Campus Pigs-Chapter 12

A faint but distinctive ringing noise was dominating Lindsey's auditory senses and she yelped when she felt an admittedly familiar hand rest on her shoulder, would’ve jumped out of her skin, in fact, if she hadn't been so full. 

“Great first-week numbers Lindsey,” Courtney encouraged, an unmistakable glint of excitement in her eyes. “Really, great. Obviously it's not all gonna stick, it's just the difference in your diet we're seeing but,” Courtney paused, grinning at Lindsey widely and dropping her gaze to the pig's dessert bloated belly for a fraction of a second, clearly not trying to bring attention to her examination of the swell pushing out the front of Lindsey’s former dress. 

Lindsey opened her mouth to respond, prepared to match Courtney's hushed tone as the remaining few contestants were weighed, and let loose a loud, head-turning burp, everyone in the immediate vicinity swiveling their heads to determine the source of the offense. Lindsey's face flamed red, her knowledge that the room was filled with other students just as full as she was doing nothing to alleviate her embarrassment, and much to her surprise Courtney dropped a hand to her belly, beginning to discreetly rub the slow oscillating circles that Lindsey had grown to rely on almost immediately. Courtney's hands were sometimes the only cure for Lindsey's worst stomach aches and she’d grown to depend on them. 

She burped again as Courtney deftly relieved the pressure in her middle, much more quietly this time, and found herself more able to focus on the matter at hand, more cognizant of where she was, what had just happened, and the urgency of the need to seek clarification. 

“We lost,” she hissed in Courtney's ear. “How did she do that? How does she look so…huge?” she marveled, both of them well aware of the unnamed ‘she’ in question. “Wait,” Lindsey whispered, backing up and staring at Courtney as one of MJ’s now former volleyball teammates made her way to the scale, her figure appearing unchanged but her height certainly providing the lean, muscular girl with plenty of places to store new fat. “What are you doing here? Shouldn't you be with the house?”

“Abby sent me over,” Courtney whispered back. “She wanted me…she wanted me to check on you and all, make sure you’re ok.” 

“Yea, more like she wanted you to yell at me for losing.”

“I mean,” Courtney began with a shrug, a smile of sheepish admittance slipping its way onto her face. “Yea, that too. But she was excited about the 16 pounds thing. Impressed, even. When she sees how much of it is water weight she’ll be sick, but until then-”

“It doesn't feel like water weight,” Lindsey interjected in a grumble. “It feels like 16 pounds of pure fat. 20 even.”

“What do you mean?” Courtney asked, fixing her with the kind of intrigued, studious look that Lindsey was already well aware meant she planned to log this conversation in this year's observation reports. Each year's entries became more and more detailed as she matriculated through college, and her position as the unofficial house-wide, and truly campus-wide librarian of the campus pig contest. 

She took her information collection and preservation methods very seriously, and the more time Lindsey spent with her, the more she realized how well-studied Courtney was in this educationally insignificant course matter. She followed the events of the contest like a sports fanatic, and as Lindsey and the rest of campus had to admit, her work had made Phi Lambda more effective than any other sorority by a wide margin. That is, until now. Until Phoebe and whatever black magic she’d used to produce such a belly in just one week's time. 

Lindsey sighed, vaguely irritated by Courtney's inquiry despite being the one to bring up the subject herself. In all truth, she was well aware that her mild irritation was only borne of her discomfort around the subject, her discomfort in her bloated, growing new body, and most of all, her discomfort with what all of this would quickly become. 

“I mean…I don't know. Just what I was saying earlier I guess. That I feel weird. Squishy.” 

Lindsey blushed as the words left her mouth, unsure if she was even feeling any lasting effects of her pregaming whatsoever, and turned back towards the scale, the second to last to hit the scale a brown headed boy named Jacob known for his prowess on the baseball diamond. 

“You do not,” Courtney reassured her in the same low murmur they had been conducting the entire conversation. “You really don't, you look great.”

“But I'm getting bigger,” Lindsey protested. “The scale said so, it's, you know.”

She scrunched her nose searching for the word. 

“You know!” she insisted more adamantly, the piece of vocab slipped from her stressed mind entirely. “Inevitable, or whatever. You can't argue.”

“Irrefutable?” Courtney guessed, and Lindsey rolled her eyes, 

“Of course you know,” she retorted, partially teasing and partially wanting the conversation to end, or at the very minimum take on a different direction. “Shhhh,” she hushed to a silent Courtney, who fixed her with an odd look at the unnecessary instruction. “Phoebe is about to go.” 

Phoebe was making her way to the scale with a level of speed that had to have been exaggerated for effects sake, the swell of her chubby little gut overly visible through her tight top and bouncing slightly with each of her heavy steps as the lower portions jiggled rhythmically. 

“She’s doing that on purpose,” Lindsey complained to Courtney without thinking, murmurs and light, single exclamation cheers spreading throughout the room as the supposed underdog turned true contender approached the proverbial arena. “Walking like that. It's making her look fatter.”

Lindsey realized with a start that she was actively jealous, battling off the same pangs of negativity she felt when one of her teammates performed better on the field or one of her friends was a certified user on their father's credit card. She was jealous. More than jealous, she was nervous. It wasn't just that she wanted to have what Phoebe had, the attention, the clear advantage in this twisted game they’d found themselves the players of, but she also wished that Phoebe didn't have it. She didn't want to compete. The stress of fighting to keep her place each week combined with the stress of watching herself bloat into an unrecognizably obese stranger would be too much for her to bear, she could barely take the stress of a chemistry quiz on the same day she had to wake up early for her 8ams. 

She frowned, analyzing the thought with a level of self-admonishment typically reserved for an avoidable jail sentence, and turned anxiously back towards the rest of the group, watching Abigail as the house president watched Phoebe make a show of her wobbly new procession. 

Phoebe's face and shirt were still smeared with icing, just as Lindsey's were, but Phoebe had truly gone all out, even getting icing in her hair. She looked full but not painfully so, and while Lindsey hadn't been observing her as closely as she likely should've been, she still had yet to see Phoebe burp raucously, the rest of the contestants all struggling considering the ridiculously unhealthy amount of sugar and dairy that they’d just packed away. 

Phoebe reached the front of the scale, a silence befalling the room although the MC had yet to call for it, and stepped upon the scale almost delicately, as if she was afraid it would break. It held of course, the few extra pounds that had sprouted on her frame overnight inconsequential in the face of its medical grade capacity, and the MC began to move the sliders up slowly, drawing out the process as she was egged on by the audibly held breath of her captive audience. The MC stepped back and hollered something into the mic that produced a vengefully loud squeal of feedback, her words going entirely unheard in favor of the painfully unexpected noise. 

“What?” multiple people cried at once, their voices overlapping. “What did she say?”

“12,” the MC repeated without the mic, her shout loud enough to reach all four corners of the room even without her amplification assistance. “She gained 12 pounds.”

The response from the crowd was mixed, some exchanging shocked looks, some clearly disappointed by a number they hoped to be higher, and some clearly befuddled as to how Phoebe could look so noticeably larger without gaining the most weight that week. Lindsey had defended her title, packing in and packing on the most by far, but that didn't mean much if Phoebe was going to knock her out of the water in other metrics. The game was not rigged for the naturally blessed of stature and never had been, and factors like BMI, body fat percentage, overall fitness (or lack thereof), body shape, and the location of a contestant's largest fat deposits, all were considered in both weekly challenges and final judging. 

On top of that, Phoebe had just won the first challenge, and if she continued that streak she’d pack on the pounds even more quickly, taking home the advantage every week and being granted the ability to add it to her next week's weigh-in. Considering her victory, Phoebe was only a few pounds away from Lindsey, terrifying considering their significant height difference. 

Phoebe had stepped off the scale while Lindsey mused and she’d been forced to search for her for a moment in the crowd, finding her surrounded by all her own sisters. They were chattering excitedly and Phoebe was resting one manicured hand on her belly as if pregnant. 

“How did she do that?” Lindsey repeated, turning to Courtney as if the organized girl was somehow privy to the competition's secrets. “How?” 

Courtney shrugged. 

“I’ve never really seen anything like it, not from a house that barely participates most years."

She paused, clearly finding her words. 

“What?” Lindsey pressed. 

The other girls were making their way through the crowd towards them, and despite their intimate knowledge of her role as the house pig and what it entailed, she still didn't feel comfortable discussing every element of her stuffings or new diet in front of the girls. 

She’d noticed she’d begun to feel a vague sense of disconnect towards them, all of them free to live their normal, stair-climbing lives while Lindsey had to ask (and was typically denied) permission to walk into the kitchen and grab her own snacks, and she preferred when the campus pig talk was left to the core group in charge of her success: Courtney, Ellie, and Abigail. 

“What?” Lindsey repeated more urgently. “Tell me.”

“No, it's not serious,” Courtney dismissed. “It's just…ok, you know what you said about feeling like it's not water weight? Well for Phoebe, it actually isn't. I mean, look at her. It can't be. That's what we should really be concerned about.”

“How do you know?: Lindsey whispered, the group almost in earshot. 

“Just look at her,” Courtney repeated. “All the rest of you have been gorging yourself for a week and it's obvious, the bloated bellies, the salt puffy faces, the struggles to suck in all in when you’re full, all those are trademarks of a short burst of inactivity and indulgence. But Phoebe was different. Your clothes still fit you, you can still look skinny in the mirror if you try. She accumulated a lot of extra fat, especially around her middle. Bloat doesn't jiggle like that every time you take a step. A too-full gut isn't that soft and grippable. Even her face. Her face would look swollen, but not fatter.”

“But…” Lindsey protested, not even sure what exactly she was arguing against. “But…How? How did she-”

“I have no idea,” Courtney replied. “None. It doesn't make sense.”

“Abby,” she called more loudly, and Abigail looked up, reading something in Courtney's face that made her push through the remaining crowd with more urgency. 

“What?” Abigail hissed when she reached them, the rest of the girls not far behind. 

She didn't look at or acknowledge the house’s frosting coated constant and Lindsey burned with shame, shocked to discover just how terrible she felt about letting Abigail down. 

“Something’s up with Megan,” Courtney murmured, and Lindsey's eyes winded, Abigail's snub forgotten. 

“Wait, yea,” Lindsey agreed hurriedly. “Something is up with Megan.”

“Get drinks, spread out to the backyard, and somebody get a speaker up here!” the MC called into the mic, mostly ignored as those arrangements had already been in motion the moment Phoebe had stepped off the scale and the scheduled portion of the evening had officially come to a close. 

All the compass pig weekly challenges ended with a debaucherous bash, as most Greek life weekends did regardless, but people seemed to go much harder at this after parties, to test their limits further and engage in things they would’ve never considered on a non-drunken, or even less drunken, basis. Post-challenge parties were legendary: the alcohol flowed, relationships were born and died, and there was always some good gossip that originated from the night, usually from a pig so uncomfortable with their new role (or their new rolls) that they blacked out just to enjoy themselves. 

Courtney had warned her about the challenge after parties but Lindsey was shocked to see how quickly the organized chaos became unregulated, loud electronica already blasting through the house's connected speaker system and drowning out Phi Lambda’s hushed conversation.

“Why do you say that?” Abigail demanded with narrowed eyes, still only looking at Courtney. 

“I was watching her,” Courtney replied. “She was acting weird. Too haughty, too excited for Phoebe. I’ve never even seen them speak before today, but she was running up to congratulate her like they were sisters. It makes no sense.”

Lindsey nodded, her every thought echoed by Courtney's logic. 

Abagail's eyes narrowed further, lightly clicking her teeth in consideration. The three of them stood within the circle of their sisters in an inner circle of sorts, their conversation shielded from any ears beyond their own houses. 

“I saw the same,” she finally confirmed. “Megan thinks because she's admin this year she can play games. She thinks i won't back.”

She took a deep breath and exhaled sharply, staring down Courtney with an intensity that made Lindsey glad Abigail was refusing to acknowledge her presence. 

“C’mon,” she said to Courtney, turning and giving Ellie a look as well. “Girls,” she instructed the group, the tone of her voice making them bunch up immediately. 

Abigail frowned. 

“Where’s Vicky?” she asked, and MJ beamed, eager to destroy Vicky's earlier presidential favor brought on by her cute outfit. “She's not here,” MJ reported smugly. “Snuck off.”

Abigail rolled her eyes and MJ’s grin widened until Abigail fixed her with a deadly flare. 

“Listen up. Go, mingle, party. Ask anyone you know about what might be up with Megan, but wait until they're drunk, feed them shots if you have to. I don't want this coming back to us.”

She sighed, looking at the group of young women. 

“Just go out there and look good, ok? Try to represent Phi Lamanda well.”

The girls nodded and dispersed, their instructions received and understood, and Karina lingered for a moment, her eye contact with Lindsey asking the unspoken question that surrounded Lindsey's role in moments like this. 

Lindsey took a hesitant step towards Karina, suddenly overly aware of just how full she was and ready to sit down, when Abigail grabbed her arm. 

“You’re coming too. We have to go over a few things at the house after this.”

Lindsay's face fell. They were leaving? She hadn't won the challenge, sure, but she’d been the winner of the weigh-in, and now that the dreaded bit of public humiliation was over, Lindsey had been cautiously looking forward to a good night out, one of her last in a body she still felt semi-comfortable claiming as her own. 

She nodded without protest and followed Abigail and Courtney through the crowd, Abigail beelining for Megan and Ellie bringing up the rear. 

“Abby!” Megan greeted, the fake, sickly sweet tone of her voice as translucent as her sheer black top. “Good try today guys,” she said with an enormous grin, staring down at Lindsey's small bulge of a belly with a level of disdain and pity that made Lindsey feel as if she were too fat to walk. 

Abigail simply stared at Megan without response, clearly in no mood for pretense. 

“What?” Megan asked, giggling. “You can't win 'em all Abby!”

“Abigail,” Abigail corrected sternly, her own name the only word she'd spoken in the confirmation so far. 

Megan nodded. 

“Sure, sure. Abigail.” 

More silence followed, and Megan, her confidence clearly waning as Abigail refused to take the bait and engage on Megan's terms, shifted unfortunately from one foot to the other. 

“So, were you just gonna stare or…” Megan finally asked, and an expression so dark crossed Abigail's face that Lindsey suddenly feared Megan would be struck. 

“How do you know Phoebe?” Courtney interjected calmly. 

“What do you mean?” Megan asked, just a single beat too late. 

“How do you know her, you obviously know her.”

“I can hug whoever I want. it was the end of the challenge, it was exciting, so what?” Megan protested, already feigning to defend several points that the Phi Lambda sub group integrating her had yet to make. 

“And yet, you haven't actually said that you don't know her,” Abigail pointed out, her voice like iced blades. 

The intimation that kept the Phi Lambda houses running as well as it did seemed also to be a powerful currency elsewhere and Megan looked a bit concerned, as if she knew she weren’t fit to stand up under its weight. 

“Alright, alright,” she caved, reaching for her phone. “I wasn't going to tell you this yet, I wanted to save it as a little surprise. But Phoebe is my cousin.”

Lindsey wrinkled her brow in confusion. 

“So what?” Courtney retorted, voicing what each of her sisters were thinking. “What does that have to do with all the weight she put on?”

“Oh, you know how younger family members always want to do everything you do,” she offered breezily, her plan for a casual reveal clearly still one she was attempting to follow through on. 

“And?” Abigail pressed. 

“And she wanted to come to the same school as me. Wanted to do everything I did. So I got her up to speed on a couple campus traditions. You know, the Earth Day bash, the morning before the homecoming game. The campus pigs contest. She was so interested in everything.

“Get to the point,” Abigail forced through gritted teeth. 

“That is the point,” Megan retorted. “She wanted to do a little extra prep for the kinds of things she knew she’d want to participate in.”

Megan slipped her phone from her back pocket, clicking it to life. 

“This was me and Phoebe two summers ago,” she said, turning the phone and eliciting an audible intake of air from all three girls. 

The picture, apparently taken at some sort of backyard barbeque, featured Megan looking the same as always, in a pair of faded cutoff daisy dukes and a dark red tank top and smiling brightly at the camera with her arm around the other subject of the photo. 

It was Phoebe. Phoebe, plus at least 150 pounds. 

The girl was only recognizable by the shape of her nose and the similar grin on her much fatter face, but without Megan's direction and context, Lindsey would’ve never looked at the ball of bulging blubber standing in the photo and thought of the phoebe she (barely) knew. Phoebe’s moon-shaped face featured a double chin that was slowly growing into a triple, and the necklace she wore in the photos seemed to actually be straining against the girth of her much thicker neck, every part of her body transformed by the pounds of lard she’d piled upon it. 

She wore a casual, warm weather outfit much like her cousins, but the difference between the fit of the two was night and day, completely incomparable to the point that their similarities are no longer significant in the face of their differences. She was also stuffed into a pair of Daisy dukes shorts, but Phoebe's shorts were both quadruple the size of Megan's and unbuttoned entirely, the lower roll of Phoebe's thick double belly hanging low enough to obscure the majority of the zipper but not how far the two flaps sat apart, her love handles puffing over the jean shorts low waistband and bulging free. Her tank top was clearly under-equipped for the task in multiple regards, and the ill-fitting tightness of her bra was evident at a single glance, the shirt too tight and skimpy to conceal just how large Phoebe had been. Her thick, cellulite-marked thighs were massive and pressed together firmly, and she was gripping a large burger in one hand, already half devoured. 

“See?” Megan asked tauntingly, shaking the picture for emphasis. “Staying in shape is easy. As long as you’ve never been fat before, of course.” 

“What…?” breathed Lindsey, confused, and Courtney nodded next to her, her mind clearly working a million miles a minute. 

“She’s right,” Courtney confirmed. “I mean, it's the best way to do it efficiency-wise, it's obviously never been done, but, but-”

The girl was stammering, barely able to get out a word. 

“I don't know how we never considered this,” Courtney murmured to Abigail, who was still staring at the photo clenched in Megan's hand. 

“What?” Lindsey prompted more firmly this time, solidly out of the loop.

“She fattened her up on purpose, years ago, then probably had her lose it all through unhealthy starvation diets. She’s right, it's not easy to stay in shape if you’ve been fat. Over 95% of people who lose weight regain the lost weight and more in a two-year period, 95% in a 5-year period. Fat cells don't diet when you drop a few pounds, they just shrink. And they’re there, shrunken and dormant. Which means the second you slack on your routine…”

“You blow up quicker than ever,” Lindsey finished quietly, finally understanding. 

Megan sat smiling at them, clearly adoring her position of power at the moment. 

“She’s been basically starving for the last two years, and now that she can eat whatever she wants, she just can't control herself. Can put away ten thousand calories in a single day, I've seen her do it.”

“Megan, what the fuck,” Abagail blurted, one of the first times Lindsey had seen her lose her composure outside of the confines of the phi lambda house. “You’re fucking sick. You fattened up your cousin so you could…wait! This isn't even about winning,” Lindsey cried incredulously, turning a few heads at the typically stoic leader's tirade. “She’s not even in your house!”

“No, she’s not.” Megan acknowledged lightly. “But she's not in your house either, is she? And she's gonna win,” Megan said, turning sharply and marching away as if she'd delivered a finishing blow. 

She had in a sense, and the three girls walked out in stunned silence, the revelation the last thing they’d been expecting.

“This is my fault,” Abigail finally said after several minutes of silence. “If I didn't hold myself to the standards that I do, if I hadn’t continued phi lambda reputation as the best house on campus, there wouldn't be so many jealous girls trying to sabotage us. I take responsibility for that.”

Lindsey sighed under her breath, the ‘responsibility’ Abigail claimed to be taking just more bragging about her own perfection. 

“Huh?” Abigail said, stopping short. “Got something to say Lindsey?”

Lindsey balked, the apparently audible indicator of complaint one Abigail wouldn't take lightly. 

“No,” Lindsey protested. “No, no, I just-”

“You lost.” Abigail interrupted. “That's what you did.”

“Well,” Lindsey began, falling silent before she could get the full word out. 

“You lost,” Abigail repeated. “It was your performance, and it's your fault. You’re the one responsible here. We’re practicing for your next eating contest for the rest of the night. You will be faster by next week. I’m gonna make you eat until the sun comes up, she promised, and Lindsey gulped, dropping a hand to her still-full belly as she trotted behind, terrified of what the rest of the night would hold.