Planet Thiccness was in the center of town and the name was on the sign in chrome letters that caught the morning sun. I stood outside for a second. Planet Thiccness. Sure. I went in.
The main floor was open. Weights along one wall, benches, a rack of dumbbells, a cable machine that looked older than me. Mirrors everywhere. The floors were rubberized and the air smelled like sweat and disinfectant and the faintest trace of rubber from the mats. A guy was doing curls in the corner with headphones on. A woman in her fifties was on a treadmill reading a magazine. And at the bench press, directly in front of me, a kid about my age was pushing weight with an enthusiasm that his form did not deserve.
Kevin Cockburn. Brown skin, big build, wider than me by a margin that was embarrassing even before I'd stepped on a scale. He was pressing what looked like a plate on each side with his elbows flared out to ninety degrees and his back arched so far off the bench you could fit a cat under it. He racked the bar with a clang and sat up grinning.
"Hey! You new? I haven't seen you in here before."
"First time," I said.
"Sick. I'm Kevin." He stuck out a hand. His grip was exactly as strong as his arms suggested it would be. "Dude, this place is awesome. They've got everything. Weights, Muay Thai in the back, yoga studio-" He lowered his voice like he was sharing state secrets. "Bro. You should feel my glutes. I've been doing hip thrusts for like three weeks and they are rock solid."
"Maybe later."
"For real though. Touch them."
"I'm good, Kevin."
He shrugged, unbothered. "Your loss, man. So what are you trying to work? Chest? Back? I do chest-back-legs-chest-back-legs, no rest days, but some people say that's too much. I say those people have weak glutes."
"Chest is fine."
He set me up on the bench. I lay back. The bar was above me, silver, knurled grip, just the bar, no plates. Forty-five pounds of empty bar. In my old life I'd warm up with a plate on each side.
I unracked it. The weight hit my arms and my wrists dipped and I brought it down to my chest and pushed. It went up. Barely. My arms wobbled at the top and I locked out and the mirror on the wall showed me exactly what I looked like: a skinny kid pressing an empty bar with the intensity of a man fighting for his life.
"Good rep, bro!" Kevin was spotting with his hands hovering under the bar. "Keep your elbows tighter. There you go."
I did another. Worse. The third was ugly. The fourth my right arm lagged behind my left and the bar tilted and Kevin's hands came under it and straightened it for me.
"Two more. Come on. Push."
Five. Six. The sixth was Kevin helping more than me pressing. I racked it and lay there breathing and my arms were shaking and the mirror was still showing me a kid who looked like he'd never touched a weight before because he hadn't, even though the person inside him had been benching two-twenty-five for years.
This body had nothing. The arms were thin, the chest was flat, and my cardiovascular conditioning was whatever you get from walking to school and playing video games. Seven push-ups yesterday in PE. Six bench reps with the empty bar today. The numbers were pathetic but they were mine and they were the starting line.
"You did great, man," Kevin said. He was being genuine. "Seriously, first time? That's a solid base. We'll get you pressing plates in no time. You just gotta show up. That's like ninety percent of it."
"I'll show up."
"That's what I'm talking about!" He clapped me on the shoulder hard enough to rock me forward on the bench. "I'm here every morning. Come find me. We'll get you huge."
I did two more sets. They were worse than the first. Kevin spotted every rep and cheered every shaky lockout and he was the most aggressively positive person I'd ever met. He wasn't faking it, either. He just liked being in the gym and wanted everyone else to like it too and he didn't have a single layer of irony about any of it. In the game he'd been a side character I clicked through to advance the training sequence. In person he was a good dude who talked too much about his glutes and didn't know how to position his elbows and had zero complications about anything.
Between my third and fourth set I looked up and the wall at the back of the gym was glass.
Through the glass was the yoga studio. Hardwood floors, mirrors, mats arranged in rows. A class was in session. A woman at the front was demonstrating a pose and the students were following and one of them was in downward dog and her leggings were doing exactly what leggings do in downward dog and her hair was loose and brown and hanging between her arms and I was looking at the curve of her spine and the stretch of her hamstrings and the shape of her ass in those leggings from across a room and through a pane of glass and my hands had stopped gripping the bar.
"Bro? You okay?"
The bar was resting on my chest. Kevin's hands were under it, holding most of the weight. I hadn't noticed it coming down.
"Fine." I pushed the bar up. Kevin helped. I racked it. "Just distracted."
Kevin glanced at the glass wall. Looked at the yoga class. Looked back at me. Blinked once, slow.
"Anna's class is Thursdays," he said. "She's cool. You should try yoga."
"Yeah. Maybe."
Anna. The girl in the game who taught yoga and walked her dog in the park and asked for hands-on assistance with her poses. She was through that glass wall in leggings and a sports bra and she was real and she was flexible and I needed to stop looking at her ass and finish my workout.
I did one more set. It was terrible. Kevin spotted every rep. The yoga class ended and the women filed out of the studio and Anna walked past the glass wall with a water bottle in one hand and a towel around her neck and she was pretty in person, brown hair, brown eyes, fit without being hard about it, and she smiled at someone I couldn't see and the smile was easy and warm and then she was gone and I was lying on a bench covered in sweat holding an empty bar.
Kevin bumped my fist when I was leaving. "Same time tomorrow?"
"Same time tomorrow."
I walked to the park. Summerville was small enough that everything was a walk away, which was good because I didn't have a car or money for a bus or really money for anything. The afternoon was warm and the streets had that summer emptiness of a town where most people were inside or at the beach and the sidewalks were mine.
The park was what the wiki had described: a green space with benches and a fountain and a big tree in the middle. The fountain had a cross built into the basin. There was a spot under the tree where the grass was worn flat from people sitting. The rap battle corner was at the far end, empty now because the battles happened at night. I'd be back.
A guy was sitting on the left bench. Skinny, hood up despite the heat, fidgeting with his phone. Pilly. The drug dealer. I knew because the game had a character on that bench who sold product and connected to the Crystal-Roxxy meth subplot and this guy looked exactly like what I'd expected: twitchy, watchful, someone who made money from other people's bad decisions.
I sat on a bench across from the fountain and listened to the water and planned.
The gym was going to be daily. Kevin was there every morning and he'd spot me and I'd grind through reps until I caught up to what I needed to be. Strength was the foundation. The game gated half its content behind physical stats and I wasn't getting past any of them at zero.
Charisma was next. Rap battles in this park, at night. I wasn't a rapper. I wasn't even a good talker in my old life. I was a good looker and a good reader of women and the confidence came from the body, not the words. But the game said rap battles trained Charisma, so I'd rap. The absurdity of it was a separate problem.
Dexterity needed panties. I didn't have panties. The Muay Thai trainer in the back room of the gym charged them as currency and I was not going to think too hard about why because the game logic was the game logic and this world ran on it even if it didn't make sense.
Intelligence needed a working PC and two hundred dollars. I had a broken PC and zero dollars. That one would wait.
Money was the unlock for everything else, and money came from Tony's Pizzeria once I got a delivery job. I'd go tomorrow.
I sat on the bench and the fountain made its fountain sounds and the sun was warm on my face and Pilly was still on the left bench and somewhere in this town Debbie was in a house she couldn't afford and Jenny was behind a locked door she didn't want opened and thirty-something women were going about their lives with no idea that the skinny kid on the park bench knew all their names and half their secrets and couldn't bench the bar.
I stood up. My arms ached from the gym. My legs ached from yesterday's PE. Everything ached and I was eighteen and this was Day 2 and I had a long way to go.
The walk home took ten minutes. Tammy's curtains were open as I passed Erik's house and she was on the sofa in yoga pants reading a book and the late-afternoon light was on her hair and the coconut was probably there even though I couldn't smell it from the sidewalk.
I went home. Debbie was cooking dinner. The house smelled like garlic and something baking.
"How was your day, sweetie?"
"Good. Went to the gym."
She smiled. Less wrong today. Almost right.
I went upstairs. Took a shower. The hot water hit my sore muscles and I stood under it until the ache dulled and I stopped thinking about anything.
Day 2. Strength: barely above zero. Everything else: zero.
I turned off the water. Got dressed. Went downstairs. Ate dinner. Went to bed.
Tomorrow I'd start on the money.