Chapter 2

Matilda and her classmates are finally graduating from high school as eighteen year olds. People keep telling them they are young adults now, but none of them can say what that truly means. The New Year swings by to say hello before departing again. Since the Schoolies festivities earlier that year, her tummy pooch has regressed back to where it came from, but she doesn’t exactly maintain this physique.

Once more, we find her by the seaside, this time for New Year’s Eve, celebrating what nobody can be sure is to come in the next twelve months of their lives. Having managed to save up something of a holiday-fund, she and her friends find a cheap room in a highrise tower and book it, split the cost, and proceed to crash the place for a three-night bender of getting shit-faced until blackout like rich social media influencers. She’s never really done this kind of thing before, and she’s been hit with a toll for it. The “goon sacks” are out again, beer bottles, wine glasses and Gin casks litter the balcony, while blue hazy smoke drifts in from neighbouring apartments and their bongs, random fights break out in the streets below, clubs grow too packed to be good news, roadside pubs blast music and laughter, while out across the cityscape, the night sky is being bombed by fireworks, painting the girls’ young, upturned faces in shades of pink, green, blue, then pink again.

Perpetually in a state just beyond the point of “tipsy”, Matilda has been keeping a constant reserve of food in her hands, treats and snacks available to munch on at any given time. Bites keep finding their way into her mouth bit by bit. Come to think of it, she’s been walking around semi-bloated all day long — all night long, in fact — and all weekend. Friday, Saturday, and then into the Sunday; every last moment of it spent snacking and drinking. It isn’t until she practically shoves her stomach in Jen’s face that a point is made about the state of things.

Inside a club called The Pixie Ring, there are no lights except for tall, thick pillars of blacklight bulbs which transmute everything into the luminosity of deep-sea glowing jellyfish. The gang of eighteen year olds find a booth to occupy, staggering and tumbling over one another to clamber into their seats like cartoons, laughing and carrying on, slapping each other’s asses for the drunken fun of it. Matilda is the last unlucky member of the gang to try and occupy a spot. There’s not much room left, so she flops onto the end of the seat, stretching her body out and laying face up to relieve the strange force of discomfort in her stomach. She lays her shoulders and head over someone’s lap. Above her, Jen’s face peers down at her like a mother bowing over her infant. They exchange smiles. Then Jen lets her eyes drift along Matilda’s splayed out form until she sees something, dark eyes halting with amused uncertainty. Matilda presses her chin into her sternum with a grunt to peer down at herself. It’s her slender waist. It’s the belly rising from it, actually. It looks rounder than it’s meant to be. Seemingly unable to help herself, Jen reaches for it, and Matilda feels a hard jab in the side of her tender stomach. She curls away from the poke, then brushes Jen’s finger aside with a snort. She tries to sit up straight, but forfeits, collapsing back down. ‘It’s not the food, it’s the drink,’ Matilda defends herself preemptively, giving herself away.

‘What is that!’ Jen cackles, struggling to be heard over the thunderous music.

Matilda feels caught in the act. ‘Uhm — me taking care of myself, maybe?’

‘Oh-hoh! Yeah, sure, chubby girl!’

Matilda rolls her eyes. ‘Girl’s gotta eat okay? Eating a bit won’t do me any damage.’

Then, out of curiosity, she rolls her head to look up from her lap, and gets a view from underneath of what appears to be a little round roll spilling over a line in Jen’s silver sequin dress — probably where her underwear strap sits. Matilda resists the urge to butt it with her head. Locking eyes with Jen, she smiles ruefully and brings up her hand to pat the under-curve of her friend’s little squishy roll. ‘It’s done you some damage, though. But hey, that’s okay. Give it to me, if you want, and I’ll look after it for you.’ She turns her head away again even as she continues to pinch the bulge curling around Jen’s waist, which feels curiously soft, with a gentle magnetism that keeps her from withdrawing her hand…

Jen squeals and swats her invasive fingers away. She sucks her belly in until it’s concave, and says with injured laughter, ‘Mind your own business — gawd. You have to be careful, you know. People can get fat, like, out of nowhere. It can happen for the weirdest reasons. Like, my aunty literally gained half her body weight in a year coz she had to start driving to a new job. And my cousin’s fiancé turned twenty-six then gained fifty pounds just like that because her doctor said she had insomnia or something and it was affecting her metabolism.’

‘So not being able to sleep is what makes you fat now?’

‘It can!’

‘Yeah right. Everyone’s so obsessed with what makes you get fat these days, I swear. What next? Fruit can make you fat too?’

Jen offers a plausible shrug. ‘Who knows, Tild. It can be anything. I swear some people out there just want to get fat or something crazy.’

After the three nights of partying, they return to their homes feeling thoroughly hammered and dusty-eyed, feet dragging with the weight of lethargy. Tess may have collected herself a love interest somewhere along the way, but that’s as easy as trawling for shrimp. Kiera, on the other hand, managed to swap phone numbers with at least three boys. Matilda comes away from the festivities not too worse for wear, and without any of that. The resulting lack of tone in her abdomen and upper thighs is not much to speak of. However, as the off-season for her playing career comes to a close, her team returns to the pitch. As she heads back into the dressing rooms after their first training session, she catches one of her teammates Luci Careen giving her the side-eye as she bends at the waist to step into her shorts. She thinks about sucking in, and almost does, but decides at the last minute that it would be pointless, because why should she? There’s barely anything there, after all. There’s barely a problem. Instead, she gives her teammate a glance that says; what?

‘Nothing,’ Luci shrugs and looks away, packing a hand-towel back into her bag.

In spite of anything that may or may not have changed with Matilda’s body, the team’s first game of the year goes swimmingly well. They embarrass their opponents with a tightly controlled 4 - 0 win with Matilda putting herself on the scoreboard with two of their goals. Likewise, the matches after their opener see them enjoying a rapid snowball effect of victory after victory that the girls don’t really know how to deal with. Intensive sessions of training between each gruelling ninety-five minutes of their weekly matches, from January through March, more or less blasts the smidge of fat off her waist, reducing its volume in a strangely unsatisfying way, as if the sudden round softness has only retreated, like the eyes of a snail, ready to spring back the moment it’s safe to emerge again.

. . .

The months pass like a bullet train before the eye of her soul, and the trees have barely had a chance to shed their leaves to the southern-hemisphere’s autumn when it’s time for her to begin university. There is no gap year — only training and study preparation each weekend. She cannot afford to suspend any sense of routine, lest she fall off before she gets going. It’s the match-day mentality of utter focus she has grown up on, ingrained into her deepest habitual existence.

Meanwhile, the little pooch of fat on her tummy has made a gradual retreat once again. It happened very quickly, practically overnight, and never came back. She doesn’t know where it went. It almost feels untrustworthy. But she doesn’t really care. She can see the line of separation down the middle of her abdominals again, and any threat of losing her endurance washes from the grooves of her consciousness like muddy water. If the little pesky paunch tries to make another return, she’ll have a head start this time.

It can happen for the weirdest reasons, Jen had told her. You can get fat for the weirdest reasons.

. . .