Campus Pigs-Chapter 3

She awoke in darkness, a seemingly otherworldly blue glow emanating from her right the only thing Lindsey was aware of. She yawned, stretching out her stiff limbs, then blinking slowly, pushing herself into a sitting position. Her unscheduled nap had left her as dazed as she was rested, and the events of that morning were slow to return to her. 

“You're up?” a voice asked from the direction of the light, and Lindsey nearly jumped out of her skin, her heart refusing to slow even when she realized where she was and who had spoken. 

Audrey was clacking away at the computer just as she had been before Lindsey had fallen asleep, and she was working in total darkness despite the late hour. 

“What are you..” Lindsey murmured, her voice still heavy with sleep. She cleared her throat and tried again. “What are you doing?” she asked.

“Working,” Audrey answered simply. “Was just about to wake you up, actually. It's 8.”

Lindsey rushed to her feet, unsure of what to do with herself. They were both well aware that the ceremony and festivities started at 9. 

“I don't have enough time,” she cried, flying for the door. “I have to get ready, I need to do my makeup.”

“Don't bother with makeup,” Audrey called after her. “You know you’ll ruin it anyways.”

Lindsey ignored her and scurried down the hall to her own room, flinging open the door to find Karina sitting at the vanity with a beauty blender pressed against her cheek. 

“Linds,” Karina chirped happily, her face falling and her tone changing the second she saw Lindsey's face in the mirror. “What's wrong?”

“Everything, Karina,” Lindsey reminded her impatiently. “I’m Phi Lambda campus pig, I have no time to get ready, I don't even know what I'm gonna wear, and I have to embarrass myself in front of everyone tonight.”

“It's not embarrassing!” Karina protested. “Everyone knows this is for your sisters, there's gonna be tons of other people on that stage all doing the same thing you’re doing.”

“That doesn't make it any less humiliating,” Lindsey muttered, beginning to throw clothes from her closet onto her bed. She sorted through them aggressively, knowing that nothing she owned would be right for this occasion. She sighed.

“Karina?”

The perpetually friendly girl looked up from her primping, her bright expression open.

“Is your purple top clean?”

40 minutes later the girls were leaving as a group, Abigail leading the procession as usual but this time with Lindsey at her side instead of Ellie. 

Ellie, Abigail's perpetual shadow, had been relegated to a position further back in order to give Lindsey the opportunity to go over Abigail's multitude of last-minute instructions.

“You don’t have to win tonight,” Abigail was saying, gripping Lindsey's forearm with just a bit too much nail. “Tonight means nothing, tonight is just symbolic. Obviously, win if you can, I'm not saying don’t put in a good effort, but just don’t strain yourself. Courtney and I have already worked out your diet and mapped out exactly how many calories you’ll need a day to get bigger than last year's winner. That's how we always win, we set our standards the highest from the very beginning of this.”

Lindsey nodded, wanting nothing more than to roll her eyes.

“Making yourself sick won't help, it's what the boys always do and it's stupid, it's why they always lose. Eating all day till you puke just means you wasted a day. It's much better to focus on calorie density than volume, that's very important. We'll go over everything tomorrow morning. When we get in, you don’t identify yourself. Other girls are gonna be talking about how they were chosen, people have been posting about it, but the Phi Lambda pig is gonna remain a secret until we’re called on to present you, it's essential. Our air of mystery is half of the intrigue. If people feel like they can know insider secrets of Phi Lambda, why would they need to join Phi Lambda? If our business isn’t exclusive, we aren't. That also means you don't post, at all, unless I give you the go-ahead. Not even on your spam account. You don’t tell people your weight, you don’t show off how fat you're getting, you just eat. That's the way we win. Laser focus on the goal.”

Abigail was rambling, her own, bossy, expression of her nerves, and Lindsey felt comfortable tuning her out, knowing that the older woman was just repeating herself to shore up her own confidence. 

They were headed to the Chi Theta house for the opening ceremonies, a yearly tradition that kicked off the campus pigs contest. Each participating fraternity and sorority presented their picks, agreed to adhere to the rules, and then watched as the unlucky selections participated in their first activity: an eating contest. 

The first matches of the campus pig eating contest had been conducted with a long-time eating contest staple; pie in multiple varieties. Over the years they’d had hotdogs, burgers, an unfortunate, brain-freeze-ridden appearance of ice cream, and even chicken wings. But the easiest food to order and purchase in mass, the food that required no utensils, no plates, and carried no possibility of brain freeze, was pizza. The eating contest had featured pepperoni pizza for as long as Abigail and Courtney had been on campus, and the cost-effectiveness and general popularity of the choice essentially guaranteed that the campus pigs eating contest had unofficially become the campus pigs pizza eating contest. 

The boys usually took home the trophy on that first night, however Abigail was right, it had almost no standing on the final winners. Phi Lambda was the home of the perpetual champions, and they’d only won the eating contest once, the year that Phi Lambda member Gina was the only one game enough to stomach more than 10 unusually spicy hot wings. Fraternities did surprisingly poorly in the contest as a whole, the boys fighting against their young, active male metabolisms, and they were often left in the dust early on, the final contenders all being women. 

Lindsey, who'd had so little time to let her mind catch up with all that had happened today she was still reeling, was barely even able to think about the eating contest she had unwillingly entered, barely able to think of anything further in the future than the next step she would take one the cobbled walkway. The only way she was getting through this night, getting through this entire semester, would be living in the moment with no thought of the future. 

Thinking about who she'd be or what she'd look like in 6 months made panic clutch at her throat so tightly she couldn't breathe, but thinking about lifting her foot and placing it down in front of her other foot was just fine. Pleasant, even. Tomorrow had become a dirty word in a matter of half a day, and Lindsey was doing all she could to ignore what she knew and allow the calm of cognitive dissonance to overtake her. If ignorance was bliss, Lindsey was seeking stupidity. 

“Ok?” Abigail insisted, clearly repeating herself. 

Lindsey snapped back to attention.

“Yea,” she rushed out with a nod. “Yea, ok.”

Abigail frowned. 

“What did I just say?”

Lindsey winced internally, knowing she’d pay for this little slight later. 

“Um,” she began, stalling. “Uh, just about the rules and stuff. For the contest.”

“I’m trying to help you, Lindsey,” Abigail retorted snarkily. “You’re gaining the weight whether you know what's going on or not, I'm just trying to help you be more informed.”

“I know, I know, I'm sorry,” Lindsey conceded, hoping to get the older girl off her back. “I'm sorry. It's just a lot to think about, I'm really distracted.”

“Aww,” Abigail cooed in a voice that expressed no sympathy, her face unchanged. “I understand that, of course I do. But you're not doing anything that your sisters haven't done before you. Sisterhood is absolutely everything Lindsey, it should be your utmost priority. It's why you’re here.”

Not an education? Lindsey thought, too cowardly to challenge the group's leader aloud. 

“Yea,” she agreed instead, still looking at her feet. 

They arrived at the Chi Theta house at the edge of campus and stopped, the girls chattering amongst themselves as they gave each other the once over and adjusted any final strands of flyaway hair or out-of-place accessories. The house was already crowded despite the technically early hour, and Karina gripped Lindsey's arm, materializing at her side the second she was released from Abigail's clutches. 

“Brayden’s gonna be here,” she sang, giggling. “He probably already is.”

Lindsey dropped her head to her friend's shoulder, somehow feeling newly exhausted as if she hadn't napped for hours. 

“I don’t wanna talk about Brayden,” she complained into Karina's sweet-smelling hair. “I don't even wanna talk to Brayden.”

“Well…Well, maybe,” Karina began slowly, clearly searching for a source of comfort. 

Her face lit up. 

“Maybe he got picked too!”

Lindsey stepped back and fixed Karina with a look so steely she immediately backtracked, stumbling over her words as she tried to explain herself. 

“It's just that you, you two, would be in the same, like, you know…boat. Same boat.”

“I don't wanna be on that boat,” Lindsey wailed, catching Courtney’s attention.

“Are you good?” she asked in a hushed voice as she sidled up to them. “Cause Abigail will get mad if you call too much attention to her, you know she likes all the pomp and circumstance of the reveal.”

“We’re good,” Karina affirmed with a quick nod. “We’re both good. We were just talking about the boys.”

Courtney wrinkled her brow.

“The boys? What are you worried about the boys for, they never win.”

“Just…wondering who got picked,” Karina answered finally, keeping a careful eye on Lindsey. “We should go in.” 

The 12 girls made their way into the party to raucous greetings, their distinction of campus's most popular sorority working its usual magic. Lindsey, a tight smile glued to her face in an effort to not betray her less than covetous new role, looked around, assessing the chaos. On a normal night, she’d be beelining for the punch bowl of jungle juice and preparing to have a time to (maybe) remember, but now she viewed the party around her through a different, more sinister lens. 

Two girls, one of them a third-year Nu Alpha and the other a blond Lindsey couldn't quite place, were weeping drunkenly with their arms around each other, only letting go to have another slug of beer. 

They must've been chosen, she thinks with dismay, noting that their sorority presidents didn’t make them avoid extra calories before the weigh-in. 

Karina came back with two drinks, tried to hand one to Lindsey before realizing her mistake, and chugged the first to slot the two cups together and leave her with a free hand. 

“It's not even good,” Karina called over the music, licking her lips. “You’re not missing out on anything.” 

Lindsey just nodded and leaned against the wall, feeling the onset of a pounding headache. Her stomach was grumbling loudly enough that it would've been audible if it weren't for the oversized speakers blasting pop music and the overlapping voices of hundreds of intoxicated students. All she wanted was to go home, have dinner, go to sleep, and wake up in a world where she wasn't this unlucky, wasn't cursed with this burden she now realized she never should've taken a chance on. 

The music cut and Lindsey's head shot up, knowing full well what that meant. The ceremony was about to begin. Organizations began to clump together, and Lindsey and Karina made their way to the center of the main room where Abigail was holding court. They pressed in with the other girls, Ellie going out of her way to step in front of Lindsey and conceal her more fully within the center of their huddle to better reveal her. 

Lindsey was beginning to feel dizzy. The eddy of voices and excitement was washing over her in powerful swells and she felt she was struggling for breath, struggling to stand. She was a social butterfly who typically loved parties, loved nothing more than to be surrounded by people and energy, but now she felt as if it was draining her, as if her life force was being sucked out and used to power the too-bright lights she was squinting her eyes against. Everything was too much. Everything was wrong.

She grabbed Karina's arm, desperate to speak, but no words would come. Karina patted her hand affectionately, her attention still turned to the makeshift stage, but the chipper voices of the tipsy event MCs sounded like a droning buzz in her ears. She watched the ceremony begin and her feeling of disconnection grew, the world around her blurry and distant as if she was viewing it through concave glass. 

There was laughter, jeering, and clapping from the crowd, but Lindsey couldn't make any of it out. Students began to walk on stage as their organization’s name was called and Lindsey felt as if she was going to be sick, as if she was fighting off a fever. 

The host hollered something else into the mic and suddenly everyone around Lindsey stepped to the side, leaving her standing alone in the midst of the cacophony that followed the reveal. Individual faces ran together until she could see nothing but crowd, and a push at her back from an unidentified hand propelled her forward to where the hosts waited for her. One of them, the Sigma treasurer, grabbed her hand excitedly and spoke, shoving the mic in Lindsey's face expectantly for an answer. Lindsey blinked and shook her head, eliciting laughter, and the woman grabbed her hand and tugged her to the waiting scale Lindsey had failed to notice. 

She stepped onto it to more shouting and applause and then it was all over, with Lindsey standing in line with the rest of the chosen ones who’d already been weighed.

I don't even know how much it was, she thought blankly, her mind too tired to work properly. The crowd was chanting now and Lindsey felt faint, felt she wasn't long for the wakeful world. 

She became aware of a concentrated buzzing in her left ear and turned her head slowly, unsure if she was fabricating the sound or if a large bee was suddenly present. 

“Hey,” a dark-haired girl with bright red lipstick was hissing. “Hey, Lindsey right?”

Lindsey nodded, feeling as if she were underwater and the girl was above, their conversation separated by a rippling, impermanent pane. 

“You look freaked,” the girl whispered. “Here, have some.”

She pushed a small pink flask into Lindsey's hand and Lindsey, desperate for a sense of normalcy, took an enormous gulp, recognizing the familiar taste of Smirnoffs as the liquid hit her tongue. She took a swallow, then another, typically not the kind to drink without a chaser but eager to be in a state of soothing inebriation. 

“Whoa,” the girl murmured.

Lindsey threw back a last shot and ran the back of her hand across her mouth, smiling sheepishly at the girl as she handed back the flask.

“Sorry,” Lindsey whispered. “I'll buy you more.”

She looked around, her stomach turning but her nerves stabilizing, and took in more of the room. Everyone was yelling, hollowing really, and she watched as more weights and names filled the whiteboard at the front of the room. The party was so large it was spilling into the backyard, and the hoots and hollers from the other room were on a slight delay as the information was passed on to them. 

Lindsey looked to Phi Lambda to find Karina watching her with worry and Lindsey smiled, giving the group a thumbs up. She was beginning to feel better. A lot better in fact. As the shots settled on her empty stomach she felt the immediate effects, and was already wavering slightly a few minutes after taking her fellow competitor up on her offer. 

“I'm starving,” she grumbled louder than she meant to, and the girl who’d provided the flask laughed. 

“Good thing to be,” she quipped. “They're about to bring out the pizzas.”

As if her words had been the cue, there was a flurry of activity as a line of frat boys separated the crowd, walking down to the stage with arms laden with pizza boxes. 

Lindsey grinned, the three back-to-back shots beginning to take the wheel. 

“Can I have another?” she asked the dark-haired girl, pointing to her body in general because she didn't know where the flask was stored. “1 more, just 1 more.”

The girl shrugged and produced the flask grinning as she handed it to Lindsey. “Just don't be obvious, ok?”

Lindsey nodded earnestly then all but upended the flask above her head and chugged, ignoring the bitter burning in her chest. 

The flask owner laughed. 

“Damn, get it then,” she said jovially as Lindsey handed it back, taking a small sip herself. 

“You get it,” said Lindsey nonsensically, the final double shot quickly pushing her past tipsy into the realms of drunkenness. “Youuu get it.”

“Phi Lambda, can we keep it cute please?” the MC chided, turning to Lindsey. “Thank you! We’re starting.”

“You're starting,” Lindsey reported under her breath, much to the amusement of her new dark-haired friend. 

“You know how this goes, everyone,” the MC went on, quitting the room further. “All of our beautiful new campus pigs are gonna compete in their very first mini-challenge, and the winner of this challenge gets 2 pounds added to their weigh-in next week. Early in the game those two pounds can make all the difference, everybody knows that! Competitors, grab a pizza. We’re going by slice count, as usual, and the last man standing wins. Make some noise for our competitors!”

Lindsey was suddenly handed a pizza and pushed into a kitchen chair. Some of her fellow competitors were crisscrossed on the floor, some squeezed onto the couch, and some, like her, perched on the frat house's uncomfortable wooden kitchen chairs. She was feeling looser and looser, and the pizza in her lap smelled absolutely delicious. 

“On your mark, get set, go!” the MC called, and Lindsey opened the box hungrily. 

She’d underestimated, or perhaps more accurately, failed to estimate, how drunk she’d get off 5 shots downed in just a few minutes on an empty stomach. She was again entirely unaware of her surroundings, but this time for a different reason. Lindsey was hammered. 

She picked up a slice of pizza gingerly like it was particularly delicate, then took an eager bite, the cheese and grease exactly what her drunken tastebuds were seeking. She took another bite, then another, blissfully unaware of the fact that a crowd was watching her and cheering her on. She made quick work of the first slice then started on the second, devouring it in a matter of moments and licking her fingers after popping the final piece of crust in her mouth. 

“This is soooo good,” she slurred while chewing, picking up a third slice and taking a bite before she swallowed. 

She finished the next piece in just a few bites, her hunger seeming to mount instead of growing closer to satiation, and the crowd cheered when she burped loudly and picked up her fourth. 

“Can I have another shot?” she called drunkenly after she made quick work of the 4th triangle of dough and cheese. “Where’s the girl with the shots?”

She looked back down as if noticing the half-eaten pizza in her lap for the first time. 

“Oh my god, I'm like, starving,” she said, diving back in as if she hadn't already put away more than enough to satisfy her. 

Lindsey was vaguely aware of the crowd's attention as she ate slice after slice, but only in the most general sense. She knew they were there, she knew they were being loud, but she was beginning to lose her grip on what that had to do with her. All she knew was that she was drunk, hungry, and there was a hot pizza in front of her.

She finished the 5th piece then the 6th, beginning to feel more pressure in her overstuffed middle but still somehow nowhere close to full. 

She picked up the second to last slice and took a bite, barely slowing down despite all she’d put away, when she heard the announcer call her name.

“..With 7 pieces down, the only girl left in the competition,” the red-faced MC was yelling. “She's just three pieces away from the eating contest female record!”

Lindsey frowned, remembering why she was there. She looked up to see Karina, Abigail, and all the rest of the girls screaming for her frantically, cheering her on and pointing to the box. 

“Keep going!” an unidentified voice yelled, and Lindsey took the instruction to heart, chomping down her 7th piece and picking up the eighth. 

She was finally beginning to realize how full she was, finally rubbing the small, rounded bloat of her packed stomach and feeling regret for how much she’d eaten and how much she’d had to drink. The regret was short-lived, however, and her inebriated, distracted mind saw more pizza and went for it.

She groaned loudly as her empty box was taken from her and replaced with a fresh one, then burped brazenly as the crowd cheered. 

“No, no” she slurred, trying to push the box back into the hands of the person who’d given it to her. “No more, I'm full,”

“You're a campus pig now,” an equally drunk voice slurred back. “Eat the pizza, you gotta eat the pizza.”

Lindsey shrugged and did as she was told, the fresh pizza somehow even more appetizing than the first. 

She finished two more slices and burped loudly, clearly nearing her limit but too drunk to feel the full effects of her gluttonous binge. 

“One more piece to tie, two to beat the record!” called the host, but Lindsey couldn't hear her over her own hiccups and moans. 

“C’mon, one more,” a voice said, and Lindsey felt a slice of pizza being shoved into her mouth. 

She tried to protest but was quickly silenced by another bite, and as soon as she chewed both, another followed. She wasn't even sure who was doing this to her, who was forcing pizza down her throat even though she was so full she was gonna pop, and she moaned with her mouth crammed with greasy dough, unsure how she found herself there and thinking of nothing else but the pain in her middle and her next bite. 

She kept eating and eating, the slices lifted to her mouth seemingly never ending. The crowd was getting louder but Lindsey paid them no mind, her focus solidly elsewhere. 

“Stop,” she finally moaned through full lips, feeling as if she were stuffed to the very brim. “Stop, I can't eat anymore, I'm gonna explode.”

“Just finish this piece,” the disembodied voice coerced. “C’mon, one more piece.”

Lindsey relented, opening her mouth to accept her fate, and the rest of the pizza was pushed into her mouth in one oversized bite. 

She chewed with effort, her mouth so full that bringing her teeth together was difficult, burped loudly, and unbuttoned her pants to raucous appulse.

“13 slices!” she heard over the mic. “A new female record! We’ve got some real competitors this year. Mark is still going strong at 16 and Logan is right behind him with 15, this is gonna be a good match!”

Lindsey groaned, blearily oblivious to what was going on. 

“Here,” said a more familiar voice, and suddenly the pink flask was shoved in front of her face, clearly refilled by its heft. 

“You did so good! Here,” said the dark-haired girl.

Lindsey took a swallow, then another, and remembered nothing else of the night.