George Barrios felt the stinging pop of the towel strike his fat butt the moment the clock struck 10:15. As the "lard ass" of Oaks River High, he was used to being tormented, beat up, and ridiculed. Everyone else thought they were better than him. Even the other outcasts made fun of him, isolating him from every human being in the school.

He once tried to lose the weight and get in shape, hoping the change in his image would better his chances of being acceptable to the student populace. It only ended in disappointment when he discovered how small his town truly was; every place he went teens yelled "which moon did Uranus swallow?" or "hide your bacon; here comes ton of fun!" and the adults never hid their disgust, always commenting on how inadequate a job his mother was doing in raising him. As much as he tried to find ways of fitting in, he finally came to the conclusion that he would forever be the roaming joke and never anything else. Knowing he would never be liked hurt him, but made it easier to deal with the meanness of the world.

He yelped like a pup hit with a newspaper and dropped his head to take the onslaught as the locker room fell silent. There was no sound of water hitting the floor, no yells of encouragement from the other students. George turned to see why all was quiet, thinking a teacher had come in to stop what would be another day of bruises he'd have to hide from his mother. It would have been nice if someone from the faculty tried to save him, but the truth was the teachers turned a blind eye to his daily torture. George knew in today's society that the teachers were more scared of the students than they were of a carjacking.

When he realized fate wasn't acting on his behalf, what he saw was more astonishing than the stories of alien abduction he loved to watch on the Sci-Fi channel. Everyone in the locker room was completely still. They aint movin' at all.

He noticed the students were not the only ones in this standstill play. As he looked around the shower room, the water drops from the showerheads hung in midair like beaded curtains without strings. The towel of another student (he wanted to think it was Mickey Durgen, but wasn't sure) stood still in the air, its tip a fraction of an inch from where his right butt cheek would have been. George's attention focused on the other students, some with mouths open, others covering their faces in laughter, all stuck in time.

The world frozen.

Chapter Two

Mark Blanchard was about to break his all-time record when the little hand pointed to ten and the big hand clicked to three. He wasn't keen on doing his max weight because he never felt it was a true representation of a man's strength. Instead, he liked to see what his max set of eight would be.

Jared, his spotter, made his amazement obvious to Mark as he watched the 18-year-old place four forty-five-pound weights on the left and right side of the heavy lifting bar. No one could laugh at bench-pressing more than four hundred pounds and Mark felt good about himself as he passed his sixth repetition.

At seven, his strength dwindled and he knew he would need all the help he could get on the eighth. Lying with his back flat on the bench, feet on the floor, eyes shut tight, he pressed with all his might when his arms stopped in mid-rep. He had pushed the bar off of his chest and thought he was going to make the rep by himself, but his arms didn't want to straighten.

"Spotter! Spotter!" he signaled for the bar to be pulled back to the rack, but it stayed a foot from his chest. He opened his eyes and the sweat began to drip off his forehead. He knew he had seconds before the weight would come down on his chest, possibly crushing the bone, sending splinters into his heart. "Focus, Mark. Just stay focused," he thought and yelled again, "Jared! You paying attention up there? Spotter!"

Jared hadn't moved and Mark's arms were starting to give in to the weight. "Oh God," he thought, "This is how it ends?"

His arms quit on him and as his hands let go, Mark prayed it wouldn't kill him. He closed his eyes and accepted his fate and the first--and possibly last--thought going through his mind was, "This isn't that bad. I didn't even feel it hit." He opened his eyes and gazed at the bar still above him. Jared's hands remained spaced apart. He looked down at Mark, mouth open in an encouraging yell when the eighth rep began.

"You ok up there, Jared?" he asked as he slid from underneath the bar. No matter what was going on, he didn't want to be under it when gravity again took control of the world. He sat up and looked around the gym. No one moved, the music had stopped and silence replaced the sounds of metal clanking against metal.