Chapter 1: And Now That I'm Strong I Have Figured Out

Two Years Later

I stuffed my martial arts uniform into my gym bag. Putting my hands on either side of the bag, I took a few deep breaths and winced. I was fucking exhausted!

"Are you okay, Michael?" my instructor asked, sitting down on the bench. I wanted to tell him to fuck off. He knew exactly what he put me through; he intended to put me through it every class for the entire summer so I would be in tip-top shape for the high school football season. He was the head coach of the team. In hindsight, I should have considered that detail.

"I will be after a good night's sleep," I told him.

There was no point at cursing my 'healthy' wish, but I did it anyway as Coach Smith walked away. Allysandre turned the wish by making me do the work to get to the goal. I had spent the last two years in martial arts schools, running, cycling, swimming, and being disgusted by the thought of eating anything bad for me. At least, the organic crap I ate tasted good to me -- it was really only the mental hump of eating salads, salads, and more salads. After a year of my wish-enforced diet and exercise plan, I learned to ignore eating and not fight my body's obsession with exercise. No matter what I did, I ended up at the dojo or school gym.

I met Coach Smith at the dojo soon after I had made my wishes. His family had just moved into town and he was keeping an eye out for football prospects. I found Allysandre's lamp the summer before my first high school year. I joined the dojo a couple of weeks before the school year started, which was enough time to impress Coach Smith with my wish-enforced work ethic. Whatever Allysandre added to my subconscious loved the idea of football.

I turned out to be a physically gifted receiver, but the school quarterback, Coach Smith's son Davis, hated me. It meant I could not partake in the usual rewards of being a player on a winning high school football team. Davis and I were tolerable to each other during our JV season. I never really got along with classmates after my mother's death and my father's denial of everything. I liked my football teammates exactly as much as I liked everyone else in school, which did not sit well with Davis' view of entitlement and team unity. It would have ended there except that he was good enough, tall enough, strong enough, accurate enough to get a scholarship to a THIRD tier football school. Davis' biggest strength was his father's offensive packages, which had me front and center as a slot receiver. His dad played for a big time football school in college and knew the difference between his son's physical potential and my greater one.

A local newspaper article described me as having the balance and shiftiness of a halfback, the size of a fullback, and the reach and hands of an octopus dipped in super-glue. I would have been better suited to being a tight-end, but my idea of blocking was to flatten someone by hitting them at top speed or a judo throw. The article ended by saying that Davis owed his success to having a real NFL prospect on his team.

The idiot reporter chose the week before the state championship during our sophomore year to publish the article. Having won our JV state championship our freshman year, we were the favorites until Davis reacted to the article by ignoring me for the entire first quarter of the most important game of our life up to that point. Coach Smith exacerbated the debacle by benching me for the rest of the game. He got crucified for it! He responded by saying, "I am a father, a teacher, and then a coach. My son and all of these boys placed in my responsibility will face consequences for their words, actions, and inaction. This is the end of the line for most of their sporting careers, if you can even call it that. They will walk away better men if I have anything to do with it."

I could not hold it against Coach for trying to be a good father. It put me in a worse way with Davis, even if Coach also took me aside to talk about making an effort to better the team camaraderie. I would have been happy to try, since being Davis' nemesis made me persona non grata with the In-Crowd at school. I didn't actually care about being friends with them -- I wanted to date hot chicks, of which the cheerleaders made up a good portion of the category. With his daddy watching him like a hawk, Davis knew better than to make my life hell after the state championships. He was subtle enough to do his work via proxies and by keeping me out of the popular kids' group.

Bullying had never been an issue at school until Davis could not take his frustration out on the target he really wanted to put the screws to. With his main target not willing to engage for skirmishes and unreachable for real high school warfare, Davis turned his attention on the high school mass of nobodies. With his father in the building, Davis kept his hands mostly clean; he just looked on approvingly. One of the lesser bulbs on our team turned the bullying to a physical level with one of the school brains. I would not have gotten involved except it was one of the few times Davis publicly egged it on. I stepped between my teammate and the kid, which would have ended it, but I went further by quitting the team, explaining to Davis' father I was not interested in spending that much time with assholes. Coach Smith knew exactly what I was doing. The lesser bulb got kicked off the team and my teammates discovered sometimes zero tolerance meant zero tolerance.

I didn't do myself any favors by choosing that particular battleground to get back at Davis. I wasn't Mr. Unpopularity by any means, but everyone made space around me on school grounds and kept things to quick conversations. At least, I did better outside of school, since everyone knew me and the Not-In-Crowd thought I was one of them, just a physically gifted member of the mass. Considering I'd been alone since my mother's death, I did not care about my social situation, except for the lack of a girlfriend to have sex with.

I got off the bus I took from the dojo and walked into my development. Walking to my door, I looked at my neighbor's lawn and shook my head. Devon, the petite blonde who moved in on the night I made my wishes, hired the worst landscaping company in town. The owner was a drunk; his employees weren't much better. I tried to talk to Devon about it, but I got the distinct impression that someone always took care of things for her, like my dumbass. Dropping my bag off at the foyer, I walked through the kitchen and into the garage. I dragged the lawn mower out to take care of Devon's grass.

"You know, Michael, she's never going to get rid of her landscaping company if you keep doing their work," Mrs. Marie said. She had pulled her car over in front of Devon's house and stepped out to talk to me.

I shrugged.

"She's not that hot, Michael!" Mrs. Marie said with a wicked smile. "Well, off to yoga! Come by this weekend and have dinner with us, sweetie. My kids would love it."

I watched Mrs. Marie drive off wishing she walked off instead. Mrs. Marie had a gorgeous ass! Mrs. Marie was also in some sort of female competition with Devon for being the hottest woman in the development. I thought it was like comparing pumpkin pie to a roast beef sandwich, but since I appeared to be the chosen judge I kept my mouth shut. Nobody had to tell me that both women wore much skimpier than normal bikinis in their pool to get my attention. I had absolutely no plans to declare a winner in their little competition! As a growing boy, I could eat a roast beef sandwich and finish it off with some pumpkin pie.

Well ... except for the disgust I felt whenever I put something with too much sugar in my mouth. Fucking Allysandre!

I finished Devon's lawn and put away the mower. I decided to put on a movie. Summers sucked for me; I didn't have friends to hang out with and no summer job. The only time I spent outside the house was at the dojo, the gym, and cutting Devon's grass. I grabbed the gym bag and headed to my bedroom. It used to be the master bedroom until my dad started spending weekends with his girlfriend and only dropping in to check on me. The drop-ins were down to once a month; on the other weekends, I got calls with increasingly unbelievable excuses as to why he couldn't come by.

My mother's death was a preventable accident -- a too-tired driver asked to make one more trip as a favor for his boss. My dad did not want any part of the lawsuit; the company, which employed the driver and his idiot supervisor, really wanted no part of a lawsuit. Things got settled very quickly and quietly. The house was paid off and I didn't have to worry about paying for college. My father's girlfriend was smart enough to avoid the landmine of my mother's death as long as my dad spent most of his free time with her. She didn't make a play for the house or money. I would be off to college in a couple of years, so she would never have to deal with a stepson. After my dad and his girlfriend basically moved in together, I asked him to let me sleep in the master bedroom. It gave him another reason to stay away, so he agreed.