Chapter 5: Serious Iron

I didn’t go to school on Thursday. I wasn’t hurt, but I had never been so humiliated in my life. I had been lifting, trying to up my max. All I wanted in the world was to crush Becky Finklestein. I wanted to crush her for hurting Courtney, for humiliating me, and for making Courtney quake with desire in ways I never could without even touching her. But every time I picked up a weight, I wondered how much more Becky would lift. I was doing curls with 40 pounds. Was she using 60? 80? Every time I curled the weights to my chest, I saw visions of her gigantic bicep balling up in slow motion, her delts, forearms, triceps, and brachialis flaring out in perfect definition. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t stop thinking about her bulging, dominant musculature and her bitchy, domineering attitude. Becky Finklestein was a bully. The worst kind of bully. The kind of bully that forces you into a fight by hitting your girlfriend. The kind of bully who was so much stronger than you, you could only dream of beating them up.

Courtney came to visit me in the basement. Her eye was looking a little better. “Was everybody talking about it?” I asked.

Courtney hesitated. “Yes and no,” she said.

“Yes and no?

“Everybody was talking about Becky. They never really talked about you.”

“Becky?”

“All anyone could talk about was Becky’s muscles. No one really talked about you at all.” I didn’t know if I was supposed to feel good about that or not. Courtney continued, rubbing my arms. “No one is going to look down on you Greg. Anyone would have done the same thing. It’s not like you can justify fighting a ten year old girl.”

“Yeah,” I said. Courtney was right. I had to take the high road. I couldn’t hit a little girl, even a big little girl like Becky Finklestein. Everyone would understand that. My spirits rose.

“Besides, if you tried she would have totally crushed you. I mean, did you see her Greg? She’s huge! Did you see her shoulders? And her legs?” My sprits fell. But Courtney kept talking. She was getting carried away, and she flopped back on my bed and started grinding her thighs together. “My God Greg her arms could break you in half like a twig. They were beyond huge. Did you see the way her biceps bunched up when she flexed? They were the size of grapefruits!”

“I saw,” I sighed.

“And just ... cut, Greg. Every muscle on her body is perfect. And her movements are so fast and fluid, like she’s a dancer or a martial artist or something. Did you see how gracefully she moved? Even with all that ... rippling ... bulging ... muscle...”

“I saw,” I sighed.

“She would have destroyed you, Greg. I mean like, remember when she pinned you in wrestling tryouts like you were nothing? Like you were a ragdoll! And you were twice as big as her, and now she’s twice as big as you ... maybe bigger.” Courtney was laying on the bed with her eyes closed as I left the room, but I could still hear her talking about Becky Finklestein as I walked down the hall. “So big,” she gushed.

I knew that the only way out was to apologize to Becky and throw myself on her mercy but I needed to confront her somewhere safe. Somewhere that there were lots of authority figures present. Two years ago it had taken two police officers to save me from her, and back then she was just a tiny little girl. Now she was a big little girl. A big, bad, little girl.

I figured that I would be safe at PJHS, where there were teachers everywhere, and a police station across the road. Courtney had to leave at lunch although she wouldn’t tell me why, so I jogged down to PJHS at lunch. If I was lucky I could catch Becky in between classes, where she would only have a few minutes to beat me up or humiliate me or do whatever she was going to do.

As soon as I got to PJHS I saw Tyler Jefferson, Clarence’s brother, on the way to lunch. He had black lump under his right eye, not a big one, but still noticeable. “Hey Tyler,” I called out, grabbing him by the arm. “I’m looking for a girl named Becky Finklestein. Do you know which lunch shift she has?”

Tyler laughed a kind of sad laugh. “She’s got this lunch shift, but she don’t eat lunch with us, she goes straight to the weight room.”

That figured. I pointed to Tyler’s eye. “How did that happen?” I asked. “Your brother finally get sick of your shit?”

Tyler looked to the floor. “My brother? No. You’re getting ready to find out how it happened,” he said sheepishly, then ran to join a group of other guys in baseball letter jackets. They all had blackened right eyes.

The weight room was past the gym, and the hallway leading to the gym was where the PJHS trophies were kept. I stopped by to check out my old squat record. I was now in fifth place, at the bottom of the plaque. All four plates above mine were engraved with the name “Rebecca E. Finklestein.” I looked at the numbers on the plaque. Becky had beaten my old record of 512 pounds with lifts of 513, 514, 515, and 600 pounds. 600 pounds? Was it possible for a ten year old girl to lift that much weight? Then I remembered the hulking mass of her legs and the rippling bulk of her glutes as she exhibited her physique on the soccer field. She could probably squat more if she wanted to.

Out of grim curiosity I went from plaque to plaque. All the weightlifting plaques had five spaces, and Becky had the first four places on all of them. She had pushed all the previous record-holders to the bottom, even Vic O’Neal. His bench press record of 316, which had stood for three decades, was now fifth best to lifts of 317, 318, 319, and 400. By “Rebecca E. Finklestein.” 400 pounds? She was huge, beyond huge, but it just didn’t seem possible. Then I remembered the striated globes of her pectorals swelling up like tidal waves of muscle, growing until they eclipsed her collarbones and stretched her tanktop wide enough to fit around my waist. She could probably bench more if she wanted to.

And it wasn’t just weightlifting. Becky had plaques and trophies for track and field, chess club, jazz band, debate club, and “Math Olympics” whatever the hell that was. Her name was all over the hallway. She was better than everyone at everything.

As I got close to the weight room I could hear the familiar sound of weights clanking. Except it was only one set of weights. And it sounded like a ton of weight. I took a deep breath as I opened the door.

The afternoon sun was streaming through the windows set along the top of the walls. I think there was a new paint job and maybe some new weights, but I don’t really remember. My focus was drawn instantly to the biggest, most muscular back I had ever seen in my life. It was shaped like the hood of a cobra, rising up from a tiny waist clad in pink soccer shorts and flaring out in a four-foot-wide conflagration of rippling muscles that contracted and bulged impossibly as the massive arms that it was attached to pumped two one hundred pound dumbbells up in the air with mechanical perfection. Frizzy orange pigtails hung down over the neck strap of a pink workout leotard, held down by the elastic band of a pair of athletic goggles. But I didn’t need to see the pigtails or goggles to know who it was. Only Becky Finklestein had muscles like that.

Her back looked like a cobblestone street of muscles, except that both the cobblestones and the mortar were muscles. It didn’t look human. When she finished her set, she floated the weights down, and held them in her little hands wiggling them casually the way I wiggled the thirty pound dumbbells that I did military presses with. How was she so strong? At ten years old she was pumping iron like an Olympic weightlifter and flexing muscles like an Olympian. I couldn’t help myself from staring at the swollen immensity of her back. I hated her and I was afraid of her and I was jealous of her, but I couldn’t take my eyes off of her.

Then all of a sudden she had turned around and locked her green eyes on me. “Hey Gweg,” she said. “Did you come down here to see someone pump sewious iron?”

Her top was low cut and cropped to show her pecs and her abs, and her developing bustline clearly outlined by the pink spandex. Her pre-pubescent breasts were as overdeveloped as the rest of her body, and I had to force myself not to look at them.

Seeing me avert my eyes, she laughed and curled the barbells up to her chest, holding them there just long enough to make sure that I could count the plates. Then she let them float down in perfect form, her arms fully extended. And then she curled them up again. Her biceps contracted and bloated as her forearms undulated and her deltoids flared to life. I felt like screaming but my mouth was too dry. Becky Finklestein was doing bicep curls with hundred pound dumbbells. No one could curl 100 pound dumbbells. No one could even get close to curling 100 pound dumbbells. Except the ten year old muscle brat that stood glaring at me and smiling. “You look pretty scared, Rubber Chicken,” she giggled as she slowly raised and lowered the massive weights. “Haven’t you ever seen anybody warm up with hundwed pound barbells?”