Gym Rat, Day 1

This will be a little experiment to see if the format works and encourages me to publish a chunk of a single story every day as it unfolds. I want to do a gradual beautification story of a nerdy girl improving at the gym with a limited cast of characters that could lead to some interesting drama. I might also do this for the final part of Perfect Body if the format proves successful!

DAY 1

“You sure that’s a good idea, Cody?” Roddy asked, but not because of any ethical concerns. “What if she, like, builds a ray gun and disintegrates us as revenge?” He scratched his square jaw with concern.

“C’mon Rod, get real. Annie’s not some supervillain mad scientist or anything, she’s just a nerd in her senior year of high school. And what we’re doing is just a prank. I’m sure in 30 years or whatever she’ll look back on it fondly. Anyways, are you in or out? I really want to sell this as legitimate, and a second person always helps with that.” Cody cast a furtive glance at the bookworm of his ire, immediately pulling away his gaze when she took a look his way and their eyes for a brief moment locked. Cody didn’t dare look back. He couldn’t tell if she rescinded her eyes in embarrassment or continued to look on with an obsessive stare. If she asked, he’d vehemently deny it.

“I mean, you know she’s totally obsessed with you, right bro? You could walk over there and ask her to do a triple backflip and she’d drop everything to do it. She probably wouldn’t get very far, but she’d make the effort if you'd ask.”

“Just shut up and go along with it, Rod.”

Roddy supposed he couldn’t argue with that.

Annie’s shivering seemed directly proportionate to Cody’s proximity to her, with her trembling like a leaf in a thunderstorm as he approached.

“O-oh my, h-hi Cody, um, I-I promise I wasn’t looking at you back there, um, if that’s what you were worried about…” She took off her thick-rimmed glasses to wipe the sweat off of her face. Cody couldn’t see or hear it, but he just knew her heart was beating faster than a hummingbird’s as long as he was in her presence. Most girls tripped over their words, Annie full-on stumbled off a cliff.

Her brain seemed to short-circuit afterwards, which gave the jock a prime opportunity to speak. He brushed a lock of blond hair out of his face, chuckling to further enrapture her.

“Actually, it was the staring that intrigued me and Rod, isn’t that right?” Cody asked, putting his one improv acting class to use as he tweaked the script ever so slightly, which Roddy of course played along flawlessly.

“Yep, that’s right!” He replied. And while he was a good listener, he wasn’t a fantastic actor. But Roddy wasn’t really needed, Annie was sold as soon as Cody started talking to her.

“So, it got me thinking, were you perhaps interested in getting a body like this on your own?” Cody asked, knowing that wasn’t Annie’s intentions at all, but that she wouldn’t say no to a chance to spend some personal time with the blond hunk of her dreams.

“W-wh-wh-what are you saying, Cody!?” Annie asked, a little slow on the uptake.

“I’m saying, if that’s what you’re into, you should join me and Rod on a trip to the gym after school today. We could give you some pointers on how to get a fit body like mine.” His prank wingman silently nodded in agreement.

Annie’s eyes lit up with stars. “T-t-the gym!? W-w-with you!? Ohmigosh, ohmigosh! Um, um, um!”

“Hey, you don’t have to say yes if you—”

“Yes! YES! I would love to, Cody! More than anything!”

His smile grew wider. The plan was falling perfectly into place.

“Excellent, how’s 5:30pm sound then? We’ll pick you up and take you there. Workout goes for about two hours if we all hit the same machines.”

A dash of hesitation crossed Annie’s face once she heard the time. “Oh, well, 6pm is when the next episode of my favorite anime drops, maybe we could… oh, what are you saying, Annie!?” She interrupted herself, questioning her own sanity. “Of course I’ll go! I-I didn’t even know something like this was in the cards for a girl like me…”

And I’ll prove that a winning hand was never possible, you tub of lard, Cody thought to himself. While he was a six-foot-even hulk of a senior, Annie was barely pushing past the four and a half foot mark. If she tried to match even half of his routine, she’d be reduced to a melted puddle of sweat on the floor in mere minutes.

“Of course, I’m a big health nut, and I think exercise makes everyone feel better at the end of the day, wouldn’t you agree?” Cody said, sprinkling elements of truth into his lies. Of course, this won’t apply to you when everyone’s laughing at your exhausted body and you’re left wheezing and sore for a week afterwards, loser. 

Annie nodded profusely, smiling wide and showing off her larger-than-average front teeth. She wasn’t exactly ugly by any means, there was a certain teddy bear cuteness to her appearance, but she was far, far away from Cody’s type.

She nearly passed out when Cody offered her his phone number—one from a cheap burner phone, just in case she got too clingy. She continued to talk Cody’s ear off about how excited she was, including several tangentially related tidbits that her rambles poorly segued into. prompting Roddy to make a tactical escape to spare his eardrums. He wouldn’t get very far, however, as Cody’s ex-girlfriend, Mariah, stepped in front of his path. She grabbed him by the arm and he allowed her to drag him over to a more secluded area of the lunchroom so Cody would not overhear them.

“Rod, what the hell is Cody doing?” Mariah asked, her valley girl accented voice growing more high-pitched—or as Cody called it, high-bitched—with every syllable. “Why is he wasting his time with that puny little wallflower instead of trying to win me back?”

Because you’re hoping an idiot like him will win a game he doesn’t even know he’s playing, was what Roddy really wanted to say, but he decided against it. 

“Well, uh, maybe he’s just waiting for you to ask him back?” Roddy offered instead. He hoped that a half-measure answer would satiate Mariah, but it only seemed to make her angrier. He didn’t have the heart to tell her that Cody was doing this mostly to cope with a breakup where he felt he hadn’t done anything wrong.

“Me ask him!? Is he insane!? Ugh—no offense, Roddy—but men are the worst! Always expecting stuff like that from girls!”

Roddy just shook his head in semi-agreement. “I certainly can’t say that Cody gives our gender a particularly good look.”

“We should totally orchestrate some sort of payback scheme,” Mariah suggested, already rubbing her hands together deviously as her mind’s eye blossomed with possibilities. Roddy groaned internally, lamenting that he had been pulled into two separate schoolyard stratagems five minutes apart from one another. 

Of course, he couldn’t bring himself to say no to either, as he valued Cody’s circle of influence, and this did put him closer to a potential relationship with Mariah herself, whom he found very attractive. Her natural tan and unnatural blonde hair created a fascinating mix of beach and bleach that captivated him. And all of that neglected to mention everything below her head, hourglassed perfection. Cody certainly wouldn’t mind, he never lived in the past, moving forward to a fault as he left a trail of unacknowledged destruction in his wake.

The school day flew by afterwards, with Cody and Roddy pulling up in their recently-gifted car to pick up Annie. She eagerly rushed out of the house, nearly tripping over herself on her own driveway with how excited she was. As soon as Cody noticed that the mad dash from her front door to the car had left her winded, he was sure that his plan would go swimmingly. A lifetime’s worth of dopamine at the cost of a conversation and a slight detour to the gym.

“Haah, hah… oof, wow, I am out of shape…” Annie admitted as soon as she crawled into the backseat, the climb between the sidewalk and Cody’s raised hummer proving to be quite difficult for her diminutive body. A nervous giggle escaped her throat, as if she was already having second thoughts, but the supposed support from Roddy and especially Cody proved to be enough motivation for her to quell those fears.

“So, uh, Annie… what exactly are you wearing there?” Cody asked, a raised eyebrow visible through the rear-view mirror as he inspected her fit.

“Oh, nothing special, just some gym clothes on loan from my father since I didn’t have any.” The extra baggy gym attire made her already tiny frame that much more unimpressive, her beesting breast and rotund waist doing her no favors. “Um, d-do I look good, Cody?”

“Oh yeah, yeah. Real good,” Cody replied, hiding his smile that didn’t sell his response at all. Thankfully for him, Annie didn’t pick up on sarcasm all too well. “Right, Rod? She really rocks those clothes, doesn’t she?”

Roddy rolled his eyes, not exactly fond of being dragged into a conversation and forced to lie. Though he found kindness came much easier to him than Cody.

“I think she looks much more confident already, which is the whole point of the gym,” Roddy said, as if he were channeling the wisdom of philosophers. “It’s a place where one can remake themselves like a chisel to marble.”

A beat passed, and then Roddy laughed. He couldn’t commit to the bit to save his life, but he really did mean what he said about Annie. The mood was thankfully kept light most of the ride, with Annie finding more confidence to speak full sentences that weren't just flustered gibberish as she usually defaulted to within Cody's presence.

The small girl looked like a kid in a candy shop as Cody and Roddy opened the gym doors for her, even though she was just in the lobby and could only make out the faintest hint of the excitement beyond. The two taller highschoolers checked into the front desk, with Cody offering his guest pass spot to Annie, suckering her further into the ruse.

“Welcome back, Mr. Cross and Mr. Jefferson, congratulations on making it to your 400th day at Blue Gold Fitness,” the cheery receptionist said, her smile never faltering once as she spoke. “Oh! And I see you have a little friend here. A hypewoman, perhaps?” She added, peering further over the table to get a better look at Annie.

“H-hello!” Annie said with a nervous smile, clearly not used to the overwhelming busyness of a place like this. Cody already assumed the little nerd didn’t get outside much, and this all but confirmed it. “I-I’m starting my first day actually, um, wish me luck! Heheh…”

The receptionist’s smile strained a bit, but she remained steadfast in her job’s attitude. “Oh, then welcome aboard! I hope you can find happiness here as well.”

Annie’s smile beamed. Cody knew that wouldn’t last.

After everyone exited the changing rooms of their designated genders, Cody guided Annie to the circuit room. Unbeknownst to the nerdy girl, she was already being misled on proper gym form. Cody and Roddy had both stretched beforehand in the locker room, and already did their required cardio after school to get their hearts pumping and ready for the upcoming arm day session.

“Alright, first up, the biceps curl. This one’s pretty simple, lemme show you the ropes, Annie,” Cody said, Roddy already adjusting the seat to the two’s specifications. He proceeded to deliberately grip the handles incorrectly, sit in an awkward position, and bend his arms at an uncomfortable angle. Even still, Cody was strong enough to make three reps of such nonsense look reasonable.

“You think you can handle that?” Roddy asked, genuinely probing without pushing too hard against Cody’s wishes.

“Oh yeah! That looks pretty easy, actually!” Annie said, before flicking her flabby arm in jest, talking to it as if it were a soldier in a platoon. “Look alive, private bicep! You’re about to be whipped into shape!”

Cody could only hold back cringing because he knew this was about to be very satisfying to watch.

Roddy lowered the weight limit, only to move it back a bit after Cody shot him a narrowed gaze. Annie got into the flawed position as instructed, ready to begin her workout journey with a bang.

It would start off with a whimper as Annie struggled to complete even a single rep, but Cody knew she would push her body beyond its comfort zone just to impress him. Sure enough, she managed to pump out seven and a half messy reps before collapsing in the seat, the bricks of weight slamming against each other, which drew eyes from all around the gym. Annie shrunk in her seat, stiff as a board.

“S-sorry…” she managed to sputter out for no one to hear.

“Hey, now’s not the time to quit, you still got two more reps until ten, maybe three, since that last one didn’t really count,” Cody said, doing his best to sound encouraging to increase her failure rate. She continued, but her confidence quickly began to wane again.

“Sh-should my arms be shaking like this?” Annie asked, noticing last that her limbs were trembling like tree branches in a storm.

“Definitely! That means it's working!” Cody lied, trying his hardest to hold back a snicker.

“O-okay then!” Annie said, exhaling when she should’ve inhaled. Cody certainly wasn’t going to tell her that, and neither was Roddy after a quick elbow to his ribs.

The remainder of the workout session played out much the same, with Cody showing off incorrect techniques, Annie following them to a T, then blaming herself when she couldn’t complete her reps to a standard invented on the spot by Cody. After an hour, Annie was soaked with her own sweat and so cramped she could barely move without eliciting an audible “owie…”

“Anyways, I’m gonna go hit the snack bar, good hustle out there, team!” Cody remarked with false excitement, drinking in every second of Annie’s agony. He couldn’t wait to do the same thing again tomorrow.

Great, thanks man. Roddy thought with a roll of his eyes as Cody dashed off around a corner. Just offload the latest victim of your pranks to me. No big deal.

As soon as Cody left, Annie broke into tears, reinforcing Roddy’s internal point immediately. He immediately comforted her, but only a little, since her sweaty body surprised him.

“Oh man, I looked like such an idiot out there, and in front of Cody, no less!” Annie said, swallowing with her sore throat.

“Hey, uh, don’t sweat it, Annie. Here, you want some water?” Roddy offered, handing the small girl an extra bottle from his backpack. Immediately, her boundless optimism returned somewhat.

“Oh, wow, th-thank you Rod. I-I don’t know what to say…” she stuttered, genuinely moved by Roddy’s act of kindness.

“You don’t have to say anything, please, drink something, you look like you’re about to pass out.”

Annie did as she was told, gulping down the water, only pausing once Roddy realized he had forgotten to tell her to pace herself.

She gasped once she came up for air, panting profusely, but did gradually calm herself down to a manageable rate. She then made a face, her lips and nose twisting with confusion at an unexpected aftertaste. Not wanting to seem impolite after such a kind gesture, she said nothing of it.

“Anyways, you, uh, should probably mosey on out of here, it’s getting late,” Roddy remarked, much to Annie’s confusion.

“Shouldn’t we wait for Cody to get back?”

“Nah, besides, he’d respect the hell out of you for getting your cardio in by running home.”

“Woah, good idea, Roddy!” She exclaimed, hopping off of the gym bench with renewed optimism—and to her surprise, renewed energy. “So, um, same time tomorrow then?”

“Oh yeah, I’ll make sure of it. You wouldn’t want to skip leg day, after all!” Roddy remarked with a smile.

If only she knew what was really in that bottle, Roddy thought to himself, watching as Annie ran off, ready to run home on foot to prove she wasn’t tired in the slightest.