was the flight from Atlanta?"

"It was so nice!" Emma gushed as she sat down and shoved her backpack under the seat. "We flew in First Class and everything!" 

"Oh my god! I wasn't the only one!" Jackie exclaimed in a hushed voice as they leaned their heads together. "We basically had a flight attendant to ourselves and the beds were actually decent!" 

"This is my first time out of the US, so I'm really fucking excited," Emma admitted as Jackie squeezed her hand.

"I'm excited too," Jackie whispered as two very official people started talking to all of them about keeping their masks on and about the cameras. 

The bus ride went by a lot faster than Emma expected ( but she'd never been to Tokyo, so it made sense that she didn't know how fast it would take to get everywhere ) and before she knew it, people were starting to load off in pairs. She slung her backpack over her shoulder and grabbed Jackie's hand so they wouldn't be separated as they stepped off.

Following the crowd of identical jackets, they all walked into the huge stadium and gaped at the size and how grand the operation was. She saw people from all over the world milling around within their groups, but sometimes venturing to other country's groups. However, a woman in a suit approached them with a smile, grabbing both of their attention.

"Emmeline Valentine?" the woman asked with cheer, she was obviously American. 

"You can just call me Emma," Emma corrected with a smile, but confused eyes. 

"Emma, I need to speak with you about the coverage around young Olympians," the woman clarified. "I'm Clarissa, I'll be handling press for the younger Olympians on Team USA — that covers you, Agila Gomez, Sunisa Lee, Jordan Thompson, Athing Mu, Colin Duffey, Brighton Zeuner, Erriyon Knighton, Tyler Downs and Katie Grimes."

"That's a lot of people," Emma said with an awkward chuckle as Jackie squeezed her hand, grabbing Emma's attention and motioned that she was moving towards the group. 

"In comparison to the whole team? Not really," Clarissa said with a gentle smile. "That's nine people out of six hundred and thirteen, you make up about point zero one four percent of the team as a whole." 

"Oh," Emma mumbled as she shuffled her feet. 

"There will be more coverage on you, Sunisa, Jordan and Agila as Sunisa's in gymnastics and Jordan and Agila are in volleyball, which are two of the most watched sports," Clarissa continued as she wrote on her tablet and showed a breakdown using pie charts and graphs that Emma was too tired to even try to understand. "Emma, I need you to listen." Emma snapped her eyes up to Clarissa, who looked quite serious. "Because the Olympic committee decided to let Alan Hadzic compete, your event is going to be in more of a spotlight than I'm sure you're expecting. You're female and you're eighteen — people are going to want to know what you think about all of this. Reporters are going to ask you questions, they're going to ask your parents questions. Let me know if anyone reaches out to you directly so we can handle them."

"But what if I want to say something?" Emma asked with furrowed eyebrows.

"Then please do," Clarissa said. "But not through them, they'll butcher your words and make you out to be something you're not. I suggest signing up for Twitter and using it wisely — I notice you don't have one already and I'd be happy to set it up for you — as no one can skew your words until after the fact. Now, we don't have much time, so get going towards the rest of the group. They should be prepping you all soon."

"Thank you," Emma said as Clarissa walked away, making her turn around a wave goodbye. 

As she rushed towards the group, where bags were being handed out, she accidentally ran into someone. She heard cursing in a different language before whipping around to see a boy with dark hair in a red, white and black suit.

"¡Fíjese por donde va!" he grumbled as he got up and dusted himself off, making sure to straighten his jacket.

"I'm so sorry," she rushed out as she gathered herself and attempted to smile.

"Of course you're American," he grumbled in a distinctly Spanish accent as he rolled his eyes. 

"Sorry," Emma quickly said once more, not wanting to start something, as she rushed off and searched for Ben. She found him, finally — all she had to do was look for a tall scruffy man who looked to be about twenty percent more confused than everyone else. 

As she found him, she didn't have to say anything before he shoved her opening ceremony outfit into her hands with a strained smile and shoved her towards the women's bathrooms. She quickly changed and ran out to meet the rest of the team — people, who had obviously flown in earlier that day and thus had time to change before. 

She straightened her jacket and wrinkled her nose at the outfit that she was wearing. Such a budget and they went with stripes. However, she quickly found Jackie again and waited with her as everyone around them grew more and more anxious. 

Finally, it was time. If she thought everything was bright before, it was blaring now. The sound around her was so great that it faded into white noise as she looked around to see the sea of colors — different countries sitting with their teammates. Laughter bubbled up inside her as Jackie filmed it and panned her phone over to her, making Emma wave at the camera. Emma pulled out her own phone, flipped to Instagram story and filmed a little, herself. 

Once she posted it, she noticed her phone wouldn't stop buzzing. Checking to see if something was wrong, she noticed thousands of people hitting the follow button on her account. Oh shit, Emma Valentine, certified anti-social nerd, was now famous, sort of.