Second Puberty 10
by Jaypat
It wasn’t a long drive to the police station and soon the cop was hustling me out of the car and commanding Joe and Kelsey to follow us.
“Officer, could you do me a favor?” asked Joe.
“What’s that, son?”
“Could you shoot him?” he said, pointing to me.
“What?” I cried.
“And why exactly should I do that?”
“Just to see if you could hurt him.”
“I promise you, son, if I shot him it would hurt him. It would probably kill him.”
“I don’t mean in the chest or in the head or anything. Just graze him a little on the arm.”
The cop looked wide eyed at Joe. Clearly he thought Joe was a little crazy and I wasn’t in a position to argue with him. “I don’t think I can do that,” he finally replied.
“Joe, will you shut up?” I hissed.
“Why?” he asked. “This is the perfect chance to test the whole bullet proof thing.” If my hands were free I would have used them to knock on his head to see if anyone was home. “I am not a fucking superhero. Bullets will hurt me.”
“You don’t know that. Hey, how about you try to escape? Then, he’d have to shoot you.”
“I am not trying to escape.”
“Wise decision,” said the cop. “With that shirt, I could hit you a hundred yards away in the dark.”
At the sergeant’s desk, they asked me for my name again. What could I say? I told them the truth and then they locked me away in a holding cell. I wasn’t sure what happened to Kelsey and Joe. I suspected they would call Mom and Dad. In which case, my stay in the cell would probably be short. There was only one other guy in there with me, sitting on a bench in the corner. He looked like he was about forty, kind of short and skinny, dressed in a crumpled business suit. He was obviously drunk off his ass. He had one eye closed but the other eye was wide open and watching me.
“I’m not going to be your bitch,” he said in a slurred voice.
“What?”
“I know how this works. You big guys go find some poor defenseless little guy to be your bitch and then you fuck ‘em and fuck ‘em and fuck ‘em and fuck ‘em and fuck ‘em and fuck ‘em---” he went on like that for a couple of minutes before he stopped and said, “I just wanted you to know, I’m not doing that.”
“Ok,” I said, moving as far away from the guy as the small cell would let me.
“No, I mean it,” he said.
“Listen, I’m just seventeen. There was just a mistake with my driver’s license. I’m probably not even going be here an hour.”
“Well I won’t be your bitch, even for five minutes!”
“Ok, fine. Look, I don’t want a bitch.”
“You don’t want me for your bitch?”
“No.”
“Why not? What’s wrong with me?” He was suddenly sobbing. “Why don’t you want me for your bitch?”
“I don’t want anyone for my bitch.”
“Is it my body? You don’t like my body?”
“No, I mean, that’s not it at all, I mean— Oh fuck, I don’t know what I mean.”
“Well, that’s good because I’ve got a great body.”
Jeeze, now the guy was undressing himself; my fucking pheromones at work.
“Look, mister, just keep your clothes on, will you?”
“Why? Am I too much man for you, big boy?” Terrific, now the guy was naked. I was locked in a cell with a naked, crazy-ass, middle aged guy who was drunk, and high on my pheromones.
Lost was on tonight. Why couldn’t I be home watching Lost?
He started stumbling towards me. I think he was trying to be seductive. He was lucky he didn’t trip over his own feet. “Look, mister, just stay away from me, ok?”
“Come on, big daddy. Come and get some sugar.” He was getting way too close.
“Dude, I’m telling you, if you touch me, I’m going to have to hurt you.”
“Oh yeah, hurt me, hurt me bad.”
It was just then that the door opened and a cop came in. “What’s going on here?”
“He wants me for his bitch,” said the middle aged guy.
“Wha—? No—!” was about all I could get out.
“Oh he does, does he?” said the cop. “We’ll see about that.” He unlocked the cell door. “You’re not going to give me any trouble are you, son. I’d hate to have to cuff you.”
“No,” I said. “No trouble.” And I quickly walked out of the cell and away from the crazy naked guy.
The cop closed and locked the cell. “You go ahead and get dressed now,” he said to the crazy guy. “He won’t bother you again.”
“Thank you, officer,” he slurred. “You guys are the greatest.”
He looked at me sternly. “Come with me.”
I followed the cop to a small interview room, where he asked me to take a seat and wait, but I just couldn’t leave it at that. “About back there,” I said, “I never did anything to—” I broke off when the cop started laughing.
“Don’t worry about it,” he said. “The entire station is on monitors. We saw the whole thing.”
“You saw? Why didn’t you come sooner?”
“Hey,” he said, “Lost was a rerun.” Then he turned and left me alone.
This interview room, like every interview room you’ve ever seen on TV, had a big mirror on one wall, and I wondered who was behind it, watching me.
In a few moments the door opened and a couple of familiar faces entered. It was Officers Quinn and Murkowski, the cops who had investigated the weight room fight. They did not look happy to see me. They sat down across the table from me and glared.
“We’ll get right to it,” said Officer Murkowski. “Where are you getting it?”
“Getting what? Is this about my license?”
“You mean this?” said Officer Quinn, plucking my license from the air like a playing card in a magic trick. “Five foot six, one hundred thirty-five pounds.”
“Yeah, well, I grew a little.”
“Jesus, kid, it looks like you put on about 200 pounds in 2 days. You don’t expect us to believe that’s natural.”
“If it isn’t natural, what is it?” I asked, trying to play dumb.
“Come on, kid, you’re on something, something pretty damn potent.”
“I’m not. You can test my blood if you don’t believe me.”
“We intend to.” Officer Quinn stared at me. I had a feeling he was trying to bore a hole in my head with his eyes, so he could see what I was thinking. Truth be told, I was wondering if I could take him. I’m not proud of it, but that’s what I was thinking. And I thought maybe I could.
“We’ve been chasing this stuff for a while. Whoever’s pushing it is pretty damn smart; they always keep one step ahead of us. They manage to get to the athletes when we’re not looking. They sell to football players, basketball players, baseball players, and then there’s you.”
“Me? But I’m not—”
“Yeah, we know, you’re not on anything. But if you were, it’d be pretty damn strange, wouldn’t it, an honor student like you, with no athletic inclinations? But then we got to thinking, it would be much easier for this pusher to sell his wares if he were already part of the school system, a teacher or maybe even another student.”
“It’d have to be a pretty smart student,” said Officer Murkowski.
“Oh yeah, an honor student at least.”
Now I got it. “You think it’s me.”
“I don’t recall saying that. But should this pusher actually be another student, and should he want to advertise, what better way then to turn himself into a floor model?”
“You think I did this to myself so I could sell steroids?” That was ridiculous. I did this to myself so I could beat the crap out of Gil Stafford—er, that is, make the school safe from bullies, a far more noble motive.
“You’re not dumb, kid. We’ve seen your records. But you’re doing a very dumb thing. “This stuff, it’s too new. No one knows what the long term affects might be. Who knows how much harm you may already have done, to yourself any anyone you sell to?”
“I’m not selling anything. I’m not on anything. I swear.”
“Sure you’re not.” Then he nodded at the mirror and a nurse came in. She produced a syringe, jabbed it in my arm and took a blood sample.
“Think about it, kid,” said Officer Murkowski. “After we analyze this, we’ll be able to prove you’re using. Just tell us who your supplier is, where you’re getting the stuff. If you do that now, it will go easier on you.”
I just shrugged. There wasn’t anything else I could have done. No matter what I had said, they wouldn’t have believed me. Even if I had told them the truth, they wouldn’t have believed me.
They also wanted to know how I had been taking it. They had apparently been checking out my bare arms and had seen no signs of needle marks. They wanted me to volunteer to have a full physical. I agreed. Actually, I thought it was a good idea. This kind of growth was really unusual, and if it was causing me any health problems I wanted to know about them.
They kept asking me questions for the next half hour. Finally they finished, but before they let me go, they had one last thing to say.
“Remember, we’re going to be watching you. Everything you do, we’ll be there. You won’t be able to take a piss without us knowing about it. And believe me, with an outfit like that, following you won’t pose much of a challenge. Then they led me out to the lobby where my parents, Joe and Kelsey were waiting for me.
I saw them before they saw me. I could tell my Dad was really angry—probably about the bumper. But when Mom and Dad saw me, all I could read on their faces was shock—probably at my size. I think the clothes Joe had bought for me made matters even worse. Every bulging muscle I had—and I had a lot of them—was clearly defined beneath it.
“Where did you get that shirt?” my mom finally asked.
“Joe got it for me.”
“I should have guessed,” she said. “That’s why I still buy his clothes. I’ll get you a new one tomorrow.”
“We’re going to have a little talk about bumpers,” my dad said looking up at me. At five eleven, he had always been the biggest in our family. Not any more. Besides being an inch taller than him, I was about half again as broad and I’d guess I had about seventy pounds on him. “But we can do that when we get home.”
Our little talk was a little strange. He explained to me how car bumpers were designed to break away from cars in order to protect the frame and that there was no way they could support the weight of a car.
“If you ever again find yourself lifting—er—jacking up a car—in order to change a tire—or something—you always want to grab it under the frame—with the jack—so you don’t damage—ah—the—ah—body.”
I really had expected to get my ass reamed, but this talk was more like instructions on how to change a tire. It was pretty clear Dad was uncomfortable with the idea of me lifting cars with my bare hands. It was amazing how he went out of his way not to mention it. I wondered if everyone was going to be this weird about how strong I’d gotten.
“Hey, Gigantor,” called Joe. “Put those muscles to some use and give me a hand with this.” I guess my size wasn’t bothering Joe any. He was trying to haul his mattress up from the basement and it was giving him some trouble. Joe wanted to move back into our room right away, and since I’d already had my spurt, I couldn’t think of a reason why he couldn’t.
“It was a lot easier going the other way,” he explained. I offered to help right away. Since I’d gotten back from jail, I had really been enjoying my new body. I loved to hear the heavy thud of my footsteps, how everything seemed so much smaller and delicate; I even felt like I was displacing more air as I walked around. Of course, I was a little more clumsy than usual, getting used to my new dimensions. I accidentally tripped and stumbled into a table and the thing shattered, completely blew to pieces. Mom just shrugged and said she never liked the table anyways and we could never have enough firewood. I still felt pretty bad, though.
But that didn’t stop me from aching to try out my new muscles. I wanted to be careful, though. I was afraid I might destroy something else. Moving Joe’s mattress looked like it would be the perfect opportunity. But things didn’t go quite as easily as I thought they would. The weight wasn’t a problem, but it was hard to get a good hold on it and the thing kept flopping back and forth all the way up to the second floor. In a way it was like trying to hold on to a large, rectangular, wriggling fish.
Of course, Joe stood back and let me do all the lifting. “What’s the point of having a massive brother,” he said, as he walked just in front of me, “if he can’t haul a few heavy objects for you? Now, could you please hurry? The way you’re moving, you’d think we had all night. If you don’t mind, I’d like to get to bed while the sun’s still down.”
Ok, that was it. He was going down. I put the mattress down and leaned it against the wall.
“What are you doing now? Don’t tell me you need a break.” But when he saw my expression, I think he guessed. “Oh, crap.” I was on him before he could move. I didn’t even have to tackle him. I just used my right arm and pushed him to the floor. He went down so easily. I didn’t bother sitting on him, like I used to, when we were little. I just pinned him to the floor with one hand. He was trying to get up. It was a definite high watching him pit his entire body strength against my right arm. He didn’t have a chance.
“Could you let me up now?” He asked.
“Not until you say you’re sorry.”
“For what?”
“For being disrespectful, ungrateful and for buying me a shirt with a pattern no one would want on a beach ball.”
“Ok, ok, I’m sorry for the things I said, but that shirt is going to be a trend setter. Wait and see.”
I was looking down at him, trying to think of a good comeback when suddenly I had this overpowering desire to kiss him. As he lay there struggling under my powerful right arm, he just seemed ridiculously attractive. I wanted to rip off his clothes, turn him over and just start pounding him. I knew there was nothing he could do to stop me and that made it seem even hotter. I boned right up. The desire was so sudden and so powerful, I almost couldn’t resist it. But in the end, I did. After all, he was my brother, related or not. I let him up.
“You wait and see,” he said. “Tomorrow, everyone will be in complete awe of that shirt, and they’re all going to want them. I see a national fashion trend.”
Joe was apparently completely ignorant of how narrow an escape he’d just had, but it was haunting me. What just happened? I didn’t think like that? I didn’t do those things to people. It was almost as if someone else had taken control of my brain and I was thinking with their thoughts. What were these muscles doing to me?
I put Joe’s mattress back on his bed and got ready for bed, myself. Once again, I had nothing to wear to bed and was forced to climb naked between the sheets. I think Joe was checking me out, but I didn’t look to see. I didn’t want to see, because if he was, I didn’t know what I might do. It was weird. I was suddenly a stranger to myself, a very big, very scary stranger. I tried to go straight to sleep, but I wasn’t successful. Thoughts of what I’d wanted to do to Joe plagued me. They weren’t completely gone. I still wanted him. It would be so easy. All I had to do was take two steps across the room and I could have him. He would be completely overwhelmed by my powerful body, no matter how hard he struggled, and I wanted him to struggle. What was the matter with me? Why was I thinking these things? What if next time I couldn’t stop myself?
In the end, I realized that I had stopped myself before and I pledged that I would continue to stop myself no matter what. And then I finally fell asleep.
I woke up the next morning, as I had on the last few mornings, temporarily disorientated. The bed was sagging. I heard the springs complaining as I rolled to the edge. I groggily thought the box spring must be broken. As I threw off the covers and stood up, I felt much too high off the floor, and looked down to see what I was standing on. When I caught sight of my monstrous legs, it snapped me right back into the here and now. And I was very glad to be in the here and now.
I could hear Joe in the shower so I stepped over to the mirror and had a flex fest. God, I was bulging out all over. I was huge. I felt like I could do anything. It was fucking fantastic! I couldn’t wait to get to school and wish Gil Stafford a good morning. And down below, my little friend was wishing me a good morning. Hurry up, Joe. I’ve got a little tension to release.
Joe blundered out of the bathroom, still dripping with a towel wrapped around his waist. He was so fucking slender. Suddenly the urges were back, strong as ever. I wanted to grab Joe, drag him back into the bathroom, and use him as a washcloth, rubbing him all over my big, fat cock. Joe would probably be up for it. My pheromones might not be affecting him anymore, but I knew he still thought I was hot.
What was I thinking? Quickly, I made a dash for the bathroom and slammed the door behind me.
“Well, good morning to you, too,” I heard Joe call after me, but I didn’t care. No good morning was far better than the good morning I had been considering. I found sweet relief in the shower. I was so fucking hard and hot and wet. I spent quite a while in there rubbing myself all over. Sometimes I even used soap.
When I went down for breakfast, Mom gave me the option of not going into school until she had gotten some new clothes for me. I thought about it for a moment but decided to go anyway. The clothes Joe had gotten for me were epically hideous, but I didn’t think anyone would give me a hard time over them. I subtly flexed my arms. Or over anything—ever again.
And then mom presented me with breakfast; I think she cooked up an entire package of bacon to go with my eggs. I sat there staring at it for a minute. Did I want to eat this? What if the growth in my body went hand in hand with the overpowering lust I was experiencing? I wanted to get bigger, sure, but what would come with it?
In the end, growth won. Being big just felt too damn good. Getting bigger, well, that was just an unbelievably awesome thought. I was getting hard just thinking about it. I decided to risk it. I scarfed everything she cooked.
Before she left, I got mom to promise to bring the tub of anti-pheromone goop to school, the period right before lunch. That way we’d have time to substitute it for the chocolate pudding.
I picked up my knapsack but I had to loosen the straps considerably before I could put it on. Even then it felt weird against my massive back. It was so light I kept thinking I had forgotten something.
I climbed on my bike, but it was way too short for me. I grabbed the Allen key from the garage and tried to adjust the seat again but it popped right off. I couldn’t raise it high enough. I had outgrown my bike! What the hell was I going to do now? How was I going to get to school? Everyone else had already gone. It was too late to get a ride. There was only one thing to do. I put the seat back on my bike moving it up as far as I could, got on it and started to ride to school. I felt ridiculous. Wearing that stupid shirt and riding a bike that was too small for me, I kept thinking of those clowns that rode around on tiny bikes. I must look just like them. I should sell tickets. This was the second day in a row circumstances had arranged themselves to ruin my big, studly entrance at school.
I was contemplating hopping off my bike, and walking it the last block to school, when I heard an all too familiar sound, derisive laughter. And unless I was very much mistaken, the laugher was Benjy Pierce, Gil Stafford’s loyal sidekick and one of my tormentors from yesterday. I stopped my bike and looked around for the source. Sure enough, there was Benjy and he was holding Graham Winger’s backpack. And there was poor Graham, who was exactly the size I used to be, trying vainly to get it back from him, before it was emptied all over the sidewalk.
Jesus, didn’t these guys ever stop tormenting people? I mean they had to at least take a break for meals, right?
I hopped off my bike and let it clatter to the ground. At first I thought I was going to shout, “What the hell do you think you’re doing,” or something like that. But I skipped the preliminaries and moved straight to the main event. I grabbed the backpack and ripped it out of Benjy’s hand. At least, that’s what I thought I was going to do. Unfortunately, Benjy was hanging on to it tighter than I expected, and when I pulled it, it ripped apart and a cascade of books and papers spilled out all over the ground.
“Shit!” shouted Graham, “You fuckers! Doubling up today? Aren’t there enough little guys out there for the both of you.” And he began chasing all his papers up and down the sidewalk, as the wind caught them and took them for a ride.
Benjy was laughing. “Ha. That was a good one.”
“Sorry,” I called after Graham but he wasn’t listening. I was half tempted to forget about Benjy and help Graham collect his papers, but I had my priorities. I grabbed Benjy by his shirt.
“What the fuck is your problem?” he said.
“Guess.”
“Who the fuck are you…?” he began and then I saw the recognition in his eyes. “Holy fuck!”
“That’s right you bastard. Time for a little payback.” We were about the same height but I had way more muscle than he did.
“What kind of a fucking mutant are you?”
“Let me show you,” I said, and I grabbed him under his arms and lifted him up. He was no where near as heavy as I expected. The look of sheer terror on his face was priceless. I heard the sound of tinkling water. At first I thought someone had turned on the sprinklers, then I realized that Benjy was wetting himself. Sweet. Well, almost-- He started to drip on me and I was wearing shorts. Jeez, I had bully piss on my legs! I threw him away, and he landed in a heap on the ground. I wanted to beat the shit out of him, but no way was I going to get covered in his piss. So, when he jumped up and ran away, I let him go. I figured I’d made my point. Anyway, Gil was the one I really wanted.
Graham was a half block down the street picking up the last of his papers. I jogged over to help. But he saw me coming and took off.
“Hey, wait!” I cried, “I’m on your side.” But it was no use. The kid was almost at the school. I still could have caught up to him, but I probably would have had to knock him down to stop him from running, and I don’t think that would have made my point.
I went back for my bike and walked it the rest of the way to school. As I locked it up and made my way inside, I was getting a lot of stares, way more than yesterday. But I figured a lot of that was Joe’s shirt. There was no way I could slip in quietly wearing that. And there was no way anyone could have missed the growth: three inches and about a hundred pounds of solid muscle, all displayed bulge by bulge under that skin tight shirt.
But the atmosphere was completely different today. There weren’t any whispers, just silent staring. And people kept leaping to the side, scampering to get out of my way. It was kind of creepy.
I looked over at Angela Johnson. She was standing directly in front of me in the center of the hall, staring at me the way a deer stares at a tractor trailer. My eyes drifted down from her face toward the fine bosom she was displaying and the tight skirt around her tight ass and I just wanted to fuck her. Right there, right then. Just shove her up against the lockers, pull down her skirt and panties, and just start going at her. And as I drew closer I could tell from the look on her face, she was starting to feel something similar, my pheromones at work, no doubt. Only this time, I was ready to take advantage of them. Or was I? No. No, I wasn’t. What was the matter with me? I forced my eyes away from Angela, but they just fell on Lisa Anderson. And I wanted her, too. She had amazing lips and long, sleek legs and I wanted to fuck her. Okay, look somewhere else. There’s Brian Sherman. Look at the fucking ass on him! A pair of well developed pecs was filling that shirt of his. He had to work out. Suddenly, I wanted him, too. Jeez, was no one safe?
Suddenly, my cell phone buzzed. I didn’t have to look.
“Professor Grant?”
“How’s it going kid?”
“A little weird.”
“Only a little weird?” he chuckled. “Then you’re ahead of the game.”
“No, seriously, it’s like I want to fuck everybody.”
“That’s just your libido. I—”
“—amped it up a bit,” I finished for him.
“Exactly. How’s it working out for you?”
“What do you mean?”
“I bet you’re having some great sex.”
“What? You think I should be running around fucking everything in sight?”
“Hey, kid, when I was in high school it was the ’60’s. That’s what you did.”
“Yeah, well, it’s not what I do. This whole thing is getting way out of control. My parents are acting weird. Everyone I see wants to fuck me and now I want to fuck everyone I see.”
“Let me get this straight. Your body is changing, you’re feeling a growing separation from your parents, your friends are seeing you in new ways, and you’re coming to terms with desires you’ve never had before. What part of “second puberty” did you not get?”
“Wait a minute, wait a minute; things are starting to make sense. You amped up my pheromones and my libido. You wanted to turn me into some kind of a fuck machine, didn’t you?”
“Glad to see all those raging hormones aren’t affecting your thinking.”
“Why would you do that?”
“Why do you think?” The answer struck me right away.
“Kids! You want me to start having kids!”
“Right first time. Don’t be selfish. Spread some of that genetic enhancement around.”
“I’m only 17!”
“I didn’t say you had to raise them, just father them.”
“That is one of the most immoral things I’ve heard in my entire life.”
“Well, you did say you were only seventeen.”
The bell rang.
“Look, I’ve got to get to Calculus. Can you call me back in about fifty minutes?”
“Sure. What else have I got to do, but bandy words with an over moral, over sexed seventeen-year-old?”
“I’m not over sexed.”
“Well, get busy,” he said, and then he hung up.
In a hurry, I thundered down the hall toward Calculus. People were leaping out of my way and with good reason. I had quite a lot of momentum going and a considerable amount of mass. If one of them should get hit by me, it wouldn’t slow me down a bit, but it would probably put them in the hospital.
When I got to the classroom, the door was already closed. Shit, I was late. I opened the door and walked in. I immediately made for the back of the room, but Mr. Sanders spotted me. How could he not?
“Excuse me, young man, can I help— My God.”
“Morning, Mr. Sanders. Sorry I’m late.” But he didn’t say anything back. He just stared at me. And then I noticed the rest of the class was staring at me, too. I tried to ignore them as I made my way back to my seat between Veronica and Charles.
But something else was very wrong. There was Veronica looking only slightly less shocked than everyone else in class. That was ok, only to be expected. But then there was Charles. He was wearing a muscle shirt, too. And I’ll be fucked, if he didn’t have muscles on his arms. He was almost big. Now, I’d swear he wasn’t like that yesterday. Was he?
As I sat down, the chair groaned under me. For a second I thought it might collapse. But it didn’t. I looked at Veronica and pointed at Charles.
“Don’t ask me,” she whispered. “I can’t get a thing out of him.”
“What the fuck, Charles?” I asked.
“What the fuck, yourself. What are you, like three hundred pounds now?”
“About,” I said feeling a little sheepish. I mean I had never told him my secret. Why should I expect him to tell me his. But I did. “Where’d the muscles come from?”
“Let’s just say I liked yours so much, I decided to grow some of my own.”
“You don’t just grow—” Then I had it. “You’re on that new shit, the stuff that stimulates your natural steroids and growth hormones.” From the look on his face I could tell I had nailed it. “Don’t be stupid. You don’t know what that stuff’s going to do to you.”
“I’ve been on it three days now, ever since you started growing. I think I know what it’s doing to me.” He flexed for me. I had to admit. The muscles looked good on him, really good. I started to get hard. No! I wasn’t going to do that. I turned my attention forward, determined to concentrate on calculus.
By this time, Mr. Sanders had recuperated and started the class again. He kept steeling glances back at us, Charles and me, but then so did the rest of the class. Charles was loving the attention. He placed his hands behind his head and bounced his biceps whenever anyone was looking. I could tell Mr. Sanders was really weirded out. He didn’t call on us once the entire class.
When the bell rang, Charles was up and out of the classroom like a shot. I took off after him, but he ducked into the crowd by the front door and I lost sight of him.
Wait a minute. Why was there a crowd by the front door? They were all gawking at something out in front of the school. I joined the crowd and plowed my way to the front. There were defiantly a couple of advantages to my new size. The first was people generally got out of my way and the second was I could see over most of the kid’s heads. And what I saw almost made me explode on the spot.
Someone had been hoisted up the flagpole. As I got closer I noticed that the poor bastard wasn’t wearing any pants. Let me see if I can guess who had hauled him up there. There was little doubt it was Gil Stafford. But as I reached the door I froze. The guy on the pole, it was Joe, my brother Joe!
I raced out to the pole, untied the line and began lowering him down. By this time a fair crowd was gathering at the base of the pole. When I got him down, I untied him. He immediately used his hands to cover himself.
“Joe, are you ok?”
“Yeah,” he said “Just completely humiliated. Nothing a transfer to another school wouldn’t fix.” There was a titter of giggles. One of the guys in the crowd opened his backpack and tossed Joe a pair of gym shorts. “I just washed them,” he said.
“Thanks,” said Joe as he pulled them on.
“Was it Gil Stafford?” I asked.
“Why don’t you ask him yourself?” he said, pointing. And sure enough, there was the bastard himself, and Benjy Pierce and Farley Simpkin.
I was hot. One look at that smirking face and all reason left me. I was going to pound that grin into the earth, stomp on it and then piss on it. I don’t even remember crossing the ground, but suddenly I was right in front of him, with my fists all balled up. To my utter surprise, he held up his hands palms out.
“Whoa there, mutant clown boy. We go at it here and now, we’ll get suspended for sure.”
Damn it, he was right. He was fucking right.
“Fifth period,” he said. “Meet me at the clearing.”
I nodded. In my state of mind, forming words would be impossible. Then Gil turned and walked away. It took everything I had to let him go.
Joe called after him. “You are going to get your ass well and truly kicked. My brother isn’t just a good dresser; he can lift a car!”
Gil turned. “Really?” He walked over to a parked car, squatted down, reached way underneath it—to the frame I guessed—and straining like he might bust a gut, proceeded to lift the front end of the car till the tires were about three inches off the ground. He held it for a second, and then let it drop.
“Oh,” said Joe. “So you can lift a car, too. That’s unexpected.” He turned to me. “Bro, I love you but I think you’re dead.”
I didn’t know about that. I still thought I had a pretty good chance of taking him down. In fact if anything I’d say the odds were pretty even, and somehow I liked that idea. It would be far more satisfying to crush him, if he had a good chance of beating me. If I had been able to overwhelm him with size, my victory would not be so sweet.
“Thanks for the support, Joe.”
“I’m always there for you. You know that. Hey, what did you do to Benjy anyway?”
“What?”
“Gil said he was getting back at you for what you did to Benjy. What did you do to Benjy?
“Nothing compared to what I’m going to do to him.” And I meant it. After fifth period, Gil Stafford would never bully anyone ever again.