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“Dui. Ke yi. Hao…mm…hen hao, xie xie. Okay, jai jian,” Dad said, hanging up the phone and letting out a sigh. He shuffled through the pile of papers at his desk and put on his reading glasses, scrutinizing legal document after legal document. He had only been back in the States for all of seven hours after a grueling flight across the Pacific Ocean which was plagued by an endlessly shrieking baby in economy, and already he was on the line with Shanghai. This deal with Tian Jing had to work out; he had spent far too much time getting a sit-down with their executives and ironing out the details for this to fall through.

            Mom’s footsteps became audible from the corridor outside. She had such a way of walking with such authority and haste that Dad could tell it that was her the instant the first footstep rang out.

            She knocked on the door and marched in. “Sorry I just needed something from the shelf,” she said without even turning to face her husband. Mom walked over to the nearby bookcase and started rifling through the many folders and binders stacked on one of the shelves. Dad raised his gaze over his reading glasses, watching his wife’s hurried, desperate body language, before returning his attention to scrutinizing the legal language on his Tian Jing paperwork.

            “Uhhrr! Can’t find it!” Mom muttered under her breath.

            “Everything alright, honey?” Dad said casually without taking his eyes off his paperwork.

            Mom turned to Dad, giving him an indignant, appalled look. “The health binder. The one with all the records. It’s supposed to be here and, and it isn’t.”

    “I’m sure it’ll turn up. You should rest.”

    “I’m sorry, am I bothering your quiet time?”

    “This is a big deal, honey. Tomorrow I gotta be on the line with Tian Jing and I’ll need all the time I can-“

    “Ohhh of course, my mistake! Well let me just screw the hell off, then!”

    Now she got his attention. Dad put down his papers and his reading glasses and pinched the bridge of his nose, “Honey, I just got off one seriously stressful flight, so maybe yes, quiet time I could use. Now would you just please calm down and tell me what’s bugging you?”

    Dad’s placid, zen-like tone did little to alleviate Mom’s. “What’s bugging me? What’s *bugging* me? Oh, I don’t know,” she said, advancing towards him in a somewhat threatening manner, “I think, you know, it maybe could be *possibly* the fact that our *daughter*, our 18 year old daughter, is taking STEROIDS and becoming an overgrown…ju…gnn..muscle freak!”

    “Okay-“

    “And maybe, just maybe, if you stopped for one second-“

    “Honey-“

    “And for once looked at our little girl and what’s she’s turning herself into,”

    “Look-“

    “Maybe you’d get what was bugging me! I mean, did you even reach out to your people like I asked you to?!”

    “Honey. Please. Just calm down. Please. I mean, maybe she *does* have, you know, good genetics as she says!”

    Mom looked at Dad as if he had just regressed into a baby.

    “Do not even start with that. You haven’t seen the way she’s been changing because you’re all the way in Shanghai all the time. If you actually took a minute, a minute! To pay attention to your daughter-“

    “Okay honey, that’s-that’s not fair and you know it.” Dad shot back, thrusting his finger at her, ”I work my *ass* off so that our daughter can go to college. Who do you think kept us afloat when that financial shitstorm hit six years ago? You don’t think I want to spend more time with our daughter? I’d retire right this very *second* if we could afford to!”

    Mom knew that he was full of shit like always, but was tired of being the one to escalate the situation and didn’t talk back. She just walked over to the chair in front of his desk and slumped down, rubbing her forehead.

    Dad’s expression softened and he leaned forward. “Look, I found someone. I was going to tell you, but you know, work…”

    “You found someone?” Mom said, her mood changing almost instantly.

    “I called a few of my people in Beijing and they pointed me to a doctor out here in LA. Edward Graham. I spoke to him, he’s a researcher at UCLA, he said he might know why Jill is…yeah.”

    “And?”

    “So I set up an appointment so he could take a look at her, earliest he could do was next month, on the second.”

    “God. Can’t he do it sooner?”

    “I know. But he’s attending a conference in…I don’t know where. It’s the best I could do. But he sounded confident about Jill. He’s gonna take a look at her, run some tests, and we’ll…we’ll know everything then.”

    There was a silence between the two, Dad staring at Mom as she leaned back in her chair, staring at the floor. She quickly rose and made her way out of the room, “Talk to her when she gets home from school. She can barely look at me these days,” she said somberly as she exited.



    Choi walked the sparse corridors of Portsdown High, head firmly aimed at the floor, an expression of defiance at the world etched on his face. It was his free period and he was heading to the library to catch up on his reading before next class. The dread of finals was slowly creeping into everyone’s minds, except for Choi’s. He was way ahead of the game. UC Berkley called the other day to say that they were extremely impressed with his test scores and application, and were excited to have him working in their biomedical science program. His internship at UCLA was starting soon too. So why the hell was he still stuck at this shit school? That was a question Choi, for all his genius, couldn’t fathom. Yes, he was a genius. He totally outclassed everyone in AP chem and bio, which is probably why nobody liked him. Still, who gives a damn? He was the greate-

    “’Scuse me, could you tell me how to get to Chinatown?” a voice asked behind him. Choi had barely a second to turn around when he felt two hands clamp onto his torso with a vice-like grip and hoist him in the air. He felt his glasses slip off his head and his backpack dangle awkwardly over his shoulders as a cacophony of laughter erupted around him. He craned his head around to see what was going on and was greeted by none other than Linton’s grinning face. Behind him were his fellow apes from the football team, standing around and guffawing.

    “Not so sneaky now, you little shit huh?!” the blonde dickhead taunted him.

    “F-f-fuck you!” Choi screamed as he tried to writhe his way out of Linton’s grip. It was no use. He saw one of the jocks advance towards him. As the laughter and whooping continued, he felt a second pair of hands unbuckle his belt and tear his pants off of him. God no. Dear God no. He felt cold air suddenly wash over his now bare legs as the second assailant ran off with his pants. He didn’t even have time to cry for help before Linton dunked him in a trash can ass-first.

    Choi groaned in the filthy hole, his body crushing and crinkling discarded cans and plastic water bottles with his every movement. The sounds of laughter and hurried footsteps grew softer as his attackers fled down the hallway. Choi tried to wriggle his way out, but it was no use. He reached up and gripped the lip of the container, and yelped as the whole trash can tipped over.

    It smashed onto the floor, causing Choi to spill out, accompanied by an avalanche of filth that covered him from head to toe. He heard a crunch as he rolled onto the floor. Those were probably his glasses that he just landed on. In a daze, he slowly rose to his feet and picked up the remains of his glasses as well as his backpack. Already there were several students who had peeked their heads out of their classrooms to see what was going on. Snickers, muffled laughter and pointed fingers attacked Choi, who was now clad only in his dirty shirt, underwear and shoes.

    He had to do something. He needed new pants. But where? The school store! They sold clothes there! But it was so far away, all the way on the other side of fucking campus! No choice, free period almost over. Must. Go. Now!!!

     He ran as hard as he could, bursting through the doors, exposing himself to all. As he made his mad dash to the store, he could see all the puzzled, amused and hysterical looks from every student he passed. The worst were the cute girls who covered their mouths and giggled as they looked at their friends. And as if things couldn’t get any worse, he rounded a corner and nearly collided with Kee Yoon, who shrieked in horror at the frantic, half naked buffoon. Choi felt like he could just cry and wet himself.

    He sprinted to the parking lot, where he couldn’t see anyone, allowing his nerves to calm a little. His embarrassment slowly turned to anger. He hadn’t even gotten his new pants yet and already he was plotting his revenge. A revenge like no other. No, he didn’t want to prank Linton back or stoop to that idiot’s level of intelligence. He had to do more than that. He wanted to *ruin* him. Somehow. He had to think of a way. That shouldn’t be too hard; he was the greatest.



     The floor creaked as Jill rolled on her back. Dressed in her sweatshirt and pants, she was toyed with her hair bangs with one hand while pressing her phone to her ear with the other.

    “Omigod yeah, he was totally checking you out,” she said to Rhonda, who was on the other line, “Like he didn’t even, like, know how to be discrete about it.”

    “Ew! That guy?!” said Rhonda, “Chris is like, so gross, like he’s got these dopey little eyes and he smells sooo bad.”

    “Hey, that’s not nice!” Jill replied jokingly, “He’s like, into violent Japanese tentacle rape porn and mutters to himself all the time, and you’re like turned off by him because he smells bad.”

    “Omigod stop it, this is-no, just, no,” a mortified Rhonda replied, making Jill roll around on the floor in a giggling fit.

    “Omigod I am like literally roffling right now,” Jill said.

    “You’re roffling?”

    “Yeah! You know, rolling on the floor…”

    “Oh, OH! Roffling, got it haha! Dude, you’re on the floor? What are you doing on the floor?”

    “Oh, yeah. I mean like usually like when we’re chatting I’m on my bed, right?”

    “Yeah?”

    “So like I’ve been putting on all this weight from working out that, seriously, my bed’s creaks now when I do that, so like I’m worried I’ll break it or something. So now I’m on the floor!”

    “Are you serious? Dude you used to be like a hundred and ten pounds or something. How much do you weigh now?”

    “I don’t know, I haven’t weighed myself recently.”

    “You totally should. Speaking of which,” Rhonda said, her voice becoming less excitable, “You haven’t touched the…uh…?”

    “Okay girl, relax, I haven’t touched it, I mean like it’s not like I need to at this rate.”

    “Yeah, I guess. I mean you’re like fucking huge now, all the guys are like terrified of you.”

    Jill chuckled, “They should be terrified! For I shall break them, aar!” she said, adopting a growling voice.

    “Haha! Okay She-Hulk, well I gotta get started on this fucking take home test.”

    “Pfft, She Hulk…! Okay, girl. Love ya!”

    “Bye!”

    Jill set her phone on her bed and rose to her feet, arching her back and moaning. She and Rhonda often chatted for hours, and it seemed like her best friend was returning to her normal self after seeming usually distracted for several weeks.

    She walked over to her computer and woke it up from its screensaver. Dozens of open internet windows flashed into view; Jill had been doing a lot of research on herself over the past few days. Even with access to the school gym, working out was still a tricky proposition with regards to timing, and so she had to find other ways to bulk up. She looked up God knows how many protein shakes and supplements, various dieting techniques and all other manner of fat-reducing regiments. Bodybuilding and fitness literature were her new reading materials of choice, alongside Seventeen and The Hunger games.

    It was getting late and she realized her eyes didn’t have the energy to stare at a bright computer monitor, so she powered the machine off. She smiled to herself and got up from her chair facing her mirror. She then proceeded to take off her sweatshirt and pull down her sweatpants, doing it slowly, as if she was performing a striptease for herself.

    She grunted in satisfaction as, now clad in only her underwear, she admired her finely chiseled body that had responded astonishingly well to her carefully researched dieting and supplement regiments. She was both bulky and super-ripped, her muscles having grown larger, her shoulders even broader than before, and every part of her bulging through her skin like it had been cut from granite. She must have put on at least another fifteen pounds of muscle and reduced her body fat to single digits just from eating and supplementing strategically. It was inhuman, and Jill’s heart pounded faster at the very thought of what would happen if she regained her gym membership.

    Then she thought about Alex, that fucking bitch. Jill had tried everything to dig up more about her, to no avail. She wasn’t on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram. She had virtually no online presence, which was hard to believe. Maybe Alex wasn’t even her real name. Admiring her magnificent physique, Jill felt that, in some part, this was for Alex. Alex was just so perfect, so flawless. Nothing seemed to faze her; so Jill had to become a goddess, a goddess of Portsdown High to present an adequate challenge. She wanted see pause, a moment of awe from that whore. Anything.

    A knock on the door and the sound of her bedroom door opening snapped Jill out of her trance.

    “Jill, sweetie-“

    “Aah! Dad!” Jill screamed as she snatched her sweatshirt from the floor and tried to flimsily cover her massive body.

    “Waah!” Dad shouted as he withdrew, “Jill! Close your blinds for God’s sake, people can see!” He couldn’t decide which was giving him a minor heart attack: the fact that he walked in on his teenage daughter while she was in her underwear, or the fact that she was looking like the Incredible Hulk.

    “Oh shit…” said Jill, realizing that, in the darkness of the night, her bedroom was perfectly visible to anyone on the street outside. Hopefully there were no peeping toms around when she was admiring herself. She quickly shut the blinds and put on her clothes.

    “Can I come in now?” Dad asked.

    “Yeah Dad. God, you know usually people ask if they can come in after knocking, which is like, the whole point?”

      “I’m sorry sweetie, it’s been a long day,” Dad said as he walked in. He realized that in her baggy sweats, which were what she wore most of the time in the past few months, it was almost impossible to tell Jill’s changing physique. In the split second that he saw his daughter fully in the flesh, Dad finally realized where Mom’s hysterical behavior was coming from. His heart was filled with a crushing sensation as everything she had been screaming at him about finally started making sense.

            Thoughts ran in his head at a thousand per second. The kids at the school…bullying wasn’t the same anymore with social media in their lives. His daughter would be shamed and made fun of all over the internet. She would be called a freak, a monstrosity across the entire campus. He would be getting phone calls from everyone from the superintendent to the school psychologist to Aunt Jessie in Montana to every fucking person in his fucking life asking what kind of a shitty parent he was for allowing his daughter to overdose on steroids in ways even the former Governor of California would find excessive.

            He took a second to collect himself and gestured for Jill to have a seat. He sat across her on her bed and smiled weakly at her. At least, he thought, she still looked beautiful as ever from the neck up (although even her neck was muscular) and still had her sweet, angelic, girlish voice.

            “So uh, how’s school been sweetie?”

            “Fine, just same old stuff you know,” Jill said. Actually, things weren’t that fine. Her obsession with her body had taken its toll on her grades, especially in Chemistry, in which she straight up flunked the last test.

            There was an awkward silence between the two as Dad tried to feign interest in Jill’s decidedly disinterested response. He had initially planned to engage his daughter in a little more small talk, but he couldn’t concentrate on that with the avalanche of concerns overwhelming his brain.

            “Sweetie, I’m just-I wanted to talk because your mother and I are concerned-“

            Jill rolled her eyes and sighed.

            “Come on, don’t be like that. Just listen to me. We’re concerned because what…what’s happening to you isn’t normal-“

            “But Dad-“

            “No just-hang on. It isn’t normal. It really isn’t. I know what you’ve said to your mother, but the fact is that even *men* who are…gifted the way you say you are can’t gain…size…like you have.”

            “Dad, I’m not on steroids. And I feel great! I’ve never felt better in my life!”

            “I know, I believe you. I do. Really. And I’m not giving you some kind of ultimatum or…threatening you or anything like that. I just want you to do something for me, okay?”

            Jill didn’t answer back and instead tried to anticipate his answer.

            “I reached out to a doctor who works at UCLA. He said he’s familiar with girls with your…condition, so I just want him to take a look at you and tell us what’s going on with you.”

            “Girls with my condition?” Jill said quizzically.

            “That’s what he said, I don’t know. It’s going to be a long day full of tests, so I’m told, but I’ll go with you. Your appointment’s next month on the second. Okay sweetie? We just want to know what’s going on with you, that’s all.”

            Jill sighed and stared at the floor. “Fine,” she said simply.

            “Good. Good,” Dad said, leaning forward and rubbing Jill’s shoulder. He was alarmed by how solid it was to the touch, even under her sweatshirt, and could feel the individual striations through the fabric, “Until then you have to promise me one more thing…don’t do any exercising-“

            “But Dad…!” Jill pleaded.

            “Come on sweetie, please understand where I’m coming from. Just wait until your appointment, okay? That’s all I ask. You have to promise me. Mom and I, we provide for you, we buy you all your things, your car, your phone, so I’m just asking you this one thing in return. Don’t do anything to…to get bigger. Can you do that for me?”

            Still staring at the floor, Jill nodded slightly.

            “Can you look at me and say it?” Dad said as if he were speaking to a small child.

            Very reluctantly, she raised her gaze to meet her father’s weathered eyes. “I promise,” she cooed.

            “Okay. That’s all I ask,” Dad said, standing up, “In the meantime just keep things up with your schoolwork and don’t attract too much attention to yourself.”

            ‘Don’t attract too much attention?’ Jill thought as Dad shut the door behind him. He might as well have asked Mom not to scream all the time.

            The following day at Portsdown High was not easy for Jill. Dressed in a puffy sweater and slacks, she looked down at the take-home test that Mrs. B dropped on the class. It looked like it would put a serious dent in her grades, and Jill couldn’t afford anything below a C if she wanted any hope of getting into the colleges she was applying to. There were a bunch of questions that required paragraph responses, and Mrs. B had a sixth sense for detecting students who collaborated on take home tests.

    She looked around the other kids spilling out of class alongside her, and was somewhat relieved that the disgusted stares had at least subsided, although she could spy a few of the girls whispering to their friends while stealing glances at her.

            “Psst!” somewhere whispered. Jill looked up to see Tara walking towards her. They both exchanged smiles and waves.

            “Hey girl! You going to the cafeteria?” Tara said.

            “Uh huh!” Jill replied.

            “Let’s walk together! The other guys are already there.”

            The two of them proceeded down the corridor, Tara scanned Jill’s sweater.

            “Where’d you get the sweater?” Tara asked.

            “Oh, hah, it’s actually my Dad’s.”

            “Your DAD’S? Jesus why are you wearing your Dad’s stuff?”

            “Omigod, cause like I need to buy new clothes, they’re all getting so tight.”

            Tara playfully jabbed Jill in the abdomen, “That’s right, cause you’re like Miss Muscles now huh? Are you still working out?”

            “Oh, nah, not recently, I’m kinda taking it easy,” Jill said, slightly uncomfortable.

            “Bicep flex, you gotta show me how big your biceps are! You keep wearing sleeves and I haven’t seen how big you’ve gotten in a while!”

            Jill smiled and chuckled at Tara, “Hey chill out, chill out! I’ll show you sometime when there’s not so many people,”

            “Oookay…”

            “How’s Linton by the way?”

            “Oh he’s fine, he’s fine. Seems kinda preoccupied though, to be honest.”

            “Really? What’s going on with him?” Jill asked, although she had a feeling she knew the answer to that.

            “You know, I don’t really know. He’s always with Adrian and the other guys, I mean like I heard they hazed that Asian kid, Kim or something. I dunno. It’s just that he hasn’t done that in a while.”

            “Lint hazed someone? Are you serious?”

            “Yeah! Omigod after all those years I spent getting him to stop doing that! I don’t know what to think…”

            “I wouldn’t worry about it. He can get a little crazy when he’s with his guys, especially when it gets close to a game. Turns into a big, psycho baby.”

            “Yeeah, I guess. My poor cwazy psycho baby Winty…” Tara playfully said. The two of them giggled.

            At that point Jill saw Choi schlepping down the hallway towards them, and the proverbial lightbulb went off in her head.

            “Ooh, Tara, can you go on without me? I’ll meet you there, but I gotta ask him something first,” Jill said, gesturing towards Choi.

            “Oh, that’s Kim! That’s the guy that Linton pranked!”

            “Kim?! His name’s CHOI you ignorant slut!” Jill said, jokingly slapping Tara on the shoulder.

            “Ouch!” Tara winced as she walked off, “Jesus Jill, you gotta watch your strength these days!”

            “Oop…! Sorry!”

            With Tara now gone, Jill hurried over to Choi, who was looking appropriately moody.

            “Hey, hey! Choi!” Jill said, smiling cheerfully at the sullen boy. Choi looked genuinely surprised that a member of one of PDH’s elite cliques was even speaking to him, “Heeeey, how’s it going?” She said playfully, leaning on the wall and cocking her head to the side, as if she were flirting with him.

            A part of Choi wanted to tell her to fuck off, and yet a large part of him was on its knees at the sight and sound of THE Jill Rhodes looking at and talking to him like that. He had known her somewhat since freshman year; they were buddies during orientation, and they shared a few classes together and exchanged a joke or two, but as everyone started settling into their circles, and Choi became the loner he was now, she barely spoke to him. It didn’t help that she was besties with that cro-magnon Linton either.

     “Yeah?” he said suspiciously.

            “Soooo like, I kinda need a favor from you…if that’s okay.”

            “Uh huh? What would that be?” Choi replied awkwardly.

            “Okay so I’m in Integrated Chem with Burnett, and she dropped this really hard take home test on us, and I know I’m gonna fail it, and like I can’t afford to because I’m trying to get into USC , so like I was wondering if you coooouuuuld…”

            “Do the test for you,” Choi said, thoroughly unimpressed.

            “Yeeeaaaahhh. Could you? Pleease? I’ll owe you big time. I mean *really* big time.”

            She can kiss my ass, thought Choi. You barely even look at me and now all of a sudden you’re begging me to expend my genius on your pitiful take-home test? Go and die! But wait…wait a second. The gears in Choi’s head started turning. He pondered his options as Jill looked pleadingly at him with a face that would melt just about any other man. A big favor from Jill might help him in his plot of revenge. He didn’t know how exactly just yet, but something deep in his brain told him to take her up on the offer. And Integrated Chem? Kid’s stuff! He’d be able to blitz through that test in no time.

            “Hm. Okay, give it.”

            “Awesome!! You are so awesome Choi, thank you soooo much. Seriously, like you just saved my like academic career,” Jill bubbled, handing him the test.

            “Yeah well, now you owe me a big favor, as you said,” replied Choi as he slipped the test into his folder.

            “Yeah totally. I mean it. Anything! You just have to ask.”

            “Okay I will!”

            “Cool beans! So a lot of it’s written, so you could just type the answers on a piece of paper and I’ll just copy them onto the actual test. And if like if you could get it back to me by next week that would be awesome. I’m like always in the cafeteria during break, so you can find me there.”

            “Alright.”

            “Thank you soooo much!”

            They went their separate ways, both of them satisfied with their transaction. As she walked away, Jill dropped her overexcited tween demeanor and proceeded to the cafeteria, a huge weight having been lifted off her broad shoulders.

Description

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“Dui. Ke yi. Hao…mm…hen hao, xie xie. Okay, jai jian,” Dad said, hanging up the phone and letting out a sigh. He shuffled through the pile of papers at his desk and put on his reading glasses, scrutinizing legal document after legal document. He had only been back in the States for all of seven hours after a grueling flight across the Pacific Ocean which was plagued by an endlessly shrieking baby in economy, and already he was on the line with Shanghai. This deal with Tian Jing had to work out; he had spent far too much time getting a sit-down with their executives and ironing out the details for this to fall through.

            Mom’s footsteps became audible from the corridor outside. She had such a way of walking with such authority and haste that Dad could tell it that was her the instant the first footstep rang out.

            She knocked on the door and marched in. “Sorry I just needed something from the shelf,” she said without even turning to face her husband. Mom walked over to the nearby bookcase and started rifling through the many folders and binders stacked on one of the shelves. Dad raised his gaze over his reading glasses, watching his wife’s hurried, desperate body language, before returning his attention to scrutinizing the legal language on his Tian Jing paperwork.

            “Uhhrr! Can’t find it!” Mom muttered under her breath.

            “Everything alright, honey?” Dad said casually without taking his eyes off his paperwork.

            Mom turned to Dad, giving him an indignant, appalled look. “The health binder. The one with all the records. It’s supposed to be here and, and it isn’t.”

    “I’m sure it’ll turn up. You should rest.”

    “I’m sorry, am I bothering your quiet time?”

    “This is a big deal, honey. Tomorrow I gotta be on the line with Tian Jing and I’ll need all the time I can-“

    “Ohhh of course, my mistake! Well let me just screw the hell off, then!”

    Now she got his attention. Dad put down his papers and his reading glasses and pinched the bridge of his nose, “Honey, I just got off one seriously stressful flight, so maybe yes, quiet time I could use. Now would you just please calm down and tell me what’s bugging you?”

    Dad’s placid, zen-like tone did little to alleviate Mom’s. “What’s bugging me? What’s *bugging* me? Oh, I don’t know,” she said, advancing towards him in a somewhat threatening manner, “I think, you know, it maybe could be *possibly* the fact that our *daughter*, our 18 year old daughter, is taking STEROIDS and becoming an overgrown…ju…gnn..muscle freak!”

    “Okay-“

    “And maybe, just maybe, if you stopped for one second-“

    “Honey-“

    “And for once looked at our little girl and what’s she’s turning herself into,”

    “Look-“

    “Maybe you’d get what was bugging me! I mean, did you even reach out to your people like I asked you to?!”

    “Honey. Please. Just calm down. Please. I mean, maybe she *does* have, you know, good genetics as she says!”

    Mom looked at Dad as if he had just regressed into a baby.

    “Do not even start with that. You haven’t seen the way she’s been changing because you’re all the way in Shanghai all the time. If you actually took a minute, a minute! To pay attention to your daughter-“

    “Okay honey, that’s-that’s not fair and you know it.” Dad shot back, thrusting his finger at her, ”I work my *ass* off so that our daughter can go to college. Who do you think kept us afloat when that financial shitstorm hit six years ago? You don’t think I want to spend more time with our daughter? I’d retire right this very *second* if we could afford to!”

    Mom knew that he was full of shit like always, but was tired of being the one to escalate the situation and didn’t talk back. She just walked over to the chair in front of his desk and slumped down, rubbing her forehead.

    Dad’s expression softened and he leaned forward. “Look, I found someone. I was going to tell you, but you know, work…”

    “You found someone?” Mom said, her mood changing almost instantly.

    “I called a few of my people in Beijing and they pointed me to a doctor out here in LA. Edward Graham. I spoke to him, he’s a researcher at UCLA, he said he might know why Jill is…yeah.”

    “And?”

    “So I set up an appointment so he could take a look at her, earliest he could do was next month, on the second.”

    “God. Can’t he do it sooner?”

    “I know. But he’s attending a conference in…I don’t know where. It’s the best I could do. But he sounded confident about Jill. He’s gonna take a look at her, run some tests, and we’ll…we’ll know everything then.”

    There was a silence between the two, Dad staring at Mom as she leaned back in her chair, staring at the floor. She quickly rose and made her way out of the room, “Talk to her when she gets home from school. She can barely look at me these days,” she said somberly as she exited.



    Choi walked the sparse corridors of Portsdown High, head firmly aimed at the floor, an expression of defiance at the world etched on his face. It was his free period and he was heading to the library to catch up on his reading before next class. The dread of finals was slowly creeping into everyone’s minds, except for Choi’s. He was way ahead of the game. UC Berkley called the other day to say that they were extremely impressed with his test scores and application, and were excited to have him working in their biomedical science program. His internship at UCLA was starting soon too. So why the hell was he still stuck at this shit school? That was a question Choi, for all his genius, couldn’t fathom. Yes, he was a genius. He totally outclassed everyone in AP chem and bio, which is probably why nobody liked him. Still, who gives a damn? He was the greate-

    “’Scuse me, could you tell me how to get to Chinatown?” a voice asked behind him. Choi had barely a second to turn around when he felt two hands clamp onto his torso with a vice-like grip and hoist him in the air. He felt his glasses slip off his head and his backpack dangle awkwardly over his shoulders as a cacophony of laughter erupted around him. He craned his head around to see what was going on and was greeted by none other than Linton’s grinning face. Behind him were his fellow apes from the football team, standing around and guffawing.

    “Not so sneaky now, you little shit huh?!” the blonde dickhead taunted him.

    “F-f-fuck you!” Choi screamed as he tried to writhe his way out of Linton’s grip. It was no use. He saw one of the jocks advance towards him. As the laughter and whooping continued, he felt a second pair of hands unbuckle his belt and tear his pants off of him. God no. Dear God no. He felt cold air suddenly wash over his now bare legs as the second assailant ran off with his pants. He didn’t even have time to cry for help before Linton dunked him in a trash can ass-first.

    Choi groaned in the filthy hole, his body crushing and crinkling discarded cans and plastic water bottles with his every movement. The sounds of laughter and hurried footsteps grew softer as his attackers fled down the hallway. Choi tried to wriggle his way out, but it was no use. He reached up and gripped the lip of the container, and yelped as the whole trash can tipped over.

    It smashed onto the floor, causing Choi to spill out, accompanied by an avalanche of filth that covered him from head to toe. He heard a crunch as he rolled onto the floor. Those were probably his glasses that he just landed on. In a daze, he slowly rose to his feet and picked up the remains of his glasses as well as his backpack. Already there were several students who had peeked their heads out of their classrooms to see what was going on. Snickers, muffled laughter and pointed fingers attacked Choi, who was now clad only in his dirty shirt, underwear and shoes.

    He had to do something. He needed new pants. But where? The school store! They sold clothes there! But it was so far away, all the way on the other side of fucking campus! No choice, free period almost over. Must. Go. Now!!!

     He ran as hard as he could, bursting through the doors, exposing himself to all. As he made his mad dash to the store, he could see all the puzzled, amused and hysterical looks from every student he passed. The worst were the cute girls who covered their mouths and giggled as they looked at their friends. And as if things couldn’t get any worse, he rounded a corner and nearly collided with Kee Yoon, who shrieked in horror at the frantic, half naked buffoon. Choi felt like he could just cry and wet himself.

    He sprinted to the parking lot, where he couldn’t see anyone, allowing his nerves to calm a little. His embarrassment slowly turned to anger. He hadn’t even gotten his new pants yet and already he was plotting his revenge. A revenge like no other. No, he didn’t want to prank Linton back or stoop to that idiot’s level of intelligence. He had to do more than that. He wanted to *ruin* him. Somehow. He had to think of a way. That shouldn’t be too hard; he was the greatest.



     The floor creaked as Jill rolled on her back. Dressed in her sweatshirt and pants, she was toyed with her hair bangs with one hand while pressing her phone to her ear with the other.

    “Omigod yeah, he was totally checking you out,” she said to Rhonda, who was on the other line, “Like he didn’t even, like, know how to be discrete about it.”

    “Ew! That guy?!” said Rhonda, “Chris is like, so gross, like he’s got these dopey little eyes and he smells sooo bad.”

    “Hey, that’s not nice!” Jill replied jokingly, “He’s like, into violent Japanese tentacle rape porn and mutters to himself all the time, and you’re like turned off by him because he smells bad.”

    “Omigod stop it, this is-no, just, no,” a mortified Rhonda replied, making Jill roll around on the floor in a giggling fit.

    “Omigod I am like literally roffling right now,” Jill said.

    “You’re roffling?”

    “Yeah! You know, rolling on the floor…”

    “Oh, OH! Roffling, got it haha! Dude, you’re on the floor? What are you doing on the floor?”

    “Oh, yeah. I mean like usually like when we’re chatting I’m on my bed, right?”

    “Yeah?”

    “So like I’ve been putting on all this weight from working out that, seriously, my bed’s creaks now when I do that, so like I’m worried I’ll break it or something. So now I’m on the floor!”

    “Are you serious? Dude you used to be like a hundred and ten pounds or something. How much do you weigh now?”

    “I don’t know, I haven’t weighed myself recently.”

    “You totally should. Speaking of which,” Rhonda said, her voice becoming less excitable, “You haven’t touched the…uh…?”

    “Okay girl, relax, I haven’t touched it, I mean like it’s not like I need to at this rate.”

    “Yeah, I guess. I mean you’re like fucking huge now, all the guys are like terrified of you.”

    Jill chuckled, “They should be terrified! For I shall break them, aar!” she said, adopting a growling voice.

    “Haha! Okay She-Hulk, well I gotta get started on this fucking take home test.”

    “Pfft, She Hulk…! Okay, girl. Love ya!”

    “Bye!”

    Jill set her phone on her bed and rose to her feet, arching her back and moaning. She and Rhonda often chatted for hours, and it seemed like her best friend was returning to her normal self after seeming usually distracted for several weeks.

    She walked over to her computer and woke it up from its screensaver. Dozens of open internet windows flashed into view; Jill had been doing a lot of research on herself over the past few days. Even with access to the school gym, working out was still a tricky proposition with regards to timing, and so she had to find other ways to bulk up. She looked up God knows how many protein shakes and supplements, various dieting techniques and all other manner of fat-reducing regiments. Bodybuilding and fitness literature were her new reading materials of choice, alongside Seventeen and The Hunger games.

    It was getting late and she realized her eyes didn’t have the energy to stare at a bright computer monitor, so she powered the machine off. She smiled to herself and got up from her chair facing her mirror. She then proceeded to take off her sweatshirt and pull down her sweatpants, doing it slowly, as if she was performing a striptease for herself.

    She grunted in satisfaction as, now clad in only her underwear, she admired her finely chiseled body that had responded astonishingly well to her carefully researched dieting and supplement regiments. She was both bulky and super-ripped, her muscles having grown larger, her shoulders even broader than before, and every part of her bulging through her skin like it had been cut from granite. She must have put on at least another fifteen pounds of muscle and reduced her body fat to single digits just from eating and supplementing strategically. It was inhuman, and Jill’s heart pounded faster at the very thought of what would happen if she regained her gym membership.

    Then she thought about Alex, that fucking bitch. Jill had tried everything to dig up more about her, to no avail. She wasn’t on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram. She had virtually no online presence, which was hard to believe. Maybe Alex wasn’t even her real name. Admiring her magnificent physique, Jill felt that, in some part, this was for Alex. Alex was just so perfect, so flawless. Nothing seemed to faze her; so Jill had to become a goddess, a goddess of Portsdown High to present an adequate challenge. She wanted see pause, a moment of awe from that whore. Anything.

    A knock on the door and the sound of her bedroom door opening snapped Jill out of her trance.

    “Jill, sweetie-“

    “Aah! Dad!” Jill screamed as she snatched her sweatshirt from the floor and tried to flimsily cover her massive body.

    “Waah!” Dad shouted as he withdrew, “Jill! Close your blinds for God’s sake, people can see!” He couldn’t decide which was giving him a minor heart attack: the fact that he walked in on his teenage daughter while she was in her underwear, or the fact that she was looking like the Incredible Hulk.

    “Oh shit…” said Jill, realizing that, in the darkness of the night, her bedroom was perfectly visible to anyone on the street outside. Hopefully there were no peeping toms around when she was admiring herself. She quickly shut the blinds and put on her clothes.

    “Can I come in now?” Dad asked.

    “Yeah Dad. God, you know usually people ask if they can come in after knocking, which is like, the whole point?”

      “I’m sorry sweetie, it’s been a long day,” Dad said as he walked in. He realized that in her baggy sweats, which were what she wore most of the time in the past few months, it was almost impossible to tell Jill’s changing physique. In the split second that he saw his daughter fully in the flesh, Dad finally realized where Mom’s hysterical behavior was coming from. His heart was filled with a crushing sensation as everything she had been screaming at him about finally started making sense.

            Thoughts ran in his head at a thousand per second. The kids at the school…bullying wasn’t the same anymore with social media in their lives. His daughter would be shamed and made fun of all over the internet. She would be called a freak, a monstrosity across the entire campus. He would be getting phone calls from everyone from the superintendent to the school psychologist to Aunt Jessie in Montana to every fucking person in his fucking life asking what kind of a shitty parent he was for allowing his daughter to overdose on steroids in ways even the former Governor of California would find excessive.

            He took a second to collect himself and gestured for Jill to have a seat. He sat across her on her bed and smiled weakly at her. At least, he thought, she still looked beautiful as ever from the neck up (although even her neck was muscular) and still had her sweet, angelic, girlish voice.

            “So uh, how’s school been sweetie?”

            “Fine, just same old stuff you know,” Jill said. Actually, things weren’t that fine. Her obsession with her body had taken its toll on her grades, especially in Chemistry, in which she straight up flunked the last test.

            There was an awkward silence between the two as Dad tried to feign interest in Jill’s decidedly disinterested response. He had initially planned to engage his daughter in a little more small talk, but he couldn’t concentrate on that with the avalanche of concerns overwhelming his brain.

            “Sweetie, I’m just-I wanted to talk because your mother and I are concerned-“

            Jill rolled her eyes and sighed.

            “Come on, don’t be like that. Just listen to me. We’re concerned because what…what’s happening to you isn’t normal-“

            “But Dad-“

            “No just-hang on. It isn’t normal. It really isn’t. I know what you’ve said to your mother, but the fact is that even *men* who are…gifted the way you say you are can’t gain…size…like you have.”

            “Dad, I’m not on steroids. And I feel great! I’ve never felt better in my life!”

            “I know, I believe you. I do. Really. And I’m not giving you some kind of ultimatum or…threatening you or anything like that. I just want you to do something for me, okay?”

            Jill didn’t answer back and instead tried to anticipate his answer.

            “I reached out to a doctor who works at UCLA. He said he’s familiar with girls with your…condition, so I just want him to take a look at you and tell us what’s going on with you.”

            “Girls with my condition?” Jill said quizzically.

            “That’s what he said, I don’t know. It’s going to be a long day full of tests, so I’m told, but I’ll go with you. Your appointment’s next month on the second. Okay sweetie? We just want to know what’s going on with you, that’s all.”

            Jill sighed and stared at the floor. “Fine,” she said simply.

            “Good. Good,” Dad said, leaning forward and rubbing Jill’s shoulder. He was alarmed by how solid it was to the touch, even under her sweatshirt, and could feel the individual striations through the fabric, “Until then you have to promise me one more thing…don’t do any exercising-“

            “But Dad…!” Jill pleaded.

            “Come on sweetie, please understand where I’m coming from. Just wait until your appointment, okay? That’s all I ask. You have to promise me. Mom and I, we provide for you, we buy you all your things, your car, your phone, so I’m just asking you this one thing in return. Don’t do anything to…to get bigger. Can you do that for me?”

            Still staring at the floor, Jill nodded slightly.

            “Can you look at me and say it?” Dad said as if he were speaking to a small child.

            Very reluctantly, she raised her gaze to meet her father’s weathered eyes. “I promise,” she cooed.

            “Okay. That’s all I ask,” Dad said, standing up, “In the meantime just keep things up with your schoolwork and don’t attract too much attention to yourself.”

            ‘Don’t attract too much attention?’ Jill thought as Dad shut the door behind him. He might as well have asked Mom not to scream all the time.

            The following day at Portsdown High was not easy for Jill. Dressed in a puffy sweater and slacks, she looked down at the take-home test that Mrs. B dropped on the class. It looked like it would put a serious dent in her grades, and Jill couldn’t afford anything below a C if she wanted any hope of getting into the colleges she was applying to. There were a bunch of questions that required paragraph responses, and Mrs. B had a sixth sense for detecting students who collaborated on take home tests.

    She looked around the other kids spilling out of class alongside her, and was somewhat relieved that the disgusted stares had at least subsided, although she could spy a few of the girls whispering to their friends while stealing glances at her.

            “Psst!” somewhere whispered. Jill looked up to see Tara walking towards her. They both exchanged smiles and waves.

            “Hey girl! You going to the cafeteria?” Tara said.

            “Uh huh!” Jill replied.

            “Let’s walk together! The other guys are already there.”

            The two of them proceeded down the corridor, Tara scanned Jill’s sweater.

            “Where’d you get the sweater?” Tara asked.

            “Oh, hah, it’s actually my Dad’s.”

            “Your DAD’S? Jesus why are you wearing your Dad’s stuff?”

            “Omigod, cause like I need to buy new clothes, they’re all getting so tight.”

            Tara playfully jabbed Jill in the abdomen, “That’s right, cause you’re like Miss Muscles now huh? Are you still working out?”

            “Oh, nah, not recently, I’m kinda taking it easy,” Jill said, slightly uncomfortable.

            “Bicep flex, you gotta show me how big your biceps are! You keep wearing sleeves and I haven’t seen how big you’ve gotten in a while!”

            Jill smiled and chuckled at Tara, “Hey chill out, chill out! I’ll show you sometime when there’s not so many people,”

            “Oookay…”

            “How’s Linton by the way?”

            “Oh he’s fine, he’s fine. Seems kinda preoccupied though, to be honest.”

            “Really? What’s going on with him?” Jill asked, although she had a feeling she knew the answer to that.

            “You know, I don’t really know. He’s always with Adrian and the other guys, I mean like I heard they hazed that Asian kid, Kim or something. I dunno. It’s just that he hasn’t done that in a while.”

            “Lint hazed someone? Are you serious?”

            “Yeah! Omigod after all those years I spent getting him to stop doing that! I don’t know what to think…”

            “I wouldn’t worry about it. He can get a little crazy when he’s with his guys, especially when it gets close to a game. Turns into a big, psycho baby.”

            “Yeeah, I guess. My poor cwazy psycho baby Winty…” Tara playfully said. The two of them giggled.

            At that point Jill saw Choi schlepping down the hallway towards them, and the proverbial lightbulb went off in her head.

            “Ooh, Tara, can you go on without me? I’ll meet you there, but I gotta ask him something first,” Jill said, gesturing towards Choi.

            “Oh, that’s Kim! That’s the guy that Linton pranked!”

            “Kim?! His name’s CHOI you ignorant slut!” Jill said, jokingly slapping Tara on the shoulder.

            “Ouch!” Tara winced as she walked off, “Jesus Jill, you gotta watch your strength these days!”

            “Oop…! Sorry!”

            With Tara now gone, Jill hurried over to Choi, who was looking appropriately moody.

            “Hey, hey! Choi!” Jill said, smiling cheerfully at the sullen boy. Choi looked genuinely surprised that a member of one of PDH’s elite cliques was even speaking to him, “Heeeey, how’s it going?” She said playfully, leaning on the wall and cocking her head to the side, as if she were flirting with him.

            A part of Choi wanted to tell her to fuck off, and yet a large part of him was on its knees at the sight and sound of THE Jill Rhodes looking at and talking to him like that. He had known her somewhat since freshman year; they were buddies during orientation, and they shared a few classes together and exchanged a joke or two, but as everyone started settling into their circles, and Choi became the loner he was now, she barely spoke to him. It didn’t help that she was besties with that cro-magnon Linton either.

     “Yeah?” he said suspiciously.

            “Soooo like, I kinda need a favor from you…if that’s okay.”

            “Uh huh? What would that be?” Choi replied awkwardly.

            “Okay so I’m in Integrated Chem with Burnett, and she dropped this really hard take home test on us, and I know I’m gonna fail it, and like I can’t afford to because I’m trying to get into USC , so like I was wondering if you coooouuuuld…”

            “Do the test for you,” Choi said, thoroughly unimpressed.

            “Yeeeaaaahhh. Could you? Pleease? I’ll owe you big time. I mean *really* big time.”

            She can kiss my ass, thought Choi. You barely even look at me and now all of a sudden you’re begging me to expend my genius on your pitiful take-home test? Go and die! But wait…wait a second. The gears in Choi’s head started turning. He pondered his options as Jill looked pleadingly at him with a face that would melt just about any other man. A big favor from Jill might help him in his plot of revenge. He didn’t know how exactly just yet, but something deep in his brain told him to take her up on the offer. And Integrated Chem? Kid’s stuff! He’d be able to blitz through that test in no time.

            “Hm. Okay, give it.”

            “Awesome!! You are so awesome Choi, thank you soooo much. Seriously, like you just saved my like academic career,” Jill bubbled, handing him the test.

            “Yeah well, now you owe me a big favor, as you said,” replied Choi as he slipped the test into his folder.

            “Yeah totally. I mean it. Anything! You just have to ask.”

            “Okay I will!”

            “Cool beans! So a lot of it’s written, so you could just type the answers on a piece of paper and I’ll just copy them onto the actual test. And if like if you could get it back to me by next week that would be awesome. I’m like always in the cafeteria during break, so you can find me there.”

            “Alright.”

            “Thank you soooo much!”

            They went their separate ways, both of them satisfied with their transaction. As she walked away, Jill dropped her overexcited tween demeanor and proceeded to the cafeteria, a huge weight having been lifted off her broad shoulders.