Second Puberty
by Jaypat
High School is hell. I’m sure you’ve heard this before, but it is. For short skinny, guys and large overweight girls, high school is hell.
I guess I shouldn’t complain. I had it better than most. At least I had brains. Only a junior and all my classes were AP. Next year I’d have to take semester of college level classes at the local community college and then early graduation, sweet early graduation. I’d get out of this asylum a semester early. I couldn’t wait.
Oh no, here comes Graham Winger stumbling down the corridor with Hunter Gibbons on his tail. Graham was a nice guy, about my size, 5’6”, a little scrawny. But Hunter was 6’2” and a line backer on the football team. The guy was huge; he took up half the corridor when he walked down it. He had a lot of muscle, but most of it was couched in fat. Still, he was exactly what a line backer needed to be, a moving wall. But there was a sport he liked even more than football, and that was tormenting little guys. And right now poor Graham was his target.
He walked up right next to Graham and hip checked him. That bump was enough send Graham flying into a row of lockers and then sprawling on the ground. His books went flying. It looked like Graham was immediately going to start scrambling to retrieve his scattered books, but then he stopped and looked up at Hunter. The big jock stood towering over him, hands on his hips, looking down on him with a smirk on his face. I knew this game, and I’m guessing Graham did too. Hunter was just waiting for Graham to grab for one of his books so Hunter could kick it away from him.
Graham was obviously trying to come up an alternative plan, but our fellow schoolmates were stampeding down the corridor on the way to their next class, and poor Graham’s books were already getting kicked around in the process. He really had no choice. He reached for his math book and, predictable as always, Hunter kicked it half way down the hall.
I’d had it. There was no way I was just going to stand there and let this kind of abuse continue.
“Taking up soccer, Hunter?” I asked. “You’ve got to be better at it than football.”
Hunter stopped and stared. “What did you say to me, runt?” Now that I had Hunter’s attention, Graham took advantage of the distraction and quickly gathered up his books. Smart kid.
“Geoff said you let the Centerville Quarterback just walk past you, last Saturday,” I continued, “He said if it weren’t for you, we’d have won.” Now, I had his complete attention.
“Geoff said that?” Geoff was our team’s captain. I was guiding him through physics. I tutored him, helped him with his homework; sometimes I even did it for him. I promised I would get him through the class with a decent grade. In return Geoff would… Well, let’s just say I would never have Graham’s problem.
Of course, it also meant I knew a lot about what went on with the team. It was Geoff’s favorite subject. That’s how I knew Hunter was on thin ice with the team’s captain.
“That wasn’t my fault,” stammered Hunter.
I had been at the game. It was his fault. “Maybe not,” I said. “And I might be willing to tell that to Geoff…”
“Really?” said Hunter. I had some influence with Geoff. This was common knowledge.
“But I don’t want to see you practicing tackles in the halls with the little guys. I might think that’s the only kind of guy you can tackle. And right now, Geoff would pretty much agree.”
“Ah O.K.” Hunter bent down, picked up the last of Graham’s books and handed them to him before lumbering on down the hall.
Graham came over to me. “Thanks, man.”
“No problem,” I replied as Graham grinned and headed down the hall. As I started on my way, I couldn’t help but feel sorry for him. I may have saved his butt this once, but it was only a matter of time before some other oversized asshole targeted him. Again, I was one of the lucky ones. I was smart enough that I could tutor Geoff. But most of the little guys in this school weren’t so fortunate. As I said, High School is hell.
I had to hurry to get to my AP biology class on time. I made it just as the bell rang. As I took my seat I noticed that Mr. Jacobs was not in his usual spot behind his desk. Instead, there was this older, frazzled looking guy. Great, a substitute. As I looked at him, he looked right back at me. In fact, he was staring at me. It was making me uncomfortable.
“Excuse me,” I said, “is there something I can do for you?”
The old guy smiled and shook his head. He got up and introduced him self as Professor Grant. Professor? Who was this guy kidding? What would a professor be doing in a high school? He went on to explain that he usually taught at Stanford but he was doing Mr. Jacobs a favor and subbing for him in his AP class. Well, that made some kind of sense.
Throughout the entire class, the Professor kept drilling me with questions. There were 15 other people in the class but for some reason the guy only called on me. I stopped raising my hand after a while but he continued to call on me anyway. I answered all of his questions correctly and each time I did he seemed to be delighted. This guy was a true head case.
Finally the class ended and as I got up to go, Professor Grant called me over and asked me to stay.
“I can’t,” I said. “I’ve got to get to my next class.”
“I believe you have a free period now,” he said. He was right. I did. But how did he know my schedule… No, strike that. Finding out my schedule would be easy for any teacher. A better question was why did he take the time to find out my schedule? I was a little freaked but I had no good grounds for refusing him, so I sat in the chair next to his desk and waited to hear what he had to say.
“My boy,” he said,” you may find this hard to believe, but I’ve been looking for you for years.”
“What?” I stammered. “Me? Why?”
“You’re adopted, correct?”
“Yeah,” I answered. Then, as usual, my mind leapt two steps ahead. “Wait a minute; you’re not going to tell me you’re my biological father, are you?”
“Well,” he said leaning back in his chair, “funny you should put it that way. If you mean, did your biological make up originate from my genetic information, I’d have to say no.”
“So you’re not my father.”
“Not in that sense, but I did design you.”
“What?”
“Oh yes, you were designed. You were engineered. I took basic human genetic material, manipulated it and produced you.”
“I was genetically engineered?”
“Yes, that is what I’ve been saying. You were years in the making. But presidents changed, our research fell out of favor and just after you were born, the government shut down the program.”
I couldn’t process what this guy was telling me. He had to be a lunatic. I mean, he knew his biology. That much had been clear from class. But he was still crazy.
“I’m sorry. I can’t take any of this seriously,” I said and I got up to go.
“Wait, don’t go.”
“Why shouldn’t I?”
“There are things you need to know about yourself, things only I can tell you.”
“I’m sorry,” I said and I started toward the door. Suddenly I felt something brush my elbow and then I couldn’t move. I was frozen solid like a statue. The professor walked around in front of me so I could see him. He had some kind of a medicated pad in his hand.
“I’m sorry about this, but I’ve waited far too long for this moment. I can’t let you leave just yet.” He held up the pad. “This is a little substance that interacts with your central nervous system. It temporarily paralyzes you. It will pass in time, or I may administer the counter agent. In either case, so lasting harm will come to you.”
I heard his words but I was too angry and frightened to believe him. This guy had just basically imprisoned me and I was totally helpless before him.
“I see you need proof of what I say,” he said removing another medicated pad from a container. “As a good scientist, I expected nothing less.” He took the pad and rubbed it against my arm. I felt a slight cooling sensation as the substance was absorbed into my arm. But that was it.
“What color are your eyes?” he asked. Why he asked, I had no clue. My eyes were brown. If he had taken the trouble to look he would have seen that for himself.
The professor picked a mirror up off his desk and held it in front of me. If I could have moved my face, my jaw would have dropped. It was still my face, frozen in a grim sort of mask, but my face. But not the eyes. My eyes, as I said, had always been a dull brown. But not the eyes that started back at me now. These eyes were blue. And not just any blue, but a deep, sparkling lose-your-self-in-them-blue.
“I’m going to release you now,” said the professor. And suddenly I could move again. I grabbed the mirror and looked at my eyes again.
“This has to be some kind of a trick.”
“It’s no trick. You’re malleable, kid. You don’t like your hair color, I can fix that too.”
“No, it’s OK,” I said. “But if you engineered me? Why didn’t you do a better job?”
“What do you mean?”
“Why am I so small and skinny?”
“Ask me again after you go through puberty.”
“Hello! News flash! I’m seventeen. I’ve already been through puberty and tada!” I spread my arms to display my short lanky frame. “This is it.”
“Only the first one,” he said. “Wait until after your second puberty.”
What the hell was he talking about now? It was basic biology. Human beings only had one puberty and I had been through it.
“You see your design is different from everybody else,” he said, seeming to read my mind. “I bet you’ve noticed how much you can eat and yet you never put on any weight.” Yeah. I had noticed that.
“You’re body is storing all that energy until it’s ready for the big change.”
“So you’re saying I’m going to go through some kind of big change?”
“Could start any time. I fact, if you want, we can induce it now.”
I was a little unprepared for his suggestion. “What do you mean induce it now? What kind of change are you talking about?”
“It’ll be a lot like the first puberty only it will happen a lot faster and the effect will be much more dramatic.”
“You mean I’ll get bigger?”
“Considerably. You’ve already got a first rate mind. I designed you a body to go with it.”
This was a bit much to take in.
“If you’re not comfortable with the idea we don’t have to induce it. But it will happen eventually, probably sometime within the next twelve months.”
I thought for a moment. In twelve months I would be out of this school, gone forever and good riddance. But if I had some kind of growth spurt now, I might be able to help make the place a little more bearable for the other little guys in the time I had left.
“OK,” I said. “Induce it.”
The professor pulled out another medicated pad and brushed my arm with it.
“Is that it?” I asked.
“A couple of enzymes, some amino acids, basically a biological trigger.”
“When will it start?”
“It’s started already.”
I didn’t feel any different but I figured that would come. I spend the rest of my free period talking with the professor. I learned quite a bit about my biological make-up and how it differed with normal human biology. He gave me a copy of his notes and invited me to look him up at Stanford after I graduated. I already had a full ride at Princeton but I promised him I would.
The rest of the day it was hard to concentrate in class. I kept wondering when I would notice the first changes. I didn’t have to wonder long.
After school, I headed over to Geoff’s house. He had a big physics test coming up and he was going to need a lot of couching if he was going to make it through. As I peddled my bike down the street, my feet began to ache. The further I went the worse it got. By the time I made it to Geoff’s house I could barely walk up the front steps.
I rang the bell and Geoff opened the door. There he was six feet tall, about two hundred and twenty pounds of muscle. Lean as they come. He barely gave me a glance before he turned back into his house calling, “Take off your shoes. My mom just washed the carpet,” over his shoulder. I was happy to do it. My feet were killing me. As I bent over to undo the lacings, they began to break and snap! I watched in shock as my feet began pushing out through the splitting seams of my hundred dollar New Balance shoes! Snap, pop, thunk, and my feet, at least 4 sizes larger, were standing on soles that were much too small for them with the upper part still wrapped around my ankles. I tugged them off and stood staring at my stocking feet, my large stocking feet. When the professor had said the changes would be faster, I hadn’t realized they would happen this fast. On the up side, released from their undersized prison, my feet were no longer cramping. I opened Geoff’s hall closet and tossed my shredded footwear inside. I noticed he had several pairs of old sneakers in there, some of which looked like they hadn’t been worn in months. They were probably out of style. No matter, they were plenty large enough for my new feet and I made a mental note to borrow a pair for the ride home.
I unshouldered my backpack and as I did, I noticed that my hands had also apparently increased in size. I was examining my longer, thicker digits when I heard Geoff calling from the other room. “Are you coming or what?”
I quickly picked up my backpack and shuffled into their family room. And when I say shuffle, I meant it. I wasn’t used to moving on such large feet, and walking was a little awkward.
When I entered the room, Geoff was sitting on the sofa with his arm around his girlfriend, Wendy Shepard. Wendy was hot. She had black hair, amazing blue eyes, pale skin and red pouting lips. She was every guy’s wet dream, every guy but Geoff that is. For him she was a perfumed reality.
She was nice enough, but girls like her never went for the smart guys like me, they went for the muscled up jocks like Geoff. They might say that stuff doesn’t matter to them, that they’re deeper than that, but at the end of they day they’ll still be going home with the quarterback.
“OK, Wendy,” said Geoff, “My tutor’s here. Time to get to work.”
Wendy stood up to leave. She glanced over at me and smiled. She never gave me a second look before, but today she did. If fact she was almost staring at my face. I’m ashamed to say I started to blush and I looked away. When I did, it seemed to break the spell, or whatever it was, and she stuttered an apology.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I just never noticed how blue your eyes are.”
I almost corrected her when I remembered that as of eleven a.m. that morning my eyes were blue.
“Hey,” said Geoff, “stop flirting with my tutor. He’ll get all excited and I’ll never pass physics.”
She giggled, kissed Geoff and then danced from the room. I heard the door shut as she left the house.
I sat on the couch next to Geoff and pulled out the physics book and laid it out on the coffee table. “OK, Geoff, today we’re going over the conservation of mass,” I started. I looked over at him and found him staring at my face.
“Jesus,” he said, “your eyes are blue.”
“So?”
“They’ve always been brown.”
OK, I don’t what disturbed me more, the fact that Geoff had noticed the change, or the fact that he paid any attention what-so-ever to my eye color. “They’ve always been blue.”
“No they haven’t. They were brown. Are those contacts?” Geoff leaned in to look closely in my eyes. I had to pull back a little.
“No,” he said. “No way those are contacts. Your eyes actually changed color.”
“No,” I repeated. “They’ve always been blue. People’s eyes just don’t change color.”
“Well, either way that’s quite a set of peepers you’ve got, buddy. I bet the girls really like them.”
“Girls aren’t interested in me in that way.” The phrase “like a brother” was the one most repeated. “They go for guys like you, Geoff. Now can we get to work here. I have some homework of my own to finish.”
He was starting to look me up and down, now and I was really getting uncomfortable. “I bet they’d like you just fine. You’ve just got to show off your assets.”
“My assets are all up here,” I said tapping my head. “And I show them off all the time.”
“Your brain is not your only asset,” said Geoff. “You’ve got those peepers for instance and I bet you’ve got more. Take off your shirt.”
“What?”
“Take off your shirt. Let’s see what you’ve got.”
“I don’t think so. We’ve got to study physics.”
“The test isn’t until next week, we’ve got a little time for this.”
“I am not taking off my shirt.”
“Yes, you are. Come on.” Geoff reached over and tried to grab my shirt. I jumped up to dodge him but he leapt after me. I made for the door but he, football jock that he was, was too fast for me. I felt him grab a handful of my shirt. I tried to twist away from him but all that achieved was a tear in my shirt. Geoff yanked harder and ripped the shirt right off my body.
“What the fuck are you doing? You ruined my shirt!” I yelled. But Geoff just stood there, holding the rag that had once been my t-shirt, and staring at my upper body. As a reflex I looked down to see what he was staring at and almost jumped back. My body was not my body. My body—the one I was used to—was thin and wiry. This body was lithely muscular and toned. I had biceps and shoulders and pecs and a well defined six pack.
“Fuck, you’re hot,” said Geoff.
“What?” I gasped.
“You’ve never had anyone tell you that before, have you?”
I shook my head, unable to believe what my ears were hearing and who it was coming from.
“With a body like that, you could get laid easily if that was what you wanted. But you know what I think? I think it isn’t the girls who aren’t interested in you. I think it’s you who aren’t interested in the girls.”
I didn’t know what to say. I opened my mouth but all that came out was, “You tore my shirt.”
“Will you forget the fucking shirt!” he exploded. “I’ve got plenty of shirts. You can have one of them. In fact, you can have this one!” With that he proceeded to rip off his own shirt. I don’t mean take it off; I mean he ripped it off.
Now I had always known Geoff was built, but I had never seen him without a shirt before. And I’ve got to tell you the sight was a revelation. He had muscles bulging out all over him. I won’t deny it. The sight of his rock hard abs, his melon sized striated chest, his cannonball shoulders and titanic biceps, caused a gentle stirring down in my nether regions. And Geoff was a lot further along than that. His sweats did little to hide his state of mind. But I was not about to suck him off and I didn’t want him up my ass either.
I tried to think how I could get out of this. If Geoff wanted to force things, I wouldn’t have a chance. But as it turned out, I was concerned for no reason.
“I can see from your face, you’re not ready yet,” he said. “I can wait.”
“Uh… good,” was all I could say.
“I think I’ve had enough tutoring for today,” he said.
“Yes, absolutely.”
“Wait a minute,” he said, and he disappeared from the room. I quickly began gathering up my things, hoping to be long gone before he came back. But just as before, he was too fast for me. He came in and tossed me something. I reached out a caught it without thinking. It was a t-shirt.
“It’s one of my old ones,” he said. “It’s too small for me now, but it’ll probably fit you ok.”
“Thanks,” I said pulling it on. It was a little big on me, but not too bad. I noticed he had not replaced his own shirt and it was hard to take my eyes off those muscles.
“I was wondering if I could borrow a pair of your old sneakers. Mine just sort of fell apart.”
“Yeah, sure, help yourself.”
“Thanks.”
“Look,” he began. “I’m sorry for coming on so strong. It’s just you made me a little crazy there for a minute.”
“It’s okay,” I said. “No harm done.”
“You’re coming back tomorrow, right?”
I paused.
“Please say you are. I’d be very unhappy if I thought I’d chased you off.”
“Ok, I’ll come back. But it’s only going to be to study physics, ok?”
“Ok, whatever you say. See you tomorrow.”
As I walked to the door I heard him on his cell phone. “Wendy? I need you bad.” I selected a pair of his old sneakers, put them on and left.