“Trenbolone.” He speaks the whole thing out, as if there were still a chance he’d misunderstood.
He didn’t. “Yeah.”
He takes a deep breath. Then he jumps up and bangs against the sofa. I start and grab my bottle so tightly I’m worried it might break. Dad comes to me, rips it out of my hand, and throws it through the air. It shatters against the trunk of a fir.
“Why, Knox? Why?”
“I wanted to be the best.”
“You would’ve been without the stuff!”
“No.”
He grabs the arm of my jacket and squeezes my upper arm. “Do you have any idea what you’re doing to your body with this stuff? Snowboarders don’t dope, Knox. They just don’t!”
“It doesn’t matter. You wanted me to be the best.”
“I wanted the bestforyou! I never wanted anything but for you to be okay and to be happy. Your mother is dead, Knox. You’re my son, and I love you. I idolize you. And then you go and shoot yourself up with some shit and risk dying soI have to lose you as well?”
My throat tightens. “I’m sorry, Dad.” I have to say it one more time because my voice breaks. “I’m sorry.”
Dad cusses. He lets go of my arm and begins to pace back and forth in front of the fire. He taps his fingertips against his nose in a steady rhythm. For a long time, I don’t know exactly how long, but it seems like an eternity before he casts me a glance and says, “We have to wean you off this right now. After we get you off this, I don’t want you to ever touch it again.”
“Yeah.” I was planning on doing that anyway.
Dad nods. He sits down on the arm of the chair and folds his hands in his lap. “You’re going to be suspended for a few months. At the very least. You can forget about the World Cup. But, with luck, you can be at the Burton US Open. I’m going to call Jennet. She can straighten it all out with the press and…”
“Dad.”
“…certainly get something going so that it doesn’t go public. We’ll have to pay back all the sponsors’ money, but that’s not a problem, and…”
“Dad.”
“…I’m sure the sponsors you still have will stick by you. I’m going to call them all in a minute and explain…”
“DAD!”
He looks at me. I miss my bottle. My whole body is shaking, but I’ve got to do this. I take a deep breath.
“I want to stop.”
He blinks as if he misunderstood me. Then he laughs. “No. No, you don’t.”
“I do.”
His smile dies.
“Listen, Dad.” I rub my thighs through the blanket and knead my hands. My chest hurts, this discussion is that difficult. “Snowboarding, that’s…that’syour thing, okay? I like it, it’s fun, but only in the way of things that you do every so often. Like climbing or, I don’t know, baking Christmas cookies. I wouldn’t want to be a professional baker. And I don’t have any interest in being a starsnowboarder. I’d like to keep on going, but without any pressure. Just so that I don’t stop enjoying it and do it the way I want to.” I hesitate a second, then add, “Colorado Mountain College accepted me. I applied to their psychology program, and they…they accepted me. That’s what I’d like to do.”
My father looks at me as if I’d just pushed him into a crevasse. He swallows. The fire illuminates his bouncing Adam’s apple as he turns his head and looks out to the Aspen Highlands.
“Dad,” I say carefully.
But he shakes his head and stands up. “Excuse me, I need a bit of time.”
“Yeah. Of course.”
He walks out into the evening, and I am once again alone.
