Pulse

fact, they were still quite remarkable. She’d gotten what she had come for—respect—and that was enough for the time being.
    There was one woman, a particularly overinflated twenty-five-year-old, in whom Clara had taken a keen interest from the start of the games. She was the one woman in the field of competitors who was abnormally large. She was, as far as any normal human being would claim, something of a giant.
    “You’re huge ,” Clara had said the moment she met Fleet Sanders. “No, seriously. You’re like a building.”
    Fleet was six feet six, and two hundred and twenty pounds of pure muscle. Rumors of synthetic steroids and blood doping swirled around Fleet like hornets at a picnic, but no one had ever been able to make anything stick. She held several world records, most notably in the hammer, which she threw like a Greek goddess. She was also alternately described, depending on the setting, as manly, homely, or “ogre-like.”
    “That supposed to be a compliment?” Fleet asked Clara.
    “In this place, yeah,” Clara conceded. “What are you, two forty?”
    Fleet couldn’t tell for sure if Clara was being nice or condescending, but it didn’t really matter. Clara was extremely beautiful, and that alone made Fleet hate her. Fleet was prone to random outbursts of rage, and there was something particularly irritating about a pretty girl competing against her in something as masculine as the hammer throw. She shoved Clara with both hands with the speed of a featherweight boxer, knocking Clara clean off her feet and onto her back.
    “You’re really fast for such a chunky girl,” Clara said, laughing and shaking her head. She knew she was being cruel, but she couldn’t help herself. As much as Fleet hated pretty girls, Clara hated bullies even more. Of course, Clara herself was one of the biggest bullies ever—it was a curious blind spot no one in her life understood.
    Fleet raised her huge leg in order to stomp on Clara’s chest; but when she went for the gusto, there was none to be had. Instead, against her will, she fell backward as if she’d slipped on a sheet of ice, crashing down on her back. Clara was up in a flash, standing over her, smiling sarcastically.
    “Enjoy yourself today, Bertha. It’s going to be a day to remember.”
    “I’m gonna kill you,” Fleet said, standing up with alarming speed and staring Clara in the face.
    “I’d love to see you try, but it looks like they’re calling your name. Why don’t you put all that rage to work on the hammer instead of wasting it on little old me?”
    Fleet was breathing out of her nose like a rodeo bull. She hadn’t been so angry in a long time; and sensing an opportunity to put her anger to good use, she marched straight to the hammer-throwing ring.
    “I’ll deal with you later,” Fleet said, pointing a massive finger in Clara’s direction.
    “Can I count on that?” Clara asked.
    Fleet Sanders looked across the field at the adoring fans. They didn’t care that she was a freak of nature, a girl of highly unusual size. They also didn’t know all the lengths to which her coaches had gone to train her into a machine. They didn’t know about the thousands of hours she’d spent alone in a gym, working every conceivable angle that might give her an edge. They would never know that she hadn’t taken any strength-enhancing drugs, not ever. If they could see what middle school had been like, they’d understand why later, when she was done throwing, she planned to do her almighty best to murder Clara Quinn with her bare hands.
    “Enjoy that throw,” Clara yelled from the sideline nearby. “Hope it’s not your last.”
    Fleet picked up the handle of the hammer, a thick metal rod that vanished inside her gorilla-sized fist. She took one more look at Clara Quinn, thought about throwing the hammer in her general direction, and began her initial turn. With the hammer throw, the athlete stands on a square of concrete that has a rounded lip on the inside edge. The idea is to spin around in circles, holding the chain and the weight at the end like a tetherball on a rope. Fleet Sanders was known for a perfect rotation, one that made the distance of her hammer throws on a par with most men’s. When she came around for her last spin, the ball at the end of the chain was moving with tremendous speed and force. Letting it go with a scream, Fleet stumbled at the edge of falling out of bounds but held her ground. She knew by the way