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Forty minutes later, we pulled into an empty campsite. I was holding a box of donuts on my lap—a jelly one for Mom, chocolate with sprinkles for Danny, maple log for me.
“Where did they go?” my uncle asked, getting out of the car. He called my mom’s name, loud, then Danny’s.
There was a splash, just one, way out at the base of one of the twenty-foot rocks kids liked to jump off. Blink and you’d miss it.
I dropped the donuts and started running as fast as I could. Even though I quit swimming lessons after one summer, I dove straight into the water.
My uncle dragged me out just before I drowned. He had to hit me in the chest to get me to start breathing. Danny was long gone; I never felt him, never saw him.
We found my mom on the other side of the campground, trying to get into some stranger’s tent at the campsite we had three years ago. She didn’t remember us leaving, Danny going for a swim, any of it.
When she found out, she fell on her knees and held on to me and came apart. Because I didn’t know what else to do, I took her home, got her to a doctor. She forgot about Danny again, and this time she didn’t remember. That’s when I started lying.
But the rest of my family remembered, and they wrote me a letter saying that they couldn’t forgive her. That if I wanted them in my life, I should have her committed to a home. I said I wouldn’t.
I had only just turned eighteen.
Danny died two months before the doping scandal, so his album ends on a high, with Victor preparing for his first Olympics. But between the last pages, I find what I’m looking for: a sheaf of magazine clippings and computer printouts that I folded and hid away. The story of Victor Lang’s fall. I don’t know why I felt the need to add these, to ruin the dream. I guess I thought that things were going to end up ok and this would become just part of the story, an interesting chronicle about how a phoenix burns up and comes back to life. I thought Danny might appreciate that.
But the resurrection never came. I unfold a paparazzi photo of Victor on his way into a meeting with USADA and WADA reps. Sunglasses hide his face and his hair’s a mess, but most of all I can recognize for the first time that uneasy, beaten posture in his shoulders that I saw at his house yesterday.
For a few extra seconds of speed, he betrayed his sport and cast a shadow over the whole Olympics as news outlets obsessed over his story and ignored the achievements of his teammates. He let down the entire world. And instead of trying to redeem himself, he crawled into a hole with his daddy’s money and lost himself in drugs and ass. He deserves everything that’s happened to him and more.
I crumple up the press clipping and throw it across the room. I’ve been broken, too. But I keep trying to do better every single day, because I don’t have any other choice.
Maybe it’s time for him to face someone he hurt.
I call the number on Werner’s check, expecting to leave a message for tomorrow. I’m startled when a woman answers. When I explain myself, she says she’s emailing me a contract and NDA. “Please print this, sign it, and take it to Victor’s house for him to sign as well. If we receive his signature by tomorrow, then we’ll process the paperwork and move forward.”
“But—”
“Think of it as your audition.” She hangs up, leaving me to stare at the phone, bewildered.
Even his own people don’t want to go near him. This does not bode well.
There’s still time to back out. All I have to do is go to my night job and leave the contract unsigned. But this isn’t about me. It’s about Mom, asleep in the next room, waiting for me to show her the world. It’s about how badly Danny would want his childhood hero to redeem himself.
At least it’s on the way to work.
