Chapter 1

Bertha was an introverted, intelligent, quick-witted, unique, curvy woman.

Or so her mother would say.

If you asked Bertha herself, she'd tell you the truth with a now sarcastic expression on her face as though it weren't obvious from the very beginning.

She was, and is, a nerd.

Simple as that.

No need to hide it. No shame. No reason to hide in a closet alongside her skeletons to dispose of-of any hint that she might enjoy a board game or two while discussing the newest episode of some Sci-Fi drama.

If you asked her when this persona was created, she'd tell you the summer before starting high school.

It came out of a few reasons. Some tragic, some not. But ultimately it came down to her parents divorcing, puberty destroying her metabolism, and her discovering the wonderful world of fandoms and fanfiction.

She'd spent the entire summer at her mother's apartment binge eating hot pizzas, cold mountains of ice cream, and devouring any cookies and treats her mother would bring her as an apology for the rough times ahead. Her father on the other hand as a new bachelor would instead take Bertha out for dinners and breakfasts at diners and cheap fast food restaurants whenever needed solely so that he wouldn't need to use his untouched kitchen at his bachelor pad.

Her new comfort was old Galaxy Wars television episodes, new movies and reboots, and scrolling through Tumblr almost mindlessly for hours just so she could pretend things were okay.

Bertha didn't like to think about the change often. She felt it as something that embittered her on the occasion if she felt too deep into her feelings at times. As though it were entirely her fault and that there were a multitude of chances that she wishes she'd taken up.

Should she have stayed swimming when she was younger? Should she have taken up soccer or volleyball or some other sport instead of staying in her room all day binge-watching whatever new Sci-Fi she was into? If they had stayed in California would she have become the surfer girl on tv that hangs posters on her walls and always has a tan?

It had been a burden on her heart, however. She'd lost that bright-eyed look in her eyes to instead shy away from people and inch around conversations with anyone else near her. She spent the first three years of her highschool career in solitude and felt it best to stay that way. As people bullied her and as she reserved her emotions more and more to herself, she felt it easier to find solace in the LED screen of her laptop.

She felt as though it would stay that way, in all of its mind numbing solitude, until the summer before her senior year.

Her mother said nothing that cool August when she'd dropped off her daughter at the mall with a budget of 400 dollars and left her there until 4 pm. She no longer had the energy to help her find something trendy that could fit her, too tired from her own personal weight struggles to assist her own daughter with clothes shopping

And Bertha struggled because of this. Her desires to emulate the cool, pretty, skinny, popular girls could no longer come true because of her size. So, in an attempt to comfort herself, she headed to the only pop-culture shop in the mall, bought herself a backpack that featured the emblem of a tv-show she was obsessed with, and the spent the rest of the money on t-shirts, jackets, pants, hoodies, and even accessories at that same store.

She'd ended up chatting up a storm with some of the patrons her age, all of them just as shy and just as excited to find out that someone else liked the same things as vivaciously as she did. She'd left the store in a daze, her hands filled with bags overflowing with fan merchandise and plenty of stationery for her to use for her final school year. Her heart raced with excitement every time she glanced back to the store, knowing that she'd be coming back again. Probably by next week.

In fact, it was this wonderful experience that made Bertha don on her themed jacket for her first day of school and subsequently make her first friend in that highschool since moving.

They were never the closest, and Bertha was still more keen on her online friends than anyone at her school, but it was this one friend that kept her eating at bay. She was a confidant that she'd never had before. Someone who she could fan-girl with about anything and everything that came to her mind all while sharing inside jokes at their tables during class time, little whispers that would hide their laughter.

Graduating high school, she finished her time there at 18 years old, 5'4" and a tender 250 pounds. But, she found her spark again and back were those bright eyes and natural curiosity she'd so long hidden.

Packing her bags that summer with a full-ride scholarship and then some under her arm, she'd headed just a bit away from the gloom of Maine to the shiny potential of New York. Accepted at one of their universities to study coding, Bertha was nothing but excited for the future ahead of her.

And for her freshman year at least, things stayed positive. Having chosen to share a dorm with two other girls, Bertha found herself two new friends (and ones that felt like nothing else before).

She first met Tammy. A heavy girl with a flat chest and a round gut, she came all the way from Kansas to study the culinary arts. Her tarts were divine, she'd been a secret blogger since age 15, and knew Bertha's favorite tv show like the back of her hand.

Then came Mandy. She was fat, simply outright. She had a double chin that challenged Tammy's with fat upper arms, a shelf for an ass, spare tires down her sides, and a round beach-ball of a gut.

If Bertha hadn't been so pretentious this year due to being the smallest of the three, she'd realize her and Mandy had identical bodies. The only difference being where Mandy had tan skin, Bertha was a ghostly white.

Whatever the reality of their situation, Bertha fell into the pleasure of solitude. She was with friends, sure, but her schedule was hers and hers alone. If she wanted to watch tv and movies until the sun rose with her roommates, she did. If she wanted to join anime club, video game club, and dungeons and dragons club, she did. And if she wanted to order pizza twice a week, eat her breakfast from the same fast food chain on campus everyday, and order an extra large frappucino five times a week on her extra scholarship money, then she did.

For the first time since having moved to Maine, Bertha felt more like herself than ever before. She was happy buying fandom merch, going to conventions with her friends during that spring, excelling at her work in her coding classes, signing up to be vice-president of her video game club for the upcoming year, and making decisions the way an immature 18 year old would.

She'd ended up weighing 350 pounds by the end of her Freshman-year-summer.

Not that she cared.

Bertha was in absolute bliss. She loved the life she led and felt as though her upcoming school year would be all the same if not even better.

And then, that fateful 27th of August, as Bertha waited with sweaty palms in her empty dorm room built for two, she met Victoria.

Skinny, pretty, wealthy, Victoria.

Victoria was there for fashion merchandising. Victoria summered in Europe and wintered in the alps. Victoria had her college tuition paid for by her family. Victoria's cheapest pair of trendy shoes cost 500 dollars.

Victoria was six feet tall and weighed exactly 115 pounds.

For the first time in a long time, Bertha felt like she couldn't breathe. Like she was back at high school in the locker room hearing the girls talk about her double chin and back fat.

Fortunately (or unfortunately if you asked her), Victoria knew better than to be so forward with her negativity.

She instead placed her luxury luggage to the side, slipped off her archival sunglasses, and held out a perfectly manicured hand out to shake.

Her voice was high and pretty unlike Bertha's low words and even occasional grunts.

She spoke eloquently as her glossy lips smacked against one another. She smelled of sweet perfumes and body lotion. Her hair was freshly done with highlights and layers to accentuate the sharpness of her cheekbones.

Her bracelets clinked against one another as she ever so quickly shaked Bertha's plump hand. She wore a silver Tiffany necklace with a heart on it. Her exposed belly button showed off a piercing between low rise jeans that could pay someone's rent and a lacey, billowing top that showed off her double-D cups propped up by a push up bra. If worse for wear, she wore platform shoes to make herself even taller.

To say it simply: Bertha hated her.

And the sentiment was returned in kind.

At first, Victoria feigned kindness. She would make small talk with Bertha but it became less often the more the pair realized they had nothing in common with each other.

Victoria had done ballet until she was 16. Bertha screamed at her mother when she was 13 and was told to go outside and play. Victoria took up modeling in high school and even had a photoshoot coming up next week. Bertha despised fashion magazines, calling them anti-feminist and against women like herself. Victoria had a seven step skin-care routine while Bertha washed her face with hand soap while picking at the zits that hid under her hair dyed dry with red streaks.

They were different, sure, but it was just one semester right? They could both handle a semester together and say their good-bye's in December.

Except Victoria was rather popular.

"She's not a slut, or anything," Bertha would say as she adjusted her jeans and shoved fries into her mouth, "I'm just saying that it's annoying." Her words could be just as back handed as Victoria's. "You're, like, 19 and you've slept with more guys at our dorm than there are days this month?"

Her friends would scoff in agreement, the group of bitter virgins agreeing with each other about how they would never act like sluts. Even if they didn't actually say it.

It wasn't like Bertha was the only one spewing behind the other's back. No, if anything, Victoria was having the upper hand in that department.

"Yeah, she just codes all day." Bertha overheard one day in the bathroom, Victoria unaware she was already in their dorm as she chatted on her bedazzled phone to a friend. "I mean, it's whatever. She's just..." she groaned, "she's just kinda weird about it. The girl doesn't take care of herself, you know?"

A response on the phone.

"No, not like that. I mean, like, look... she's..." Victoria's voice dropped to a whisper as though she were saying something dirty, "she's fat. Like, big."

Laughter on the other line, and Victoria's laugh was just as shrill.

"Oh my god, have you seen her? She's huge. Literally her bicep? The size of my waist! And not to mention that she wears the weirdest clothes. It has, like, tv show references on it and stuff. She only ever wears those dirty Chucks and, like, a big hoodie. It's almost like she knows she has to cover up her hair. Yeah, totally. It looks like a home-job gone wrong. It's half dead and the other half is I think her natural hair color? But she's so pale it looks fake."

Unable to take anymore, Bertha stepped out and cleared her throat.

But Victoria was unphased, sitting on her pretty and pink bed as she twirled a lock of her hair and smiled. "Oh, hey Bertha. I was just talking about you." And then she spoke to her phone. "Oh my god, yeah, that's actually her name."

When Bertha recited this to her friends, they swore up and down, saying every curse possible as if that would help the situation. They gave their condolences and kept telling her over and over again that she was strong enough to overcome this temporary difficulty. That soon enough it would be over and done with and just a bad memory!

But Tammy and Mandy didn't have to live with Victoria. They didn't have to watch the newest season of their favorite tv-show with headphones on under the sheets as the bed next to them rocked and squeaked. They didn't have to deny Victoria's fake invitation to the campus gym every day or be asked if she was still hungry late into the night when her stomach rumbled loud and aggressively.

They didn't wake up to the sound of Victoria's expensive hair dryer turning off, pretending to be asleep all while watching her skip away with a purse in one hand and a phone in the other as she locked the dorm room behind her.

They didn't know how Bertha would wait ten minutes exactly before getting up and heading to the mirror attached onto the wall next to their shared bathroom. How she would drag the weight of her hands over her body, over the fat she carried with her. 350 pounds. She'd undress herself with sorrow, noting how her stomach would jiggle with the slightest movement. She'd adjust the frames atop her nose and pinch the fat under her chin. She'd grab her fat, flabby belly and jiggle it in her hands, the fupa underneath unavoidable. Her ass looked massive when she turned to the side, a shelf that no jacket or hoodie could hide. Her arms had bingo wings and her fingers were like sausages. She had fat, overwhelming shoulders. Her thighs were swollen tubes of fat all the way down to her cankles where they usually only ever wore sandals because of how fat her feet looked.

She'd never felt so othered in such a long time.

And when she grabbed a skirt out of Victoria's closet and couldn't bring it past the thigh of a single leg, Bertha would shove it back in, brush her teeth, and order on her phone two breakfast sandwiches instead of just one. In the meantime, as long as Victoria didn't notice, she'd steal a puff or two of that sweet vanilla-scented perfume.