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“Somerset Christian. The little one out on Turquoise Lane.” Darius didn’t have to close his eyes to picture that church.
“Oh yeah.” Terry rubbed the bridge of his nose. “I know right where that is. Out by the Pacific Coast Highway, right?”
“Yes, sir. That’s the one.”
“Guess you spent a lot of time there, huh?” Still Terry’s voice was gentle, soothing even.
“Yes. Yes, I did.” Darius took a bracing breath. If he waited any longer, he’d lose the guts to walk this road altogether. “Terry, I’m going to cut right to the chase. I’m here today because—” Darius closed his eyes, but the tears came anyway—“because I have let everyone down. But most importantly, I have let God down, and He’s—He’s not with me anymore.”
“Darius.” Terry’s words radiated with compassion. “Son, you haven’t let anyone down. You’re a fantastic athlete and a wonderful young man. So many people are rooting for you!’
Darius gritted his teeth. Just what he’d always heard—the applause of a crowd mesmerized by a falsity. It was time to put an end to the lies. Once and for all. “No!” His voice was a cry for help. “No, I have let everyone down. They just don’t know it.” He was trembling now, shaking in every limb. His very insides felt like a quivering mass of jelly. “Do you—do you know that I fell? In Sochi?”
“Yes, I heard about that.” Terry released a slow breath. “That was just an accident. It could have happened to anyone. There’s no need to—”
This was the moment. Do or die. No turning back now. Darius took a deep breath—and spoke the truth he had never breathed a word of. “It wasn’t just an accident.”
For the first time Terry looked taken aback. “I—what?”
“It was my fault.” With every word, Darius felt as if white-hot claws were ripping the hard splinters from his heart. But it was going to be worth it. No matter what Terry thought of him when the truth was exposed, he had to finish his confession.
“I was totally to blame. Because the night before, I had made the biggest mistake of my life.”
From an early age, Darius had been taught by his father that there were two beverages that hampered athletic ability. One was coffee.
The other was alcohol.
The Olympic committees were somewhat ambivalent about alcohol in general. It wasn’t sold inside the Olympic Village, but athletes could go out to drink or bring their own booze. To counteract this leniency, some countries restricted alcohol use or banned it entirely.
Canada was not one of those countries. However, that didn’t mean all the Canadian athletes drank. In fact, most of the ones Darius knew wouldn’t touch the stuff. They claimed it hurt their performance.
“Always dehydrates me,” one of Darius’s teammates in Vancouver had sworn. He’d shrugged. “I’m not a tee-totaller type, so yeah, I might have a beer or two with dinner back home. But here, I stay a mile away from anything strong.”
“Yeah,” another guy had chimed in. “I’ve worked way too hard to mess it up now.”
“It’s not just about that,” an older man in their group had huffed. He was a veteran athlete at his fourth, and probably last, Olympics. “It’s not the Olympic thing to do.” His chest had puffed out as he added, “Remember, gentlemen, we are the world’s role models right now!”
Darius had taken all they said to heart. Besides, he was a good Christian kid. He didn’t drink.
But in Sochi, things were different than they had been in Vancouver. He was no longer the young golden boy, the idol of his nation, flanked by the support and love of his parents. And it was probably his grief—and the pressure he’d faced—that made everything start rolling downhill.
“EVERYBODY EXPECTED MEto take gold in the thousand meters.” Darius could remember how uncertain he’d felt, how scared he’d been. “I barely got bronze. Third place.” He spread his palms. “The media ate it up. ‘What’s wrong with Payne? Will he recover?’ And...I had no one in my corner. All my friends were figure skaters, not short-track guys. My grandpa was gone, and my parents too.”
“I know that had to have been hard.” Pure understanding, that was Terry.
“It was plenty hard.” Darius remembered walking the sidewalks through the Olympic Village the day before the five hundred meters, feeling as if his soul might crack under the load of expectations. The five hundred meters was his specialty. He was determined to medal. He had had only one chance left to bring home gold—for his parents. And for himself. One chance to finally be a man—a great man.
The pressure had bowed his soul and warped all his priorities. By that time, he was no longer the naïve little fellow at the Vancouver games. He’d been around the block and knew a thing or two more. Plus, God had—well, sort of drifted, stuffed away with the memories of his parents and the pain of their deaths. Or maybe it was Darius who had drifted.
He’d felt horrible that night. Neither his heart nor his body was cooperating. Shaky and sweaty, he’d wandered around the city of Sochi long past dark, returning to the Village right before curfew. The whole time, the tension pounded him like a hailstorm.
Just inside the gate, he’d run into a fellow athlete. The guy was also a short-track skater, from Germany. Darius had met him briefly during the opening ceremonies and even skated against him in the thousand meters, but he hadn’t gotten a chance to talk to him much. The Germans were lodged in a building far from the Canadians, but Darius had heard that on most nights, loud party music and raucous cheers came from the Germans’ part of the Village, their country having no policy restricting alcohol use for athletes.
“Hallo, friend!” The wiry little guy grinned at Darius. He spoke English with a heavy accent that was sometimes hard to decipher. “How you doing?”
“Nervous.” The invisible bands on Darius’s chest kept him from taking the deep breaths he needed. “I’ve only got one race more. Tomorrow.”
“Relax!” The kid clapped him on the back, grinning at him. “You have trained hard. Nothing to worry about, ja?”
