Fix by Force

By Jason Warne

Spencer doesnt have a choice.

He can't choose to be different than what he isthe son of the town's worst enemy, the weakling who can't stand up for himself, the loser without friends.

He can't change the way things are.

Or maybe he can.

Immediate confidence.

Rapid change.

Instant hope.

These are the things Spencer believes he needs to fix his life, and that is what the steroids promisea quick fix.

But promises can be broken and shortcuts are often treacherous, and Spencer must decide if those risks are worth the perceived rewardsif artificial hope is strong enough for him to be fixed, by force.

• Language: English
• Publisher: WestBow Press
• Release date: Mar 28, 2012
• ISBN: 9781449739379

Jason Warne

With his debut novel, Fix by Force, Jason Warne hopes to entertain and inspire readers. His fast-faced story about self-image, relationships, choices, and sources of hope, aims to speak most loudly to readers who are seeking authentic and relatable characters.

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Copyright © 2012 Jason Warne

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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WestBow Press

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Bloomington, IN 47403

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ISBN: 978-1-4497-3938-6 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4497-3939-3 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4497-3937-9 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2012901996

WestBow Press rev. date: 03/23/2012

CONTENTS

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-Two

Chapter Thirty-Three

Chapter Thirty-Four

Chapter Thirty-Five

Chapter Thirty-Six

Chapter One

My dad gave me a tape recorder for my sixth birthday. I thought it was nice, but my mom said it was garage-sale garbage.

I recorded the fight that ensued.

Later that night while listening to the playback, I accidentally taped over one of my mom’s profanities, with my own, Oh, shoot! taking its place.

I thought it was hilarious—like my own little ad-lib exercise—and after I had worn out that segment of tape by replacing my parents’ attacks and accusations with the best stuff my six-year-old mind could conjure up, I moved on to making up my own skits and pretend celebrity interviews.

My impromptu productions eventually developed into fully scripted stories and songs—things that I would work on non-stop by rewinding and erasing, then re-recording until I was satisfied with the finished product.

I could manipulate everything on tape.

But then one day the last of my batteries died, and so did my dad, and I was forced to follow someone else’s script.

And that’s all life was to me—some kind of massive screenplay with a role for everybody. But I hated my part. I even hated my name—Spencer Allen Shane, son of David Spencer Shane, who was still somehow reprising his role as the town’s most hated person years after his death.

Almost every script I knew was basically about good versus evil—heroes against villains. I figured real-life was probably the same, except my family wasn’t either of those. We didn’t deserve a lead role—not even as villains. We were too insignificant—too one-dimensional. We were more like the cowards that ran whenever trouble would arise. We were everything the heroes were not.

I was well aware of how I’d been cast, but that doesn’t mean I accepted it. I tried whatever I could think of to rewind, erase, and force a rewrite. I played on the football team, changed my appearance with every trend, pried my way into social situations with the popular kids, and even pretended that I liked whichever pseudo-reality show everyone was talking about. But all that any of my classmates seemed to remember about me was my performance as, idiot who broke boy’s wrist, when trying to help the kid with a bone disease into his wheelchair, or, loser who lost half his hair, after dyeing it school colors for football homecoming, or my most recent act as, tool who busted the teacher’s lip, while I was rescuing her from an aggressive hornet by throwing a few open-handed jabs. No matter what I tried, I was center stage, portraying the character I was meant to.

But now that I had made it to senior year, I knew that I’d have to fade into the background if I even stood a chance of graduating.

So I wasn’t going to try anymore.

No more acting. No more posing. I had failed a third of my classes and missed about two total months of school during the last three years of tirelessly fighting to change the script, and if I continued this year, I’d never earn enough credits to graduate.

So the plan for senior year was invisibility. A full year of hiding. Nothing more than the background actor that nobody notices.

But my plan had too many special clauses for things I didn’t really want to change, and there I was in plain sight, running across the football field as Zack Durbin—my story’s arch-nemesis—motored right toward me with unwavering eyes and stanch determination, in wannabe hero fashion.

Even though I was one of the smallest on the football team, my speed worked in my favor for tackling, and all I had to do to bring down most guys was drop my shoulders and create an impact. But Zack was just too tough. His dad looked like a title winning Mr. Olympia, and Zack seemed to be in training to keep the title in the family.

But it didn’t matter to Coach Laverne or anyone else how much bigger and stronger Zack was. My position was the last line of defense, and it was my job to keep him out of the end zone. I was usually quick enough to force most runners to the sideline, and I could anticipate spin-moves and jukes. But Zack was the fastest on the team, and he never shied away from contact, especially with me.

I knew that he’d probably come in high with a hard stiff-arm to the face, and I was preparing to go low at his knees, but then I accidentally caught a glimpse of our team’s best defender, still slumped in the aftermath of Zack’s stampede, and I suddenly realized that I was completely alone and exposed in the open field. I remembered that everyone was watching, and I hesitated. My slight pause was all Zack needed to wind up. He traded his stiff-arm for a helmet, reared back his head, and aimed at my facemask. I closed my eyes and waited for the familiar hollow cracking of plastic on plastic, but my head was tilted upward and I didn’t recognize the sound of plastic on bone until I was sprawled at the forty, tasting blood and gagging on my mouthpiece.

I immediately attempted to rise to my knees but was pulled back into a sit by Coach. He held me down by my shoulder pads. Just take it easy, Spence.

I reached for my chin strap but it was no longer attached. Coach tugged gently on my helmet.

I brushed him off. I got it, Coach.

I pulled a little at the earpiece to loosen up the helmet’s hold and when I did, my jaw fell limp. I instantly became dizzy and hung my head, listening through flashes of blackness as blood poured from my mouth and cascaded down my chin, covering my jersey and pooling in my hands.

I could feel myself slipping in and out of consciousness, and although I felt more out than in, I pushed up gently on my chin and held my mouth closed as I slowly rose to my feet and pushed away from Coach again, standing wobbly as I searched for the sideline. I finally spotted it and staggered forward, but was immediately knocked back a few steps as the pain set in. It was like nothing I had ever felt before, throbbing at my jaw, swelling inside my skull, and I struggled not to cry.

Coach stepped in front of me and tried to hold me still as he repeated, Slow down, Spence, slow down, but I twisted away from him and stumbled into a slow jog, keeping my eyes fixated on the sideline. I thought I heard a couple guys chuckling, so I tried to run faster, but that only made my balance abandon me sooner, and I lurched forward as my upper body was being pulled downward, leaving my legs lagging too far behind, causing several open-mouthed collisions with the earth.

I tasted the soil and rolled over as mud dried on my face. My last attempt at speaking took the form of loud whimpers, drowning out Coach’s calls for help. And as whimpers became weeping, another noise was rising and reverberating in the fast advancing darkness.

The audience following cue—with laughter.

Chapter Two

I returned to school a week later with a kind of purple-bluish tinted face and a mouth full of so many wires holding my jaw together that the metal detector down at the county building would probably explode from overload. The fracture wasn’t quite as bad as it felt, but the doctor estimated that the wires would remain for at least five to six weeks. I had only made it through one week, and while it was hard to speak and impossible to chew, my inner ventriloquist had surfaced, allowing grunts and heavy lisping, and the seven-daily chocolate protein shakes were surprisingly filling.

I knew that I looked and sounded ridiculous, and since I hadn’t yet devised another plan to replace my failed attempt at invisibility, I just kept my head down all day and pretended not to hear if someone talked to me. I was barely even spoken to anyway, but at or about, as most people just uttered one word remarks as I walked by, like, Look, Ouch, Damn, or usually, Holy … with any number of three or four words that could appropriately follow.

After fifth hour, the only freshman on the team, a hefty, hairy, puberty-plagued transfer student named Dyson, came over to my locker to clown around a little, trying to make light of it all.

Aw, heck, Dyson patted my back, "most people just ain’t fans of the Smurfs like me and you. I know Metal Smurf had a few good cameos."

I chuckled a little, mostly because it was one of the stupider comments I had ever heard from the good-natured Dyson, and we shared a brief laugh when I told him, through my ineloquent caveman style, that I was sorry he was scratched from the script when producers cut out the role of Sasquatch Smurf.

Dyson pulled at a patch of hair on his chin. "Naw, they cut me out because I was too hairy, plus, you know, I ain’t blue!"

Zack interrupted our banter by sliding in between us and nudging Dyson with his elbow. He elbowed Dyson again a little harder to make room, then leaned back into a locker with his arms crossed high at his chest. Shoot, Spence, he moved in close to study my face, it’s about time you traded in those slow rubber feet for a metal face.

I offered a quick fake chuckle, then looked around Zack and nodded at Dyson before turning to leave.

Zack followed close behind me. Hey, but Coach said, ‘thanks’ ‘cause he won’t have to turn on the sprinklers for a while. You watered the field pretty good yourself.

Mmmhmm, with another fake laugh was all I could think to give. I didn’t want to let him know that he was actually getting to me, but I was sure he could tell, which is why he continued.

I mean, for real though, Spence. Why you even on the Varsity team? You shoulda been demoted to Pop Warner. He grabbed my arm and squeezed it tightly until his middle finger met his thumb. Well, I guess we could give you the ball and have you turn sideways. He tilted his head to the side and pretended not to see me. So skinny, you’ll just disappear and run it in.

I yanked my arm back and walked away quickly, sinking down and hanging my head lower as some hallway spectators joined in on Zack’s laughter.

But I wasn’t laughing, and I wouldn’t fake it anymore. Screw that—it didn’t work anyway. The laugh at yourself advice that most adults seemed so eager to give was bull. It didn’t work with Zack. He was never deterred. He never stopped. He never would, and I couldn’t just keep taking it.

Zack and I were actually almost friends in elementary school. He was small like me then, but he was clever and poised and funny, and used those traits to best a bully or two. He often stood up for some students like me, confusing and embarrassing our tormentors with ingenious verbal assaults. I was completely awestruck by his confidence, so I starting sitting at his lunch table, hoping we’d become friends.

Finally ignoring the protests of a few of the older, kid-less Baptists in town, the School Board finally allowed us to dress up for Halloween that year, and many parents came out to join in the festivities. Zack’s mom always brought treats for our other parties, and that Halloween was no exception. She seemed like a nice mom—she smiled a lot and always had something funny to say. She was energetic and pretty, and I often wished that she was my mom, who never attended our school events; always saying that we needed the money and she couldn’t leave work. She hated Halloween anyway. When I asked her to buy me a costume for the party, she told me to slick back my hair and wear my black sweat suit.

There. A vampire. Just like your dad.

Yeah, according to her, my dad was a vampire. At least that was what she called him during arguments. She said that his negativity could suck the life from anyone.

I guess it was no coincidence that his birthday was on Halloween. He’d usually go out alone and would move back and forth between the town’s two bars, drinking and causing trouble—a lot of trouble. I knew that most of the town feared his violent drunken outbursts when he was out of jail, and I was expecting much of the same that night—which meant my mom would be too upset to take me Trick-or-Treating—but when I came home from school, she met me at the door and told me that we would all go out for a birthday dinner. She seemed energized and happy, but I wasn’t—I was tired of missing Trick-or-Treating, so I locked myself in my room and threw a fit. My mom spent about an hour trying to convince me of the importance of making sure my dad had a nice birthday, but she eventually gave up and said they were leaving without me. It was a popular bluff, so when I heard the garage door open, I just waited in my room, expecting her to come back after a few minutes. But three hours later, I was still alone.

Then, there was a loud knock at the door and lights flashing.

Your parents were in an accident. Your mom is okay … your dad is in heaven.

I suppose it’s easier to lie when you say it quickly—I was pretty sure that vampires didn’t go to heaven.

A police officer took me to the hospital where I was surprised to see Zack and his dad in the waiting room. I waved at Zack a little, who was still in his ninja Halloween costume, but instead of waving back, he just glared back through teary eyes. The officer hadn’t told me about Zack’s mom—that she was part of the accident too. She had been driving to the restaurant to get some carry-out while Zack’s dad stayed home and got him ready for Trick-or-Treating. There was only one main highway in town, and she was traveling it when my mom and drunken vampire-father were just leaving the restaurant.

Zack’s mom held out longer than my dad, but not by much. And every time Zack and I crossed paths in the hospital hallway, he gave me the same treatment that he’d issue at school for the first few weeks that followed—complete avoidance. I actually got used to not seeing him, and even though I liked him and had always hoped to be his friend, I was okay with his absence, because I didn’t know what to say or how to act anyway. But one day, after at least a month, he reappeared, and started giving me more attention than ever—but not the kind I wanted. It started small, with a few simple putdowns and daily scowls. But his attacks grew in size and frequency as we grew, and during some particular stretches, aggressive forms of bullying were a daily occurrence.

By middle school, Zack was messing with me in some way at least once a day. It was usually just standard bully stuff—a few jokes at my expense, tripping me in the hall as I hurried to class, kicking my chair out from under me as I tried to sit. But by high school his harassment had gotten more creative—more potent. I didn’t even recognize him the first day of freshman year—he was huge—having gained five inches and forty pounds over the summer. He used his size advantage over me daily—singling me out for hard screens and flagrant fouls when we were forced to play basketball in gym class, spiking the ball in my face during volleyball, and seeking me out at football practice for brutal hits and chop-blocks, even if I wasn’t near him or part of the play. He added property damage to his tactics sophomore year—vandalizing my locker, accidentally ripping my clothes during activities in gym class, or stepping on my textbooks after knocking them out of my hands in the hall. And then there was the first part of junior year, when, at least once a week, he put manure in my locker and backpack, and sometimes even my pants’ pockets when I had to change for gym. He said I was full of it so he was just reminding me.

But as bad as all that was, the last few months of junior year were worse, even though it was mostly verbal bullying. For an entire semester, he refused to use my real name, calling me, David, and always asking me what hell was like. Or sometimes he’d just use my last name, speaking it loudly and forcefully, repeating it condescendingly—reminding me who I was. I was Spencer Allen Shane, son of David Spencer Shane, the man who had killed Zack’s mother—the man who had been detested and feared by most of the town. Zack’s hatred for me was because of that name—because I was David’s son. It had been that way since the accident. He never let me forget it. I could never settle into any comfort at school. I just waited, always on edge, never knowing when he’d strike. I just waited, never knowing when he’d choose to remind me of what I had come to believe was true. That I really was the insignificant nobody of this script.

So I hated Zack too, even though I would still sometimes watch him just like I had in elementary school. I was mesmerized by his confidence, by his popularity, by his power. I longed for the same things, and marveled at the thought of living like that, having so much respect and self-assurance. It was a common theme for many of my daily journal entries, where I’d rant jealously about his power and dream about the day when I could finally triumph over him with some of my own, making him regret

Reviews for Fix by Force

[sszkutak_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Background: Spencer is just trying to live his life and get through high school, but that is hard when you have a bully tormenting you all the time. He believes that somehow he can change himself for the better and only gets himself into more trouble, and realizations that his life and family aren't what he thinks they are.Review: Fix by Force is a very emotional ride. Spencer is a strong, stubborn character who is hard to like, even in the beginning. He believes the world kind of revolves around him and that leads him down bad roads. He fights with his mother, gets expelled from school, and then gets wrapped up in steriods to give himself confidence....It was very hard to read this book, but it was a GOOD tale. I think that it's equivalent would be a tale of a girl with an eating disorder. Spencer feels inadequate and starts using, the people around him start to leave him as he progressively gets worse. I think that Spencer is hard to follow as a lead character, but it also allows you to understand some of the choices that he makes. This is not a fun fantasy or romance, but a dark, purposeful, piece of writing that will strongly impact the reader.Only 99 cents on Amazon for Kindle. Please go support this book. It is intense. Book was provided by the Author for an honest review.

[jibar_2 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I want to open this review with a quote from the actual book. This quote is from near the end of the book, and I don't think it spoilers, but beware anyhow:"Too many young writers waste time backspacing through mistakes and overanalyzing the appearance of the words they've written. A good story though, is just that, a GOOD STORY. It's often written hastily and driven by emotion. It compels the reader to continue, and makes him feel like part of the experience."Having said that: This book personifies that. I was pulled in right from the get-go and I loved every single page of it. Fix by Force starts with Spencer's daily activities, brutal bullying included. Physical bullying, which I have no experiences with, included. I do however have pretty extensive knowledge of mental bullying and it was expertly done in this book. I was about to write "written", but even though it is in fact written, it doesn't feel like that to the reader. It feels like one is looking directly into Spencer's head.Even though he is quite obviously wrong in most of his ways of thinking for a great part of the book, the reasoning made a lot of sense to me because I was able to think myself into the character. All the characters - even the minor ones - were build very well and I think we all know people who are maybe a bit like Zack or Tay. I remember someone saying that he couldn't understand why victims of bullying are jealous of their bullies. I was always jealous of the girl who bullied me in school, down to every fiber of my body. And I also hate her a lot, still. So that's why I - in my situation - would not have reacted the same way that Spencer did in the end.But you know what? It made so much sense for Spencer. Everything he had become and everything he didn't want to be made the ending so perfect. I can recommend this book to teens and adults alike. It doesn't downplay the abuse of steroids in any way, as many books do in my opinion, and it also shows that while you may think that you are lost and are not worth anything the way you are right now, that you are always wrong. Always. Because there is going to be someone in your life that values you a lot. So read this book, it's very great. In my opinion, very much on parr with books like If I Stay, or even Forbidden - though not in the obvious way. Fix by Force very much deals with emotional as well as environmental issues of teens these days and I love how it is done!