Alanna's Powers
Chapter Five
	
	A few months after our sister Alanna had thoroughly 
embarrassed my brother and me in a display of strength, we began 
to realize that we could use our sister's strength to our 
advantage. Though she was no longer just a little girl, and any 
observant person could tell she was athletic and powerful, she 
still did not look physically intimidating compared to most big 
guys. Moreover, even though she was only a ninth grader, she was 
a knockout. Most guys were more interested in getting into a 
clinch with her rather than avoiding one. Her greatest feats of 
strength were known only to my brother and me. This made it easy 
to play people for money or hustle them.
	The first time we did this was when Alanna was in tenth 
grade, and we had seen some pretty incredible things from her in 
our weight room and in other venues. For instance, one day our 
cat had hidden under our father's little foreign car, and we 
could not get her out from underneath. Alanna, on a whim, had 
grabbed the bumper with both hands, squatted down, and lifted the 
the front end of the car. Then said in a hurried voice, "One of 
you guys get the cat, please."
	When we seemed hesitant to crawl under the car that she was 
holding up, she sidestepped two or three times, got the cat, put 
it indoors, and then lifted the car up again and put it back into 
place. We looked at her as if she were from another planet.
	"Alanna, what made you so sure you would be able to do 
that?"
	"Well, I have been lifting a lot in the gym, and the other 
day I decided to see if I could dead lift all the weights we 
have. That came to over eight hundred pounds. I figured I ought 
to be able to lift one end of the car easily enough."
	"It must be those foreign cars are really light," said 
Jeff. He couldn't believe, despite all the evidence, that his 
sister was as strong as she was. "You try it," she suggested. 
"But don't hurt yourself."
	Jeff was never one to back down from a challenge, so he 
squatted down and grabbed the bumper. He took a couple of deep 
breaths and lifted. Nothing happened. Oh, the car moved a little, 
but the wheels stayed firmly planted on the ground. Then he asked 
me to join him, and we both tried to lift the car. Together we 
were able to make it move a little more, in fact, we got the 
wheels to lift ever so slightly off the ground for a moment. But 
try as we might we were unable to duplicate what she had done by 
herself; we were not even close.
	Then she had another surprise for us. She squatted down and 
grabbed the bumper of the car; as she lifted the car again I 
noticed the swelling of her thigh muscles and their impossibly 
beautiful tear drop shape, the perfect diamond shapes of her 
calves which seemed impossibly huge on a high school girl. While 
holding the car she did ten calf raises with perfect form. We 
were aghast. However, what followed was an even bigger surprise. 
She gritted her teeth, grunted, and curled the front end of the 
car with both arms once, twice,... eight times before putting the 
front end of the car back down gently. As she did this her 
forarms and biceps transformed themselves from the smoothely 
toned and well shaped arms of an athletic and nicely built young 
girl to the hugely muscled arms of a male body builder. Her 
capacity for morphological change seemed to increase with her 
age, and now she was literally as big in muscularity as any 
bodybuilder of her height.
	"Move over Arnold," I said facetiously. Then I watched as 
she winked and gave me a quick one armed flex of her bicep. 
	On another occasion the three of us had driven to the 
movies in our mom's car. While backing out Jeff had rammed the 
car's bumper into the guard rail and had gotten it jammed. In 
fact the old fashioned bumper of this car had wedged itself 
underneat the hard aluminum edge of the guard rail, and we could 
not move the car. Jeff and I had gotten out and tried to figure 
out a way to get the car lower so that it would unhitch itself 
from the rail, but the springs of the suspension system were 
pressing the bumper up against the bottom side of the aluminum 
guard rail, and we could not move the car.
	Alanna said, "I think I can solve the problem." However, 
Jeff did not listen to her. Instead he called a bunch of the 
other movie goers over and explained the problem. 
	Eventually, after he explained his plan, we got a bunch of 
people to sit on the trunk of the car to see if that would 
depress the suspension enough to unhitch us, but it did not work. 
The suspension moved a few inches, but it needed to drop some 
serious distance. Meanwhile Alanna kept saying, "I think I can 
solve the problem." 
	Finally, after the others had gone and we were getting 
ready to call Dad, Alanna got out of the car and grabbing the 
bottom of the guard rail with one hand she pressed down on the 
bumper with her other hand. Miraculously, she was able to do by 
herself what the weight of ten grown men sitting on the car and 
bouncing it could not do. She pressed the car's suspension far 
enough that the tail pipe scraped the ground as she forced the 
car forward with her one hand and unhitched it from the guard 
rail. The recoil from the suspension rebounding from her pressure 
made the tires leave the ground, but the car was unhooked.
	Jeff and I looked at eachother in amazement. "Thanks 
Alanna. You got us out of a jam. We owe you one." Then we looked 
at the guard rail. It was bent upwards. Not only had she pressed 
the car's supension down. With one arm she had bent the 
industrial grade aluminum guard rail noticeably. We said nothing.
	As I said before, we knew we had something special in the 
family, and occasionally the competitive part of us got the 
better part of our judgement. We hustled a number of people. The 
first time happened purely by happenstance. We ran into the 
captain of the Smithton High football team at a party, and he was 
bragging about various feats of strength in the weight room; he 
was obnoxiously full of himself. Jeff told him to cool his jets 
and that Smithton was going to lose to our school, and soon they 
were jawing about who was stronger. To make a long story short 
Jeff bet him that the members of our family could beat him two 
out of three in arm wrestling. It didn't take long for this guy 
to look us over and accept the bet. He and Jeff went first and 
had quite a struggle. Jeff tried to take him in the initial 
surge, but he collected himself and fought back. Then he started 
pressing Jeff's arm towards the table. Jeff steadied himself, 
strained, and then slowly reversed the bully's advantage until he 
was pressing the Smithton captain's arm inexorably towards the 
table. Thirty seconds later Jeff had his arm pinned in defeat.
	Then it was my turn. After a short rest the Smithton 
captain gained his composure and was able to pin my arm with more 
trouble than he expected, but he pinned it none-the-less. We were 
tied at one apiece. At this point Jeff offered to double the bet 
and sat down at the table. The captain agreed to it. But when 
Jeff put up his arm he said, "but not against you! You said it 
was your whole family. Now it's your sister's turn."
	"No, that's not fair," Jeff cried in mock surprise.
	"Tough petooties! You made the deal." Everyone else agreed. 
They thought we were defeated, but we had them right where we 
wanted them. Alanna sat down at the table, slowly. Pretending she 
did not really know what she was doing. They locked wrists, and 
the next thing he knew his arm was pinned down."
	"Hey, that's not fair," he cried. "You went too quickly, 
and I wasn't ready; plus my arm is tired from the other two. We 
should wrestle left handed."
	"O.K.," said Alanna. "Let's go again, left handed." 
Everyone agreed this was generous of her, but they were all a bit 
surprised at what had happened and thought it was a fluke of some 
kind. This time they locked left hands, and this time Alanna 
decided to play with him. She let him push hard against her arm, 
and she held it rigid. He could not budge it. Meanwhile she 
breathed calmly for twenty or thirty seconds or so before she 
slowly brought his arm down with deliberate slow force. A 
disgusted and surprised captain of the Smithton football team got 
up from the table and threw his money down.
	Just then his girl friend, who was hosting the party, asked 
him to help her bring a couple of kegs of beer inside to be 
tapped. "They're in the truck," she said. " We just went out to 
get them. There are three of them." 
	I looked at Jeff and Alanna and said, "let's keep the game 
going, OK!" So we offered to help bring in the kegs. 
	"Thanks," he said. "That would be real useful."
	He and a friend struggled to get the first keg out of the 
truck and were struggling up the driveway with it when we 
appeared. They dropped it once and were swearing about it when 
Alanna simply grabbed one end in each hand and hoisted it over 
her head in one move. She carried it the rest of the way by 
herself, and put it down softly so as to avoid the foam that 
comes from too much jostling. Then she returned to the truck as 
Jeff and I were unloading one of the remaining kegs. "Load them 
both on my shoulders," she suggested.
	"What?"
	"Load them both on my shoulders. I can carry two at once."  
Obviously the difficult part was going to be keeping the kegs in 
place, as they are not only heavy but quite bulky. But she used 
her prodigious strength to pin them to her shoulders and walked 
calmly up the driveway into the garage and up the steps to the 
deck in back with both kegs on her shoulders. Then holding each 
of them in one arm she let them down slowly together. Mr. 
football man was quite surprised.
	"Any other heavy work you want me to do before I go?" She 
asked. Otherwise, we'll see you this fall at the football game 
when Jackson High whips Smithton's butts." 
	That fall at the football game, my sister the cheerleader 
smiled and waved at him during the game, and he could do nothing. 
We beat them for the first time in five years, 35 - 6.