Gym Candy

"I ended up practicing every single day, just like my dad wanted, but I wasn't doing it because I thought I had a chance to start. I was doing it because I didn't know how else to play." 

Mick plays and practices hard, almost as if he doesn’t have a choice. There are no real signs that his father has been an overbearing tyrant, but it is possible that Mick never had a chance to not play obsessively. 

"As game time neared, a sense of power filled me. It started in the back of my head and spread like a wildfire until I felt as if I was going to explode." 

Nothing else in his life feels as good to Mick as football. Nothing else in his life gives him the same sense of power. The football field is where he feels the most in control of his life; ironically, he loses control over his own life by taking drugs to make him better on the field. 

“Games are lost and won in your mind as much as they are on the field.” 

This is Mick’s thought during the first game with Foothill. It is a stark contrast to his attitude later in the novel, when he comes to rely on steroids and his resulting physical prowess more than mental toughness. 

"Why had I failed? Why had I come up a foot short? You don't have the talent, a voice whispered—my voice." 

Mick can only see his being stopped in the Foothill game as a failure, and even though it is only one play in the entire game, he sees this shortcoming as outweighing any and all good he did for the team. 

“It’s something every man should know how to do.” 

When Mick turns sixteen, his father takes him to a gun range. By stating that men should know how to shoot guns, his father implies that if Mick does not learn how, he will be less of a man. This act winds up being ironic, as Mick uses the gun on himself. However, by not taking his own life and thereby showing that he knows how to use the gun, Mick lives, and has the opportunity to become an actual adult, something that, at sixteen, he is not. 

“Not a word to your mom about this. She’d want it out of the house

Hiding the gun from Mick’s mother is yet another secret that Mick is expected to keep. Further, the fact that Mike has to be hiding things from the person he married further reveals his own arrested development.

“The wind was pushing black clouds towards us, and that fit, because there was a black cloud over our friendship and words weren’t going to make it go away.” 

After the fight with Drager, Mick can’t believe that no one, including Drew, helped him. This is foreshadowing of the betrayal he will feel towards Drew later, both after he threatens to tell Carlson about the steroids, and after he saves Mick’s life. 

“You’ve got to take what people have to offer, whoever they are.” 

Initially, Mick doesn’t want to train with Peter because he thinks he’s gay. His father reminds him that, even if Peter were gay, results are what matter, and Peter will get him results in the weight room. This foreshadows Peter’s offer of drugs, which Mick then feels pressured to take. 

“The whole time I held him, I knew I was acting crazy. I wanted to stop, but then Diver started crying, which made me even more crazy-mad. I yanked him away from the locker and then slammed him back into it, the metal clanging from the force.” 

During Mick’s first instance of roid rage, he is aware that he is not acting rationally. Nonetheless, he seems completely unable to control his escalating responses. 

“I looked down at my body. In my bathroom with a night-light on, my chest hadn’t seemed too bad. But out in the bright sunlight, there was no pretending. My nipples were still oddly puffy and my zits were red and angry.” 

Before swimming with his friends, Mick sees what the side effects of the steroids look like. Kaylee has to hide her reaction from Mick when she sees his body. Mick can no longer pretend that his symptoms from using steroids are not severe. 

“Spirituality is a part of life, too.” 

There has been no sign that spirituality is anything that Mick or his father have every taken seriously, beyond the occasional church meeting. For them, life is football, and spirituality has no obvious place on the football field. Mick’s mother is a reminder to them both that spiritualty exists a notion that is reinforced by her act of giving Mick her Bible when Mick enters rehab. 

"I don't have to keep doing it once I start, right? I can always quit.” 

Mick believes that going off the steroids will be an easy choice, but he is already opening to the possibility, even though he says he’s not interested. 

“Once an injection was done, a sense of power would rush through every cell in my body, and every time I looked at myself in the mirror after I showered, I seemed not only stronger, but older—more like a man.” 

Given his self-image, Mick’s dilemma over going off of steroids is even more difficult. Not only would it mean losing strength and football ability, it would feel like being less of a man, and thereby subvert his coming-of-age. Ironically, the physical effects of the steroids—zits, feminine-looking nipples—make him look more adolescent and non-masculine than he had prior to taking the drug that would make him more ‘manly’ on the field. 

“What I’d done was cheating, but I didn’t think of myself as a cheater. I’d gotten on the train for a while, just to get a boost. But now that I had it, it was going to be me that was keeping it, not some drug.” 

Mick continues to justify his steroid use because it was only temporary, not seeing that this is another way to deceive himself. He hasn’t yet fully understood the extent to which the drug is now a fundamental aspect of his personality. 

“It wasn’t until I got home that I even thought about the steroids. I’d stopped using them, but weren’t they still in my blood and in my muscles? How much of what I’d done was me and how much them? I’d never know for sure. But there was one thing I did know—that with every tick of the clock I was moving closer to the day when I’d be entirely on my own. It was a good feeling, but it was a scary feeling, too.” 

After his record-breaking game, Mick realizes that he isn’t sure he can take credit for his success, even though he has been off of the steroids for a brief time. He admits that he is afraid of the day when he is drug-free again, because he knows that, even though he doesn’t want to have extra help, without the drugs he may be merely good on the football field. Here, the steroids also take on a symbolism of threshold to manhood—Mick goes from being a kid to using an adult and legal substance. Leaving the steroids behind will be a test of his maturity and resolve. 

“You see yourself going downhill in one thing, and you can’t help but be afraid that you’re headed downhill in everything.” 

After going off the steroids, when Mick’s progress in the weight room stalls, he is afraid that he will lag in other areas. The period when he stops using the drugs is not one of peace and shows that the drugs are tied to his own psychology, and not only his body’s biology. 

“‘Hearing about it is great. Seeing it?’She shook her head

Even when told that Mick’s performance on the field is wonderful, his mother isn’t interested in watching. She can be supportive without pressuring him, and happy for his success without participating in his games. This shows her as a capable adult, able to hold and accept two somewhat-conflicting ideas at once, which places her at odds with both her husband and son. 

“Being sorry isn’t enough. Actions have consequences, which is why I’m suspending you from the team. For a week.” 

Unlike Mick’s father, Carlson will not make excuses for Mick’s behavior. He disciplines him quickly and decisively, according to the standards he has set for the team, even though Mick’s absence may cost them a win. 

“You play together with guys, week after week, and suddenly you’re not there with them, and a feeling of emptiness comes to you.” 

Although his secret steroid use has made Mick feel isolated, he realizes that he still benefits from the camaraderie of his team, even though he could not tell them about his cheating. 

“Everything happens fast on a football field, but a running back has to have patience.” 

The football field is one of the only areas where Mick is willing to exercise patience. He can watch and wait to see how events unfold, rather than trying to force them. Whether or not he can apply this patience to his steroid use, after rehab, is left ambiguous. 

“Now this whole season, everything we supposedly did, it’s all ruined. You cheated, Mick. You were the main man, and you flat-out cheated. We don’t belong in the playoffs. We didn’t win a thing.” 

For Drew, the fact that they won the games based on Mick’s performance doesn’t matter, given that the performance was based on cheating. This is the first implication for Mick that his actions might have taken something away from the team. Drew functions as the archetypal sidekick/voice-of-conscience through much of the novel. 

“You should have come to us, Mick. To me or to your mom. You’re not alone in this world and you never will be—not as long as either of us is alive.” 

Even though Mike’s pressure may have resulted in some of Mick’s choices, he would have preferred to know about Mick’s struggles than to have him try to win at all costs on his own.

“Sitting here in the dark with that kid down the hall crying and crying—I’m not sure that Drew saved me. Sometimes I even think he betrayed me, just as Judas betrayed Jesus.” 

In rehab, Mick is no longer sure that his life is worth living, so he cannot always feel gratitude to Drew for saving his life after the gunshot. Placing Drew’s actions on the same level as Judas’s betrayal shows how tormented Mick is at the potential loss of his future football career, and how delusional he remains, even after a good amount of time has passed since attempting to commit suicide.