Time for Josh and Alex to deal with things head on. Let me know what you think and remember to donate to Nifty http://donate.nifty.org/ to keep the site running.
Chapter 7
I had no idea what to expect as I walked to our meeting place on Saturday morning. Obviously Josh wanted to talk to me but would it be to clear the air and explain things or would he want to say goodbye forever? When I arrived there was no sign of him. I wanted to climb through the gap in the trunks but I couldn't grip well enough with my right hand to pull myself up.
"Josh? Are you there? I called out.
"Yeah, come on through!" He called back.
"I can't! My hand's a bit busted!" I suddenly heard movement on the other side and I expected Josh to pop up through the gap but instead he climbed up onto the upper trunk.
"Oh shit!" He exclaimed when he saw me, then dropped down to the ground next to me for a closer look. The drop must have been about 15 to 20 feet from the top but he landed without a stumble or breaking any bones. "That guy who yelled at me yesterday said you'd had a fight but he never said you'd been hurt."
"It looks worse than it is." I reassured him. He looked genuinely worried and upset that he'd caused this but I had to calm him down. "The only pain I've got is in my hand and that's cos I punched Brandon, the rest is just aching a bit." I gave him a smile to say I was ok.
"You punched Brandon?" He was more shocked than worried now then he smiled, "No wonder you hurt your hand, I've felt rocks softer than his head. Come on, let's go." He said pointing at the gap in the trunks.
"Ok, but you might have to give me a hand though." Next thing I knew he'd lifted me like a child and placed me on the bottom trunk. I was surprised by how easy he'd made that seem but then thought back to what I'd seen last time we were here and thought I'd be seeing a lot more before the day was out. I wriggled through the gap and did my best to shimmy down the ladder using one hand while Josh just seemed to vault over the entire structure. When he landed I took the opportunity to get a good look at his appearance. He was wearing a sleeveless shirt and Bermuda shorts which made a change, and this was the first time I'd seen more of his body than just his hands and head, at least at a regular size. He was built pretty well which wasn't surprising; I was expecting huge, ripped muscles but he looked more like a footballer. There was some definition there but not as much as I expected, he pretty much looked like a regular teenager. We stood facing each other with neither of us seemingly knowing where to go from here.
"So..." I decided it was time to get some answers. "What's been going on with you lately?"
He looked really sheepish at first but then it was like he realised he needed to deal with this instead of running away. "I'm sorry about last week. You must have thought I was avoiding you."
"Weren't you?" I asked rather bluntly. "Cos that was definitely how it felt to me. You missed every lesson where we were meant to be together, didn't want to walk home with me when you even bothered to turn up, and then to cap it all off I had to defend you to that dickhead Brandon which ended up with me getting my ass kicked!" I didn't know where the anger came from but I could see that he was quite taken aback by it.
"I'm sorry," He said again, which pissed me off more. "It's just...when you looked at me last weekend you looked so scared and I panicked cos I thought you'd think I was a monster." He was on the verge of tears now and he'd seemed to lose a little size.
"Of course I was scared." Probably not the best way to start as Josh now looked even more upset. "I wasn't scared of you Josh. I was scared because I thought you'd been crushed but then when I turned round and saw you under the rock my mind didn't register at first that you were holding it up. By the time it did I was still in shock, but you'd dropped it and ran off before I could say anything. I don't think you're a monster at all, your family explained a lot to me and it actually sounds like you're going through a tough time."
"You can say that again." He replied which made me mad again.
"See, that's what pisses me off, right there!" I snapped and he looked stunned. "You're having a tough time and I want to help you, I even told your grandpa that but he said to give you time. I've wanted to talk to you all week cos I missed you but you all shut me out!" He slumped to ground and started to cry and I felt really bad for him. I knelt down next to him and lifted his head up to look him in the eyes. "I've really missed you this week; I don't care about what happened last weekend, I liked you before that happened and I still like you now, I wouldn't be here if I didn't so come on, let's put last week behind us and start again." I smiled and helped him up. He gave me a hug which surprised and hurt me slightly and he saw me wince.
"Sorry, how badly did he hurt you?" He asked. Looking over the bruises that were exposed, especially my glorious shiner.
"I'll live." I replied. "So, why did you want to meet up here and not at home?"
"I wanted to explain this place to you and thought it'd be easier to show you everything." He answered. "I made this place my own a few years ago and you're the only person who's actually stumbled on it since I blocked it off."
"Wait, you're the gamma beaver?" I asked with a smile and he just grinned back. "So you put these trunks in the way and built that dam at the other end? How?"
"Well the dam as you call it was pretty easy; there was already dense forest there so I bulked it out a bit more with a few big logs and rocks I moved." He explained.
"You mean the rocks from over there?" I asked pointing at the indentations in the ground.
"Some of them, a few of those I just crushed when I was bored. That's what those little stones are; they used to be the boulders." I stood there slack jawed as he picked up a rock the size of a coconut and just squeezed into dust in one hand.
"Holy shit!!" I exclaimed and he looked a bit embarrassed. "Wait, so how can you be that strong yet you can hammer a nail into your birdhouse without smashing it to bits?"
"It's taken practice believe me," He chuckled picking up another large rock with one hand. "I can pretty much control my strength now, see? I can grip this as tight as you could but then if I want to..." The rock exploded into dust in his hand and he just let it drop to the floor. I really needed to stop staring slack jawed at these things otherwise I'd end up choking on the dust.
"So what about those trees blocking the path? I'm assuming you put them there." I asked pointing back at the barrier.
"Actually the bottom one was almost in place, I just had to slide it over a bit. The other one was standing over there so I just knocked it over and dumped it on top." He replied, pointing at a big scar in the earth.
"I love how you explain it so casually like `Yeah I just yanked a massive tree out the ground and put it on top of another one.' As if it's the sort of thing people do every day." He was starting to look less embarrassed and more proud as I said that and I noticed his shoulders get a bit bigger and more defined. "What about the gap in them, did you mean for that to be there?"
"Not really, but after I saw you struggle to get through I wedged that log between them to make the gap a little bigger." He said.
"Wait, you followed me up here? That explains why I thought things were different when I came back."
Now the embarrassment came back. "Yeah, when I saw you from the barn I quickly finished up and decided to see where you were going. I thought you'd seen me when you were sitting in the clearing so I ran back to here and made this easier for you to get through. Did you like the little hand grips I made?" I knew they weren't there before!! He showed me how he'd made them by jamming another rock into the bark right in front of me. I tried to pull it back out but it wouldn't budge until Josh casually tugged on it, leaving a big dent in the wood. He handed me the stone and I marvelled at how hard it was, yet he had crushed the same ones into powder with no effort.
"Wow! Your strength is insane." I gushed and he seemed to smile and swell up a little more with that. He didn't really get bigger but you could definitely see more muscle fibres appearing in his shoulders and what I could see of his pecs seemed to firm up a touch. "What else have you been doing up here then? Did you damage those trees along the path or was that really storm damage?"
"I did most of them." He said with a blush as we walked along the path then he pointed to the remains of two trees standing near each other. "That one on the left was hit by lightning, see the way it's split most of the way down? I decided to see if I could replicate it with that one and pretty much tore it in half." I looked at the two of them and the one Josh had attacked definitely came of worse. He went over to the lightning hit tree and put his hands in between the trunk where the lightning had split it and then just pulled it apart down to the roots as if he was just tearing a tissue. He then pointed out a few other trees that he'd uprooted then showed me one where the top part had been snapped off about 4 feet up the trunk.
"What did you do to that one, bear hug it?" I asked.
He looked a little sad. "No, I got mad when one of my favourite horses died so I came up here and punched it. I think the top landed over there somewhere." He said pointing into the undergrowth.
"Damn!! Good thing it was me who punched Brandon and not you." I said trying not to think of the messy consequences of that exchange. We came to the clearing soon and I sat on the log to start on my peanut butter sandwiches as I was starving. "Want some?" I offered but Josh just shook his head. "Are you allergic to peanuts or something? Don't tell me they make you swell up." I added with a corny smile. He just laughed and picked up his ruined bag that he'd obviously stashed here earlier opening it up to take out that bottle of foul smelling gunk he'd brought with him the last time. "What's that shit you're drinking anyway? It smells disgusting."
"It's like a mega protein and vitamin supplement." He said. "It tastes ok once you get used to it but I have to drink it while I'm still growing up as my body burns through calories really quickly. I'd probably expend more energy eating those sandwiches than I'd actually gain from them."
"So you don't eat regular food?"
"Of course I do, mostly for the taste though; I just have to drink this stuff to keep my energy levels up as the amount of food I'd have to eat would be ridiculous." He replied.
"How much would you need to eat?" I asked.
"Put it this way, we wouldn't have any horses left by the end of the week." Then he started taking another swig of the concoction.
"Damn! I wouldn't like to empty your septic tank after that." I joked and saw the foul stuff shoot out his nose as he laughed.
"You dick!" He said with a smile wiping his face.
"So what's going to happen with that big rock that fell down the other day?" I asked, nodding towards the massive slab on the floor.
"Dunno, I might ask grandpa if he wants me to smash it up to build another wall on the other path." He answered rather matter-of-factly. "It'd probably be easier to throw it down their first rather than trying to carry it down or take it piece by piece, I'd just have to make sure no one was down there before I threw it." I was beginning to feel a little in awe of Josh. He seemed to be getting quite comfortable telling me about these feats of strength as if they were nothing to him. In some ways it was frightening to think about what he could actually do but at the same time it was comforting to know that such a sweet guy was in control of such power.
I sat there quietly for a moment finishing off my food then asked. "So what's up with those holes in the cliff face then? And don't feed me some bullshit about woodpeckers this time."
He smiled and said, "I use them to help me climb up there, watch." Then he walked forward a few paces then just jumped straight up the wall and grabbed one of the hand grips. He must have been about thirty feet above me just holding onto the wall with one hand and waving back to me, then he just let go and dropped to the floor where he'd started. "See? No big deal."
"What's at the top anyway? You ever been up there?" I asked.
"Course I have, wanna come up and take a look?"
I took one look at that wall and shot him a looked at him like he was joking. "What you gonna do, throw me up there?"
He looked back at the wall then back to me as if he was realising that what he'd done wasn't possible for anyone else. "How about a piggyback?" He asked with a smile.
"Ok, but I don't think I'll be able to carry you for long, you look a little heavy." I said and saw him looking confused, then he realised what I'd said and smiled.
"Idiot, I meant I'd carry you. Climb on." He turned around and I hopped on his back. "Hold tight." Then he leapt into the air towards the wall and I saw his hand slam into the rock, smashing a hole into it with his fingers as he created a new grip. He carried on scrambling up the wall this way just making his own hand holds all the way up until with one final leap he landed gracefully in a glade at the top of the cliff. He set me down and I noticed he wasn't even out of breath. "What do you think?" He asked as I surveyed the surroundings.
With my back to the cliff I could just see more trees and foliage as if the forest had followed us up here. When I turned back the way we came I could see a much better view than what was on that left hand path below. There were fields ahead as far as the eye could see and then as my eyes travelled to the right I could see the stream winding its way down the hills from my right. "Wow." Was about all I could say to sum it up.
"Nice view eh?" Josh asked as I turned back to face him. He was lying on the floor catching some sun with his eyes closed and no top on.
"Very nice." I replied, hoping he didn't notice where I was looking. As he lay there on his back with his arms stretched behind his head I could see the definition in every muscle standing out in bold relief. His biceps, although not huge were still mounded up next to his head and you could see the slight flare of his lats leading down to his narrow waist. His stomach was flat with the slightest trace of a four pack leading up to his small, but perfectly formed pecs. He hadn't skipped leg day either as they certainly looked like they contained the power he'd just needed to propel us up here. I lay down next to him to relax for a while and catch some sun myself. We were quiet for a few minutes until Josh started to move next to me. He propped himself up on his elbows crunching his corrugated stomach a little and turned to face me.
"So after all I've shown you today, are you freaked out?" He asked looking slightly concerned. I sat up and looked him in the eye.
"Not really, I've kinda had a week to get used to it after speaking to your family." I saw him relax a little but he could see that there was still something on my mind. "There is one thing I am curious about though. I've seen you do all these feats of strength today but you haven't put on any more muscle, so why did you get big last week when the boulder fell?" He stood up and started pacing around as he tried to decide how best to begin.
"You know how my grandpa said the changes were down to moods and emotions?" I nodded and he continued. "Well you've probably seen me change a little a few times. Basically emotions that make me feel bad like embarrassment, shame or anxiety make me shrink down a bit, whereas the more positive emotions like pride, happiness or just contentment make me a little bigger."
I nodded my understanding but still wanted to know more. "What about fear? Your grandpa mentioned something about a fight or flight response."
"Yeah, fear's a weird one." He said. "There's different things to be afraid of so my body reacts differently depending on what scares me. If I'm scared of someone finding out about this then my body isn't just going to get bigger otherwise that would make the fear even worse. Last week when I feared that I wasn't going to be able to stop you getting crushed, my body reacted by making me bigger to shield you, then the fear changed when I saw you looking scared and I was terrified of what you thought of me being big, so my body shrank back down and I was able to get away much quicker."
"Makes sense." I then had a funny thought and smiled as I asked. "What about anger? Do you turn green when you're pissed off?" He laughed at the thought and told me he didn't.
"I don't tend to get angry too much, but if I do it's only over silly things and my body doesn't react too much to it. If I'm relaxed and keep them all under control then I can change whenever I want. I do have panic attacks sometimes though and they make my body go haywire. I missed school on the Wednesday of the week you arrived because I had one that morning, and don't take this the wrong way but it was because of you."
"Me?" I was actually a bit upset that I'd given him a panic attack.
"Well kind of." He started, seeing the anguish on my face. "You've got to remember that I've been avoiding people for a few years because I knew these changes would be coming and I didn't want to get close to people, then you showed up and everything changed."
"How so?"
"As soon as you introduced yourself to the class I could see that you were probably going to keep me entertained for the rest of my school life and I really wanted to get to know you. I hadn't seen you in any lessons on the Tuesday so I was starting to think I wouldn't see you much at school so then an internal conflict started." I was getting really confused now and he could see this so he continued. "On the Wednesday morning I woke up and my emotions were all over the place. On the one hand I was hopeful that I'd see you and on the other I was dreading it in case you wanted to become friends, so my body was fluctuating out of control which made me panic more. Thankfully on the Thursday I'd calmed down a bit but I nearly lost control again when you came into CDT."
"Wow, I didn't know I was having such an effect on you." I said, still a little stunned by his confession. "So are we ok now? No more panicking about what I think of you?"
"That depends." He replied.
"On what?" I asked.
"On what you think about this."