chapter 3- this means war (p6)

As her curiosity got the better of her, Mia entered and began looking through the pictures. She saw Kate, Jessica, and Lara back in the freshman dorm they once called home. Kate was a bit thinner than she was now, but the other girls looked the same. Jessica was just 5’3 with long brunette colored hair, round brown eyes, a narrow nose and full lips. Jessica had been a cheerleader in high school but gave it up in college. She picked up yoga as a hobby instead. Her body was pear-shaped, thanks to her shapely legs, womanly hips and round ass. However, any excess weight Jessica might be carrying on her tiny frame was absent from her tight midsection, one need look no further than Jessica’s big c-cup bust to discover where her genetics blessed her. For someone so short, Jessica was a knockout. Her attractive features might have been a point of contestation between her and Mia, but Jessica’s lack of height literally and figuratively gave Mia a leg up on the social scene at the university.

Lara, on the other hand, was much taller. At 5’10 and 164lbs she was the largest girl in the group. Lara had bright blue eyes along with a narrow nose and thin lips. Lara was by no means fat or even overweight, she was just bigger. She shared a certain resemblance with Kate but was lacking in the bust department by comparison. Lara only sported a modest b-cup.

However, Lara still maintained an athletic figure and was captain of the club volleyball team. She had played in high school but wasn’t quite good enough to make varsity in college. In fact, that was something all of the girls had in common freshman year. Jessica didn’t make cheerleading. Lara didn’t make Volleyball. Kate didn’t make tennis and never even tried to go out for indoor track or soccer like she had in high school. Mia on the other hand had made the swim team and the outdoor track team but quit freshman year, because it just wasn’t fun. Although, nowadays Mia couldn’t help but miss long jump and running hurdles like she had in high school. Track meets were some of the only times her dad would come watch her compete. If she won, he’d take her to the mall to go shopping.

As Mia reminisced she realized just one thing was missing in Kate’s pictures, her. There was a small period of time freshman year when Mia wasn’t super close with Kate, Jessica or Lara, but where were all the pictures of them all together?? Mia flipped through the pictures but had no luck. That’s when she noticed a few pictures lying beside Kate’s laptop. They were group pictures, and Mia was in them, but she was mostly in the background, obscured by her friends. Mia hardly remembered that Kate had once been slimmer than her, but these pictures proved it. Mia smiled and thought,

‘Oh how the tables have turned.’

However, Mia’s amusement didn’t last long. There was one picture on top that was upside down. There was a date on the back of the photo. Probably one of the parties they’d attended together toward the end of their first semester freshman year. Why had Kate circled the date??

Her curiosity piqued, Mia tapped Kate’s computer on. There was a folder opened marked ‘Douglas U Freshman Year!!’ and Mia clicked on it. There was a list of smaller folders with dates on them. Mia found the one with the same date Kate had circled on the photo and clicked on it. The folder was full of pictures. Sure enough, Mia remembered that party. Well, most of that party. She’d gotten sick toward the end of the night. Mia recalled that she’d seen some of these pictures before on Facebook, Kate must have posted them. But not all of them. There were some pictures Mia did not remember. As she scrolled down, one picture in particular caught her eye.

“Oh my god I was not that big..” Mia gasped, as she couldn’t believe her eyes. There she was freshman year.. Drunk off her ass, wearing leggings stretched so far that they were practically see-through and a t-shirt too small to cover the obvious beer gut she was sporting. How humiliating.. She was happy Kate had never posted this. She remembered weighing herself shortly before winter break and crying her eyes out when she realized she weighed 144 pounds.. It had been a serious wake up call.

Why the heck was Kate looking at these photos?

That’s then Mia opened up Kate’s browser history. As she looked a little bit closer, the last website Kate had been on appeared to be an online weight loss simulator. Mia clicked on it, and to her surprise the very same picture of her as a fat freshman was in the simulator slot! Ignoring why Kate might have been playing around with her old picture, Mia noticed something else that was weird. It looked as though the before-picture was slimmer than the after-picture. What the hell was this? It looked like the after picture had gained even more weight all around her middle. It looked photoshopped or something!

Mia immediately went back to Kate’s search history and found something resembling an answer for all this. With searches like: “what foods make you gain weight,” “how to make my butt bigger,” and “How to fatten up fast,” it was pretty obvious to Mia what was going on. Suddenly it all made sense, all the food Kate was making, the food she was buying, and her weirdly generous behavior. Kate couldn’t beat her playing fair and square, so she wanted to make Mia fat in order to upstage her! Well it wouldn’t work, Mia was going to fight fire with fat! Kate was going to be huge!

Standing up abruptly from Kate’s desk, Mia confidently growled, “This means war…”