Chapter 111: So far out of Everyone's League
As expected, the worst moment of the day was after school when I had to tell the Cheerleading Squad that I was quitting. I hated to lie to them, but the only thing I could think to tell them that had any credibility was that all the jumping and stunts would hurt my new boobs. They were all so understanding and sympathetic that I started to cry. I hated myself for telling them something so completely apart from the truth, and my crying was only reinforcing my story, so I felt even worse about that.
I left as quickly as I could. Fortunately, my wonderful friends Jim, Bud and Neeka were waiting to console me and walk me home. Their support and understanding made the unbearable bearable. Bud again carried my books and Neeka walked with her arm around me.
After a couple of blocks, I felt better. I even remembered to ask Jim and Bud why it seemed that the other boys had been avoiding me when I expected just the opposite.
They looked back and forth at each other before Jim answered.
"I think it's that you are so gorgeous that they are afraid to try to talk to you. I mean, you are so far out of everyone's league that it just isn't funny, you know."
I was still puzzled. I asked, "But why am I 'out of their league'? I'm the same girl I was last week. Well, three weeks ago. Well... maybe I'm not." I thought about all the changes that I had been through in the past month and especially over the last weekend. Had I changed that much? I had figured that it was just my new breasts that made me different, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized that I had changed in just about every way it was possible to change.
Physically? That was the obvious part. Mirrors had become an essential part of my life. Without them I simply could not see the lower two-thirds of my body. Yes, they are that big.
Mentally? Certainly. And not just the powers that I was still learning about. I had changed in some fundamental way as a result of the pain I had undergone and the trials I had been through. I had goals and responsibilities that I had never even dreamed of having before. I had done things that I had only seen in the movies or read about in fantasy novels. I had gone from being a prisoner of my mother's psychosis to being a heroine. It was still a heady feeling to think of myself that way.
Sexually? Last week I was a virgin. Since then I had made love to members of both sexes. The girls were great. Bud was fantastic. If that wasn't a profound change I didn't know what would be.
Emotionally? I felt like I had grown more emotionally than any other way. The things I thought were important to me before seemed absurdly trivial now. Cheerleading was the best example. Before, being on the squad was the high point of my life. Today, I had walked away from it as not being relevant to who I was or what I needed or wanted. I had to choose between spending time jumping and shouting in front of hundreds of fans to whom I was merely side-line entertainment, or learning the skills that would enable me to save lives and protect others from harm. The comparison struck me as funny and I laughed. Neeka smiled and hugged me around the shoulders as we walked. She had probably been following my thoughts and knew what made me laugh. When I looked at her, she nodded. Finding Neeka, more than anything else that had happened to me had had the greatest affect on who I was becoming. You have no idea what it's like to know that the person next to you knows every thought that goes through your head. If they don't run away screaming in terror it validates you as a person. It tells you that you are one of the good-guys, not some crazy wacko who should be in a padded room in a quiet facility away from normal folks. Neeka knew me. The real me. As long as she stayed with me I knew I was a good person. That knowledge made all the difference in the world.
I was a new person all the way through. I was so relaxed around other people that I was making a new friend every day. More than one a day, if I counted Sheriff Bob. I decided not to count him as a friend yet, though. He was a business associate. To him, I was a politically-convenient resource he could call on to pull his ass out of hot water. Already, if not for me he would probably be bound and gagged in the trunk of his own car, wondering if his SWAT team would shoot him or his wife while trying to bag his kidnapper. I did have that advantage in our relationship; someone who called themselves his friend might promise to come to his aide when he needed them. I had already come to his rescue in the dark of night without even knowing who he was. He said he always paid his debts; and that one would be accruing interest for a while.
The main difference was that I wasn't the slightest bit scared of people any more. Knowing that you can't really be hurt has a way of liberating you. I tried to remember the last time I had been intimidated by someone, but the only one I could recall was my mother — my biological mother. Even she had lost her hold on me. Once I understood her, our roles had reversed and I had become more concerned with her well-being than she with mine.
Bubba and Leon had scared me at first, but it was more over what they might do to my friends and family before I could stop them. Once I knew I was strong enough to beat them, they held no real terror for me. If those two didn't scare me, then there wasn't likely to be much walking around on two legs that could. Knowing that I could pound someone into sand if they pissed me off bad enough had a great deal of influence on how I related to people.
Weekly Power Status
-- Power
Ranking 
-- Power
stone