The crowd was growing thicker and louder, and I finally got a sense of the scale of this spectacle and what a loser I was. I had accomplished nothing that made me deserving of carrying the torch. Sure, I had volunteered at the shelter as I had told the group, but I had done it once a week for a semester and hated every minute of it.

The thought crossed my mind that someone who had lost a limb to a flesh-eating bacteria or freed captive puppies from their cages during an Animal Rescue League fire had been denied a spot on the torch runner list because I got hammered one night and thought it would be funny to get myself involved. In a moment when I should have been eating up the accolades, I was immersed in self-loathing soup.

As our bus crept to a halt, the police escort lights flashing, the first person, the woman with all the orphans, was handed her torch and ushered off the bus. The combat nurse, who would pass the flame to me, smiled again at me, her teeth as white as her hair, and said, “Oooh, this is exciting, isn’t it? I can’t wait for my turn.”

When the Brazilian woman stepped off the bus, she shot me a dirty glance and hissed, her eyes narrowed, “You will see. I will not be the one who is to drop the torch.”

Tina, the woman I was to pass the flame to, had survived a gunshot wound to the chest from a boyfriend. Sitting next to me, she sensed my fear. She gave me a concerned look and in her slow, Southern drawl offered, “Don’t worry, hon. You’ll do just fine. It’s only a quarter of a mile. Even you can run that.”

In the months leading up to this moment, I should have had time to mentally prepare myself for the inevitable: being found out as a fraud. But events happened much faster than I’d planned. I was just overcoming my violent urges towards Tina when the combat nurse was helped off the bus by an escort runner, one of the men and women who ran surrounding the torchbearer to prevent anyone from ruining the festivities, because without a torch relay, the terrorists would win. Still smiling and creeping me out, the combat nurse waved at me and sang, “I’ll see you in a few minutes!”
           
Melissa was in front of me, grinning and taking her own shot. “Okay, Mr. College Graduate,” she chirped. “It’s your turn.”

Not for the first time that night did I consider bludgeoning someone with my torch. But when Melissa handed it to me, I was surprised to find that it wasn’t shaped like a Coca-Cola bottle but rather silver and sleek, like an icicle, and more suited to stabbing people than clubbing them. At its bottom was a shiny plate on which was inscribed, “Light The Fire Within.” The top consisted of a glass cylinder that contained the gas canister that would enable me to bear the flame for all of America. I stepped off the bus and was met by a round of cheers from the spectators who lined the route.

My mother stood at the front of the crowd, grinning and snapping pictures. I gave her a quick hug. “Your father and sister are up ahead a little,” she told me. They were strategically placing themselves at different spots along the quarter-mile route to get as many pictures as possible of me making my country proud.
           
One of the security escorts approached me, wielding a pair of tongs to switch on the gas in my torch at the right moment, just before the combat nurse passed the flame on to me. He gave me instructions on how to run the torch in the correct Olympic manner. “Once the torch is lit,” he said, “the flame will run down through here,” (he traced his finger along the length of the torch), “up here,” (he ran his finger up my arm), “and finally end here, where it will light the fire within” (he tapped my chest where my heart was about to burst through). I yelped when he poked me, and contemplated how conducive the torch’s tapered design was to shoving it up someone’s ass.

A middle-aged woman approached me and asked if she could take a picture of her children with the torch. I looked around to the half-dozen motorcycle cops who stood nearby, hoping one of them would shoo her away, but no such luck.

The two kids stood in front of me, each with one hand on the torch, the other gripping an American flag. The woman stooped in an attempt to cut me out of the picture altogether. When she was done, she asked, “So what did you do to get such an honor?”

The question was more of an accusation. The sinking feeling returned to my stomach. I felt exactly as I had two hours before when faced with people of actual accomplishment, exposed as a ne’er-do-well liberal-arts-educated waste of space. It wasn’t my fault, I told myself. Someone somewhere in the process of selection should have known better than to throw me in this mix. Someone would lose his or her job over this. Before I could muster an answer, an escort runner pulled me away. I was about to become the only person in the world in possession of the Olympic flame, and I felt nauseated. The escort who had poked my chest gave a big grin and asked, “You ready?” He didn’t seem satisfied when I shrugged in response.

Eyeing the large police escort, I wondered how much higher the crime rate would be in Nashville that night. Following the first group of the police motorcade was a series of Chevrolet trucks from which volunteers were tossing various Coca-Cola promotional items. Behind that was the press bus, a large truck full of photographers snapping pictures from the back while a series of loud speakers on top blared various Olympic theme songs. Another series of motorcycle police completed the motorcade, followed by the combat nurse, walking slowly, taking in everything around her, still smiling.

As she approached me, she tilted her torch in at a forty-five degree angle toward mine, just as Sam had instructed, mine feeling even heavier in my hands than it had minutes before. The flame leapt from her torch to mine, and the crowd roared. My feet seemed reluctant to take my first steps onward toward Tina.

As I started to jog, the lit torch still cumbrous in my hand, I tried to let myself become swallowed up in the patriotism, in the general can-do Olympic spirit of it all. I can do this, I told myself. I can do this without being found out. The crowd cheered, and I caught a glimpse of my father taking pictures as I ran past. All I could see was his graying hair and beard, his face obscured by his camera as he clicked furiously, and for the first time I felt a hint of pride. For a moment, the impression of commercialism and guilt faded.

I didn’t struggle as Tina had insinuated I would. As the feeling of fear melted and I accepted the propaganda that I had heard for hours leading up to this moment, I decided to embrace it fully and to take my time. In a way, the absurd corporate tie-ins helped me rationalize my fraudulence. The companies had desecrated the sanctity of the Olympics. My unworthy participation couldn’t damage the image of the event any further.

I slowed my pace, no longer determined to get it over with as quickly as possible. I waved to spectators, took in the cityscape around me, and even smiled. Near the end of my route, just as Tina’s form was becoming recognizable, I heard a large cheer off to the side and spotted my sister along with a small group of my friends and a large group of well-wishers I didn’t recognize, a horde of strangers she’d coaxed out of a nearby bookstore. 

I jogged up to Tina, tipped my torch in toward her, fighting a sudden urge to lower it farther and set her knit cap on fire, and watched as her torch was ignited. The caravan carried on without me. A security escort turned off the gas, extinguishing the flame and my fire within. The flame had been in my possession for five minutes. The bus pulled up, and I climbed on to a round of applause from my bus mates as I collapsed into a seat at the front, my legs shaking from nerves.

Melissa winked at me and said, “Not bad for a college graduate.” I managed only a weak smile and thanks in response. After we picked up the remaining torchbearers, we headed back to the parking lot from which our journey had begun five hours before.

I started to calm down. I still didn’t really belong, but that feeling faded as I thought about how corporate the event was. Not only the torch relay, of course, but also the Olympic Games themselves. The athletes of ancient Greece weren’t competing against each other for the best shoe endorsement contract. I felt a little guilty for being involved in an event that had become so adulterated. But at least I was a fraud in a fraudulent event.

The drive home was uneventful, my mother and father reliving every moment of the festivities and talking about the various people from around the country they had met. My sister and I chatted in the back, she relating the recruiting of the supporters, and I expressing my feeling of being a sham.
           
“Well, yeah,” she offered. “You are, aren’t you?”