Read Online Beauty by Patria L. Dunn (Patria Dunn-Rowe) - Free Book Online Page B

Kerrington. They were all skinny. They were all pretty. And they were all popular. There were nights when I cried myself to sleep wishing I were just like th em. Sure they included me in their do r m suite movie nights… I lived there. They also came to me for help in their classes, or even advice about their boyfriends. I never had anything to offer for the latter , but I was a good listener, and I guess that’s what made us friends. It didn’t matter that they didn’t acknowledge me outside of that. I knew my place, and it was with the bottom dwellers. Except…I never grouped myself with them. My list of bottom dwelling friends consisted of : Michael, Abbey, Dewayne, Heather, Renee, Gordan, and Buster. They were bottom dwellers because just like me, they had no life. So what , they’d thrown me a surprise birthday party a few months ago. I’d spent the whole time hoping that no one saw me with them in the student union hall. In high school they would have been the leaders of the nerd clique. In college…they were accepted, but not one’s you spent your time with unless you were studying or needed to be tutored. Half of them were just as chunky or overweight as I was, and none of them ever did anything fun like June and her friends did.
    Shit! I’d forgotten my promise to help out at the blood driv e this morning. Reading over Michael’s first three emails, inwardly I cringed at leaving them hanging. I smiled at the pictures he’d attached to the last email. In it Michael, Abbey and Buster all pretended to choke themselves to deat h, th e ir arms raised so that the pictured captured the pint of blood they’d all donated. The three of them had stayed for summer semester, all of them taking the same class I’d registered for: Intro to Thermodynamics. Becoming an engineer hadn’t been a decision that I’d mad e for myself. My father had taken a shot at it and failed. He was now a high school science teacher, and I didn’t want to follow in his footsteps. I wanted to trample all over them and then say: See, I’m better than you ever were!
    I shot a quick email back to Michael explaining that I’d been sick all night and had been in bed throwing up all morning. I’d never let them down before, and so there was no need to sound more convincing. He’d believe me. It was a tiny white lie. I had been sick, and I’d also thrown up several times at Becca’s, but Michael didn’t need to know that. He wouldn’t understand.
    The rest of the emails I left for later. I wasn’t in the mood to listen to anyone else’s problems. I had my own to figure out. After stripping my borrowed clothes off, I stepped on the scale I’d left sitting right in front of the closet. My gaze connected with the full length mirror and I jumped in shock at the fullness my body had taken on. The difference wasn’t huge, but it was definitely noticeable. My cheeks were rounder, my breasts just a hint larger. Where my stomach had been perfectly sculpted the day before, there was no definition now and my sides were showing the beginnings of love handles. My gaze lowered immediately when the scale beeped once to announce my current weight, and I jump from it as if it had burned me.
    One thirty four! I’d gained twenty something pounds in a night!? What the fuck had I done to warrant that kind of weight gain!?
    I stepped back on the scale and then off again when it confirmed the same exact number as before. I was hyperventilating, my head back to throbbing from the migraine I still had. With shaky fingers I grabbed the tiny Ziploc bag of blue pills and plucked one out, swallowing it dry.
    I lay on my bed naked, waiting to feel something…anything…
    The witch had never said I couldn’t exercise. I was small enough now to do it without passing out after just a few minutes. It was so simple. I’d beat her at her own game, do what I wanted, and never worry about being fat again.
    With that thought I was up and dressed in a pair of June’s