by Fred Aceves
Crockett’s tail wags.
Alpha gets down on both knees to receive licks on his face. “I’m going to miss my best boy.”
I’m witnessing, yet again, one of the greatest things about being huge. Something Alpha and the other guys never mention. If you’re jacked, you can be yourself all the time without the risk that people see you as less than a man. No need to constantly prove yourself to be a man by doing scary or stupid stuff.
I think of the great lengths I’ve gone through to prove myself over the years. The tree I climbed, despite my fear of heights, when I was twelve. The snail I stomped on when I was ten. God, how I hate that memory, the gooey insides of that creature splatted on the sidewalk. All so the neighborhood boys wouldn’t call me a girl.
This constant manly act is why I wouldn’t tell anybody, not even Miguel, about how many hours I used to spend with my mom in the kitchen. It’s why I won’t take an umbrella to school on a rainy day, even though we have two at home.
Alpha can baby-talk a dog or take pictures of sunsets and post them on Instagram. He could probably suck on a lollipop while skipping down the street—if he were allowed to eat sweets.
Crazy how being unnaturally big lets you be natural in other ways.
16
Twenty-one days until school begins
WHAT ARE YOU UP TO? Karina’s text reads.
She’s been texting from Miami as much as she did when she was here. I text her back that I’m at the gym, that I’ll text her later.
It’s a lonely feeling for me, I gotta admit, to only share the bare facts of my life, where I am and what I’m doing. I used to tell her everything and now I have to hide what’s become the most important part of my life—everything related to gear and what it’s doing to me.
I put the phone away and strap on the weight belt for legs day, still feeling soreness in my chest and arms as I buckle it tight. I love the pain in my muscles, how every workout lingers for days.
Tower also puts on his weight belt. He’s wearing pants, as usual, to cover up his nonexistent calves. They’re strong as hell from doing calf raises with a ton of weight, but he’s got that common curse. Some calves don’t grow no matter how much you train them.
He has an appointment for implant surgery though, and will be wearing shorts by the end of the summer.
Gaby is with Dad today so I don’t gotta worry about getting home in a big hurry. Don’t have to worry or feel guilty at all for lying to Dad, who actually trusts me. He believes I’m doing push-ups and other calisthenics in the living room.
After Tower finishes his warm-up set, I do my twenty warm-up squats.
“Let’s do this,” Tower says.
We load up the bar for his first real turn. Slide three big plates on either side.
“Where’s the vomit bucket?” I ask him. “Or do you plan on throwing up right here on the floor?”
I love being able to tease a guy as big as him without getting snapped in half.
“I finished my cycle, Little Man.” He slides a plate on his side. “Not that vomit would make this place much dirtier than it already is,” he adds with a laugh.
The floors do need a good sweeping and mopping. Alpha has been too bummed to do any cleaning around here. He got back the day after he left. Without Mindy.
Tower motions to reception with his bandana-wrapped head. “The guy’s a wreck.”
Alpha is at his laptop but not looking at it. His head is tilted up at the ceiling. He’s spaced out all the time now. Even when he’s walking around, giving somebody a spot or chatting people up, he’s not all there.
I never imagined that Mindy not coming back would mess up a tough guy like Alpha so bad. I’ll hang back after my workout to get this place in order. Help Alpha out.
I tell Tower, “He’ll be getting that forty-five thousand bucks from BeastMax Nutrition soon.”
“Money will cheer him up. Getting this place looking nice should cheer him up even more.” He enters the squat rack, back in lifting mode. “It’s go time.”
He gets under the barbell, all energy. We’re not going to let a sad friend keep us from going hard as fuck in our workouts.
“How many reps last time?” I ask.
“Ten.”
Since he’s working with the same weight, today he needs to do more reps.
At least thirteen or fourteen.
His legs tremble with the seventh rep and he lets out a tiny groan. What the hell?
Maybe he didn’t sleep or eat well yesterday. I move in closer. Just in case.
He groans and winces with number eight.
“That weight ain’t shit!” I shout. “You got this!”
Except he doesn’t got this. On the eighth rep he stalls halfway, knees bent.
“Aaargh,” he lets out as his whole body trembles.
I hug him tight from behind and squat with him. Up we go. Then I move him forward and help him rack the weight.
He does the post-squat pacing to get his heart rate back to normal, hands on his hips. The largest muscle groups on the body are the glutes, hams, and quads, and you work all three with squats.
“What happened?” I ask him.
“Happens every time,” he says when he’s somewhat recovered. He takes a plate off his side. “It’s that fucking off-cycle loss.”
I hold the plate on my side. “What loss?”
“I told you, bro. I’m cycling off for a month,” he says, taking off another plate. “It’s your go. How many reps are you going for?”
There’s a jerk in my chest, but I try not to panic. “So you’re losing strength?”
He notices the uneven bar, how I haven’t moved an inch, and steps away to get a better look at me.
“Wait.” His eyebrows are up so high they’re touching the bottom of his tight green bandana. “Do you think your steroid gains are maintainable?”
A paralyzing fear takes over me while my own heart is racing like I’ve knocked out a set of squats. I turn to look at Alpha, who’s still slumped in the corner. Did he trick me or something?
I lock eyes with Tower again. “You telling me I don’t keep my gains?”
“You keep some, sure. You drop maybe ten pounds of muscle during those weeks off gear.”
“What?”
“But when you get back on, you recover your size, and gain much more.”
“I’m not getting back on. It’s just this one cycle.”
Tower steps closer and speaks with a lower voice. “Are you serious? If you don’t go on another gear cycle, you’ll lose everything.”
“Everything?” I repeat, trying to keep it down.
I don’t care that Alpha’s heartbroken. And a million times bigger than me. I so wanna punch him right now.
“Well, not everything,” Tower clarifies. “You keep the muscle you would’ve gained naturally.”
Which isn’t big enough to be the new me. It wouldn’t even make me big enough to kick Ricky’s ass.
I look across the gym to Alpha again, and catch Rogelio in my periphery. He’s doing crunches on a floor mat. I remember how he warned me, my first day here, to stay away from gear.
“Alpha!” I shout, and wave him over.
His eyes brighten. He hops up from the reception chair and makes his way here.
I’m about to get some answers. Either Tower is fucking with me, or he’s full of shit, or . . . I don’t wanna think of the other possibility.
“Wassup?” Alpha says.
Tower looks at the floor like a kid in trouble, while I tell Alpha everything I’ve heard.
Alpha speaks with calm. “Some of the weight loss is water weight.”
That’s his fucking response?
“True,” Tower throws in, excited to be positive about something.
“The point,” I say, “is that I’ll lose my gains if I stop doing gear cycles. Yes or no?”
Alpha looks away and does this weird shrug, palms facing up. “Why do you only wanna do one cycle though?”
How I wish I could body slam Alpha right here. Or lift one of those benches and hurl it at least, to release all this pent-up anger. How I wish these average chumps weren’t here so I could at least scream.
There’s all this red-hot energy in me trying to get out and I gotta be chill, concerned with not making a scene.
I mean, how the fuck can I go back to being Bitchslap when my cycle is over?
“You know I wanted to do only one cycle. It makes no sense to do a cycle if the gains aren’t permanent.”
I say this with a tight jaw, careful not to raise my voice.
“Besides,” I add, “I’m not rolling in money.”
More importantly, I’m not so stupid that I’d take steroids again and again. But I’d be an idiot to call the two biggest guys I know idiots.
“Friends get a hookup,” Alpha says, giving me two thumbs-up. “You’ll get your next gear cycle at cost. That’s a promise.”
I close my eyes and take a deep breath so I don’t kill him. Then another, deeper breath.
I open my eyes. Nope. I still wanna kill him. That he’s still holding his thumbs up makes me wanna do it all slow, with torture devices so he suffers as much as possible.
“I need to clear my head,” I say, walking past him.
I head out the door and into the sunny day. When the door closes behind me, I let out a scream so loud my own dad might hear it three miles away.
I felt dumb as a brick when I found out Van Nelson’s gains weren’t natural. Now I’m that same clueless kid all over again. I dig into my pocket for my phone, wondering what the actor looks like now. Narrow my search to the last month.
In one picture Van Nelson is smiling and flashing a peace sign for TMZ. No longer jacked under that sharp gray suit.
In another picture, from the Ellen show, he sits at a slant just like the hostess he’s talking to. You can see he’s lost the heft in his arms, the short sleeves of his shirt loose around them.
Unfuckingbelievable.
After playing the most badass action hero of all time, he’s back to looking like an average chump.
How could I be so stupid to believe I’d keep my steroid gains? You stop downing beers and eventually you’re no longer drunk. You stop hitting the weed and hours later you’re no longer high.
I pace, angry with myself. Angry at Alpha too. I had to hurry outta the gym so I didn’t shout at him, Why the fuck didn’t you tell me the truth before?
Now I gotta put a question to myself: Would it have mattered?
Since the beginning I vowed to do whatever it takes. This, apparently, is what it takes. First, a gear cycle to get big enough for the start of school. Then, after five weeks of cycling off, another cycle to recover the lost pounds.
So I don’t shrink before school ends I’ll have to do, let’s see . . . three more cycles. Maybe two and a half.
I don’t like the idea of showing up to college all scrawny. So maybe another tiny cycle? The point is I’ll eventually wean off the gear. I’m not doing it forever.
What’s a year or two on gear? Alpha, Tower, and the others have been on it for way longer and they’re fine.
The alternative is going back to being Bitchslap David, which is unacceptable.
I push through the door into the gym and head to the squat rack to do my first real set. I get under the barbell and push up, the weight heavy across my upper back.
Then I lower it, going deep, my ass nearly touching the back of my heels as Tower begins to count.
Last time I did eight so it’s twelve reps today—no fucking excuses. I’m still gaining strength instead of losing.
17
Nineteen days until school begins
IT’S PAST SEVEN when I’m driving on my way home from the supermarket. I’d better get used to the puttering sound of this Pathfinder, and to asking Dad to borrow it every time I wanna go out. Any money I make is going into the next-cycle fund.
The moment Dad got home today he gave me the car keys, some money, and the shopping list. Said he wasn’t feeling well.
I guessed right that the supermarket would be packed. The rush hour crowd filled several checkouts, each line at least three carts deep. I kept my hood down. Nobody showed a shock of recognition.
I may retire the hoodie soon. The gym guys all say I’m unrecognizable now. Not just because of my bigger size, how I’ve grown into my oversized head. It’s because of my new scraggly beard, which I keep trimmed neatly. Dad, Gaby, Karina, and the guys at the gym have all commented on the change.
That puts some confidence in my walk. Other times I see myself as not big enough, nowhere near as big as I could be, and it brings me down. That champ mentality is still at work.
When I pull up to the driveway, I call Karina to tell her the bad news that we can’t hang out tonight. We haven’t been hanging out anyway, since I’ve been busy with my muscle gains and she’s been busy with her friends and volunteering.
“Listen, Karina,” I say. “My dad is feeling sick so I can’t hang out. I’m going to hold things down at home, okay?”
“That sucks. I was looking forward to seeing you.”
She tells me to take good care of him, and mentions Universal Studios. “We’ve decided to go the weekend before school starts.”
Miguel is still excited about Universal Studios too. He mentioned it when he emailed me and sent pics of historic Santo Domingo.
“Sounds good to me,” I say, but I don’t wanna spend money on that anymore.
In fact, it seems so childish to me now, visiting a theme park. Just like the video games I haven’t played. Maybe I’ve grown more than just muscles and a beard.
I come through the front door with six shopping bags. “Hey, Gaby.”
Three bags in each hand when this would’ve taken me at least two trips at the start of summer. I’m so baller.
Gaby doesn’t raise her eyes from her My Little Pony coloring book or say a word.
It’s quiet in here, the TV black and silent, which is weird for the evening. If Dad isn’t watching the news he must be resting in bed.
“We’ll hang out just as soon as I put these groceries away,” I say, heading to the kitchen. “Whatever you want.”
I start with the refrigerated items.
“Jenga?” I ask her. “Memory? Pickup sticks?”
Not a word from her. She doesn’t look up either. The crayon in her fist just wiggles faster. What crawled up her butt? We were cool before I left.
I close the fridge door and grab the two big cans of sardines. Dad likes to eat them with hot sauce and those flavorless Goya crackers. When I walk over to the cupboards I notice a square of light spread against the hallway wall—that can only be coming from my room.
A cold panic hits me when I think of my stash. But Dad can’t suspect anything. Besides, the gear is well hidden in the pocket of a jacket hanging in the back, the thick one I only wear two weeks out of the year, if at all.
No parent, nobody at all, would ever think to search the pockets of clothes.
Dad must be on WebMD since I have the only computer in the house. Anytime his stomach feels funny or he starts coughing he wants to get on that site. A terrible idea. That site will get you thinking you have pancreatic cancer or tuberculosis when it’s just indigestion or bronchitis.
I put away my big bag of oatmeal and two bags of brown rice.
Dad won’t come across my favorite websites. I browse in private mode. Still it’s annoying to have him in there without me knowing. I mean, sure, get on WebMD if you want, pop into my room to use the computer, but what about respecting my privacy? He should’ve asked is all I’m saying.
Wait a sec. How long does it take to check symptoms on WebMD? A couple of minutes?
I leave the groceries and walk to the living room. “Gaby? How long has Dad been in my room?”
She shrugs without looking up.
I walk to where she’s sitting, and stand over her. “Has Dad been asking you questions?”
She drops her head so low I can’t see her eyes. She has stopped coloring to grab a pink crayon. Then she drops it to grab a yellow one instead.
If it takes two minutes to get a diagnosis from the website, what else has he been doing in my room?
“Gaby? What’s going on?”
“He kept asking me,” she says, in that creaky voice that means tears will soon follow.
Since she refuses to look up, I lower myself to the floor so that we’re almost eye level. “What did he ask you?”
“Doña Carmen told him.” It comes out high-pitched, and a teardrop streaks down to her chin. “He kept asking me, David. I didn’t—it’s not my fault, okay? He kept asking me.”
My hearts pounds so hard I feel it in my ears.
Why doesn’t Doña Carmen from across the street mind her own fucking business? She used to take care of us back in the day, but nobody needs her anymore.
I’m grounded for life. Whether or not Dad has found the gear, leaving Gaby alone is a million times worse than anything I’ve ever done. And what if he did find my stash? He’ll take it from me and won’t give it back and it’s goodbye gains and hello Bitchslap. I’ll lose everything I’ve been working for.
I take a deep breath and head into my bedroom.
It’s chaos. Dresser and nightstand drawers yanked open. Clothes spilled out or on the floor. The closet doors are also wide open but the clothes inside are still hanging. I tell myself that’s good.
There he is, sitting on my chair and looking at my monitor like he belongs here.
My worry turns to simmering anger.
“Why did you go through my stuff?” It comes out more sharply than I intended. And in English. I tell myself to get a grip. Talk to Dad in a calm voice and in Spanish.
He turns his gaze from the computer screen—some Google results there—and locks wild eyes with me. He rises from the chair. Slowly as usual because of his bad back. He walks over.
“My stuff,” he says in Spanish. Taps his chest twice with a finger. “My bedroom, my computer, my house, my everything.”
He tells me to close the door so I do.
“You’ve been leaving your little sister all alone at the house. Doña Carmen told me, so don’t even try to say—”