Jake’s Dream Come True
By Billy_Ray77
Chapter Three
Mike had come home with me after school, stayed for dinner but went home early. I was sitting in my back yard hoping Samantha would show up and thinking about my ‘armor.’ It had worked perfectly in that it had kept anything from making contact with me. But I couldn’t do anything about the whole mass and momentum thing. I supposed that if I were backed up against a building I could anchor my shield to that... but I couldn’t count on that every time.
Actually, the more I thought about it the more relieved I became. I really hadn’t thought it through. If it had worked the way I had wanted it to it would have looked odd. Shit, it would have looked absolutely freaky. Since my reactions seemed to be faster, I decided that I would start working out – enough so I didn’t look like a total weakling. Then I could always appear to be fighting normally but my opponent wouldn’t be able to hurt me and with my strikes backed up by the force of my telekinesis anyone dumb enough to challenge me would be in for a big surprise.
“Hey, Jake.” Came the pleasant quip a split second before the thought entered my head that Samantha hoped I wasn’t embarrassed by her having saved my ass this afternoon. A lot of guys would have had their pride hurt, having a girl come to their rescue, but it never bothered me. I make overtures to pride of course; I never groveled or begged to not get beat up. For some reason, in my mind, getting the crap beat out of me by some thug twice my size was nowhere near as humiliating as begging that thug not to beat me up. Of course, I wasn’t a masochist – once the beating started, anything I could do to shorten its duration or if someone or something intervened, well, I took whatever I could get.
“Hey, Sam. Have a seat. Thanks for this afternoon.” I added to allay her concerns.
She plopped down in the lawn chair across the table from me. If I tilted my head just right the umbrella shaft perfectly dissected her face – but I didn’t want anything in the way of her angelic features. She was once again wearing loose fitting clothes and I didn’t know if it was because of the cool evening or if she was keeping to her promise to not display her body to me.
“Well they were doing it because of what I did, why didn’t you tell them that you didn’t talk to the cops?”
“Wouldn’t have done any good.”
“They might have believed it. If they knew you like I do then they would’ve known that you would never do anything logical like call the cops.” She said chuckling. “But then, if they knew you like I do they wouldn’t be beating you up, they would be asking you for help with their homework.”
As she spoke I knew that she still felt guilty about instigating another beating for me. I couldn’t tell her that it hadn’t hurt one bit.
“You know, I’ve decided I’m not taking it anymore. I asked mom if she would buy me a weight machine and I’m gonna start taking self defense classes.” Mom had agreed and I didn’t even have to use my power. If I were to start winning fights I needed to look like it was at least a possibility that I could do so, besides looking more masculine would also help my other plan.
“Jake, you don’t have do all that. For one thing stop being such a smart ass and you wouldn’t bring so much of this on yourself.”
“I get beat up anyway. At least my way I get some sort of moral victory out of it. But I’ve decided that college isn’t going to be like high school. I’m not going to be everyone’s punching bag anymore.”
“You certainly don’t compromise much do you? When you decide on a course of action its balls to the walls and take no prisoners. I’d worry about you, but with your determination I think I had better worry about the other guys instead.”
I was still getting messages from her mind and she did indeed think that whatever I set my mind to, I would be able to accomplish – in spades. It heartened me to know that a woman as confident and capable as Samantha held me in such esteem.
I had decided it was time to start ‘Project Samantha’, as I had named it, so while she talked I began focusing my thoughts, reviewing my plan. I wasn’t going mess around with her emotions, how she felt about me as a person since my new power had told me that she all but loved me already. What needed to be changed was how she viewed me. I felt that if she were physically attracted to me then a romantic situation was inevitable. I was, however, concerned that if she suddenly changed her opinion of me overnight then she may get confused or even suspicious, so the plan I had was to slowly change her opinion. It gave me a buffer and made it more likely that my meddling wouldn’t be discovered. For an eventual romantic connection with Samantha I would wait for a lot longer than my current plan would take. Hell, I had been waiting years as it was, and that was without hope that the situation would change.
I sent «Jake has attractive eyes» as the first of many adjustments. I would give her this suggestion several times per day for the next week then assess the progress. If the assessment proved positive then I would move on, if it still hadn’t taken, then I would increase the frequency until it did.
That was when I noticed that she was looking at me with puzzlement. I realized that I had been staring at her, without saying a word, for quite a bit longer than would be normal. It must have appeared that I had drifted off into a daydream in the middle of our conversation. Crap. I wasn’t picking up anything anymore and was concerned that she might think that I was having a sexual fantasy about her. I tried to make it look as though I was lost in thought.
“You know, I was just thinking that you took an awful chance intervening like that today. Thad and those guys could have hurt you pretty bad.”
She continued to stare at me for several more seconds and I was beginning to think that she was daydreaming when she responded with a start.
“They wouldn’t dare touch me.” She snorted, “if those guys got rough with a cheerleader, or any girl, as far as that goes, they would be ostracized. Popularity is far too important to those weenies.”
“Well, I hope you’re right, because now they know that you talked to the cops. You should be careful, you know, just in case.”
We talked long into the evening and I didn’t get any more images from her mind. A few times that night, when she thought I wasn’t looking I caught her watching me with a small smile on her face and it filled my heart with gladness to see her enjoying our time together. But then, I suppose that if she didn’t like it we wouldn’t do it so often.
My plan worked better than I hoped. By the time the week was out she was watching my eyes a lot more. At first I wondered if maybe it was because she was trying to catch me ogling her, but the look in her eyes didn’t reflect that sort of sentiment. I noticed that during our evening discussions, where before we would often sit side by side or back to back watching the stars, she now began positioning herself in such a way that she could look me in the face without moving too much. Finally I caught the thought that she considered my eyes to be dreamy.
My next adjustment was that she would like my hair. It didn’t have much body and pretty much just hung there. I suspected my suggestions were working when she decided that I needed help in that area and after several failed attempts to style it herself she escorted me to a hair salon in the mall and spent considerable time with the stylist deciding what to do with my incorrigible sandy locks.
By Halloween I was working on what I considered to be the hardest part. Making her believe that my face was attractive. I wasn’t horribly disfigured or anything but my sharp angular features were generally not considered handsome. This was going to take some time so I had planned to give her at least three weeks of conditioning before going on to the next step.
The working out was beginning to show and while I wasn’t bulking up as quickly as I had hoped, I did have a bit of tone and some definition. I felt better too. The bullies were leaving me alone (Thad and his crew weren’t the only ones) and that was probably due mostly to the fact that my hobby of being a smart ass had taken a back seat to my Project Samantha. But like I told her, the bullies didn’t always wait for me to give them a reason.
I was eating lunch. Mike had stayed to ask his teacher some questions after class and was still in line getting his lunch so I was alone at the last table in the cafeteria, when Dan and his bunch of plug uglies showed up. Dan wasn’t a jock like Thad. He and his friends were druggies, meth freaks and equal opportunity bullies. They would strong arm people for money, be loud and obnoxious with stuff only they thought was funny and basically do their best to piss off as many people as possible.
It was the day everyone was supposed to wear their Halloween costume to school but I had foregone that particular tradition for this year. It never mattered anyway, dressed up or not; someone was going to give me shit. Last year I dressed up as a mad scientist (complete with a dry ice smoke generator in my backpack – it was pretty cool, or so I thought) and got beat up twice.
“Nice costume dude… I mean dweeb… I mean dweeb-dude.” Dan broke up at his own joke and his crew followed suit. Apparently they had been out in the parking lot drinking (and/or whatever else) their lunch.
“He must be dressed as Nerdy McNerdston.” Said Jimmy, Dan’s best friend. They all laughed uproariously at that one.
Just as the laughter was settling down the newest member, a freshman named Paul tried putting his two cents in, “But that mask is really over the top.”
It was an old and worn out jibe for this time of year and they all stared at him for a second or two in silence and then Dan spoke.
“Okay, that wasn’t too bad, we can give the punk some props for that.” He clapped and they all laughed again.
I had been anticipating this and even planning for it, but at that moment I really wasn’t in a ‘revenge’ state of mind. Besides, I had begun to think that using my advantages to beat people up, made me no better than the bullies themselves.
“Say Dan, how about we skip this today? I’m really not in the mood.”
“Oh, so the little dork isn’t in the mood? Gosh fellas, the dork isn’t in the mood. Maybe we should just go away.”
“I don’t know Dan,” chimed in Pete, one of his more violent followers, “what would people think? I mean, here you go to all the trouble of teasing this fucker and then you just walk away? You do have a rep to protect.”
I looked sardonically across the table at Pete, “Thanks, you’re a big help.” I wished my power of suggestion worked instantly – I could put a stop to this now.
“He has a point.” Added Dan sarcastically, “look, I’ll do you a favor. Since you’re not in the mood, how about this?” With that he reached over the table and flipped my tray into my lap. I jumped out of my seat faster than I thought I could have and only got a little on my pants. He was not dissuaded, “Does that help your mood any… Dork?”
“No big deal, this will wash right out.”
The new guy was apparently desperate to make his bones and came around to my side of the table, picking up what was left of my chocolate milk he poured it down the front of my blue and white button down short-sleeved shirt.
“How about that, dork? Think that’ll wash right out?”
Part of me got angry, but another part felt bad. The kid didn’t get much respect from the others and what was about to happen wasn’t going to help. The part of me that felt bad suggested that I should go easy with him. The other part of me remembered being victimized by jerks like this since second grade and said, ‘Fuck him.’
I armored up and pushed him backwards without adding any telekinetic power.
The others smiled.
“Get him, Pauly.” Encouraged Dan, “show him why that was stupid.”
Paul wound up and threw a powerful punch that ended up missing my face by a fraction of an inch as I barely managed to pull my head back in time. He may have been young but was no stranger to fighting and when his right didn’t connect he followed up with a quick left. That one connected and my head snapped to the side as I tried to roll with it.
He was experienced in fighting but it seemed he made too many assumptions when fighting those weaker than him. He must have been used to following through until he connected then he expected I would either drop to the ground or try to get away because he hesitated and that gave me time to recover.
In my fantasy about this I would duck and dodge punches aimed at me until I saw an opening then break out like Jet Lee with hands and feet flying, each blow backed up by a telekinetic boost. Well, I had an opening but didn’t know what to do. For a split second I was totally confused and then reacted more out of reflex than anything.
Having been on the receiving end of plenty of kicks and punches I knew that, at least in my opinion, a good shot to the solar plexus or the pit of the stomach were by far the most deadly – so that’s what I did. I had practiced enough that the boost was added almost automatically and my punch to his stomach dropped him like a sack of wet cement.
Dan looked over at Jimmy, “I thought you said he wasn’t a pussy.”
“Well he looked tough every other time I saw him fight.”
By this time Pete was coming around the table. I knew his favorite thing was to put me in a bear hug, lift my feet off the ground then throw me down, sometimes coming with me to try and twist off something important. As soon as he reached out for me I slid to the side and dropped a boosted hammer fist right on top of his head. He didn’t go completely unconscious but he definitely went bye-bye for a while because as soon as he hit the ground he rolled over to sit up and then looked around confused.
By then Jimmy was coming around the table to my right and Dan was coming around to my left. I turned to my right and stepped in to meet Jimmy. Before he could do anything I quickly threw my right hand out and hit him with my palm right on his nose. With the armored boost it was more like getting speared with a two-by-four. His nose flattened against his face and he dropped, landing on top of the still groaning Paul. There was already a copious amount of blood flowing. That’s when Dan got to me and he must have punched me in the back of my head because the next thing I knew I was tumbling over Jimmy and Paul.
I scrambled to my feet and tried to put some distance between us by running around the table. Dan jumped up on the table and launched himself at me. As he tackled me I grabbed him partly with my arms but mostly with Telekinesis and we spun to the floor. I landed on top and made sure he hit the ground hard enough to knock the wind out of him. Just to be safe I caused the armor covering my chest to rapidly pulse out and compress his chest just as he hit.
I stood up and stepped back in case any of them were able to get up and try something else. Looking around I saw the entire cafeteria whooping and clapping as the principal, Mr. Wilbur came in and moved quickly to my table. Observing the four boys on the floor he looked around.
“Who did this?”
“I did, Mr. Wilbur.”
He looked at me incredulously. “Jake! I’ve never known you to try and cover for someone else before.”
“Well, no, I don’t think I ever… Hey! Seriously, I did this.”
Before he could respond Samantha approached us. Radiant as always, she was wearing a loose fitting white blouse tucked into the narrow waistband of her tight faded blue jeans. Her red hair fell in loose ringlets down her back and across her shoulders with just a few locks laying on the front of her shirt where her lovely chest pushed out the lacy fabric.
“I saw it Mr. Wilbur. They started messing with him and when they got rough he took ‘em out. He told me he was taking self defense classes, I guess they worked.”
She was speaking to Mr. Wilbur but most of her attention was on me. Dan and his crew were on their feet by now but still showing a good bit of wear and tear. Mr. Wilbur made them stick around.
“Well, miss Ridley, your word is good enough for me,” he looked to the four thugs, “you boys come with me to see the nurse,” he looked at me again, “if you want to do anything about this, come to my office later.”
He led them away and Samantha came to stand next to me as we watched them leave. She stood close, her arm pressed against mine. I could almost feel electricity surging between us at the point of contact.
My breath quickened slightly and my knees went a little weak. I desperately wanted to turn to her, abandon myself to my deepest feelings and take her in my arms. Kiss her passionately and declare my never-ending love and devotion to her.
“So, are you going to do it?” she asked.
“I…” had I inadvertently said that out loud... in my head? … Or something... “Wait, do what?”
She looked at me quizzically.
“Are you going to go to his office? What else would I be talking about?”
“Oh… uhm… nothing… No, I’m not going. They’ll leave me alone from now on.”
“For what its worth, I think you should.” She turned towards me, “I also think,” She turned to me and took hold of my arm just above the elbow, “that you were very impressive.”
I felt my face grow hot, I couldn’t think of anything to say. I had imagined this moment a million times, and I was always suave and witty. But I couldn’t even remember how to talk, never mind what words to say.
“I guess I won’t have to worry about you anymore.”
“I,” I croaked, then paused, cleared my throat and continued, “I don’t mind, I like it when you worry about me.” Oh Shit! Stupid much?
“Yeah,” she said with a smile and quick squeeze to my arm, “I suppose I do too.” She then turned and walked away. She was quickly joined by her prettiest cheerleader friend.
“Sam… what’s with the geek again?”
“Shut it, Tiffany.”
That was all I heard before they walked out of range.
I stood there for a long time. People passed by me, some ignored me as usual but some slapped me on the back and said a word or two. I didn’t hear any of it; I didn’t feel any of it. The only thing I knew was Samantha’s smile. She had smiled at me before but this time it was different. There was something else there. I don’t know what it was but that smile just felt different. I didn’t so much walk to class after lunch as I floated. But, by the end of the day I had half convinced myself that I was just imagining it.
I also considered my fight with Dan’s crew. I hadn’t wanted it and I had been right that such a victory wouldn’t feel as good as I had anticipated. Beating them up just because I could didn’t make me any different than them. With my powers I should be able to figure out a way to avoid physical confrontations.
I was still contemplating my options when Samantha met me on my back patio that night and I took a break from my karmic musings and continued my planned conditioning during our small talk.