The Olympics are a mind fuck. The crowds, the excitement, the strange languages swirling around me, the flags and pins and team jackets from all the different countries—if I close my eyes, I’m back in Sochi. Back to that life where everything I ever wanted was spread out in front of me.

And fuck but it’s tempting to let myself drift there.

“Ready, Adam?”

I force myself to open my eyes. The riders are about to start their second runs of the day in the slopestyle qualifying round, and I can’t exactly do my job if I’m sitting up here with my eyes screwed shut, torturing myself with a little stroll down memory lane.

The buzz in my veins as I strapped my board on at the top of the pipe.

The crowd roaring as the announcer yelled out my name.

“Adam?”

Shit. I shake my head, like my brain is one of those kid toys that can be cleared and reset with a few quick flicks of the wrist. If only it were that easy.

“I’m good to go,” I say.

Gabe and the camerawoman, Alex, share a long look. “You sure?” he asks me quietly.

“Totally.” I look down at the neatly typed list in my hand: descriptions of all the riders’ first runs. Gabe’s been as good as his word so far with all the stuff we talked about. All I need to do is shoot him or Alex a quick thumbs-down if I need a break, and if one of them makes the biking sign for stop, I know I’m losing it and need to get out of Dodge. I hope to hell that last signal will not be necessary, but it relaxes me to know it’s there if I need it.

We’re in a little room in a tower near the base of the mountain. One wall is all windows and it’s high enough to see the entire slopestyle course. I have no idea what kind of arrangement Gabe came to with the Olympic people as far as licensing and footage is concerned, but I guess billions of dollars talks. We’ve got television screens in here so we can get close-ups of what’s happening out on the course in real time, and we’ll be heading down to interview some people at the bottom later.

It’s a sweet setup for sure, and if things were different, it would be a dream gig. If, say, I was gearing up to compete in my own event in a few days and they wanted me to weigh in on the slopestyle competition for shits and giggles.

The feeling of weightlessness as I launched myself off the lip of the pipe and flew.

Shit. I have to focus. I knew this would be tough, but I underestimated the physical response I would have to being this close to the course. In Mammoth I hung back, kind of like I did in Breck. I kept to the condo and the lodge and talked to people there instead of hauling my ass onto the actual mountain. Nobody pushed me because Mammoth isn’t just a regular mountain, after all. It’s the mountain, the place I crashed, and maybe someday I’ll be strong enough to hike up to the place it happened, but not this year. Maybe not ever.

I dipped my toe into the water in California, sure, but today has been a full body polar plunge and I’m struggling.

I never even competed in slopestyle either. If I’m this messed up today, then the half-pipe event is going to bury me.

“Who do you like to win?” Gabe asks.

That’s a no-brainer right there. “Zeke has it in the bag. His run was in a whole other league.”

The top twelve riders from today will advance to the final. They get two runs and use the top score, and Zeke could easily skip his second run and skate through if he wanted to. His technical abilities and style were noticeably more advanced than even his closest competitor. He’s kicking ass, and the course is made for someone like him, so he’s fun as hell to watch.

The setup they have going on here in PyeongChang is pretty crazy. I may have never competed in slopestyle, but my whole body is itching to strap on my board and get out there to try it out, just for the pure joy of it. There are six sections: three jumps and three rail features. The rails come first and offer tons of different lines that really let the creative riders shine. The third one even has a little snow bowl that’s new for a course at this level and looks fun as hell, especially for a guy like Zeke who popped out and hit the gnarly curved rail that the more conservative riders shied away from.

It’s the jumps that are really calling to me, though. Angled takeoffs, half-pipe style ramps, and a huge money booter at the end to send you flying. Zeke nailed a triple cork on his first run, and I’m pretty sure he’s gonna go for a quad next. If not today, then definitely in the final.

He wasn’t the only guy to hit the triple, and every single time a rider attempted it I swear I could feel Gabe and Alex desperately trying not to watch me. None of us even named the trick, which is piss poor announcing to be honest. We all talked around it, and I kept my gaze straight ahead, focused on the course, and schooled my face so no emotion showed.

I’m going to have to be the one to break the silence. Gabe is too decent a guy to throw out the words if he thinks hearing them will hurt me. I study the paper Alex pressed into my hand a few minutes ago. The first guy up is a Canadian who attempted the triple in his first run but didn’t hit the landing exactly right: he wobbled and dragged his hand. Excellent. No time like the present. He’s sure to dial it in this round to up his score.

“Think McMasters will land the triple on that final booter?” I ask.

Gabe’s eyes widen slightly but he plays along. “He’s hungry for it. He’ll definitely try again, and I saw him land it at practice earlier in the week.”

I let out the breath I’ve been holding with a rush and smile at Gabe when he gives me a nod. Done. Floodgates open. Then McMasters’s name is echoing around us and the crowd goes fucking nuts, and I don’t have time to think, all I can do is try to keep up as the riders come, one after the other, swooping and grinding and flying through the course.

As the round progresses, I use my cheat sheet more and more. I may remember every single instance that someone tried the triple, but the rest of the tricks blend together occasionally and the paper in my hand saves me. I lose the names of things a few times, but Gabe is quick to jump in if he senses I’m struggling, and I figure out that throwing in a quick story or fact about how it feels to actually do a trick compensates for not actually labeling it.

In a fucked-up way, it actually reminds me of riding. Of the way I would change lines in the backcountry if a hazard popped up on the route I planned to take, or how I’d switch up my runs in the pipe if the riders ahead of me did something similar to my usual. I was good at thinking on the fly back then, and the circumstances might be different—and not to my liking—but it’s actually comforting to realize my ability to adapt is as strong as ever. Makes me feel like myself again, like I’ve discovered a part of the core of me that remains unchanged.

Zeke is last up, and he kills it so hard that for a split second I feel relief that I’m not out there, because his run is so hardcore that he makes all the other top riders in the world look like little grommets messing around. He ups the difficulty of every trick by taking off or landing switch, nails an awesome frontside rotation off his toes instead of his heels, and performs a different kind of spin on each jump. His grabs are clean, and he lands smooth every single time—no wobbles or flapping his arms. He’s a machine.

Gabe and I are both on our feet when Zeke hits that last jump. My cheat sheet is balled up in my sweaty fist, and I’m bouncing on the balls of my feet, like I can somehow send him the momentum he needs to make that final rotation. He sails into the air and perfectly executes the complicated set of spins and twists and it’s flawless—so fucking glorious I forget all about my own history with corked spins and get lost in the beauty of his movement.

All I feel is joy. For Zeke when he stomps the landing and for myself, because I’m here, witnessing athletic perfection, and the pure artistry humbles and inspires me. I thought I’d lost the ability to feel this way about snowboarding, and the rush of getting it back, even if it’s only for a second, steals my breath.

A deep sense of happiness floods through me, and I hold myself still, noting the way my blood is zipping through my body, warming me and making the tips of my fingers tingle. It’s intense and unfamiliar and my first instinct is to run away, because I’m not used to this. Dr. Warne told me over and over that I needed to let myself feel, but when the only emotions you have are anger and fear, you tend to shove those suckers down deep and do whatever it takes to avoid them. At least, that’s what I’ve been doing.

In the process I stopped letting myself feel anything at all. Being with Piper is the only thing that’s made a dent in the walls I’ve put up, but even with her I’ve been cautious. And it’s different, because with Piper I’m outside of myself somehow, in another place where the two of us exist together, not stuck in my own mind and body. But this, right now? My walls are down, and everything is rushing through me; a perfect storm of every emotion I’ve ever felt. I want to shut it down, but instead I grit my teeth and stay present. I just…feel…and let the images that come pass through my mind.

Getting towed to the top of the pipe behind a snowmobile, the wind crisp on my sunburned cheeks… Laughing at Ben when he tried to hit a jump next to me and ended up face first in waist-deep powder… Bending down to get the medal put around my neck in Sochi… Piper’s sleepy smile the first time she woke up next to me… Tuning boards with Brody late into the night in the garage in Breck while we sank too many beers and planned the backcountry trips we’d take someday…

My chest aches and little prickles of nausea threaten to close the top of my throat. It sucks. I’d rather hike a fourteener barefoot with no water and a mountain lion on my tail than endure this, but I stick it out as long as I can, and then I open my eyes. I sway a little but I’m still standing. In fact, I’m spinning, because Gabe’s got his arms around me and he’s lifting me off my feet, twirling around the little room while Alex grabs her camera and scrambles out of the way.

“That was fucking incredible!” he yells in my ear. “Let’s get down there and talk to him!”

I glance down to see Zeke being mobbed by people at the bottom of the hill. Clearly only a couple minutes have passed, though it felt like a torturous eternity to me. I’m wrecked; sweaty, breathing hard, and exhausted, but I force a smile onto my face and follow Gabe out the door.

The only way out is through. One of my therapists in Colorado used to tell me that when I was being a dick about tossing beanbags or drawing stick figures or whatever she wanted me to do that day. I hated it then, but she was right. I guess I haven’t wanted to get out bad enough yet to walk through these particular flames, but I took my first steps and that has to be a good thing, even if I got a little burned.

* * *

Zeke and I have plans to take some pictures for Brody’s documentary tonight, so I hang around waiting for him until he’s done talking with his coach and signing stuff for his many fans. Darkness is falling when he finally gets away, though the mountain is still lit up like a Christmas tree, the course builders going over everything to make sure they’ll be ready for the final tomorrow.

Zeke shuffles into the studio with his board under his arm, smirking at his phone. He looks like a man who is up to no good, which is pretty much par for the course. He lives to snowboard and pull pranks, and not necessarily in that order. Brody actually wrote a section into his contract banning Zeke from touching other peoples’ sleeping bags due to a camping incident with a raccoon a couple years ago.

I never got to know him too well before, but he’s been a lifeline since I got to Mammoth. He’s so laidback most of the time that he exudes waves of calm. Being around him mellows everyone out, even a tense fucker like me, because the little shit that irritates the rest of us never seems to touch him. Restaurant doesn’t have his first two meal choices? No worries, he’ll have whatever the waiter recommends. Plane stuck on the runway for four hours? No complaints from Zeke, only a few gentle snores.

Just became the most famous snowboarder in the world? He’s still slouching around, carrying his own shit, and his backpack is patched with so much ragged duct tape that you can barely see the fabric underneath.

He’s good people.

“Sorry, man. I’m gonna have to bail on the photo session tonight. My agent wants me to do the Olympic Instagram thing. You heard of it?”

“The Leap thing tomorrow night?” One of the big energy drink companies is sponsoring an Instagram scavenger hunt. They’re releasing a list of thirty items, people, and places at six p.m. tomorrow and people have until midnight to take and post as many photos as possible. Anyone can play and win prizes, but there’s a special category for the athletes, and whoever comes first gets a huge endorsement deal.

“Yeah. Are you doing it?”

I shake my head. “Nah.”

“I’ve been roped in to a planning meeting tonight. Total bummer.”

“You look real upset,” I say as his phone lets out a series of pings and he laughs out loud at the texts coming through.

He types a quick response and slips his phone into his jacket. “Autumn’s agent is making her team up with me and she’s not happy.”

“But you are?” I flick the lights off in the studio and hold the door open, waiting for him to follow me out.

Zeke shrugs. “Autumn is a kick,” he says. “She just needs to be reminded to relax occasionally.”

I raise my eyebrows and I swear his cheeks turn red, but maybe it’s sunburn.

“Good luck with that,” I tell him. I like Autumn, but the girl is really not built to relax. She’s probably drawing up a ten-page scavenger hunt victory plan as we speak, complete with maps and footnotes.

Zeke hoists his backpack up and changes the subject. “Heading back to the Village?”

“Not sure.” I’ve barely seen my room at the Village because I’ve been spending my nights with Piper in her hotel, but I told her I might not make it there tonight. The surprise party she’s planning for Natalie is the day after tomorrow, and I know she’ll be up half the night making sure everything is perfect.

I glance out the windows at the workers scurrying around on the mountain. I can see the half-pipe from here, though I haven’t forced myself to really look at it yet. I’m running out of time, though. The qualifier is in a few days and then I won’t have a choice. Maybe it’s time. Not to get up close, but to sit here in the dark and start to come to terms with the fact that this is real. It’s happening.

The only way out is through.

“I’m actually going to hang around here for a while,” I say.

“You sure?”

“Yeah. Got some stuff to catch up on.”

“Cool. I’ll catch you tomorrow. Sorry again to bail on you.”

“Good luck for tomorrow. You’ve got it in the bag.”

“Thanks, man.”

I wave him off and step back into the dark room, closing the door behind me and clicking the lock to make sure I won’t be interrupted. The windowpane is cool against my forehead as I take in the view. The entire mountain is spread out before me and I force myself to examine it all. The snow glittering under the floodlights, the dark shadows of the fir trees between the trails, the chairs swinging in the wind as they whiz up and out of sight.

The pipe is bustling with activity. Some people are walking along the bottom, bending down to check out the condition of the snow. There’s a team spraying the lip with blue paint and whoever is in charge of the electronics is flashing names and images on the huge screen at the top. It’s a beautiful pipe, solid and well built, and Ben told me conditions are good, which must be a relief to everyone after the clusterfuck of the pipe in Sochi.

I thunk my head against the glass and stare out for as long as I can stand it, closing my eyes when it gets to be too much. My mind does everything it can to run away, dredging up random distractions like a fight I had over Pokémon cards in second grade and the time my car skidded on black ice and I nearly hit a snowplow when I was first learning to drive. Sometimes I shut the thoughts down fast. Other times I let myself drift, but I always come back to the pipe eventually.

The mountain is going dark by the time I step away. I’m stiff from standing for so long, and I’ve got a wicked tension headache brewing. It’s late and Piper is probably in bed. I should head back to my own room, down some painkillers, and go to sleep. Instead, I lock up the studio and wander toward her hotel, my feet crunching along the snowy sidewalk.

I need her.