A Starr is Born Pt 4
Reworked by Wendy C from
a story written by Mistress X.

The next morning I realized I didn't have enough room for all of this new stuff in my bags. Well, it wasn't like my old clothes were any good to me anymore anyway. What had once been a shirt that hugged tightly around my chest was now a tent, and I had little choice but to consign them to the hotel's lost and found.

I finally changed into one of those damnable workout suits, the blue and white one, but I covered it with my home-made shorts and one of my new white Ts, and waited for Jerry to pick me up for the last time.

I packed my bags into his car and he took me to the stadium. I carried my stuff through the parking lot in the crisp morning air and found the same bus Cassidy had brought me to the day before.

Rapping twice on the door I stood and waited and it finally swung open. There before me was the same brown eyed bombshell blond that I'd spied on in the shower a few weeks before. She was taller than me now and was currently wearing a set of lacy pyjamas.

"Oh, hey," said Violet groggily. "You must be the new girl we’re expecting?"

"I'm the new bunk-mate... I guess," I answered uneasily.

"Oh well, come on in," she said with her exaggerated drawl. "I'm Dotti, but everyone calls me Violet."

"We've met before," I pointed out.

"Have we?" she questioned. "I don't remember you."

"Violet you idiot," said Cassidy through the curtain to the bunks. "You've been told about her condition."

"Oh shucks," said Violet. "Of course I know. Remember it's just the character I do."

"It's half a character," Cassidy jibbed.

"You can call me Sam I guess," I said. "Sam Starr is the name they gave me."

"Anyway, come on," Cassidy called out to me. "You get the bottom bunk on the right side, and you can put your stuff in the right closet," She came through the curtain and looked over at Violet. "And you need to get dressed. There ain’t anybody here that’s going to want to look at that."

After I got my stuff moved in we headed in to where the gym was set up, we wouldn't have to use the ring today, which was fine by me because I was finally able to get back to weight training. I stepped up to the free-weight rack, lamenting the lost progress on my now scrawny arms. I looked at myself and sighed. I wasn't so foolish as to think I could go right back to using 70 pound dumbbells, I'd probably never be able to use those again. Deciding to be more conservative, I elected to start with 30. I grasped one of the 30 pound weights from the rack and pulled upward.

"Casey, what are you..." Jerry began.

I heard a pop, and felt a sharp pain in my shoulder………. Then I screamed like a banshee.

"What the hell am I going to do with you?" groused Mike as he sat across his desk from where Jerry and I were sitting. I now had my arm in a sling and was holding an ice pack to my shoulder. "Been back in the gym for less than two weeks, and it's already hurt itself three times. It even had to go to the hospital for pity sake. Jerry if I didn't know better I'd have to ask if you knew what you were doing."

"Relax. Mike," Jerry insisted. "People get hurt in this business all the time, you're not liable."

"That's not the point god dammit!" Mike slapped his desk hard. "I gotta make use of this talent, you understand me? The executives are making me use it, I've got to make that work and you're not making it any easy here."

I really wanted to tell Mike to stop calling me “it”, but quite frankly I wasn't keen about him saying the alternative.

"Look, Mike," said Jerry. "It's an adjustment period. This first month or so was always gonna be the roughest. But there's a lot more to work with here than if you pulled some raw kid off the street. Hell, she knows more than any wrestling school graduate you're ever gonna find. It's the body she’s having trouble with, that’s all. She's gotta get back into shape. Trust me, it'll all work out by the time she's scheduled to go back in the spotlight."

"You know I have other responsibilities here right?" Mike huffed. "I've got two shows to book this week, the weekly show here in Buffalo, and the pay-per-view in Manhattan. That's one of the biggest shows of the year. I gotta keep this whole circus organized, and I don't have time to be holding yours or her hand, and I don't have the patience to have you disrupting the whole gym every five minutes. I've got no choice but to let you get it in shape, but please, Jerry, no more headaches for me. Alright?"

By the time we were back in the gym, and I was allowed to work on my remaining good arm, Jerry was already hammering into me the adjustments to my workout, lifting technique in particular.

"Look, Casey," he said, "you're never gonna be able to recreate the body you used to have. You don't have the T levels anymore and you can't take in the calories. Look over there," he pointed across the gym to where Luke Power was working out with a barbell that weighed more than I ever did, and next to him was a 98 pound trainer with a clip-board, who looked like he was about one sandwich above blowing away in the wind. "You have to understand, that from here on out, there's a much bigger difference in testosterone levels between you and that trainer, than between that trainer and Luke.

You just can't lift what you used to, and you can't put on the mass you used to have. Besides which the execs wouldn't like it even if you could. So what we're gonna do right now is to focus on wire strength. Let's get you fit enough to earn the pay check then we'll worry about making you look good for the hard-cam. So, let's stop acting like we're slipping on some beach muscles. I want you to pick up something lighter, something lighter than even your first instinct, and we're gonna do two or three times as many reps with it as you’re used to."

It's impossible to describe the kind of disappointment I felt, not entirely due to its depths. No, it was different. This was something I'd been looking forward to, but on some level I already expected to be let down. I had been lying to myself and not very convincingly, true to form. I wanted to reach for the 15lb, but I heeded what Jerry had suggested and reluctantly picked up a 10lb.

"Okay, now pump it, nice and smooth," Jerry instructed.

I started curling.

"A little slower," he said. This was a little humiliating, but it was surprisingly heavy. By no means was it giving me the kind of strain I was used to, but it was still offering more resistance than I would have guessed. By the twelfth rep it was actually starting to burn, but Jerry pushed me to the full 20. After that we moved on to leg curls, which were easier, and I did a full set of 30 before Jerry had me lie on the floor doing sit-ups.

Then it was back to the free weights for another 20, this time though he made me extend my arm over my head at the top of each curl, which added a lot more to the workout. That's how it went for a long time, rotating around different body parts long enough to give one a rest, then start over. I was pretty wobbly by the end of it in truth. "You look pretty wiped out," Jerry remarked.

"No problem" I said, my what I hesitate to call, bicep quivering. He knew what he was talking about, but I couldn't very well admit to being wrecked by a workout like this. I had to preserve what little pride I had left.

"Good. Then you can hit the treadmill."

I stifled a moan.

"Gotta get that stamina up to snuff too."

I practically crawled back into the bus and fell onto the couch. At least it was a show night, and the girls were working, so I had the place all to myself. I looked up and saw my pitiful reflection in the black TV screen across the little room.

"Channel 818," I commanded, and the TV turned on. The camera was panning over a crowd of people who I could hear as a faint buzz from where I was laying. It focused in on the ring, and a set of dancing spotlights to keep people's attention before the live show started. After that it cut to the commentators, who were busy hyping up the matches on the card for the night, as well as 'speculating' on what consequences those matches would have on the PPV in Manhattan. You always have to bring up the big money show. I didn't have much else to do, or the will to do much else, so I just settled in and watched.

The first match was the debut for those couple of nothing guys, fresh out of developmental, that we'd been fighting over the practice ring with. They were still raw and pretty meh. They hadn't developed any personalities to speak of and were pretty interchangeable as far as I was concerned, so I didn't really care who won, not that that really mattered anyway.

The next match was Cassidy teaming up with another girl named Ruby against Terri Vixen, and Bella Donna. They all had experience, but Donna, fresh off of a face turn, couldn't play the good-guy to save her life. All in all it was solid. Cassidy finished it up with a top rope leg drop for the go home spot, and went over. That is to win, in layman's terms.

After that they cut to commercial and came back to a back-stage interview section where they asked the queen bitch herself Angel Madison how she thought the last match went, which she used as an opportunity to talk herself up and hype her own match later on the card, and again, the PPV.
Nothing to complain about really, it was her job and she did it well enough. It was probably pretty easy to do since her actual personality was so close to her character.

Next up was actually a pretty good match. It was a “No Holds Barred” match between Kurt Robins, and Black Hat McCoy, two past their prime ring generals who never had much charisma, but had enough experience between the ropes to pull off the really dangerous looking moves safely, which was really the point of the no holds barred gimmick. These two could do pile drivers and brain busters all day without worrying about anybody actually getting hurt. It was a real piece of work and I was really more interested in the good ring psychology and professional work than who won or lost. I had to admit, it was good booking on Mike's part. He'd really utilized their strengths to their fullest.

Now we were moving up the card, with the first real feud match of the night. Violet was announced, followed by Angel, carrying that gaudy as hell pink strap they called a Ladies' Title. Oh man I was not looking forward to having to be seen carrying that thing. At any rate, the match itself was nothing to write home about. It was non-title, just set-up for the title match at the PPV, which usually meant one thing, a gimmick finish. Sure enough, as soon as it looked like Violet had the upper hand, Angel roll through the middle rope and to the floor where she put on an 'I'm hurt' act a four year old could see through. She had to. Four year olds were supposed to. The only person who was supposed to be fooled was the ref.

Violet stood in the middle of the ring while the ref “checked on” Angel, when Miami Dawn emerged from under the ring with what looked to me like a wiffle-bat, smacked Violet in the head with it and ran off. Violet played dead. Of course the ref “didn't see any of it” and Angel “mysteriously recovered” just in time to jump back into the ring, so the ref could count to three. Never mind of course that Violet had suddenly gone from winning the match to unconscious, and that the bat was still lying in the middle of the ring!

Now the stakes were set up in the minds of the fans. "Oh Violet could have won if Angel hadn't cheated. What'll happen at the PPV?" Uhh. I happened to already know that Angel was going to retain her title at the PPV.

Then after another commercial break there was another backstage interview. This time it was to set up the main events of both tonight and the PPV in Manhattan, Luke Power vs Tsunami Akimoto. The ring reporter stood between Luke, who was giving his all-American golden boy shtick, and Genbo. Genbo was Akimoto's mouthpiece. Aki spoke English alright, but he wasn't quite fluent enough for mike work, which with the crooked manager going along with the strong silent heel, was a recipe as old as the pyramids. Ironically Genbo was a native born Hawaiian, so he actually played up the Japanese accent.

I wasn't really paying attention to what they were saying though. I was sort of zoning out. Had Power changed his gear? I couldn't put my finger on it but those little blue and red trunks looked particularly tight on him tonight, especially with those big, cut-marble columns he called thighs sticking out bare beneath them. Also when he talked, he would pump those huuuge boulders of biceps up and down his tree trunk arms. Wrestlers are taught to use a lot of body language in their promos, and he did. When he talked his colossal rock-hard pecs would flex, bouncing up and down the title belt he had resting on his shoulder, so that the strap would hang down and tickle that steel grill of out of this world abs he had. My fingers brushed lightly past my knee and rested on my thigh. They moved slowly, almost of their own accord, upward and inward, further, further...

Ka-chunk!

The door to the bus opened up and my hand snapped back like a bungee cord. "Hey," said Cassidy popping in from the night, back in her civvies, her hair still wet from the shower.

"Hi," I returned nervously, not fully conscious of what I'd been doing. "They uh, they didn't need you anymore tonight?"

"Nah. It was just one and done, so I showered and walked over," she said. "But I stopped by the catering table on the way out," She held up a paper plate full of cookies. I sat up and gave her some room to sit down, and she dropped down, stretching her back as she did. "Oh man. I know I hate losing, but damn, I kinda hate winning too."

"Nobody made you take the leg drop as a finisher," I remarked. "It's not conducive to a long career," as I sneaked a cookie.

"I know, I know," she confessed. "I gotta phase it out pretty soon," she popped her neck and then opened her eyes. "You actually watching this"

"Well, what else am I gonna do?" I asked.

"So how'd Violet do? Did she look good?" she inquired.

"She did alright," I said. "Your match was better."

"Oh I know Honey," she said smartly. "But I ain't a six foot blond with big tits, which is why I'm not in the title scene. And don't tell her I said this, but she ain't a six foot blond either. That girl's hair color
is about as natural as Angel's boobs."

"Well I'm not a six foot blond with big tits, and I have a guaranteed title coming up," I insisted.

"Yeah well I ain't a six foot blond, AND I ain't got an agent with some leverage," she said.

"Half the girls on the roster have boob jobs," I remarked.

"Way more than half Honey," she corrected, and munched a cookie. "The vast majority of us belong to the silicone squad, including yours truly. I just went more modest. I know which side my bread is buttered on," and she shimmied her hips a little. "Besides, I'm gonna have back problems as it is."

I giggled at that, honest to God, I did a genuine, stomach turning giggle. Cassidy smirked at it.

"Anyway," she handed the plate of cookies off to me, stood and stretched her back. "You think they'd let me renegotiate my contract if I faked an injury? If I'm gonna take this much pain, I'm gonna need to get paid more."

"I've looked into the injury thing," I said. "Believe me, I've looked. They have it covered solid. If anything it works in their favor."

"Poo," she said dropping back to the couch. She took another cookie. "So what are they doing now?"

"They're doing the tag-team feud," I answered. "But all the commentary is talking about is the main event."

"Right! Isn’t Aki supposed to jump Luke Power during his promo right?"

"Yeah," I answered. "He did it right after you came in. Now it's all “will Luke Power be in any shape for the main event match? Will he be in shape for the title defence in Manhattan? You know how it goes."

"Sometimes I wish I could find a bookie willing to take bets on pro-wrestling," she mused.

Ka-chunk

The door came open again and in came Violet. "Oh hey," she said as she saw us. "Oh, you're watching the show? Did I look good out there?"

"I'm sure you looked fine," Cassidy answered.

"So where are we?" Violet asked as she plopped down right between us and snatched a cookie.

"They're about to start the main event," I told her.

"Oh good," Violet nibbled on the cookie.

They introduced Akimoto first. He was a huge Japanese guy in black tights that had the image of one of those Japanese wood block paintings wrapped around the right leg. It was the one with the wave crashing over the mountain. He was a former legit sumo champion, that's not to say he was a tub of guts mind you. Yes, he had a barrel for a torso, but he was surprisingly fit and defined for a guy his size.

While he didn't have quite the same solid marble sets that Greek goddesses drool over rippling physique as Luke, and honestly who does? he did have the size to portray a convincing opponent for him. He also kept his hair up, kept it looking nice, because even though he was booked as a heel in North America, he was always a baby face in Japan, and he had to be able to play off the good guy. Quite honestly, I could see it.

No introduction was bothered with for Luke. In a bit of wrestling story telling, as soon as his music hit, he rushed down the ramp and to the ring, sporting a fake limp to sell the revenge angle from earlier in the night. He slid right into the ring and they began trading pulled punches, starting out not as a wrestling match, but as a brawl, already swinging before the bell rang. It was a good start. In an excellent bit of physical narrative, Aki repeatedly attacked Luke's faux injured leg to make him look cut-throat, and to give Luke some vulnerability. At any rate they got into a professional swing, really selling the hate for each other and soon it was a showcase of two big... sweaty… glistening... bulging... hunky bodies slamming into each other.

"Hey Sam," a voice called.

"Huh, eh, what?" I questioned.

"Sam?" Violet repeated.

"Yeah Violet, what?"

"Ain't Luke sexy?"

"Violet, don't ask her that," Cassidy berated.

"Will you introduce him to me?" Violet requested.

"Huh?" I said puzzled. "How should I? I don't know him. I only talked to him a couple times."

"Jerry's your trainer now right?" she said incredulously.

"Yeah."

"Well he's Luke's trainer too. He's the one who taught him to wrestle," Violet explained.

"Really?" Cassidy questioned.

"Yeah," said Violet. "I heard he's his uncle or something."

"Huh," said Cassidy. "I guess they do kinda look alike," She wasn't wrong, once I thought about it. Jerry did sort of resemble Luke, just fifteen years older, half a foot shorter and just as much narrower across the shoulders. Jerry was in good shape but Luke was... I bit my lip lightly.

In the end Genbo and Aki pulled some manager interference shenanigans and ended the match in a disqualification, thereby preserving the heat for the title match. The road crew tore down the ring that night and we were off, to the next exotic New England location, but we were all in our bunks by then, pretty tired from the day’s events.

I was lying in my bunk, feeling the road moving beneath me, and watching the lights moving across the curtain of my little sleeping pod. I had my good hand behind my head and I was thinking of the show, and the bouts, so that I couldn't help but feel like I actually wanted to get in the ring again.

Chapter Nine

The PPV (Pay per View) went on as planned. Angel retained the strap, there was some storyline gimmick that led to the tag-team titles being in contention thereby extending the feud, and Akimoto pinned Luke for the title after Genbo 'tasered' him while the ref was distracted. All I could do was sit in the bus and wait while everybody else was working.

When we got to Boston I was contacted by a lawyer and I had to miss a day of training so I could tape a deposition for James Phoenix’s trial. By the time the show went to Jacksonville I had to fly back to Cleveland to give testimony in person. My part therein was mercifully short. Sitting up there in front of people and staring across the courtroom at the face of the person I hated most in the world, without jumping out of my chair and strangling him in front of the judge, jury, and God himself, was the hardest thing I'd ever done. Fortunately I was only required for a few days, with the possibility of being called again, and I caught back up with the tour in Orlando.

It had been over a month now since James Phoenix had dosed me, and almost a month since my body stopped changing, on its own anyway. In that time I had regained considerable stamina and coordination and I was finally starting to put on the tiniest bit of muscle. It was still too soon for anything easily noticeable, but I could feel that the progress was underway. "So have you thought about a finisher yet?" Cassidy asked sitting beside me on the ring apron, toweling off the back of her neck.

"No," I answered.

"Well you should," she said. "I kind of noticed you've been trying to stick to your old moves. You really want to not be recognized, you gotta change it up. The finisher especially," she mused for a moment then spoke again. "How about an inverted deathlock? It's still a submission, it's different enough that it won't be recognized, and few enough people use it that it'll stand out."

"I'll think about it," I said.

"You feeling alright?" she asked. "You've been kind of sluggish today."

"No, I'm fine," I said with a dubious lack of enthusiasm. "I've actually been feeling better lately. Been, getting a feel for it I guess," I thought for a second. "Hey how do you know my moves anyway?" I asked. "Well enough to know I hadn't changed them I mean. Are you a fan or something?"

"Nah," she said. "But we got that game console in the bus. We got the video game from last year; I've been practicing with you. You know you were kind of sexy."

"Thanks, I feel loads better now," I grumbled sarcastically.

"Hey Casey!" a familiar voice called, and I looked up to see a crowd being led over by Jerry. The voice was Nigel’s, and he was among a bunch of suits and writers from the company.

"Nigel, what are you doing all the way down here?" I asked.

"Oh, business" he answered and scanned his eyes up and down me. I knew he was trying to get a lay of the land. I'd changed a lot since we'd last seen each other. "Wow," he muttered more audibly than I'm sure he meant to. "Um, anyway, some of the execs wanted to check on your progress and I insisted on being here for it. Truth is I tried to get them to push this back to next week."

"Why?" Cassidy interjected.

"Because next week we're in Miami," I answered for him.

"Casey, these are some people from image and marketing," Jerry explained. "They wanted to come take a look at you."

"Would you and your friend here be willing to climb between the ropes and give us a bit of a demonstration?" asked one of the execs, a lady with fogged over glasses whose suit, hair, and posture all said the stick up her ass had a stick up its ass.

"I'm a little tired today, but I think we can make a go of it," I answered. I knew the dance and how to dance it. "Come on Cassidy let's give them a short demo."

The two of us went into the ring, Jerry followed after us to act as referee. "Um, Mr. Cullen, you see that bell over by the table?" Jerry pointed out. "Would you mind ringing that when you're ready?"

Cassidy and I whispered the opening to each other as he walked over and picked up the striker.

DING

Cassidy made a quick step and hit me with a lariat. A lariat is akin to a clothesline but the implication is that it's more of a hook than a strike. I did a back bump, and Cassidy lifted my foot in preparation for a toe hold, but she stopped to gloat for the imaginary crowd first, and I put my foot into her hip and kicked her off. She stumbled back and did a butt bump, landing sitting up. I kipped up (It took me too many weeks to be able to do that again) and bounced off of the ropes into a low flying shoulder check, knocking her flat. I picked her up and put her in a sleeper hold, a rest-hold choke. We frequently use it to catch our breath and call the next few moves for each other, which is what we did.

The ropes were too close behind us for her to do a heel hook escape so she instead fought her way to her feet, and then dropped to her butt again, hooking my head into a stunner, I bounced back into the ropes and hooked them, not having the space to run out. Cassidy got back to her feet and Irish whipped me into the corner, I made sure to go in back first and lay in to drive home the impact. She then cut the corner of the ring, came off the ropes and charged into me, jumping and turning at the last moment, hitting me with a flying butt thump, one of her signature moves. I tumbled out of the corner, giving her some space and acting dazed. She leaped onto the second turnbuckle, her rear towards me, looked back, and jumped backward. Hooking my neck with her arm she dragged me down into a flying DDT. I rolled all the way through the impact and back up to a seated position, giving her a free position for another rest hold.

She then put me in a dragon sleeper, a variation of the sleeper hold where the attacker's arm is hooked the opposite way around and the head is pulled back instead of pushed forward. It was truthfully more of a neck crank than a choke. We called out next set and in an inverse of the spot earlier I now fought to my feet. I slipped out from her hold, hooking her wrist along the way, and pulled her arm behind her into a hammerlock. I pushed her off and she did a chest bounce off the ropes and straight back to where I was waiting with a waist lock that I transitioned immediately into a bridging German suplex. I lifted her into the air, leaned backward, and slammed her shoulders into the mat while maintaining the waist lock and pointing my toes, thereby forming my own body into an arch.

With her shoulders down Jerry dropped to the mat and slapped down counting "one" before she kicked her legs signalling the kick out and I released the hold. We both stood up, clinched into the collar and elbow, and we called the final spot. I shot under, hooking her arm along the way. I applied some touch leverage to the back of her shoulder “forcing” her to the mat face down, and then put her in the cross-face. She began slapping the canvas immediately with her free arm signaling the submission and Jerry called the match.

DING-DING-DING

Nigel struck the bell thrice and Cassidy and I stood up, catching our breath, and looking out over the audience. The suits and the writers were all huddled up whispering to each other, one assistant filming the whole thing with his phone, and I watched them as I took a pull off of my water bottle. After a while they seemed to come to a consensus and a doughy looking greasy guy stepped forward.

"We've seen enough ring work for the moment," he said. "But how about your mike work, can you talk for us Honey?"

I narrowed my eyes at him, my contempt crawling up my spine. "Honey?" I said, venom dripping from my voice. "Honey! There's nothing “honey”' about me!" I shouted. "I'm not in the fly catching business here Porky. That smells more like your job. I'm in the wrestling business, I'm in the ass kicking business, but even if I was, I'd be ALLLLL vinegar," By this point Jerry had caught on and approached me handing off a dry erase marker to stand in for a microphone.

Contrary to what a lot of people think, neither wrestling matches, nor promos, tend to be scripted. We would usually be given the broad strokes, the intent behind it, yeah, but the words themselves had to all come from us. Pro-wrestling was one big improv show at the end of the day. "But if its honey you want, you better be prepared to get sticky, because I'm about to jump out of this ring and STICK my boot laces up your flabby ass!"

I leaned over the ropes and leered at him. "Unless, you wanna try buttering up, squeezing through these ring ropes, and taking a tour around my house," I flicked the marker at him, bouncing it off his doughy chest, and walked back to center ring. Again they huddled up and discussed, again the aide filmed it all, again I watched.

"We'll have to talk this over at greater length," said glasses lady finally. "We'll be in touch shortly," and they all walked toward the door, Nigel giving a silent thumbs up as he followed behind them.

"That was solid work," Jerry said. "Smooth as silk. They're not gonna find anybody in the Indies that could hold up a half a match like that."

"They already said they were going to use me," I pointed out.

"Yeah, but now they have to decide HOW they're gonna use you," he said.

"Wait, wait... how do you pin?" I demanded as I desperately mashed buttons on the video game controller.

"Don't worry about it" quipped Cassidy next to me, showing a much greater mastery of her own. We were back on the bus after practice, and she was showing me the video game she'd told me about. I'd remembered getting scanned for it, blew a whole weekend in a suit covered in silver balls to make this thing, and I'd never played it before. Naturally I was playing as myself, my old self, my good old, handsome self. Cassidy was playing as Jackson Castle, a solid upper-middle card worker.

"I thought you were practicing with me," I complained, secretly certain she could have trounced me playing as the ring announcer.

"Yeah I was," she said. "But I usually play as Jackson, when I can't play as myself that is."

"Why him" I asked? It wasn't that he wasn't a good worker, but as far as game stats he was pretty average. He had a really built muscular physique. REALLY good I thought now that I gave him another look, kind of ….... nice.

The problem was he was on the small side, a bulldog one could say, and it didn't lend to the intimidating presence that would have taken him further. That and he wasn't the best talker.

"I don't know. He probably would have been offended if I picked somebody
else," she said.

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"Well it's his game," she said. "I sort of stole it out of his apartment one time."

"Wait," I began, "are you saying you dated Jackson Castle?"

"Well," she said. "I wouldn't call it that personally. I fucked him a couple times, but it wasn't too serious. A lot of us girls have dated guys from the locker room. All that prime man-meat walking around, it'd be a waste to do otherwise."

"You all always treated me like crap," I complained.

"No offense honey ...... but you were kind of slimy," she said. "You were good looking and all, but you had kind of an asshole rep."

I looked at her slack jawed. The voice on the video game counted out "1... 2... 3!"

"It's not like you weren't damn sexy or anything," she pointed to my digital form laid out on the computerized canvas. "We just like some dick. We don't need it to be all dick if you catch my drift."

I dropped the controller and walked back to the bunks.

"Where you going?" she asked.

"My stomach hurts," I answered.

"Hey Sam, get up," I heard Violet's voice say. "You're gonna be late for practice."

I just curled up into a ball in my bunk and moaned like a dying cat.

"Come on Girl. What's the problem?" Cassidy came in. "Get up."

"Nooooo!" I groaned.

"What's the problem?" Cassidy slapped by panty covered butt.

"My stomach HUUURTS!" I wailed.

"So what?" said Cassidy. "We all gotta work through it now and again. We both did since you moved in."

"Yeah," confirmed Violet. "Mine was kind of heavy too."

It took me entirely too long to realize what they were talking about, my eyes grew wide when I did. "No, no, no, no, no, no..." I chanted as I rolled out of my bunk and on to the floor. I crawled out to the den area, literally dragging my sheet with me and I stuck my face in the couch cushions, hiding in my blanket like a frightened child.

Cassidy stood in the curtain, arms crossed, fingers tapping in frustration. "Huh," she sighed. "Violet, you got any pads" she asked? "I don't want her staining those sheets," She came and pulled me up,
guiding my pitiful blanket bedecked form back to the closet, tears streaming down my face. "Come on. Let's get you some clothes, and Violet will take you inside and find you a nice secluded shower stall that you can get good and hot."

"What are you gonna do?" Violet asked taking my wrist.

Cassidy headed through the door to the outside and stopped in the frame. "I'm gonna go tell Jerry she's probably not gonna be any good for the rest of the week."

I wasn't COMPLETELY useless the whole week, but it wasn't a very productive one. I did eventually manage to get into the gym, wearing some new sweat pants I'd bought, and mostly doing the lightest things I could. Thus began a new and horrible chapter in my life, wherein I had to actively apply knowledge I had never wanted to gain.

"I can't do this every month," I said sitting on my knees in the middle of the ring.

"It's not always like this," Cassidy reassured me from her perch on the top turnbuckle. "A lot of the time there's no cramps at all, it's just bleeding."

"Well that's no fun either," I said, looking down and fingering my water bottle.

"That's rich, coming from someone I happen to know took a razor blade to their own forehead just to better sell a chair shot. Just think of it as getting color."

"That's gross," I said. "And that's different, that's... part of the job."

"And this is part of life," she retorted.

"Not my life," I grumbled under my breath.

"Oh, I'm sorry," she chided. "I forgot you were special."

"Well I'm not exactly normal!" I snapped. I put my face in my hands and moaned. "I need to call the pharmacy."

"Just go to the infirmary," she said. "They can give you something for that."

"No I mean..." and paused, "for my anti-depressants. I... I didn't get the last refill on my prescription and I kind of feel like I need them right now."