Gym Candy

The D-bol begins to work four days later. Mick is able to push through a set of squats with more stamina and energy than he’d ever had before. Every exercise he does that day is easier than before, and he can go longer. He tells Peter, and Peter tells him that’s how he knows it’s working. Then Peter gives him a new program. It is nearly double the lifting load that Mick was doing before. When Mick asks him why he didn’t give him this program before, Peter says, “You weren’t taking D-bol before. You couldn’t have done it” (163). 

During the final weeks of school, Mick finds himself disliking a harmless student named Russ Diver. Russ is a good-natured, overweight student who is well-liked by everyone, including, previously, Mick. On the second-to-last day of school, Russ accidentally bumps into Mick, knocking his backpack out of his hands. He stoops to pick it up, but Mick is suddenly overcome with anger. He grabs Russ and pins him against a locker: “The whole time I held him, I knew I was acting crazy. I wanted to stop, but then Diver started crying, and that made me even more crazy-mad” (164). He slams Russ into a locker. Drew grabs Mick from behind and asks him if he’s okay. Mick leaves without explaining. 

Mick says, “That was the first time the roid rage came over me, but once that edgy feeling came, it never entirely left” (166). However, the good part of the D-bol is that it works. Mick spends every day running, lifting, and then working for his father, in order to continue to pay for the steroids. His lifts continue to increase, and he grows more muscular each week. Mick’s mother asks Mick why Drew never comes around anymore. She’s anxious about how much time Mick is spending alone. It’s true that Mick is lonely, but he can’t talk to Drew about the steroids, and it doesn’t feel like there is anything else worth talking about. 

Mick begins to get severe acne that includes zits on his back and chest. Six weeks after beginning the D-bol, something worse happens. In the shower, he notices that his nipples are puffy and thick. He tells Peter, who is happy that he told him so quickly. Peter gives him a vial of Nolvadex and tells him to take it for approximately two weeks, or until the symptoms fade. Mick is worried that he’ll backslide in his progress in two weeks without D-bol, and Peter agrees, but that is simply how it works. Then he tells Mick that the reason he doesn’t have acne, and can keep taking steroids, is because he is on something called a “stack” of drugs (170). He injects himself with steroids, which spares him some of the side effects Mick is experiencing. Mick says he could never inject himself, and leaves. 

Mick sits on a bench near Popeye’s, full of anger: “My rage was aimed squarely at me. The zits, the puffy nipples—they were betraying me. I hated my body, hated what it was doing. When I needed it to be strong, it had gone weak” (171). 

He goes home and works for his father. When he is almost done, Drew calls him on his cell phone. He invites Mick to go play volleyball in half an hour with him, DeShawn, and some girls, including Kaylee. Mick is surprised to find that he has a good time, and Kaylee seems to have a crush on him. When the games end, she asks if she can see Mick again the next day and he says yes. 

Mick spends the week playing volleyball and walking around Green Lake with Kaylee. Sometimes their conversations are awkward, but they love being together. On Saturday, when he arrives at the park, things are set up for a volleyball tournament. Rather than pay the fifty-dollar entry fee, they decide to swim instead. Everyone gets in the water except Mick, who is self-conscious about his zits and nipples, although he feels they have returned to normal size and appearance. He quickly takes off his shirt and rushes into the water, hoping no one noticed anything. When he climbs out an hour later, however, he notices that Kaylee is reacting badly to the sight of his body. He looks down and sees that his back and chest are covered in zits, and his nipples look strange. He runs to the Jeep and drives away. He drives aimlessly for hours, not getting home until eleven. 

On Sunday morning, Mick’s mother tries to get him to go to her new church, Mars Hill. Mick goes with her for the one-hour service, which features a sermon focused on making the world better in small ways. Afterwards, Mick is amazed while he watches her talk with her friends. He’s never seen her so happy, or talkative. Then Mick sees Russ Diver near the food table. He immediately walks over and apologizes to Russ. Russ accepts his apology, then leaves to talk to an overweight girl named Gina. Mick watches them and it’s obvious how in love they are. He doesn’t understand how Russ has his life sorted out better than Mick does. When he gets home, he has a message from Drew asking him to call him back, or to come to Green Lake.

Mick begins driving to Green Lake but changes his mind and heads to Popeye’s. Mick wants to go be with Kaylee and his friends, but not at the expense of greatness on the football field. He started taking the D-bol for a reason. If he quits taking steroids now, the symptoms will have been for nothing. 

As soon as Mick sees Peter, Mick tells him, “I want to do a real stack” (185). Peter tells him that it will cost him fifteen dollars a day, and he’ll have to give himself a lot of injections. Mick says he wants to: tryouts are coming up and he needs to be his strongest. Peter gives him a calendar that will tell Mick when he needs to take his pills, and when he needs to give himself an injection. Peter says that for the first few times, they will inject each other, and he teaches Mick how to prepare the needle. When they finish, Mick says, “If the D-bol was like hitching a ride on an express train, this is like blasting off on a rocket” (189). Peter cautions Mick that the dangers of rage and depression are amplified by injectable steroids, even more so than the pills he was taking.

When Mick gets home, there is another message from Drew. When they talk on the phone, Drew says that they missed him, but Mick says that he isn’t going to be able to come back to Green Lake for the six weeks until tryouts. Drew hints that someone else will be interested in Kaylee if Mick isn’t there, but Mick says there is nothing he can do and hangs up. 

The day before tryouts, depression hits Mick hard. Suddenly, everything seems pointless to him. Steroids, football, lifting weights, Kaylee, Drew…all pointless. Peter had said, regarding depression, “Move around. The one thing you don’t want to do is nothing, because if you do nothing, it will get worse” (192). However, Mick finds that he is so depressed that he can’t even make himself play a video game. His dad comes into his room that evening and asks him to come throw the ball with him, managing to get Mick out of his room. As they throw, the depression lifts. By the time Mick goes to sleep, it is almost gone.

On the second day of practice, Coach Bower, one of Carlson’s assistants, tells Mick and fellow player Middleton that he needs forty-yard dash times for each of them. Mick’s fastest time had been 4.7 seconds. This time he runs it in 4.52, nearly two seconds faster than the previous spring. He asks Mick to run it again, and he manages to shave off a tenth of a second. Bower is impressed: “With that kind of speed, you are going to be a load to bring down” (195). The rest of the week progresses in similar fashion: every time Mick is tested on a drill, he is at the top of the charts. 

At the next scrimmage, a player is trying to tackle Mick. Mick lowers his head and runs right through him. The kid is shaken up, but unhurt. Mick is exhilarated with his new power, and his coaches are impressed. This repeats itself through the scrimmage. No one can stop Mick and he scores several touchdowns. Mick knows that he has won the starting spot. After practice, he drives the Jeep to Carkeek Park, where Piper’s Creek is located. He floors the Jeep and drives through the creek, then up the other side. 

On Saturday Mick goes to the gym to tell Peter about how well he did. Because the season is now starting, and he made the team, Mick says, “So this is when I stop using the steroids” (201). Peter asks him why he doesn’t just do another stack. As Mick does his workout, he thinks: “I hadn’t been able to explain to Peter why I was quitting because I couldn’t totally explain it to myself. What I’d done was cheating, but deep down I didn’t think of myself as a cheater […] I’d done it just to get that starting spot” (202). He continues to work out for the rest of the summer and there is no sign that his strength is declining. Mick begins to think that he might be able to mend his relationships with Drew and Kaylee and be an elite running back. He might be able to have it all. What is most important to him is that the steroids are in the past.