“Ah, then by all means—carry on. I like the pigtails.”
Chelsea ripped out the high ponytail that made her look like a Teletubby and plaited her hair back into the pigtails she’d started with, fastening a lime green hair elastic around the end of each one.
“Very electric Kool-Aid,” he said approvingly. “Are you going over to breakfast yet?”
“No, I still have at least an hour of churn. You go ahead, though.”
“All right.” He gave her a good-luck hug, then headed off to the caf himself. Barely nine o’clock and it was already a scorcher. He felt sorry for the women, who’d lucked into a day even hotter than what the men had had, but it should be cooler in the park.
Not all of the men who’d been eliminated were choosing to come along. Some of them hadn’t been seen since the competition had ended. Maybe they were doing a Roddy—partying the rest of their Olympics away, but Flynn feared they were doing a Spencer—running straight home to hide their disappointment. Of the half dozen guys who’d chosen to make the trip, none had been likely prospects to final, but Flynn knew from the peeks he’d gotten into Spencer’s psyche that expecting to lose wasn’t any nicer than not expecting it, so he was going to make sure they had a good time today, that they went home with happy memories in addition to the bad ones.
Their destination was a park along the Tama River, just outside of the urban area surrounding Tokyo. The last time he’d been there, he’d been following Shino, but the train system was pretty straightforward and he had no trouble shepherding his gang through it, though they got more than a few bemused glances from their fellow passengers. Maybe because of the three giant pads they were wrangling along with them but probably just because they were a half dozen white guys who’d boarded the train outside Olympic Village. Climbing was a popular enough sport in Japan that bouldering pads might not be a rare sight.
From the train station, it was an easy five minute walk to the park, which sprawled across multiple acres with hiking trails to the shrine at the top of the mountain. Their destination was downhill, not uphill. To the river where a path ran, winding through trees and leading periodically down to sandy beaches where kids could splash in the summer-shallow water. Boulders were strewn randomly here and there—some along the path, some right on the water’s edge. They weren’t tall boulders—the tallest climbable one being only twenty feet—but short didn’t have to mean easy.
Easy was the place to start though, so Flynn led his gang to a pair of boulders he remembered from his last trip that featured some moderate problems ideal for warming up on. They threw their bouldering mats under the taller one and took turns climbing and spotting each other. Flynn sat on a bench and watched them, vaguely wishing he’d been eliminated yesterday so he could climb today. The too-hot-to-compete-on-stage weather was perfect for three-minute burns in the shade, the company was lively, a light breeze carried cool air down from the mountain, and the river burbling behind him provided the perfect soundtrack for it all. The only thing missing was Spencer and the chance to take his own turn on the boulder.
Since he couldn’t climb, he threw out advice, sharing whatever he could remember about the lines and how to climb them. Their group grew raucous as everyone forgot yesterday’s disappointments, and a crowd started to form around them—other climbers who could tell they had superstars in their midst.
The crowd blocked Flynn’s view of his friends, so he turned his attention to the smaller boulder next door, which was occupied by a family. A boy of maybe eight and a girl of five or six climbed while their parents supervised a toddler from a blanket on the ground nearby. No wonder Japan was expected to take home most of the medals if they were getting their climbers started as young as that little girl. She had a chalk bag fastened around her waist and real sticky-rubber rock shoes, and she wasn’t screwing around. She climbed like a miniature Spencer—studious, static, and determined not to fall. Her brother, on the other hand, was a champion faller—launching for the top without a clear strategy for how to hit it and dropping back to the mat when he inevitably didn’t, then hopping straight up to do it again.
Flynn went over and bowed to the parents a few times, using his very limited Japanese and a lot of hand gestures to indicate that he’d like to give their kids some tips. He wasn’t supposed to be climbing—and he was wearing sandals which hadn’t been intended for climbing—but the boulder problem the little girl was trying to do was the equivalent of walking up a ramp for him, so he demonstrated it for her a few times, adjusting his moves to fit her reach. Then he held a hand against her back to give her some confidence while she did the moves herself, and she immediately picked up on what he’d been showing her. She was going to be a champion if she kept at it. Her brother, on the other hand, just wanted to jump and fall—too much Flynn in him to take advice.
The brief taste of granite under his fingers whet Flynn’s appetite for it. When this competition was over, he didn’t intend to touch plastic again for a long time. Granite, sandstone, maybe some gneiss. River gorges and rocky passes, randomly dispersed boulders and long cliff lines—those would be his future. Maybe he could talk Spencer into a road trip before school started.
Eventually his gang had climbed out the moderate lines available on this boulder and interrupted his daydreams to ask for something harder. Flynn made a goodbye bow to the little girl’s parents. They bowed back, expressing what was probably appreciation for his advice, though he couldn’t make out enough of what they were saying to be sure. As he turned to leave, his eye caught on their toddler who’d wandered over to the mat while they’d been talking. He pointed at the baby, then made a quick downward motion with his hand to convey the danger of being in the fall zone, but before he could get his point across, the older boy launched into one of his reckless lunges for the top. There wasn’t time to think, only to grab the baby and spin him out of the way. The boy landed half on top of Flynn, but the little one hadn’t been touched, and it wasn’t until Flynn stood up with the baby safe in his arms that he noticed the pain in his ankle.
Shit.
He managed to downplay his limp until he got out of sight, but as soon as they made it around the next bend, he had to stop and sit. He’d fucked it up bad this time. Janco came over and shook a bottle in his face, and he gladly accepted a handful of ibuprofen from him.
“We going to have to carry you out?”
“Nah, just need to rest it. Give me a sec and I’ll show you guys a really sweet boulder.”
“Not too worried about it,” Janco said. “More worried about you. What are you going to do tomorrow?”
“Climb.”
That was what he always did when his ankle got bad. Ignored it, climbed on it, lived with it. But for all that he joked about not using his feet, he did. Every climber did. Briefly, he considered withdrawing. Someone else would get a chance at their dream, and he kept saying it didn’t matter. But now, faced with the possibility of not being able to compete, he realized it did matter. Not whether he won a medal or not, but that he was giving it his best shot. The way Spencer would expect him to. The way he always had.
As if to confirm that he still had a reason to put on a good show tomorrow, his phone pinged with a text from his mother letting him know they’d landed and were beginning the process of working their way through immigration and over to Olympic Village. He arranged to meet them for dinner, then texted Spencer to see how he felt about a meet-and-greet, surprised when he got an almost immediate reply. Maybe Spencer’s victory had inspired Pierre to lighten the fuck up.