chapter 1.1: older girl

In the library of Amelie’s university, on the fifth floor in a corner designated for soft music and cheerful conversations, Amelie was pretending to study. She had her textbook out and one earbud in, but as she glanced up time after time to people-watch, she found herself paying less and less attention to her books. She sighed a little.
“What’re you working on?”
Amelie looked over her shoulder, pulling her earbud out as she turned. The girl – or, woman? – behind her was broad-shouldered, with brunette hair in the cutest messy bun held with a pair of Muiji pencils, wearing a white pullover with Studio Ghibli characters screen-printed on its front and orange leggings. She was a bigger person, certainly not fat, but her pullover and naturally tall and wide frame gave a lot of space to put what might have been two hundred pounds of person. She had to be a student, but she looked older than Amelie, maybe 23, 25-ish.
“Oh, history,” Amelie said, smiling broadly. She’d been dying to get distracted since she sat down. “Judaism 141. It’s a gen ed.”
“You like that class?” The other student leaned on the back of Amelie’s chair, and Amelie had to twist almost completely around to look her in the eye.
“Yeah, it’s really good,” Amelie said. The girl nodded, smiled at her, and started to head out again, but Amelie scrambled to say something else.
“I mean, it’s okay,” she corrected herself. “I mean, I’m not Jewish, or Christian, even, so I don’t feel like I really connect with the material, you know?”
“Totally,” she said. She was leaning on the chair again. “I hated my gen eds, all of them. You’ve got to take Psych 100 with Danesh, though – it was the easiest class I think I ever took.”
“Oh, yeah? I don’t really like psychology,” Amelie said.
“Doesn’t matter. You don’t even have to go to the lectures. Just show up for the tests, and he posts all his notes online.”
“I don’t know,” Amelie said carefully. “I mean, I always go to all my lectures. I just don’t want to miss something, you know?”
The other student nodded, half a smile on her lips. “You a freshman?”
“Yeah,” Amelie admitted, sheepish. “It’s my first semester.”
“Well, trust me, freshman. By the time you get to your third year, you’ll be skipping as many classes as you actually attend. What’s your name?”
“Amelie.”
“I’m Brynn. Nice to meet you.”
“Are you a senior?”
Brynn rolled her eyes. “Super-super-senior, actually. I switched from pre-law to history of food.”
Amelie nodded a little. “Wow,” she said, the false cheer patently obvious. “That sounds like a super fun major.”
Brynn grinned. “It’s nothing,” she said. “Don’t worry, you can say it.”
Amelie laughed. “Okay, I’ll say it. That’s the most useless major I’ve ever heard of.”
Brynn laughed out loud. “I know, I know. My parents were beyond furious, but I’m their only kid, so they can’t cut me off. But I like it. Lots of essays, and some cooking classes too.”
“Oh, wow! So are you going to be a chef, then?”
Brynn shrugged. “We’ll see where fate takes me, I guess.”
The two of them kept chatting, and eventually Brynn pulled up a chair of her own so Amelie wouldn’t have to keep straining her neck. Brynn was witty and cynical, and she knew all the secrets about their school, like what hours the lounges in the upper floor were always deserted or who the mascot actually was or when you could sneak by the culinary classes to get free food. Amelie couldn’t believe there was so much to know about their campus, and Brynn was like an encyclopedia of insider information.
Brynn was fascinating, Amelie found. Once she sat down, and Amelie got a closer look at her face, she saw the careful way she’d not only winged her eyeliner in orange, but she’d dotted her cheeks with fake scarlet freckles. Her eyebrows were sharp and deliberate, and the effect was striking every time she quipped and raised a brow. Her face, her body, were enchanting.
They continued chatting, and in the frosted window to their right, the sun began to set. Amelie only realized an hour had passed when Brynn took a minute to answer an email, and Amelie started looking around her own phone. She ought to put her emails on her phone, too. That would be a great way to save time.
“Oh, wow, it’s 6:30,” Amelie said. “I have to get food before the meal period ends.”
“Do you want to go back to my place?” Brynn offered. “I have an apartment a couple miles from here. I can make you food.”
“Oh, really?” Amelie asked, shocked. She was really inviting Amelie over so soon after meeting her?
“Sure,” Brynn said, laughing at Amelie’s enthusiasm. “I like you. You should come over. Nothing fancy.”
“Okay!” Amelie shoved her books into her backpack, quickly standing. “I’m sure since you’re a culinary student you’ll have lots of good food.”
Brynn smiled, a look that, for a second, Amelie couldn’t quite read. “Oh, don’t worry,” she said. “It’ll be something unforgettable.”
They walked down to Brynn’s car, and Brynn’s phone automatically connected to the speaker. “Oh, this song is really good,” she said, and they sat in silence for a bit while Amelie listened and Brynn relaxed to the music. It was something local, that Amelie had never heard of, and it was a little diverse for her tastes, but definitely outstanding technically.
“I like it,” she said. Brynn grinned at her.
She wasn’t quite so chatty in the car as she had been in the library, and Amelie took her cues from her, looking out the window at the urban life. Their school was close to a major city, and Brynn’s apartment was in the busy downtown. She parallel-parked – “It’s still a block away,” she informed Amelie – with no regard for the stopped-up traffic as soon as she slowed her car, then waved her hand, and Amelie followed her up to the apartment.
It was small, but cozy, the old-lady wallpaper utterly covered by unframed artwork from local painters. Sketches of the skyline drawn without lifting the pen, pictures of sleeping women with giant Afros and the city nestled in their hair. Unlike the music they’d listened to on the way up, the paintings weren’t so much good as they were deeply, profoundly passionate. She was almost afraid to touch them, they were so haphazard, but she was drawn to them all the same.
“Amelie?” Brynn called, standing over the stove, already assembling ingredients. “Come this way,” she instructed.
Amelie followed. She sat down at the kitchen table. “Can I help with anything?” she asked.
“Nope,” Brynn said, coming from behind Amelie’s chair. “You just sit there, and I’ll bring the food to you, alright?”
“Sure,” Amelie said cheerfully, and when Brynn brought over a plate full of rich chocolate eclairs, she quickly dug in. There were about twelve on the plate, each just a little larger than bite-sized.
“These are so good, Brynn! Did you make them, or buy them?”
“I made those,” she called back. “Learned the recipe in a class I’m taking. You want to watch TV?”
“Sure,” Amelie said. She’d been hoping to talk to Brynn more, but Brynn switched on the TV on her kitchen counter, flipped to Netflix, and put on some standup, and Amelie was engrossed. Meanwhile, Brynn was busy in the kitchen, but she set a plate down in front of Amelie to start her off.
The plate held two dozen meatballs around a bowl of spiced hummus, each of them with a little toothpick already inside. It looked like it might be a party favor, what with the number of them, and so Amelie wondered if she was meant to share, but before she could ask, Brynn called over from the kitchen.
“Enjoy it,” Brynn said. “The recipe’s from a friend of mine from Turkey. And I have a million more of those in the fridge, so don’t be shy about it.”
Amelie shrugged, reached for a toothpick, and began the careful maneuver of dipping the meatball without letting it fall into the hummus.
They were delicious. It was almost too much flavor; Amelie’s family didn’t tend to use a ton of spices, but it was rich and nutritious without being too much. The meatballs had their own sweet sauce, too, like a barbecue sauce or something, and Amelie wondered how much sugar was in it and she munched away, eyes glued to the TV. She was glad it wasn’t too hot for her, even though she bet Brynn loved spicy food. She must be going easy on her.
She was reaching for another one when her hand came up empty. She pulled her eyes from the TV for the first time in a while, she wasn’t quite sure how long, and saw the meatballs were gone, and so was most of the hummus. Embarrassed, she was about to apologize, but Brynn slid the next plate right under her hand.
“Okay, here you go,” she said. “I’d love for you to try this. It’s a mac-and-cheese casserole, Southern American style. You’re not allergic to anything, are you?”
“Well…I am a little bit lactose intolerant,” Amelie admitted, looking up from the food to see what Brynn’s response would be. Brynn had her lips pursed, her stunningly made-up face just the slightest bit disappointed, and Amelie grabbed the plate anyway. “But I’m sure it’ll be fine,” she said, and started in.
Amelie wasn’t really hungry. The meatballs had been a lot, and she was already comfortably full. Brynn had given her the entire dish, with no indication of how much she was supposed to eat from it, so Amelie dipped her fork into the corner for just a taste.
It was heavenly. She almost couldn’t believe food could be this good, but there it was: creamy, sweet, greasy with little bits of bacon and slathered with stringy cheese. She couldn’t help but shove another forkful of it in her mouth, and the cheese strings came up with it too. She took a few more scoops, gulping them down almost without swallowing, compelled by the gooey tangle of cheese to keep shoveling in forkful after forkful. Eventually, Amelie traded the small utensil for the big soup spoon Brynn had left with the casserole.
“Good?” Brynn asked, looking pleased.
“Mmph!” Amelie answered, giving her a thumbs up. She pulled the casserole dish into her lap, so she could eat it while she watched.
She knew she was being a slob, especially when the cheese started sticking all over her. Her cheeks pinked, but she didn’t want to stop herself, and from the way Brynn was humming idly in the kitchen, occasionally looking over her shoulder at Amelie and winking, she didn’t seem to mind either. So Amelie kept scarfing down food.
She shifted in her seat, and felt the bottom of her camisole spring up over her belly. She took a second to pull it back down, but only two spoonfuls later, it was back out again. Amelie looked down, and saw her stomach starting to form a food baby, too large for her little camisole to cover all the way.
“Whoops,” she whispered, laughing awkwardly at herself. She set the mac and cheese down on the table to fix her shirt, but there was no way it would stay. She blushed, and sat up straighter in her seat. There – the shirt covered her belly all the way now.
“I think I’d better slow down,” she told Brynn.
Brynn turned over her shoulder. She was working an enormous bowl of batter with a giant mixer, her pullover having been replaced with an apron that read, “No Cook Likes A Skinny Guest.”
“Finish it off,” Brynn encouraged her. “Don’t worry about manners around here. You just go ahead and make yourself comfortable. Eat as much as you like; there’ll always be more.”
“Are you sure?” Amelie said, blushing a little. “I don’t want to – ”
She was cut off by Brynn putting the spoon back in her mouth. She licked off the cheese, and now she was blushing from how much she liked it, not from the embarrassment of no longer being able to cover her puffed-out belly.
“Okay,” Amelie mumbled around the spoon, and Brynn laughed a little at her. She playfully slapped Amelie’s belly with her hand, and Amelie’s face turned bright red. She shoved more food in her mouth just so she wouldn’t have to address what had just happened, and Brynn laughed all the way back to the kitchen.
Amelie sighed a little. It was sort of paradise, getting to hang out and veg, and somehow the casserole was still warm too. She kept eating, even though her stomach was getting really full now. Brynn was being really nice, and Amelie couldn’t just turn down her hospitality like that. She surprised even herself by how much she was able to eat, stretching herself a little past her usual limit.
“So, have you mostly been eating at the dining hall since you got here?” Brynn asked from the kitchen.
Amelie swallowed, though her mouth was still too full to speak. “Yeah,” she said around the food. “I have the Unlimited plan.”
“Oh, yeah, that’s the best meal plan,” Brynn said. “You can just keep going in as many times as you want. You hit up Midnight Munchies yet?”
“Almost every day,” Amelie admitted, blushing. The dining hall’s late-night special was definitely overkill, but her parents had been so strict about getting their money’s worth… “I just don’t want to waste it.”
“I hear you. You go there for the chocolate cake they do, don’t you?”
“Yes! How did you know?”
“All the freshmen love it. I’ve probably eaten ten pounds of the stuff myself. When I stopped having a meal plan, though, I had to work something else out…and that’s where this came in.”
She was next to Amelie now, her sugar-cookie perfume mixing with the unmistakable scent of chocolate. Amelie was already eating, but she could have sworn her mouth watered. She set down her spoon, took a few swigs of water to cleanse her palate, and tried to get a look.
Brynn shielded it from her, though. Instead of leaving it on the plate and going back into the kitchen, she pulled up a chair and sat next to Amelie. Amelie could still see the TV, but now she had the table with the forgotten casserole dish on one side of her and Brynn on the other side.
“Voilà my masterpiece,” Brynn almost purred, and the sound plus her full belly was enough to nearly put Amelie to sleep, but that chocolate…wow. It was a cake, nearly a foot square and almost six inches deep and hollowed out in the center to hold a decadent ice cream sundae: whipped cream, chocolate chips, M&Ms, marshmallows, the works.
“Ohh, it looks just like the cake sundaes at the dining hall but bigger,” Amelie gasped. She reached for it instinctively, but the twinge in her stomach made her sit back.
Looking down, she could see just how much she’d eaten. The elastic at the bottom of her blouse was pushed up to her navel, and the bottom of it was just barely covered by the frills. Underneath her shirt, her belly was as round and smooth as if she’d blown it up with a gas pump. When she’d tried to lean forward, the pressure it had put on her belly had made all that cheese and pasta feel like a rock she’d swallowed. It growled, and she knew it wasn’t from hunger, but all that chocolate made her think something else…
“Look at it.” The words were almost a command, but one that she obeyed instantly. “Don’t you want to just devour this thing?”
“Yeah,” Amelie mumbled. Her cheeks had never been so hot. “I really shouldn’t eat any more, though…” She tugged at the edge of her blouse, trying not to make it obvious, but the edge of it just wouldn’t grip her fluffed-up belly.
“Oh, don’t think about that,” Brynn waved it off. “Everybody needs a cheat day, right? And I know you’d eat more than this at Thanksgiving. Think of this like your mid-year Thanksgiving.”
Amelie cringed. Brynn was being so nice, but she was starting to feel uncomfortable, and not just because she knew she was about to fart in someone else’s apartment. “That’s so sweet, but…”
“How about this. Have you seen Palm Springs? It was at Sundance.”
Amelie shook her head.
“I’ll put it on for you,” she said. She pointed the remote at the TV, and it was already on before Amelie could form the words to protest. Brynn put a hand on Amelie’s chest, pushing her firmly into her seat. “You just sit and watch the movie, and I’ll help you out with this…”
Brynn dipped the spoon into the cake and, like a mom with a toddler, put the first spoonful of the sugar-loaded confection in Amelie’s mouth for her.
Her taste buds exploded.
Amelie’s mouth opened and closed. The movie was slow, and she knew she shut her eyes a few times. She wasn’t falling asleep, though. She was just falling into the chocolate. And Brynn didn’t notice, right? If she’d noticed Amelie’s dopey expression when she gulped down a chunk of Ghiradelli’s and let her jaw hang open for more, or the way she sighed when the hit of dopamine the sugar gave her flooded out her brain, or the burps that had nearly escaped and the farts that already had, she’d have said something, right?
She wouldn’t have just kept silently spooning food into her face, slow and methodical and just as indulgent as a parent with a child, letting the spoon slide across her sugar-streaked tongue so she could pick up every last calorie. She’d have said something when Amelie shifted her weight the first time, would have slowed down or something. She’d have slowed down, or asked Amelie if she was still hungry, or given her something else to eat that wasn’t pure fat and the emptiest of empty calories.
Or if not the first time, the second time then, when Amelie had shifted a shoulder to scratch and her blouse had slid up her belly up to where it got caught on her bellybutton. Amelie would have pulled it back down, but Brynn’s hand got in the way of hers one too many times, and instead she just left it there, looking awkwardly between the TV and Brynn’s face. Brynn seemed to be watching the program; she couldn’t have even noticed about the – shirt – situation…she turned back around, gave Amelie a serene smile, and held up another spoonful. So Amelie let it go, and let the shirt stay where it was.
By this point, she was reaching her limit. Her belly was bloated and throbbing; she’d already gone from mostly-skinny to six months pregnant with a food baby, and it was worse since she was sitting down and her belly just pooled in her lap. She spread her legs out a little bit and her gut fell in between them. It took enough of the pressure off that she could keep eating, so she let it go, with a nervous look at the oblivious Brynn wondering how long she intended to keep this going.
But if that little scene hadn’t caught Brynn’s attention, then the third time must have. She’d spread her legs wide and her belly was sitting in between them, and she was lolling back her head in her chair. The frills at the end of her shirt couldn’t hope to cover the expanse of her belly, especially with it hanging down the way it was now. All the cheese she’d eaten before finally had its revenge on her, and –
Uuuuuuuuuurp. Her belch tore through the apartment and her shirt unhooked from her bellybutton and slid all the way up her stomach. Now, her beachball of a belly was exposed to the air, bright red and throbbing just like her face.
Amelie scrambled to cover her belly, but the pain from just moving was so great that she stopped altogether. She groaned, reduced to only holding her stomach in her hands, and it turned into another belch.
Brynn raised an eyebrow.