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Bookworm - Story
🕑 Added 2023-01-13 11:10:09 +0000 UTC“Nerd” they called her. “Geek.” “Teacher’s Pet” even.
Carlie, 15 years old, had plenty of nicknames attributed to her from the kids in school, and for good reason. Not that the reason was negative, mind you, but kids will be kids and nerds are at or near the bottom of the totem pole.
Carlie had a dream to be a doctor, a surgeon, and she knew that she would need good grades and a lot of knowledge to get there, even at a young age. As early as six years old, when other kids were forgetting textbooks at school she would take each and every one home and read and work on them until it was bedtime. As it happened her studious nature put her knowledge and work ahead of her grade and by seven the school district had allowed her to skip a full three years of school in order to give her the challenges that she desperately needed.
Now, not only was the work more difficult, but the textbooks were bigger and heavier. But that didn’t stop her from lugging everything she had home every single day, loading up her backpack to full and carrying the rest in her arms. And that didn’t include the times she would bring extra books home from the library.
Day in and day out she did this, even though her peers made fun of her - first for just being nerdy or a goodie two shoes (she always had all the correct answers for class), but when she skipped for also being younger than everyone.
Now in her senior year, nothing had changed, other than the older kids having left. Though as a senior she should be higher in the social order, her age plus her reputation kept dragging her down. So at fifteen she was still a bit of a pariah.
One day in particular, the day before winter break, she was stuffing her back full of books to study during the two weeks off, having brought in a whole separate bag duffel bag so that she wouldn’t be carrying books in her arms in the rain, when one of the more antagonistic seniors , the stereotypically named Billy, walked up and slammed her locker shut.
“There’s the nerd girl again, taking home the whole library for winter break!” - he sneered.
His two perpetual cronies behind him snickered.
“I’m surprised you haven’t finished reading every book in there, that’s all you do.”
She tried to ignore him and pushed her glasses up her freckled nose. Though she was very cute, no one took notice. The glasses sometimes were like a mask and she sometimes liked that she didn’t get the attention other girls did.
“All that reading and you don’t even know what ‘break’ means. Do you? Like taking a break from studying? Relaxing? Nah, you probably don’t. It’s too bad too, you’re kinda cute even if you have a flat chest.” - he jeered, jabbing a finger into her chest. It was firmer than he thought but it was obvious she didn’t have breasts so it was expected.
“I wonder what would happen if we took your precious books and took them away” - he wondered aloud.
“Yeah, what’re ya gonna do then?” - one of his cronies barked, very unable to form his own, independent thoughts.
Billy bent over and grabbed the straps of the closed duffel and tried to throw it from the ground down the hallway but to his surprise he was unable to simply scoop up the bag and launch it into the air. In fact, he wasn’t able to lift it at all until he grunted and strained and then lifted the back to his hip before dropping it back to the floor.
“Jesus, nerd, what do you have in here, weights?”
Carlie calmly reopened her locker and finished stuffing her backpack with the remainder of her textbooks, zipping it closed carefully so that the overstuffed bag wouldn’t cause the zipper to tear.
“No, just homework” she said, peering down her nose at him as she put the backpack on and easily scooped up the second bag like it was empty - “Something you haven’t done in years.”
She scurried down the hallway and out of the school quickly so that she could walk home the four miles in the rain. When she was in elementary school the walk had been short, only a mile, but as she got older the schools were farther away. But she had never minded the walks, and she walked quickly. While she walked she thought about the shocked faces she had left behind. Never had she considered how heavy her bags were or the books inside. To her any work she had to do to lug the books home was worth the effort to learn what she needed. Her bags had never seemed too heavy to her but she had gotten used to it as she got older.
She lugged her books indoors and up to her room and let them drop to the floor. But she was really curious now how much the bags weighed - she had never checked. She got the weight scale from her parentsbathroom and put it on her floor. She first tried putting the bag on the scale but both the duffel and the backpack were bigger than the scale and blocked the reader. Then she had an idea, stepping on the scale herself and weighing in at 142 pounds. That seemed pretty heavy for her age, but she shrugged.
Then she put her backpack on and stepped on the scale again. The old-school ready spun around until the scale ready 205 pounds - the back was over 60 pounds! That seemed like a lot too. She got off and switched to the large duffel and got back on the scale - now the number ready 220! So this back was almost 80 pounds with all the heavy books she had decided to take home.
“Wow!!” - she whispered - “I guess these are pretty heavy after all. But that would mean… that I’m stronger than Billy? And he’s four years older than me!”
Carlie never really looked at her body, at least not closely, but as she stripped out of her wet clothes to get into something dry and looked at herself with a critical eye. Her full length mirror showed a muscular, athletic looking young woman that had more brawn that you would have suspected if you looked at her. She had seen muscular people before but had never considered herself muscular. Until now, of course. It all seemed so obvious, especially when she awkwardly tried to flex an arm like she saw the boys do and a muscle the size and shape of a baseball popped out of her arm!
Carlie had plenty of knowledge about the things that she was trying to study, but she didn’t know anything about sports, or muscles, or what “strong” meant. In fact, her parents had gotten her a pass out of physical education because at her age she wouldn’t be able to keep up with even the girls in her class.
So for the first time in four years of high school she brought along a change of clothes for gym class and, instead of heading out to the library during the gym period, went to the locker room for the class. Some of the other girls gave her odd looks - it was January now, after break, and they had never seen her in the locker room over three and a half years. But the whispers faded to silence as she stripped off her sweat pants and pulled on shorts and a tank top, revealing her muscular, sinewy body, something they hadn’t seen on any girls in their time in school.
“Nice of you to join us” - Mr. Scales, the gym teacher, said as he took roll - “I was about to take your name off the roll permanently, seeing as how you’ve never been in class until today.”
“Sorry about that” - Carlie said quietly, but loud enough to hear. She was getting stares just for being their, not to mention her body, but was trying to do her best to cover up her arms and to make herself look smaller. Her only purpose there was to see if her hunch was true.
“Well, you’re in luck, today we’re doing presidential fitness testing” – he said and whole class groaned - “Yeah yeah, you all knew it was coming. Do it today and you won’t have to do it ever again, so stop complaining.”
He flipped over a page in his clipboard and said:
“Oookay I have you paired up with a buddy to count your reps since there’s too many here for me. It’s alphabetical by girl and boy, so here’s your pairs.”
Carlie was in the middle of the alphabet, because of her last name, and was paired up with a girl named Jax who she had only see a few times in her classes. She had frizzy hair and obnoxiously chewed bubble gum. Known as a bit of a jock she was in decent shape for her age. She rolled her eyes when she saw she was paired with the nerd.
“C’mon” - she said with no small amount of exasperation - “Let’s just get this over with.”
Mr. Scales had assigned them a rotation for both Jax and Carlie, they would start with sit ups, then move to push ups, then chin ups. They had two minutes to do as many reps as they could, and that was the test if you scored past a certain threshold you were given a certificate. Carlie had looked at the previous years testing, comparing the boys and girls. The girls requirements were much lower in fact, they were allowed to do push ups from their knees and a flexed arm hang instead of chin ups if they preferred. But even the weakest boys ended up doing more reps than all but the strongest of girls. She wondered where she would fit in.
They found a corner of the the gym to themselves to set up for sit ups. “Okay, I need you to anchor my feet, and we can set a phone timer for two minutes. All you have to do is count my reps” - Jax explained.
“Got it!” - Carlie said, and she set her phone timer for two minutes, and held down Jax’s feet and ankles with her hands - “Ready… go!”
With her hands crossed over her chest, Jax started to do sit ups, and Carlie counted each rep aloud. As sit ups go, they were rather slow, but all of them were perfect, with a straight back and using only her engaged core to lift her torso up. Around rep sixty she was about ninety seconds into the timer and starting to slow down, with heavier breathing. She finished the two minutes with seventy two sit ups.
Jax sat up and looked at Carlie while she caught her breath.
“Have you done any of this stuff before?”
Carlie shook her head. Jax rolled her eyes.
“Well if you do it right you want your stomach muscles to lift you straight up. It’s ok if you round you back, they don’t have to be perfect. Are you ready to try?”
“Sure” - Carlie said, laying down on her back while Jax took her place at her feet, phone ready.
“Ok. Three, two one, go!
Her first sit up ever was far from perfect, her back rounding as she rolled herself up. But after one or two reps she figured out how to brace her core until it was board straight. The first perfect rep her torso shot straight up, surprising Jax with the speed.
“Whoa!” - she thought to herself - “That was so fast.”
She had only wasted a few seconds on the bad sit ups but now that she had learned how to better control her body it was just like how she kept herself standing straight when carrying her heavy book bags the reps came fast. And to her they were easy after years of bracing her core against the weighted bags. She did nearly two reps every second, tirelessly until the time ran out. Jax had been too stunned to keep count - she had forgotten pretty early one and had given up. She blushed when she realized that she had dropped the ball.
“Sorry but I lost count” - she said sheepishly.
“That’s ok, I counted too. I did one hundred and seven.”
“Wow!” - Jax breathed - “I think that’s a school record.”
“Maybe, I’m not sure. I saw last years tests and I just beat all of those..”
“Switch stations everyone” - Scales said from his chair that he used to “observe” the class with. Really he just read sports news and let the kids do as they pleased. As long as they had numbers at the end of the class and he saw everyone working he didn’t particularly care for this part.
“That’s push ups for us next” - Jax said as they moved to a different part of the floor - “Have you ever done one of these before?”
Carlie shook her head.
“Of course you haven’t. Okay, this is how to do an actual push up, not one of the fake ones you’ll see over there.”
She demonstrated where to put her hands, how to keep her body in good posture, to get her chest to the ground in a full rep and then straighten her arms at the top. She only did a couple of reps as not to waste them before her test, but soon she was ready.
Jax of course went first. Her upper body wasn’t as strong as her core strength was and she struggled past twenty, often holding herself in a plank until she was ready for the next rep. She was only able to complete thirty five in the two minutes allotted.
She shook out her arms.
“Wow that was harder than I thought but I’m not very strong. But I’m sure you’ll be fine, you have really muscular arms” - she said, noting the shapes in Carlie’s arms.
Carlie shrugged.
“I dunno, I’ve never done a push up before.”
“You can’t be serious. Do you lift weights?”
“No, just my book bags.”
Jax shook her head.
“Ok well.. let’s see how well you do. I’ll set the clock but first you should try a couple of reps.”
Carlie nodded and got into position, placing her hands and then taking her knees off the floor when she was ready to try a couple of reps. She lowered herself and pressed up--it was so surprisingly easy that her hands came up off the floor a couple of inches. Jax raised an eyebrow, surprised at this development. Carlie made a note not to use so much power in the test.
“Ok, I’m ready now.”
Jax gave the countdown and Carlie started. Just like the sit ups, the reps came surely and easily. She kept an eye on the clock and made it a game to herself--she tried to do a rep with every second, as much as her body allowed--except for the last twenty seconds, where she found she had more than enough energy to continue and doubled the speed of her push ups. This time, Jax did not lose count.
“Wow... you just did one hundred and forty push ups… I’m pretty sure that’s a record for the boys too…”
“That was pretty easily, if I’m being honest” - Carlie admitted.
“Carlie...this is a weird question, but can you show me your biceps?”
“Wait, here?”
“Yeah” - Jax said - “No one is looking right now. Can I see?”
Carlie sighed.
“Ok, sure” - she glanced around and slightly raised her right arm a bit and flexed it. That baseball-sized bicep sprung up again, a little bigger than she had seen at the beginning of break due to her present pump. There were veins right on the ball of the muscle.
“Holy crap!” - Jax said. Carlie quickly put her arm down.
“Please don’t make a big deal about it. I just came in today to see if the muscles were a fluke. I... just discovered them right before break.”
“So you never thought you were strong or muscular before?”
“Not really. I’ve never been to the gym and I don’t really look at my body all that much.”
“Well you look… really amazing” - Jax admitted - “Okay, let’s do the chin up test quickly. I guess I’ll have to show you have to do those too I suppose.”
“Yeah” - Carlie nodded. Jax went over the chin up for her,
“This is probably my worst one” - Jax said.
“This test is just as many as you can do in a row without falling off, but you have to get your chin over the bar. I’ll go first.”
Jax jumped up to the bar, and with some struggle was able to finish nearly six reps before hopping down.
“Guess it’s my turn” - Carlie breathed and shook out her pumped arms. They rippled with tight, corded muscle. She wasn’t even sure if she’d be able to reach the bar, but even a little up put her up there. She hung from the bar for a second before pulling herself up with such speed and her chest touched the bar. And she did it again, and again. Jax watched on as the fifteen year old completed rep after rep, after rep. Fifty reps later she finally slowed and hopped down from the bar.
“No freaking way” - Jax said - “Fifty?!?!”
“Yeah, I guess that’s really good?” - Carlie didn’t know, really. She only knew that it was better than what she had seen posted.
“Are you sure you didn’t do gymnastics or anything, that you don’t work out?”
“I swear. All I do is carry my books!”
“Well, Scales is gonna shit his pants when he sees your scores. You better be ready to do all of this again.”
“Why?”
“There’s no way he’ll believe you. So you might have to do even better the second time around, and in front of everyone.”
Carlie didn’t really like the sound of that, and gulped. She hoped it wouldn’t come to that.
Jax turned in their scores and then it did come to that.
“No way” - Scales said in a loud voice - “Carlie, come here please.”
Carlie walked over to his chair.
“You must be lying with these scores. I can see that you look lean, but you can understand my skepticism to see a fifteen year old girl put up these kinds of numbers, better than any of my boys. So you can either get an incomplete for the day or do the test again.”
Carlie bit her lip. The risk to showing up to class was that she would actually have to have a grade submitted, which if she got an incomplete, would drag down her GPA, and that wasn’t good.
“I’ll do it again” - she said quietly.
“Great, I’ll be counting this time, and no funny business.”
So Carlie did the tests again, but better this time, as Jax suggested, doing one hundred and twenty sit ups, one hundred and sixty push ups, and then seventy two chin ups, really putting effort into everything. Her arms were red from her efforts, and she was actually sweating, but Scales had no choice but to both accept her old scores and witnessing the superior new ones. The singular attention she received from him made sure that everyone in class gathered round her and cheered her on as she worked through her reps.
In the locker room some of the girls wanted to talk to her but most of them were either jealous or looked at her like a freak. It was more the boys that were cheering her on (they loved seeing Scales getting shown up, he was one of the worst teachers at school and oten did not put up with their shenanigans). But Jax stood by her and helped her feel comfortable while she changed. She noted how red her chest and abs were, like her arms. The six pack.
“Do you not have a bra?” - Jax asked as Carlie put on a clean shirt without a bra.
“I don’t... I don’t really need one…” - she pointed out. She had gone through puberty but didn’t received any blessings in that arena. It was just the two of them in the locker room at this point everyone else had gone to lunch.
“Do you think... do you think I could see again?”
Carlie shrugged, and pulled her shirt off again. Jax had to admit that Carlie’s body was rockin. She had round shoulders and arms with bulging triceps. There was a distinct, if not deep, line down the center of her chest. Her pectoral muscles were two large squares below her neck. As it so happened, she did have some breast tissue, but it was barely there, under each quarter-sized nipple like a cap on top of her pecs. Her blocky abs gave her a distinctly rectangular looking upper body.
“Can I see your arm muscles again?”
Now that there wasn’t so many eyes around, Carlie flexed both arms. Jax took two hands and tried to encircle one bicep, but it was just large enough. She tried to squeeze it.
“Wow! I can’t even make a dent in it! You really should try working out, you could be like a bodybuilder.”
Carlie stopped flexing and shook her head.
“No... I want to be a doctor” - she said softly and pulled her shirt back on.
“No reason why you couldn’t do both. Listen, I’m gonna start working out to get in shape for summer, maybe we could be workout partners? I’m not starting until spring break so you can take your time to decide, but it would be fun to have someone to lift with. Plus since you’re a senior too maybe you could help me out with my college stuff.”
Carlie smiled. It could be nice to have a real friend around here, for the first time.
