chapter 3

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Week One
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Too bad for her then, that the 8th of May ticked over while she slept– a fat load of nothing she could do about that. When she woke late morning, she emerged into the living room wearing her silk nightgown to find her roommates already up and watching TV. It was as bad as Christmas; just about every advert was about food.

Being the start of Tjockningfest, it was a public holiday, meaning nobody had to go to work. Linda had to attend uni later, but that was all. At the dinner table, which stood across from the two window-facing lounges in the living area, Milo Bergstron sat spooning sugar-loaded cereal into her mouth.

‘Where’s Prairie?’ Linda asked.

‘Getting more food.’ Milo beckoned Linda to sit. ‘Come on, eat up, Tjockningfest is today.’

‘I’m not hungry.’

Through a mouthful; ‘Yes you are. Come on.’

Standing awkward in her nightgown, she felt the impulse to draw it tighter around herself. But she sat down instead, pretending to be part of the fun. Just as she took a seat at the far end of the table, with the morning light from the window at her back, Sofia Carria, a two-hundred and ninety pound cover model with an Instagram following to match that of Tess Holliday, came in through the front door carrying multiple shopping bags. ‘Girls I’ve got goodies!’ she announced as she waddled out from hallway. She bee-lined for the kitchen, from where could be heard the sounds of unloaded groceries. Feeling vaguely alienated, Linda watched in silence as Milo scoffed her breakfast; her pale hair held up in a bun, dainty Scandinavian eyebrows working as she spooned more food into her mouth than she could chew.

Emerging from the kitchen was Prairie Gardner, a blonde, curtain-fringed homecoming queen with an impressively wide grin and gleeful blue eyes that seemed always to shine with erotic energy. In her arms was a fondue fountain. She brought it to the table, set it down and switched it on. Milo straightened her petite body at the sight and gave Prairie a vigorous thumbs-up. ‘Good idea,’ through a mouthful, and she loaded another spoonful of sugar onto her already unhealthy cereal.

‘Damn.’ Prairie admired her fondue. ‘Feel like I’ve put on a few just looking at it.’

Linda stayed poker-faced as she imagined the implications of the remark– suddenly extra width in Prairie’s hips, the pressure of her butt more visible against the rear of her jeans, maybe her belly sticking forward a bit, breasts gaining a size.

‘Jeez Linda,’ Sofia called, coming out of the kitchen with some blocks of chocolate.She cracked the blocks into lines and arranged them beside the fondue with bowls of strawberries, marshmallows and banana slices. ‘Stop looking so glum. What’s the deal?’

‘Huh? Nothing.’

‘You sure?’ Sofia was giving her a certain look.

They were all watching her now, concern glaring from their eyes. She imagined them thinking *What’s the matter with Linda? She sad? She anxious? Bad sleep?*

‘No I’m fine,’ she said. ‘What’s going on here, do I look sick or something?’

Milo, with her spoon held up ready to pop into her mouth, said, ‘You just seem a bit off?’

Linda said nothing.

They seemed to get it. No more questions were asked.

Prairie took a seat before her fondue tower like some shrine, her head tilted to one side, knee bobbing with delight. While Milo spooned yet more sugary cereal into her mouth and kept an eye on the news– talking heads across the room yabbering about local news on low volume. Sofia visited the kitchen to grab some drinks. When she came back they started to eat.

Sometime later Linda still hadn’t touched a thing, and now Sofia was standing behind a chair leaning with her hand atop its back, casting glances at her. Prairie was too bodily involved in consuming her fondue to realise. But Milo perceived the dynamic at play. Taking a line of chocolate, she extending her hand across the table. ‘Have some.’

Linda smiled, shook her head.

Milo’s small, fair face was deadly blank. ‘Why not…’

‘Dunno,’ Linda shrugged. ‘Don’t feel like it.’

‘Surely you do, though. It’s Tjockningfest.’

Linda was getting irritated with all this nagging. ‘No. It’s okay.’

‘Why not?’

Giving in at the last, Linda went to open her mouth. She wanted to explain herself. But she couldn’t quite do it. ‘I just, I don’t like… I’m just not… I don’t wanna take any risks. That’s all there is to it.’ She looked away to the TV.

‘Risks?’ Sofia giggled. ‘Ah, come on now.’ She put a hand on one of her mammoth hips, giving Linda a skeptical look. ‘What, you’re afraid you’ll put on a few? You’ve got a lo-o-ong way to go before you get anywhere near this.’ Just for emphasis, Sofia did a little hip-twisting dance to show off her over-exaggerated figure, hands rising and falling down her torso, hips and thighs. There was no rebuttal Linda could offer to this.

Sofia was easily around three hundred pounds. Sometimes you would hear her breathing when she made any repetitive movements. Strange thing is when you consider she used to be a bulimic anorexic. Whatever body used to be underneath had been consumed in huge globs of fat. Her body parts lunged and wobbled even as she side stepped from one side of the kitchen to the other. Strange thing was, none of her enormous rolls looked sloppy. It was as if they wanted to forget gravity, roaming outwards in smooth, exaggerated shapes of bulbousness. You’d think that underneath all that extra weight was muscle. But all she had to carry around her burden with was the bones and muscles of her once-anorexic frame.

‘Trust me; you’ll be fine.’ Sofia shrugged. ‘You have nothing to worry about.’

Last time Linda checked, her own weight had never exceeded a hundred and twenty-one pounds. ‘Fine,’ she said, slow and careful, after a long time of staring out the window and hoping the topic went away. ‘But I’ll… I’m only having a little bit, okay?’

…

The problem, as we understand, is that “a little bit” turned into “heaps”, and left Linda with a heavy discomfort in her stomach. It seemed like there was no way of getting rid of it. The only way to banish the feeling was by letting go of her stomach muscles. All that did– unknown to her since she never once looked down at herself –was release her belly into the balloonish shape it’d wanted to take all this time. Now she stood up and went about her day with the curious sensation of being led everywhere by her tummy. In fact she was.

But forget it. She paid no attention. Why? Only because, that night, she devised what she thought was a good plan. Truth was, it was never going to work. We understand this. But it was all she had, and so she believed in it:

Since it was Tjockningfest, people would expect her to eat *at least* something. There was nothing she could do about that. So she was going to participate. At the same time, though, she was going to keep a strict eye on her body, and the moment she caught any change in her form, she was going to pull the pin and quit. If anyone asked, she would cite “health concerns” given to her by her doctor.

Linda had no doctor.

All she had was a complex about eating.

***

So Linda let herself be dragged into the Seven Weeks of Tjockningfest, more or less happy to have junk food here and there. Never anything too severe. The moment her body showed any signs, she was out.

Problem is, things become relative. Once everyone around you starts consuming so much food that doctors prescribe laxatives and other medicines to alleviate discomfort… when an entire nation’s population overeats every single day, binging until their tummies ache… commuting home from work still bulging from their workplace’s Evening Feast party– it’s fatally easy to find yourself doing the same thing without realising it. You can overeat to a moderate degree, and still be “eating less than everyone else”. Linda wasn’t the first to fall into this trap of relativity. Nor will she be the last.

But as we’ll understand, Linda had never consumed so much food per day in her life as she did first week of Tjockningfest. It was too easy to feel relatively safe. While everybody else, each stranger she met, was going about with distended guts, eating their fifth pizza for the day, Linda was only ever on her second. Doesn’t seem like so much in comparison. But when it comes to the scientific realm, eating two pizzas injects more calories in your system then you need. By that stage, you’ve well and truly lost. Linda was never going to admit this to herself. Even as she got ready for uni on Friday morning– after a breakfast of syrupy pancakes, strawberries and cream, then some danish rolls for good measure, causing her stomach to balloon out so bad she could only suck it back into a slight mound –she knew it was only bloating. It would eventually vanish. So long as nobody saw her like this, things were gonna be okay.

*