The New David Espinoza

by Fred Aceves

  He has gone into the large dank room in the back, the one I try to avoid. It’s essentially a big bathroom, lined with two urinals, a stall, and two small showers. On the other side are the lockers, with benches in front, like our PE locker room at school.

  The flimsy door bangs against the wall when I push through it.

  “Go easy with the door, please,” Alpha says.

  He’s peeing with his back to me. His round bulging calves cast a shadow over his high-tops.

  It hits me how crazy this is. I’m confronting the biggest guy I’ve ever seen. With no backup or witnesses around.

  I’ll stay by the door in case I gotta run.

  “Who the fuck did you call lazy?”

  My voice booms in the emptiness. The adrenaline rushing through my veins has me extra alert. I’m both invigorated and shit-scared. Why am I stepping to the biggest guy in Florida?

  “Sorry, bro,” Alpha says, with a true gentleness in his voice. “Didn’t mean to offend you.”

  “I don’t give a shit how big you are,” I tell him, my heart racing. “I’m sick of you guys thinking you can do and say whatever you want just because you’re bigger than me.”

  “Whoa, hold up.” His voice echoes, punctuated by the zip of his fly. He turns around to aim squinted eyes at me. I swear he’s the size of three people. “What are you saying?”

  “I’m saying there’s more to life than muscles and that maybe—”

  “No, no. You said ‘I’m sick of you guys.’ Are you talking about bullies?” He takes a small step forward. “Are you calling me a bully?”

  An honest answer might get me killed, so I say nothing.

  My stomach twists when he walks across the room, brushing past me. He opens the first locker. “Come here.”

  I join him, my hands trembling.

  In the locker is a small towel, wrist wraps, and an enormous tub of protein. Or maybe the tub contains the ashes of people who’ve offended him.

  “You see that?” he asks.

  “Yeah.” I try to keep my voice even as I read the label. “Chocolate-flavored protein powder. Twenty-eight grams per serving.”

  “Not that, dumbass.” He jabs a finger onto the inside of the metal door, causing it to bang against the adjacent locker. “This.”

  A bunch of photos, each one with a different shirtless guy flexing, who all seem related. That’s my guess at first, until I see the final photo: Alpha, recently. These are all photos of him. This is his transformation.

  Alpha taps the photo on top. “That was me as a high school senior,” he says in a faraway voice.

  The kid, bony as me, is flexing biceps that just aren’t there. Pimples cluster both cheeks. And those dark brown glasses! They’re the thickest, ugliest frames I’ve ever seen.

  “Zit-faced and rocking bifocals. I was so fucking skinny I practically had to run around in the shower to get wet.” Then he adds, “No offense.”

  “None taken.”

  I step closer to the photos, too shocked to say anything else. If Alpha went from what I’m seeing to what’s standing next to me now, I’m more sure than ever I can hit my goal of twenty-five pounds of muscle.

  “So don’t call me a fucking bully. Bullies are the reason I started lifting. I got picked on every day.” The hint of pleading in his voice surprises me. “I wasn’t interested in becoming ‘as big as possible,’ as you say. It was about self-preservation.”

  He understands me! Hell, he used to be me.

  “That’s exactly why I wanna get big,” I say. “So people stop fucking with me. I just wanna live in peace.”

  He slams the locker shut with a flick of the wrist. “Nah, bro. You don’t get picked on like I used to.” His eyes take me in from head to toe, lingering on my exposed arms. “You’re skinny as fuck—ain’t gonna lie—but you’re an okay-looking kid. Coming across an occasional bully is just part of being a teenager.”

  “I get picked on all the time,” I correct him. “Also, sometimes once is enough,” I say, remembering the video.

  Not that I ever completely forget it. It’s always on the edge of every thought I have, ready to drop into my brain and take over everything.

  Alpha shakes his head, and starts to walk away. Just when we’re getting somewhere. How can I get him to understand?

  By showing him the video, which is still on YouTube. After all, he showed me his goofy high school picture. I hate the idea of one more person seeing my humiliation, but it might change his mind.

  “Wait,” I tell Alpha.

  He stops reaching for the door and turns. “What?”

  “Give me a second,” I say, searching for the video.

  Right away it pops up. Fuck me. The video posted by another user days ago has almost 1,673,000 views. In total, about four million people have seen me get slapped.

  I hand the phone over.

  Alpha looks at it in his palm as if it’s a foreign object. “What’s this?”

  “Proof that I have it worse than you ever did.”

  He starts the video. As he watches with the sound on, I watch his face. In my mind, I revisit the details that are stuck in my memory.

  Alpha winces at the loud slap. Seconds later he winces again as Bitchslap David drops to the floor like a bag of laundry.

  “The whole world has seen it,” I say. “Including everybody at my school.”

  “Fucking hell, bro. That’s brutal.” He lets out the hugest sigh I’ve ever heard and hands me back the phone. “Point made.”

  “So you’ll hook me up?”

  His eyebrows raise. “With gear?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Hell no. Are you crazy? First, you’re a minor. Also, most people get as big as they can on their own before fucking with gear.”

  “I don’t have time to get big on my own. Come on. I’m trying to become a new person so I can separate myself from what you saw in the video.”

  He’s listening, so I continue. “My senior year of high school can either be the greatest year of my life or the worst. It’s up to you.”

  “Don’t put this on me,” Alpha says, shaking his head.

  “But it is on you.”

  Alpha takes a deep breath and looks away before sort of looking at me again. “My senior year was the worst. Not that I got bullied more, necessarily. Just that everything I wanted became more important and was just as unattainable. A girlfriend, self-confidence, friends.”

  It just might happen. I don’t know how else to nudge him in the right direction, so I repeat myself. “I don’t have time to get as big as I can on my own.”

  “You do go hard as fuck in your workouts,” Alpha says, considering me with a calm gaze. “No doubt about it. I shouldn’t have called you lazy.”

  “I’m totally dedicated,” I say, barely able to contain my excitement. “All I need is a boost this summer.”

  “A high school senior,” he says. “To be seventeen again. You lucky bastard.”

  It’s like he’ll be doing it for the both of us. Giving me the chance he didn’t have when I was his age. Whatever helps him say yes is fine with me. I’m vibrating with nervous anticipation.

  “Okay, I’ll hook you up,” he finally says. “I got some extra gear at the house.”

  My heart pounds with excitement. I gotta contain myself so I don’t start screaming with joy or something crazy.

  Physically I’m here in the locker room, among the urinals and lockers and general stinkiness, but actually I’m above it all, soaring through the sky like a fucking bird.

  10

  ALPHA’S HOUSE is about twenty blocks away in a nicer neighborhood than mine, the houses about the same size but in better shape. I roll up in Dad’s puttering Pathfinder, under a darkening sky that is streaked purple.

  When Alpha opens the door I ask, “Is that a dog?”

  A huge pet is behind him and I wanna make sure. If you focus on the face, it looks like a Rottweiler alright. The body is way bigger though, lumpy with muscles.r />
  Alpha laughs. “Yep. I gave Crockett his last injection a few weeks ago. I wanted to see how big he could get. But he was getting out of control, trying to hump my girlfriend Mindy and all her friends.”

  A dog on steroids? That sounds dumber than stoners blowing weed smoke into their dogs’ ears to get them high. I’ve heard of kids doing that, but Alpha isn’t some kid from school.

  “Come on in,” he insists. “It’s okay.”

  Crockett eyes me, muscles tensed and tail wagging. He lets out a low murmur. Though I normally pet dogs, I don’t feel like losing a hand today. When I move quickly past him he follows me.

  “Can you put him outside or something?” I ask Alpha.

  “He’s been outside all day and wants to hang out with his best friend.” Alpha bends down to kiss the dog between the ears. “Isn’t that right, boy? You wanna hang out with me?”

  It almost makes me laugh, a big guy like Alpha kissing and baby-talking a dog.

  “This dog is a sweetheart,” Alpha says, and points a finger away from us. Crockett takes a spot on the couch.

  Mindy must have decorated this place. Everything matches. The dark blue in the striped throw pillows that go perfectly with the curtains, for instance. Leave it up to Alpha and he might have put muscle posters all over the walls, with pseudo-inspirational quotes like in the gym.

  A photo of him and his girlfriend hangs on the wall. She’s hot.

  Mindy’s due home in an hour, which is why I came as soon as Alpha called, when the evening trainer showed up at the gym to cover him. We gotta do this before she shows up. I guess she might get mad at him for giving gear to a kid.

  “Stay right there,” Alpha says at the entrance to the kitchen. “The light is perfect for a before pic.”

  He takes a few steps back to size me up. I cross my arms, wishing I had my hoodie on. I feel like I’m under a microscope right now.

  “I’ve taken before pics already,” I say.

  “I wanna track your progress too.”

  Cool. It’s like he’s not just selling me gear but also taking me under his wing.

  It puts me a bit at ease.

  I take off my shirt.

  He snaps three pics and pockets the phone. “People think we cheat, but we train harder than anybody else. You know why?”

  “No,” I say, putting my shirt back on. “Why?”

  “Because we’re doing whatever it takes to be great. Most people never try to achieve greatness.”

  I’m totally with that. It’s exactly how I see myself, as someone aspiring to greatness.

  He climbs onto the kitchen counter looking more gorilla than man. Grabs the long cardboard box that was pushed out of view on top of the cabinets and brings it down.

  “First rule of Gear Club is you don’t talk about Gear Club.” He pauses to consider something. “Actually, that’s the only rule. Gear is taboo only because people think it’s drugs, so don’t tell anybody you take them. And definitely don’t say where you got them.”

  “My lips are sealed.”

  “This is important,” he insists. “Don’t. Tell. Anybody. Not even the girls who’ll be all over you like white on rice.”

  I laugh at the idea that I might become what girls call hot. Not that I’d break up with Karina or anything. It has to feel pretty good though, for girls to see you in that way.

  “For real,” he says. “And whether you play the field or finally get a girlfriend, you say nothing. I don’t care how close you are, how cool you think the girl is.”

  “I have a girlfriend,” I say.

  “Really?” He raises one eyebrow, and I totally get it. A kid with this physique isn’t supposed to have a girlfriend. If he met Karina he’d be even more shocked at how cute she is.

  “I mean, okay,” Alpha says. “But don’t tell her.”

  Of course I wouldn’t. If Karina or anybody else wonder how I got my gains so fast I’ll just say it’s thanks to the supplements I’m taking: the protein powder, creatine, and glutamine.

  He lifts the lid off the box. Dozens of tiny packages are inside: ampoules, bottles, boxes of pills, and individually wrapped syringes. All with pharmaceutical logos and unpronounceable names, the dosage labeled ml or mg.

  I shiver at the idea of getting poked with one of the syringes. By superstrong Alpha no less. But he insists it’s a must for big gains.

  “How does your girlfriend not know you’re on gear?” I ask him.

  “She knew when we started dating three years ago, and it caused problems,” he says, poking around the box. “She asked me to stop and I told her to give me one more year to win the World Muscleman Championship.”

  As he continues his search, he explains that he just wants to win once, to know what it’s like to be a champion, and with that title he’ll have recognition, use it to start a chain of high-level gyms.

  “Iron Life I bought from a friend who moved away, with the money I inherited from my grandparents. It’s okay, just not as nice as it could be.”

  He sets a small box marked Dynabol aside. “So anyway, a few weeks ago Mindy said no more chances, and that if I continue to take gear, we’re done. So I told her I’ve given it up.”

  “And that’s going to work?”

  “She’ll come around. I’ve convinced her before and I’ll do it again. I have to take gear. Without gear, there’s no way to be big enough to compete in the World Muscleman Championship. And all my years of hard work can’t be for nothing.”

  He sets down a rubber-topped transparent bottle about the size of his thumb. It seems to be full of water. “There’s your stack. Dynabol and Suspension.” He turns to me. “Listen, David. Girls are always trying to change us, but we have to resist and be who we are.”

  I think of how Karina has tried to change me but come up with nothing. Well, this week she’s been on me to leave the house, believing it will cheer me up, but that’s just her being nice.

  I turn away as Alpha unwraps the syringe. I can’t look. Alpha said he’ll inject me at the gym for a while, whenever I go to work out, until I can do it to myself. But I can’t imagine that ever happening. He’ll need to do it for me all summer.

  I say, “I really wish I could just take pills.”

  “They’re not as effective, bro, unless you combine them with an injectable. Besides, too many pills are hard on your stomach. Didn’t you notice Tower throwing up after each heavy set?”

  I move my eyes from the fridge to Alpha—not a good idea. I feel my spine go cold. The needle looks about as long as half a pencil. He jabs it into the bottle and draws the clear liquid into the cylinder. This is what will get shot into my ass muscle every other day.

  “Exactly how long is that needle?”

  “An inch and a half.” He sets the bottle aside. The needle glints in the kitchen light. He presses on the tiny plunger until a single drop oozes out of the pointy tip.

  “No air bubbles, so your muscle doesn’t get injected with oxygen.”

  “Thanks?”

  I guess that’s good. I’m so nervous right now I don’t know what’s good or bad, what’s up or down. All I know is that this is the only way to hit my goal.

  Alpha holds the syringe behind his back. Is it that obvious I’m freaking out?

  He smiles and asks, “Are you ready to start your journey toward monster gains?”

  “No monster gains,” I remind him. “It’s just this one cycle. I’m not trying to hurl cars at people or scare small children.”

  Alpha laughs, his gigantic shoulders going up and down. “That’s the best compliment ever, when kids point and stare.” He gets serious. “Alright, bro. Which is the lucky ass cheek? Left or right?”

  My heart is really racing now. I pull down my shorts and boxers enough to reveal my right cheek. Here we go. No turning back. I ready myself by taking a deep breath.

  I turn around to place my hands on the kitchen counter by the sink. Crockett watches from the living room couch. I almost forgot he was there.


  These injections will help me transform into muscular David, who will get respect. That exciting thought brings me some calm.

  “I’m going to add twenty-five pounds of muscle by the end of summer,” I say out loud. Anything to focus on the positive instead of the horrifying needle about to stab me.

  “I didn’t mention it before,” Alpha says, “but Suspension is the one steroid that is water-based instead of oil. That means it’s fast-acting.”

  “Awesome.”

  “It also means it burns like a bitch going in, so I’ll inject it slowly,” he says. “Don’t freak out.”

  Those are probably the worst three words to hear when you’re on the verge of freaking out. My heart pounds and my neck starts sweating.

  All of a sudden, the needle stabs me. A pain flashes, then disappears. Next the hot liquid oozes in, dripping down, burning.

  The fire spreads more as I squeeze my eyes and also my lips together—so I don’t whimper from the pain. I open my eyes to see Crockett standing on the couch, way too interested. Looking at me like he’s starving and I’m a big steak.

  “Ow,” I say, suddenly feeling the metal needle among all that burning.

  “Stop clenching.”

  “Your dog’s making me nervous.”

  Crockett hops down from the couch and trots over, moaning like he’s in heat.

  “It’s attacking!” I shout.

  I fight the impulse to run. The needle is still in.

  “Done,” Alpha says, pulling it out before Crockett runs into the kitchen.

  He leaps toward me. I jump back, tugging up my shorts. I hold my palms out and walk in reverse until my back is pinned against the wall.

  “No, Crockett!” Alpha tries to grab the collar as the dog keeps lurching for me.

  The liquid heat burns in my glute and hamstring as I slide along the wall. “Keep it away!”

  “No, Crockett!” Alpha shouts.

  Alpha throws himself on the dog, a tackle in front of the fridge. He clutches the collar with one hand and helps himself up with the other. Crockett tries to jerk away as Alpha stands still, completely out of breath. Alpha is actually panting, his big chest rising and falling.