Chapter 6: Unfair Advantage

I couldn’t sleep on Thursday night. Every time I drifted off into a dream, Becky Finklestein would show up and make it a nightmare. Sometimes she was Wonder Woman, flexing her pecs in that red and gold halter top. Sometimes she was Supergirl, with every impossibly cut muscle visible under her blue tights as bullets bounced off her harmlessly. Once she was the Hulk, but with orange freckles instead of green skin. And bigger. Her eyes burned with anger as her muscles exploded out of her purple pants and white shirt. As I awoke in a cold sweat, I could hear her voice from my nightmares. “I’m the strongest one there is!” she growled.

I didn’t get back to sleep.

I struggled through school on Friday, but as the day went on, and but the close to last period things got, the better I felt. Courtney’s black eye was gone, so I didn’t have to think about Becky every time I looked at her. At lunch I met Jerry Jackson and a couple other guys from the PJHS baseball team. They had fading black eyes, too. I wondered if Becky did it with a slap like she did with Courtney, or with a flex of her arm like she did with me. Most of the team was too scared of Becky to help me out, but Jerry, Roy Larsen, Bill Emery, and Travis Martindale agreed to be part of my plan.

Courtney was going out for dinner with her folks before they went away for the weekend. Normally I went out to eat with them, but I said I was feeling sick. I kind of was, but I snuck out at sunset and met Jerry in his car. “Everything is in the trunk,” he said as we drove out toward PJHS.

We could see the lights of the weight room as we approached. Jerry turned off his headlights and parked around back. We got the ski masks and baseball bats out his trunk, and Travis used the key he stole from the shop teacher to let us in the side door. We snuck through the halls until we got to the trophy hall. Becky had a new plaque, for getting a perfect score on her PSATs. I thought about her freckles, glasses, and braces. The only thing that kept her from being a nerd was her muscles. Her gigantic muscles. We could hear the clanking of weights as we approached the weight room. If we were lucky she would be laying down on the bench, and we could attack before she got a chance to stand up.

We were not lucky.

Becky was on the squat rack, squatting 800 pounds. We filed in with masks on and bats in our hands, but Becky didn’t stop. “ten, eleven, twelve,” she counted, then she re-set the weight and stepped out from under the rack. She was wearing purple track pants and a white t-shirt that was so tight and soaked with sweat that it was basically invisible. She had a purple sportsbra on underneath her shirt, and her purple track jacket sat in the corner near her duffle bag. “What do you skinny bitches want?” she said.

I felt like I should have something to say. “Shut up, Becky!” I yelled.

It wasn’t a great comeback, but seeing her in purple pants and a white shirt reminded me a little too much of my dream, where she was the Incredible Hulk, and I was off my game. She rolled her eyes. “Gee I wonder who you all are? With the baseball bats and batting gloves and everything?” she asked sarcastically. Then she looked at Roy. “You should at least change your ski mask, Roy. You wore that stupid thing every day during December.”

Bill and Roy looked at each other. There was a moment of silence, then we moved. Becky didn’t budge. She put her hands on her hips and blew a big pink bubble. “You need to learn a lesson,” Bill said.

“This isn’t fair,” Becky said. “You have an unfair advantage.”

“You ain’t so tough when you’re outnumbered, are you?” Travis laughed. Then he swung at Becky.

Travis batted clean-up for PJHS, and his swing was so powerful that the whoosh of the bat echoed through the weight room, and the wind the bat generated as it cut through the air ruffled Becky’s pigtails. And then the bat slammed into Becky’s stomach. She didn’t budge. If Travis’ swing had any more effect on her than ruffling her pigtails, she didn’t let on.

“I’m always tough,” Becky said. “But you cwowns can hit me all you want without worrying about hurting me and getting in twouble. I don’t have that luxury.”

Jerry swung at Becky’s left arm. On impact, the bat jumped out of his hands and skittered across the floor as he curled his fingers in pain. Becky didn’t budge. Jerry was on his knees and wringing his hands. He looked like he just swung his bat into a brick wall. But it wasn’t a brick wall, it was the arm of an ten year old girl who had glasses, freckles and braces. And it was so packed with muscle that the sleeves of an XXL t-shirt bunched up above the bulging mass of her biceps and triceps. “My fucking hands,” Jerry said.

“If I lose my temper I could kill you, and then I go to jail for sure,” Becky said. “I can’t even fight back, not really. That’s not fair.”

Then Roy swung at Becky’s head. We all froze as the sweet spot of the bat crashed into Becky’s jaw. If we were lucky, we wouldn’t get sent to jail. If we were lucky, we would just get expelled. We weren’t lucky.

Becky didn’t budge. It seemed like minutes passed while we stood motionless, Roy’s bat resting atop her massive traps, against the smooth girly curve of her jaw. Then her nostrils started to flare, and her lips curled into a snarl. Becky’s breath got heavy, making her giant pectorals swell under her t-shirt as her cheeks reddened. “Now you’ve made me angwy,” she said quietly.

Then Becky curled her fingers, and braced her legs, and puffed out her shoulders, and screamed.

The sleeves of her white shirt split instantly as her massive softball-sized biceps curled up and her shoulders rippled into triple-headed perfection. Her chest expanded with such force that the shirt split down the middle, and fell to the floor in shreds. Her calves erupted into massive diamonds of muscle, tearing her purple pants on either side. I was shaking. Her muscles had erupted out of her clothes just like in my dream. Just like the Hulk. Only she wasn’t done. Becky’s enormous thighs bunched and expanded, stretching the pants so tight that they began to split apart one thread at a time over the swelling immensity of her legs as her femoris, lateralis, medialis, and gracillis, shifted and contracted against each other. Then her pants exploded into shreds of purple fabric. Not even the Hulk burst out of his pants, but the Hulk didn’t have muscles like Becky Finklestein. She stood glaring at Roy, all three and a half feet of her packed with sweating, throbbing muscles, covered in freckled skin that was stretched so tight it looked like she might burst through it as well. Her purple underwear strained against her rippling bulk like rubber bands wrapped around a mountain.

Roy tried to pull the bat back, but Becky’s hand shot out with blinding speed and grabbed the barrel. How could she be so fast? Her arms were as big around as telephone poles, and she moved them in the less time than it took me to blink. She fixed Roy with her eyes. “Why would you do that?” she demanded. “Why would you swing a baseball bat at my head?”

Roy let go of the bat and backed up. Becky stalked after him, the bat clutched firmly in her hand, her heart-shaped glutes bunching and undulating as she swung her hips with graceful ease. “You’re not supposed to hit girls,” she said bitterly as Roy tripped over his feet. Becky stood over him, holding out the bat. “You know what happens if you hit girls, don’t you?” she asked. Then a crackling sound filed the air as Roy’s baseball bat began to splinter, splits running from the knob to the head as Becky squeezed it in her dainty hand. A second later, she had cracked it into kindling, both the knob and the head pointing skyward as the barrel cracked in her hand. She dropped the remains of the bat the ground and slapped the sawdust off her hands. “If you hit girls, they hit back,” Becky said venomously.

“Please let me go,” Roy pleaded, his eyes filling with tears.

Becky raised an open palm. “No,” she said, and casually swatted her arm down in a gentle slapping motion.