* * * * *

The next day during classes my head bobbed every few minutes as I dozed off. I actually face-planted on my desk in homeroom which amused Jenny and Annie to no end. My eyelids felt like they had tiny but chubby sleep fairies hanging on the lashes and pulling them closed. I think I must have sleep-talked something to that effect while dozing because Nancy Sanders asked me if sleep fairies gave out money for teeth too. Then she giggled hysterically. Our Literature teacher was not amused.

At lunch I found Crye and the gang and took an open seat.

"Hi," I said, feeling uncomfortable and unsure if they'd accept me back at their table again.

"Hey," Crye said and then yawned so hard and wide her jaw cracked. Apparently I wasn't the only one pulling all-nighters. Even with the powder-white makeup and dark rings of eyeliner, I could see the fatigue in her face.

Ash eyed me. "You look tired. Go to a rave or something?"

"Nah. Just did a lot of reading." I bit into the soggy square cafeteria pizza and forced it down my throat while mulling the list I'd made. "Do you guys think I'd look better if I cut my hair?"

Ash shrugged. Crye stood up and walked around the table, her black Victorian-era dress rustling as she walked. She wound some of my hair around her fingers and sniffed it. I noticed her black fingernails matched her lipstick.

Her violet eyes seemed to see right into me. They were not the peaceful color of flowers, but sparkling, fiery, and full of life despite the dark bags under her eyes.

"Do you wear contacts?" I asked, staring into those amazing irises.

She jerked from her reverie. "Yes—yes of course. Nobody has eyes this color."

"Looks cool," I said lamely. I'd almost said "beautiful" but figured that would've been over the edge.

Crye stared again at my hair as a tarot card reader would look at my fortune. "Your hair is a mess."

"I know that, but—"

She put a finger to my lips and shook her head, so I shut my mouth. Sometimes the hardest part of asking for advice is actually taking it to heart. I'd done things my way for long enough and look where that got me: relying on a Goth chick for fashion advice.

Crye held my hair so it stood on end. She looked from Ash to Nyte to me and grunted like a doctor who'd just found a potentially hazardous anomaly in someone's brain scan. "You have coarse hair. I think you should cut it to about six inches and spike it."

"Spike my hair?"

"Her mom owns a fancy salon. I'd listen to her," Ash said.

Crye wore her long black hair straight with a simple part down the middle like the matriarch from the Addams Family. The day before she had worn it in pink-bowed pigtails. If it weren't for the shrapnel-like piercings all over her face and the deathly white makeup, she might actually look cute. I could almost stand everything except the nose and tongue studs. The hygiene issues those posed made me want to barf.

"I can get you a friend's discount," she said.

A lump formed in my throat. I couldn't understand what I'd done to deserve a friend's discount from people I'd more or less looked down upon until a day ago. I hadn't done a thing to deserve the kindness of these people except turn myself into a social outcast. I cleared my throat, but my reply still came out a little gravelly.

"Thanks," I said. "I'll do it." I gave her my number and went to class.

After school, I went to a gym I'd passed a million times before on the way home, and inquired about personal training.

"I want someone who will really whip me into shape," I told the short skinny guy who signed me up. I hoped he wasn't a trainer. His arms looked like noodles.

He pursed his lips and looked me over. "I know just the person."

I looked around the gym and spotted several people with the blue trainer shirts on. One was a stocky black guy with arms thicker than this guy's waist. "How about him?"

"George?" He tsked. "He's booked right now. I can put you on the waiting list."

I scanned the area but the other trainers looked just as out of shape as their trainees. I wasn't about to waste money or time. I needed results. "Yeah, put me on his list, please."

"In the meantime, I'll put you with one of our best. Vic."

Vic sounded like the name of a swarthy Italian guy from New Jersey. A guy who could teach me street smarts and help me get six-pack abs all at the same time.

"Sounds good, thanks." I paid for two months up front and hoped by then I would know what I was doing and wouldn't need a trainer anymore. I couldn't afford to keep one for long anyway. The cash I'd stolen from my parents wouldn't last forever, and since neither Dad nor I worked, we had zero income.

Come to think of it, I didn't know how he was paying for the house or utilities. He'd been buying enough beer to supply a frat house, and I didn't have a clue where the money was coming from. Things looked bleak. All my ambitions could come crashing to the ground if we got kicked into the streets. Being homeless seemed like the crown jewel on my mountain of fail. I would have to do something about his issues sooner or later.

After school the next day I had my first appointment with my trainer. I put on my gym shorts, a sleeveless T-shirt to show off my chubby arms, and examined myself in the mirror before I left. I pulled up my shirt and grabbed a roll of pale jelly belly. My belly button was deep enough to store a short stack of dimes. My man boobs sagged from lack of a man bra. Vic had his work cut out for him.

I went to the gym and looked for someone fitting the profile of a low-level thug from a New Jersey mafia family before giving up and going to the trainers' desk. A redhead with ripped abs and enough freckles to form constellations on her otherwise forgettable face looked up as I approached.

"I'm looking for Vic."

"That's me," she said. "Justin?"

"Yeah," I said, trying not to voice my disappointment. I needed someone like George to get me in shape, not an aerobics queen. I hoped George's waiting list wasn't too long. "How does a girl get a name like Vic?"

"Short for Victoria." She shrugged. "You can call me either. Just don't call me Vicky. Can't stand that name."

She hopped up and motioned me to follow. After the dreaded weigh-in, she calculated my body fat percentage first with calipers and then with an electronic device I held in my hands. I think I maxed it out. Then she measured my biceps, my chest, my waist, and my legs. By the time we finished, my thirty-minute session was halfway over and I was impatient to start pumping iron.

"What's all this for?" I asked.

"We're setting a baseline," she explained. "Otherwise we can't measure progress." She looked at the numbers she'd collected and shook her head. "Besides, you won't last more than ten minutes."

"Gee, thanks."

Six minutes later I was drenched in sweat and staggering around in a haze of breathless agony, ready to drop dead on the floor. Victoria made me walk back and forth until the incredible pain in my body faded. I had pretty much lived down to her expectations. On the bench press I'd struggled to lift a meager hundred pounds. For back, shoulders, and legs, I'd performed about as well as a person with no muscles.

"It's normal to do crappy your first day in the gym," she said in a not-so-reassuring way. "A month from now you'll be doing much better."

"A month from now I'll be dead," I said, feeling as though I would keel over at any moment.

"Drink two gallons of water between now and tomorrow," she said. "I prepared a list of foods you can have. Stay away from everything else."

I glanced at the list: chicken breasts, wild-caught fishes, whole grains, and all the green vegetables I wanted. "I can't cook."

"It's easy. Just broil chicken breasts. Google for recipes and you'll be okay."

I wondered if there was anything Google couldn't help me with. "What about fat-free microwave dinners?"

"Absolutely not. Anything processed is crap. You know all the agony you went through today?"

"Yeah."

"Do you want it to be for nothing? I'm not lying when I say eighty percent of body composition is what you eat. Exercise can only do so much. Garbage in, garbage out."

I sighed. "Okay. I'll do whatever it takes."

She smiled, revealing straight white teeth. "See you Wednesday. Rest well until then."

I gulped what felt like a gallon of water from the water fountain before I left and still felt thirsty. I turned to leave so my fat bottom wouldn't keep other parched souls from enjoying a drink and plowed into a cute girl in tight gym shorts and a yellow tank top that adhered to the kinds of curves men drooled over. "Sorry," I muttered, trying to get out of her way.

"You are rather hardcore," she said in a very proper British accent. "It is quite awesome, dude."

"That's me," I said. "Zero to hardcore in ten minutes." I wondered if she was making fun of me or if the British naturally had issues using the words "dude" and "awesome".

She laughed, deep throated, sexy, and hormone-sizzling. Compact but muscular and a little shorter than me, she wore her yellow blonde hair in a tight bun. Her skin was pale but slightly flushed. If she'd been working out, it didn't show. Not even a sheen of sweat glistened on her body.

"I'm Stacey." She held out her hand.

I took it, noticing how warm it felt. "I'm Justin."

"You are quite the handsome one," she said and ran a finger up my arm.

My hackles rose. My vision snapped like someone had put a picture on a rubber band, pulled it taut, and let it go. Two Staceys looked back at me and then my eyes lost focus. I massaged my forehead and rubbed my eyes under my glasses, trying to ward off the inevitable headache.

"Are you quite all right?"

I pinched the bridge of my nose and opened my eyes. The dizziness faded and my eyesight returned. I looked into her amber eyes. Her pupils weren't round. They were vertical slits. I massaged my eyelids again, convinced my eyesight had gone crazy. "Just a headache," I said. "Must be allergies."