I didn’t take any more Tylenol. I wouldn’t use ice or a heating pad. I dealt with the pain, alone in my room, because I felt like I deserved it. And I wouldn’t even consider sending out a tweet.
Twenty minutes after I got home, Carter called my phone. The Gators didn’t have a game that week, and he’d missed mine because he was studying.
“Mom made you call?” I asked.
“Not really. She told me what happened. I figured you’d need to talk.”
“I know what you’re going to say: ‘Quarterback’s ego. Think you’re more important than the team.’”
“No, I just wanted to see how you were feeling. Let you know it’s not the end of the world, just a football game.”
“But I gave this one away. It was a big one,” I said, glancing over at Carter’s bed in the far corner, as if he were there.
“They’re all big ones. So you messed up. Don’t repeat the same mistakes. That’s why they call it learning.”
“Sounds good, but it doesn’t change things,” I said, as new waves of pain and self-pity slammed my insides.
“Nothing changes things,” Carter said.
“Then why am I even talking to you about it?”
“Because I might have answers to questions you didn’t even know were coming. And if I don’t have the answers, at least maybe I’ve seen the questions before.”
“Anything else?” I asked, hoping to end the conversation.
“Just know that I’m here.”
“I’ll take it. But I wish there was more,” I said, and then got off the phone.
The worst night of my life was when Dad left home. But this was right up there. I couldn’t sleep. Pain and pressure came at me nonstop from every angle. What would Coach G. think about the way I blew the game—and my selfishness? And what if my elbow didn’t come around?
* * *
Early the next morning, I got a call on my phone.
He wanted to meet me at a park close to my house. I was completely exhausted. But after everything he’d done to help me out, I felt like I couldn’t turn him down.
I sat alone on a bench beneath a huge oak tree. There wasn’t another soul in sight when he appeared.
“Saw some of your game last night.”
“You did?” I asked.
“Enough to know that elbow isn’t healing fast enough on its own.”
“It’s terrible. My passes have nothing on them,” I said.
“That’s why I think you need these,” he said, pulling a vial of pills from his pocket.
“What are they?” I asked, trying to peer through the darkened plastic. “A new supplement?”
“Sort of. Just not approved yet. But they’re completely undetectable to any test,” he said. “I use them myself sometimes.”
“So they’re not legal?”
“Not for athletes, not without a prescription.”
“You mean they’re steroids?”
“Travis, steroids are everywhere in society. They’re in the feed we give chickens and cows to make them healthier. These are for humans. In pill form, no needles. The mildest you can take. Just a few steps above aspirin or Tylenol. But instead of masking pain, they heal the problem at the source and promote growth,” he said, pointing at my left arm.
I started to tremble on the inside. All I’d ever heard since the first grade was, Just say no!
“I can’t. They’re drugs,” I told him, feeling some distance between us for the first time. “Anyway, it’d be cheating.”
“I didn’t mean to insult you,” he said, putting the vial away. “I was only trying to help. It’s what plenty of scholarship athletes do to compete when they’re injured. I just wanted you to have the same options they do.”
I made my excuses and then got out of there. I even turned down a ride.
By the time I walked home, the pain in my elbow was nearly unbearable. I waited for it to die down. It didn’t. I was starving, but I couldn’t even twirl leftover spaghetti around the fork.
This time, I called him.
I’d talked myself into believing I really wouldn’t be cheating. That for me, taking steroids would be about getting healthy, not about becoming a better player. I already had the talent. That’s why I had the scholarship in the first place.
A few hours later, we were back at that same bench. But now, he produced two vials of pills.
“It’s a seven-week cycle,” he explained. “The first four weeks, you take the ones in the container with the blue stripe. The next three weeks, take the ones from the red. They’re stronger.”
Before squeezing them tight inside my right hand, I almost laughed over the vials’ child-proof caps.
When I got back home, I found a note on the kitchen table:
Hope you’re feeling better. Took Galaxy to the dog-run for some exercise. See you in a couple of hours—Love, Mom
I locked my bedroom door behind me. Then I put both vials on top of my dresser and stared at them as my elbow throbbed.
It’s almost the same as taking Tylenol, I told myself.
Dad rang my phone, but I wouldn’t pick up. I didn’t want to mix one set of problems with the other. I had too much sitting in front of me right now.
I must have walked twenty laps around the room, with my mind racing in a thousand different directions. Once I even stopped in front of my dresser and pushed down on the cap of the blue vial. I felt it give and knew it would twist open with one turn of my wrist. But just as quick, I took my hand back off.
Alex’s face popped into my mind. What would he think of me taking a shortcut after how hard he worked to get his knee ready?
The trophies on the top shelf of my bookcase could have made up a team of golden football players. They looked down on me, like they were already passing judgment—only none of them had a dent or scratch on his body to worry about.
Something he said kept echoing in my ears: It’s what plenty of scholarship athletes do to compete when they’re injured. That definitely had me leaning toward trying the pills. I figured there was so much about big-time football I just didn’t understand yet—maybe this stuff was totally common.
I turned around and noticed Carter’s empty bed. That’s when it came to me. I could ask my brother for an honest answer about what college players did. Like Carter had told me, If I don’t have the answers, at least maybe I’ve seen the questions before.
I put one of the vials in my pocket and hid the other inside a pair of sweat socks in my underwear drawer. Then I jumped on a city bus and headed down to the Gainesville campus.
I didn’t call Carter until I was there.
“I’ve got a team meeting in about forty minutes. But come on up,” he said.
Walking through the athletes’ dorm with steroids felt strange. And every time the pills rattled inside my pocket, I looked around, paranoid that someone would hear them.
Carter met me at his door and asked, “How’s your elbow? Looks like you can barely move it.”
“I need to talk,” I said. “I want to show you something, get your advice.”
“On what?” he asked, closing the door.
I pulled the blue vial of pills from my pocket.
“Do you know anything about this kind of stuff?” I asked, with my voice dropping a couple of notches.
“Who gave you this crap?” Carter asked, snatching the vial away.
He looked so angry, I was afraid to tell him.
“I, I can’t say.”
“You don’t have to. I’ve got my own ideas,” he said, heading for the door.
A second later, he was bounding into the hallway and then starting down the stairs.
I chased after him, calling, “Come back, Carter! Please!”
But there was no stopping him.
Carter entered the football complex, with me on his heels. He marched past the pair of crystal footballs on display, through the sliding glass doors, and into the Gators’ weight room. Coach Harkey was standing by a weight machine, studying some chart. That’s where Carter grabbed him, running Harkey back against a wall.
“You! You did it!” Carter screamed, trying to shove that vial down Harkey’s throat. “You gave these to Travis!”
Harkey managed to get his arms up, protecting himself.
“Are you crazy, Gardner?” Harkey hollered. “What are you saying?”
“It wasn’t him!” I yelled, trying to pull Carter away with my good arm. “It wasn’t Coach Harkey!”
Carter either didn’t believe me or was too far gone to hear. Some Gators who’d been training tried to get between them. But Carter’s grip on Harkey was solid.
“I’d never give a player steroids. Let alone a high school kid,” said Harkey. “What kind of animal do you think I am?”
“Don’t pretend with me!” Carter raged. “First you killed Alex, now you’re pushing them at my brother!”
“It wasn’t him!” I cried. “It was Walter Henry! He gave them to me!”
Carter slowly loosened his grip.
“Walter Henry,” he said. The anger in Carter’s eyes intensified until it turned to fire. “God, I should have seen it.”
He pushed past everyone and darted out the door. Me and Harkey ran after him, but Carter got to his car in the parking lot before we could reach him. Then he sped off so fast, he left behind skid marks and the smell of burning rubber.