After the game, the Screech Owls took the train back out to the Olympic Park, where all the teams from the Oz Invitatonal had been given a full afternoon for practice.
It was beginning to sink in that the real joy of this tournament was going to be the Mini-Olympics. They’d had a good time playing the Bandits, and the Bandits had taken inspiration from their incredible tie game, but Muck had just proved that no matter how it was arranged, a competitive game was still more fun to play than a lopsided one.
The Mini-Olympics would be the real competition. Travis could sense it. The air was electric at the Olympic Park, the same high-tension, thrilling charge Travis normally felt at a top-rated hockey tournament. Everywhere they went there were competitors their own age working out and clocking themselves and trying to lift weights and hitting tennis balls and swimming and diving and dribbling basketballs. Just as the Owls – the visiting star team – felt a special glow whenever they took to the ice in Sydney, the Aussie kids took on their own glow when they appeared on the track and in the pool and on the basketball courts.
The Wizard of Oz could easily have got his nickname from playing a half dozen different sports. He was, Travis realized, a natural athlete. He could run faster than anyone else. He could swim faster. He could come within a few inches of actually dunking a basketball.
Everywhere Wiz went, Sarah could be found. Or was it the other way around? They had become a sort of golden couple of the Mini-Olympics – Sarah the best female athlete in the entire Olympic Park, Wiz the best male.
Nish was out of sorts. He was a star at hockey. He could be something of a star at lacrosse, as well. But Travis had never known Nish to play, or even care about, a single other sport.
Nish swam, but not very well. He was strong, but not nearly as strong as Sam or Andy or Wilson. He was so slow on the track he wouldn’t even consider running.
“Why don’t they make Nintendo an Olympic sport?” Nish whined.
“Well, it’s not,” Travis said.
“Or burping? Or making your armpits fart? Something I’m good at?”
“You’re out of luck,” said Travis.
“Or,” Nish’s eyes suddenly lit up, “why not skinny-dipping as an Olympic event?”
Travis’s mind recoiled with an image of a packed Olympic pool reacting in horror as Nish, butt-naked, raced in the doors and along the side of the pool and off the diving board – Nish, butt-naked at attention, the gold medal for Individual Skinny-Dipping around his neck while the Canadian flag was raised and “O Canada” struck up by the band, a small tear rolling down his cheek and off, bouncing off his shoulder to land on his other cheek.…
Travis shook off the thought. “Don’t even think about it,” he warned his unpredictable friend.
“Well,” Nish moaned, “I gotta do something.”
“You can practise our dives!” Sam interrupted.
“I can’t dive from the tower!”
“You promised,” Sam reminded him. “I put us down. We’re on the list. You can’t back out now – unless, of course, you’re chicken.”
Travis tried the 200-metre run and then the 400 metres – he liked the second distance better, not too short and not too long, a good test – and after he’d warmed down he decided to check out Nish and Sam’s practice for synchronized diving.
A crowd had gathered at the pool. They were watching Wiz and Sarah race for fun – Wiz barely winning over eight lengths – and they were watching Liz and Sam practising their diving.
Sam noticed Travis coming in and waved to him from the top of the tower. She pointed down to the floor below her, and there Travis found Nish, huddled against the rail.
“You don’t have to do it,” Travis told him.
“Of course I have to. She dared.”
“A dare doesn’t mean a thing.”
“Maybe not to you, pal. It means everything to me.”
There was no use arguing. Nish was the only human being Travis knew who came complete with buttons. You couldn’t see them, but they were there. Sarah knew exactly how to push them to get the reaction she wanted. Muck knew how to push them when he needed a good game. Sam was fast learning how to push them, too.
“You ready, Big Boy?” Sam called down.
Nish nodded. Sam dived, a perfect one-and-a-half somersault before she cut neatly into the water. She surfaced, pushing her hair back, and smiled up at Travis and Nish.
“We’re going to win gold, you know – Nish ’n’ me.”
“I’ll believe it when I see it,” said Travis.
They began on the one-metre boards. With Sam advising, Nish dove again and again and again. She counted out “one-two-three” and then they both bounced and tried to leave their boards at the same time.
It took a while, but Nish was a fast learner. He might have a large body, but he had great control over it, and it didn’t take him long to perfect the somersault and back dive and even a small twist. The more they dove, the more coordinated they became. Some of the dives were horrible, and everyone watching laughed mercilessly, but an increasing number were perfectly in time. A few times they dove so perfectly in tandem the pool erupted in a smattering of admiring applause.
“You’re a natural, Big Boy!” Sam shouted.
Nish said nothing. He nodded. He didn’t seem even remotely comfortable.
They moved to the three-metre boards, and Nish looked, for a moment, terrified. But Sam cajoled and prodded and coaxed, and eventually he began diving from the three-metre with the same surprising grace he’d shown on the one-metre.
“We’re headed for the gold medal!” Sam shouted, pumping a fist after one perfectly matched dive.
It was time to try the tower. Sam went up first, and stopped at the first platform to wait for Nish.
Nish mounted the steps like a convicted murderer brought to a scaffold. He moved like a sloth, both hands firmly on the handrails, his feet so reluctant to leave the steps it seemed they might be glued there.
He made it to the first level and froze. Nothing Sam could say or do could convince him to climb higher. He stayed there, eyes closed, his entire body shaking.
“Travis!” Sam called. “You better come and help him down!”
Travis scrambled up the steps and took hold of Nish’s wrist. His fingers were locked solid.
“Let go,” Travis said. “We’re going back down.”
“I … can’t … move,” Nish said.
“You can’t stay here.”
“Keep your eyes shut,” Sam said, “and we’ll guide you.”
Slowly, they brought Nish back down. There were a few giggles from the crowd, but no open laughter. It was one thing to kid Nish about his stupid ideas, but no one wanted to humiliate him.
As soon as Nish’s feet touched the floor he opened his eyes – they were brimmed red, but perhaps that was just the chlorine in the pool.
He didn’t say a word. He headed straight for the door and was out, gone.
“There goes my gold medal,” sighed Sam.