Sabrina's sexuality was a complicated topic, to say the least. To her parents and their siblings, she usually described herself as bisexual for the sake of simplicity. With her friends and cousins, pansexual was the preferred term. Sabrina's grandparents simply knew her as a straight girl who never seemed to be able to find a boyfriend. Online, she was a member of several communities of weight gain enthusiasts and fat admirers, and had even anonymously shared spare bits of her fat-related artwork here and there. In those circles, gender and orientation were nearly irrelevant—your fetishes alone basically defined your sexuality.

    With so many moving parts to consider, Sabrina's sense of sexual identity was hardly grounded, and as a result, there was a constant confusion as to the way in which Sabrina should be channeling her sexual energy. Surely, indulging in fat porn, gawking at obese people and frequently masturbating couldn't be long-term solutions. Was she supposed to go out and date people? If she did, was she supposed to look for someone who wanted to gain weight? How would she even find such a person? Could there even be someone like that out there who would be compatible with her?

    Instead, perhaps she was she supposed to just find a normal person, then cross her fingers and hope that their relationship made them comfortable enough to put on a couple of pounds. Hell, maybe she'd be better off just dating people who were just fat already. Perhaps that should have been enough.

    Alternatively, maybe none of it should have mattered. Maybe by focusing so much on what her romantic interests looked like, she was being just as awful as the bullies and body-shamers she so viscerally detested. That last option in particular filled her with a looming sense of dread, and that was because it felt like such a real possibility. If it was true, then every iota of support she'd ever proclaimed for body positivity was founded on outright hypocrisy. What role did fat admiration play in body positivity? Was it a natural tool to help people look past society's beauty standards, or a bias that made it impossible for her to earnestly participate in the discussion?

    Truthfully, Sabrina didn't know how to answer any of these questions. Sometimes, she wondered if they were even worth asking when the answers had the potential to come with so much more moral and romantic baggage. Sometimes she felt like, even if she sat down and tried her damnedest to finish the puzzle, she'd only realize that she didn't have all of the pieces. That may have been the scariest possibility of them all.

    Despite all of this confusion, there still remained one tiny bit of certainty for Sabrina to hold onto—one way to sexually define herself which, at least up until this point, and as long as she didn't have to try and explain it out loud to anyone, seemed to work alright for the student art teacher: at the end of the day, she knew what she liked. Sabrina liked big people, and she loved seeing a person get bigger. The rest of her sexuality, from top to bottom, could essentially be seen as an extension of that desire. It was a fragile construction of sexual identity, but it had worked for many years as the single truth that could be gleaned by means of Cartesian deduction from the mess of sexual tension built up inside her head. It was the 'cogito, ergo sum' of her sexual identity: the fatter they get, the hotter they are.

    Suddenly, though, even that last bit of solid reasoning had been cast into question. Swimming with Vicki and Heather should have been so incredibly attention-demanding that Sabrina shouldn't have been able to consider thinking about anything else for a second. In reality, throughout most of the realized-fantasy experience, she had been obsessing nearly the entire time over a third body that had been plumped-up incessantly during its stay at Beaumont High: her own.

    Was it curiosity? Shame? Excitement? Perhaps it was something different altogether. Perhaps there was room for another target for her sexual desires, one which this lifelong undereater had never even had a chance to consider. As Vicki led Sabrina to get more of her favorite hyper-fattening energy bars, Sabrina couldn't help marveling at the fact that she had asked her friend to do such a thing in the first place. The idea of eating more of these things was simultaneously sickening and totally irresistible.


    "Right down this way," Vicki said. "The main hall machine is the only one on the West side of this floor that I haven't cleared out of Bloom bars yet."

    Sabrina followed close behind her friend, astonished. "Cleared out? Jeez Vick, how many of these things have you eaten?"

    "I mean, just enough to make up for the energy I'm burning the rest of the time. I've honestly hardly eaten anything else all week too, so it's pretty much my main source of calories. But yeah, I've emptied most of the ones in B-hall and the ones inside the gym."

    Vicki announced this with pride, as though the incredible number of energy bars she'd been eating should have been seen as an impressive sacrifice, rather than a total failure. Her thinner friend could hardly believe what she was hearing. This student math teacher was a very intelligent young woman who had lost lots of weight just a few years earlier—she couldn't possibly have been ignorant to the incredible irony of gobbling down tons and tons of health-food, so it had to have been some sort of self-destructive doublethink. Vicki knew on some level that this rampant overeating was going to turn her attempted diet into an extreme bulking session, but she was choosing to believe otherwise in order to avoid the horrific guilt associated with the reality of the situation. At some point, inevitably, the illusion would come crashing down.

    "Here it is," Vicki said, plopping her bag down next to the vending machine.

    "Wow." The word slipped out of Sabrina's mouth automatically. She could never get used to this thing. It was massive—the biggest vending machine in the entire school, as far as either of these girls knew—but it still managed to carry so many different types of junk food that Sabrina couldn't understand how it contained them all without violating the laws of physics. With its touch screen menu and vast selection, it was also impressively high-tech. Sometimes, it was unclear if the school's total lack of investment in athletics was what allowed them to afford this sort of tech or if these luxuries were what killed the students' interest in sports in the first place. Sabrina suspected the answer lie somewhere in the middle.

    Vicki inserted her vending machine card. Then, with sharp, perfect muscle memory, her fingers darted up towards the touch screen. Bloom bars began dropping into the pickup area within a couple of taps. They came from up high and deposited into a pickup slot towards the lower middle of the machine, expertly placed so that nobody would have to bend over to retrieve their food. It had been designed that way so that the slot was easily reachable for people with physical disabilities, which was great, because it was easy to pick up a handful of those after a few years at Beaumont high. Most people here couldn't even put their socks on without taking a few breaks.

    "Mph. Your turn," Vicki said, already eating. She stepped away from the machine, allowing Sabrina to take her place.

    Immediately, the scope of Sabrina's options overwhelmed her. She hadn't used this machine before, and its sophistication was astounding. There weren't items listed on the touch screen; instead, there were full categories, and tapping any of them prompted a sub-menu of items which could've overfilled an entire standard vending machine on their own.

    Sabrina gaped, dumbfounded. "There are so many options."

    "Right?" Vicki said. Her mouth was full, but she was getting a lot of practice lately at talking clearly in spite of that. "The people who run the school weren't exactly being very subtle by placing it right outside the main office."

    If either girl had been more observant, it would've been easy to realize who had been in charge of that decision. On the opposite side of the main office door, another entire vending machine occupied an irresponsibly large amount of floor space in order to be comfortably within reach from behind Jenny Frost's desk.

    Sabrina inserted her card, then started with a couple of Bloom Bars, quickly finding herself surprised at how effortless it was to acquire them. Usually, free food came with the expectation that you were only going to take one or two servings—i.e. office donuts, Halloween candy or free samples. This thing, on the other hand, seemed downright eager to give its entire contents away to anyone who wanted to glut themselves on a mountain of junk food. Sabrina supposed the only reason it wasn't already empty was that there were only so many times each day these fat kids could top off their already drum-tight bellies without them popping.

    Sabrina had scooped several handfuls of the snacks into her bag before the machine finally ran out. She glanced over at Vicki, vaguely embarrassed to have smuggled so much food into her bag, and was relieved to find that her friend was too busy wiping Bloom Bar grease from her phone screen to be paying any attention. Knowing this, Sabrina made sure to fill the rest of her bag up with other snacks of particularly high caloric content. Her choices were purely mathematical, disregarding taste. Sabrina disliked most junk food equally strongly, so there was no sense in getting anything but the most fattening stuff available.

    If Sabrina had been in a clearer state of mind at that moment, she may have stopped to wonder why exactly she was doing this. It wasn't anywhere near an informed decision. It was purely instinctive; an impulse. The closet chubby-chaser had no explicit intent to gain weight, nor was she even aware of any desire to do so. In that moment, all Sabrina knew was that she was totally consumed with curiosity in regards to the new shape of her body, and this felt like the only way to scratch that itch. It was as though she'd finally cracked open the door to a secret part of herself which might have always been there, informing other aspects of her personality silently from some shadowy part of her subconscious mind. The only natural response, it felt like, was to push the door further open. It was a primal, human impulse—she had to know what was inside.

    "How's your head?" Vicki said, not looking up from her phone. She was still busy wiping it with the bottom of her t-shirt. That Bloom grease was hardy stuff, apparently, and she'd been inadvertently slathering it on her touch screen all day.

    "My head?" Sabrina repeated. She'd begun unwrapping a Bloom Bar for herself, and her body was already begging her to stop.

    "You know, the one you crashed into the wall with. That head."

    "Oh! Yeah." Somehow, Sabrina had been so stimulated that she'd nearly forgotten her headache. "It's okay. Still hurts, but I'm not dizzy anymore."

    Vicki's smile switched quite suddenly into a frown.

    Sabrina frowned too. "What's wrong?"

    "Maybe we should get someone to look at that," Vicki said. "I feel weird about you going home like that. What if it's, like, a serious injury?"

    "I don't think it's serious," Sabrina insisted. "Really, it's fine."

    "No, come on. Let's get you to the nurse's office," Vicki said, grabbing her friend's hand and leading her down the hall. "If Mary's still here, maybe she can give us some advice."

    "You're really that worried about me?"

    "Yes, I am." She looked back and caught Sabrina smiling, characteristically red in the cheeks.

    "Hey—don't laugh! I'm just saying... I care about you."

    "I'm not laughing," Sabrina whimpered. "I care about you too." Suddenly, all the energy bars in her stomach felt like butterflies.

    Vicki knocked on the door, and a muffled invitation from the other side let them know that the nurse had indeed stayed far past the end of the school day, as well as the unsurprising fact that her mouth was full of food. At Beaumont, most teachers liked to finish the day by sticking around and grabbing a few free entrees from the cafeteria. After all, there was nothing quite like eating a meal in order to unwind from a long day of constantly eating other meals.

    Vicki greeted Mary first upon entry, immediately trying to ignore how many lunch trays were piled on the edge of her desk. Currently, she seemed to be working on a sub sandwich so grotesquely large and ridiculously composed that most restaurants would probably put a customer's picture up on a wall somewhere for finishing it alone—a feat which Mary was evidently halfway through achieving.

    In the eyes of the average person, Nurse Mary Gianni was likely to be seen as a creature of many contradictions. Despite having seen her on many occasions and been examined by her at various points, neither student teacher could help being struck by this impression all over again today as they entered her office. She maintained an aura of ultimate cosmetic consciousness and self-care; her natural beauty was accented wonderfully by her incredibly flattering makeup choices, an adorable outfit and hair that was remarkably well-styled despite surviving an entire day's work. Still, somehow, she also was one of the largest people the average person was likely to have ever seen, and her incredibly overindulgent diet made it clear that the genetic component of her incredible obesity was likely either small or nonexistent. This woman cared so much for her appearance that she was willing to spend hours each day to cover herself in makeup and perfectly style her hair, but in the same breath, her body had become completely entombed in blubber due to her total lack of self-restraint or proactivity.

    At first glance, Mary's personality may have seemed to the layperson like a clash of mutually exclusive personality traits, but Sabrina in particular couldn't help feeling like the shock value of this pairing of traits resulted more from a rejection of social norms than any sort of inherent contrast. Why couldn't someone look as good as they want and eat the way they wanted to? Were fatness and high self-esteem just inherently at odds with one another? Of course not. The answer seemed like a pretty obvious 'no,' and Mary was walking—er, sitting—proof. Something about that gave Sabrina a rush of confidence. Suddenly, she found herself thumbing the bottom of her muffin top discretely, beneath her shirt, while the rest of her hands were tucked safely into her pockets. Despite being the skinniest in the room by more than twice her full bodyweight, this figure still felt unrecognizably smooth and big to the previously skinny artist. Next to Mary, she felt empowered.

    Mary greeted the student teachers, smiling and dousing her fingers in hand sanitizer before glancing back up at their faces. When she finally did make eye contact, her jaw dropped. "Oh wow, you're all wet. Did you two use the pool? I can smell the chlorine from here."

    "We did! We just got back."

    "Wow. Nobody's been in that thing since, like... I wanna say maybe three or four years ago. Definitely sometime around the turn of the decade. Nowadays, too many kids have parent notes for the students to do much of anything in gym class, let alone to actually go swimming."

    Vicki was stifling a grin. It was easy to see that breaking the pool's streak of disuse was a point of pride for her, a way to feel like she wasn't falling into the same traps as everybody else. Sabrina, who easily detected this, couldn't help wondering guiltily whether or not it was a healthy way for her friend to think. Was this boosted confidence really just a false sense of security?

    "How was it?" Mary continued. "Still basically chlorine soup, I'm guessing—right?"

    "Pretty much," Sabrina said.

    "It was interesting," Vicki said. "We had a good time at first, but uh, we're mostly here because Sabrina had a little accident."

    "Oh no." Mary's face dropped. Clearly, there were a lot of highly undesirable possibilities associated with uttering the phrase 'had a little accident' in this high school nurse's office. "What kind of accident?"

    Sabrina blushed. "I uh, just bumped my head on the wall. Nothing serious."

    "She thinks it's nothing serious," Vicki interrupted. "But I know better than to just, like, assume that. She's been acting a little funny since then, too."

    "Funny how?"

    "Just a little dazed. Quiet." She sent a playful glance in Sabrina's direction. "More dazed and quiet than usual." 

    Sabrina smiled.

    "How long ago did it happen?"

    "Like a half-hour ago, maybe."

    "And does it still hurt?"

    "Yeah, honestly. It's not that terrible though."

    Mary asked a few more questions, ("Were you or are you dizzy?" "Did you lose consciousness at all?") then came to a conclusion.

    "Well sweetie, it sounds like there's a real possibility that you've had a mild concussion. But, thankfully, it's nothing that shouldn't fix itself as long as you get a bit of rest and be pretty careful with your head for a couple of days. The headaches will probably continue for a bit, but as long as there's no repeat trauma, there shouldn't really be any long term effects."

    Vicki sighed. "Well, that's a relief." She elbowed Sabrina gently. "See? I told you it was worth looking into."

    Sabrina nodded in agreement, but she didn't look at her friend. Instead, her eyes were locked onto a device in the corner of the room.

    "Like I said, it's important to avoid further injury. You don't play any sports, do you?" Nurse Gianni asked this almost dismissively, the way a pediatrician asks a ten-year-old if they've ever done drugs. A formality, a question that could only possibly be answered "no."

    "Nope."

    "Good," Mary said. "Any big weekend plans, otherwise?"

    "Not really. Was just gonna sit home and draw, probably."

    "That sounds perfect to me," Mary said. She grinned. "Consider it my prescription."

    "Will do."

    At this point, Vicki and Mary began talking, and Sabrina tuned right back out. Now, her eyes quickly locked back onto the machine in the corner. There was a question burning on the tip of her tongue. She had to interrupt them—she had to ask if  she could use it.

    "Hey, uh, Mary, while we're here—can I use your scale?"

    Vicki lit up. "Oh, great idea! I'm dying to see how this diet and workout stuff has been paying off."

    Mary was surprised, but hardly bothered by their request. "Of course! No problem, I'm happy to help. Here, just step on whenever you're ready. The readout should come right up on my computer."

    Vicki wasn't having any errors this time around. She opened a unit conversion app on her phone and got ready to translate any number that came out of Mary's mouth before anyone had the chance to do a lick of mental math.

    For the first time since the beginning of the semester, Sabrina pounced on the futuristically featureless Beaumont scale. Just like before, it had no numbers, buttons, lights or any sort of indication that Sabrina was doing anything correctly or otherwise. Nevertheless, the lack of intervention on Mary's part made it clear enough that the machine was able to do its job. At the beginning of the year, Sabrina had weighed in at just about 110 lbs—decidedly underweight for her relatively normal height, especially considering the higher and higher averages you tended to see across the developed world these days. Now, she waited with bated breath for the new number, not willing to admit to herself just how much she hoped it would come back a lot higher than before. 

    "Looks like you weigh about 69.4 kilos," Mary said. "That's about—"

    "153 lbs," Vicki interrupted.

    Sabrina was glad she was facing the wall. It stopped the others from seeing just how hugely and dumbly she was smiling, as well as the ever-escalating redness of her cheeks.

    Forty pounds. Forty pounds in just a couple of months. How was she supposed to feel about that number? Speechless, she made no substantial comment, even though her mind was racing.

    "Okay. Cool. Your turn, Vick."

    Vicki nodded. Quickly, she handed Sabrina her phone with the unit converter still pulled up. The screen still read that strange number: one hundred and fifty-three. Now, it was Sab's turn to handle the conversion. As she watched her friend climb up onto the scale, Sabrina was surprised by how mild her excitement was. She was about to learn her college crush's weight for the very first time after watching her get fattened like a state fair pig, but she couldn't help feeling like the revelation that she weighed more than 150 pounds was too shocking to be adequately followed up. At this point, learning Vicki's weight felt gratuitous, almost unnecessary. Still, the fact that she'd been dreaming and guessing about it for so long made Sabrina completely unwilling to treat Vicki's weight like anything less than a sacred truth.

    As Vicki waited for her reading, Sabrina watched for it on the computer screen, noticing that the program it was feeding into seemed like a direct display of their Beaumont medical records. Vicki's previous official weigh-in was listed on the screen along with the measurement—68.5 kg, or about 151 lbs when converted through the app—a number which Sabrina was shocked to realize was actually lower than her own current weight. This meant that Vicki the pear-shaped BBW goddess had, at some point recent history, actually been skinnier than Sabrina was now. This truth was actually really hard for Sabrina to wrap her mind around.

    The new number, when it came out of Mary's mouth, only just barely managed to snap Sabrina out of this train of thought. The incredible disparity between this new weight and her previous one was just too much to ignore.

    "103 kg"

    Vicki's shock was apparent even in her body language alone. Clearly, she wasn't prepared to hear a metric number over a hundred when all the numbers she'd ever previously heard in this office had been just shy of 70. A triple-digit number sounded impossibly large. Still, the aspiring math teacher had made a point of ensuring that the numbers were accurate this time, and she wasn't going to fully internalize that number until she heard it converted to standard units.

    "What's that in pounds?" she asked Sabrina. Her voice was full of anxiety.

    "About 227," Sabrina squeaked. Just as she expected, Vicki's body slumped further with each digit. She'd been optimistic about dropping into the high 100's, but had more realistically been hoping just to get out of the two-teens and into the two-tens. Instead, she'd managed to pack on ten pounds in a matter of weeks—an even faster rate of expansion than before the start of the diet.

    Sabrina's emotions were all over the place. She felt sorry for Vicki and worried about her feelings, but the numbers were too loud to process much of anything in the way of complex emotion. Thankfully, at least for now, Vicki seemed the same way—disappointed, but too dumbfounded to really understand the full significance of those abstract numbers. She made a point of looking at the data herself before thanking Mary and saying goodbye, but had little to say about how it affected her.

    On the way out of school, neither girl said much. On a normal day, Sabrina would have asked her friend how she was feeling, knowing that the number would surely have been upsetting and trying harder to comfort her, but there was too much new information bobbing around in her head to think much of anything. Mythically rare images of Nurse Mary gorging herself and of course the mythically rare images of her bikini-clad college crushes were dancing through her mind—an overwhelming selection of things to draw when she got home, and perhaps to fantasize about later on when all the lights were out.

    As they walked, Vicki glanced down at herself and picked at the damp, skintight fabric of her shorts. How had she not noticed that they'd gotten tighter? Sometimes, she was happy that her weight went to her hips and butt instead of pooling around her belly or her calves or something like that. Today was not one of those days.

    "I gained weight."

    "Huh?"

    "Since last time," Vicki said. "I've gotten fatter."

    "So have I," Sabrina said.

    "But I've been dieting and exercising and everything." Vicki groaned. "I thought I was doing so well."

    Sabrina wasn't sure what to say. When they reached the parking lot and had to split up to go to their cars, Sabrina stopped and spoke.

    "You are doing well. You're really doing your best, you know? This place just makes it really, really hard to do much of anything in moderation. If you don't want to do something, it's so easy not to do it. And if you do want to indulge, the thing you want is always, always within reach. It's a perfect waistline trap. It doesn't force anything down your throat, but sometimes I think that's only because it doesn't have to."

    "Ugh." Vicki rolled her eyes. "You're telling me. I've hardly snacked at all lately, but every time I let my guard down, I feel like this school just fills me with junk food as soon as it can."

    Sabrina still didn't have the heart to tell Vicki that glutting herself with calorie bombs was still very certainly intense snacking, even if they were labeled like health foods.

    "Anyway, thank you. Seriously, Sab. It does mean a lot."

    Suddenly, Sabrina scooped Vicki into a hug that was warm, long and mutually squishy.

    "See you on Monday," Vicki said. "I hope your head feels better by then."

    "I hope so too," Sabrina said. "See you then."


    The pale girl shuffled off to her car, sticky with chlorine, stuffed to the brim. Her belly begged for mercy, but was punished with another Bloom bar regardless. 

    From 110 to 153. That's forty-three pounds.

    Sabrina repeated the numbers in her head all the way home, hardly noticing that she was still eating for the first ten minutes of the drive. Eventually, she stopped when she caught herself literally whimpering at the painful tautness of her stomach.

    Everything she'd seen today had been so magical. Sabrina wished she could have recorded it all to live back through it as many times as she wanted, but of course taking candid pictures of her friends or the nurse or the numbers on the screen would have been equal parts impossible and morally out of the question. What she didn't feel bad doing was recording her memories of the day's events on paper.

    After about fifteen or twenty minutes of writhing and groaning on her bed while her tummy found places to put all of those unrequested calories, it was finally time to draw. Flicking through pages of distasteful fan-art and bloated pinups, Sabrina eventually found herself a white page towards the back of a particularly well-used sketchbook and began drawing the three student-teachers. This time, she began with herself. In only a few minutes, a set of guidelines on the page quickly became a rather realistic sketch of her own likeness. Even just from memory, each detail was represented almost exactly, from the owl-eyes and delicate contours of her face to the little teardrop of a potbelly that had grown in right above her bikini bottom. It was rough, but for the most part, incredibly precise.

    Something was still off, though. Something wasn't right. Sabrina realized that she'd drawn herself a little too skinny. Perhaps she'd been remembering herself more the way she used to be than the way she actually currently looked. Rather than start over, she simply erased the tummy and waist of the drawing and replaced them with bigger, softer, less shapely handles of flab. The width of her thighs was the next detail to be altered, then the thickness of her arms. Everywhere, she made sure that the softness was visible, almost tangible, in her skillful linework. Looking back up at her face, Sabrina suddenly realized that she hadn't reflected the new fullness of her cheeks in the picture, so she made sure to round things out rather generously.

    Her attention flitted back down to the belly of the drawing, which was now very obviously larger than its real-life counterpart. Regardless of the already existing discrepancy, there was a nagging feeling that it needed to be bigger. Sabrina erased an even wider part of the paper, then grew herself a belly so big that it lapped over the front of her bikini bottom and onto the tops of her thighs. She could nearly feel it, sticky and dry like the rest of her skin from chlorine, dangling over her legs. It was easily heavier than any part of herself had ever been, probably by a factor of at least two or three.

    The frenzied artist watched her own body change in the picture while her hands continued moving automatically. Soon, the skinny body that had been subject to so many misguided male friends' "manic pixie dream girl" fantasies was so fat that they'd probably talk shit about it behind the folds of her back. Her arms and legs swelled to the point of thickness, then impractical heaviness, then uselessness. Her apron of blubber sunk to cover most of the space above her knees. Sabrina's heart raced as she added bigger tits to her likeness, imagining how it would feel to sweat in the crease where her fat breasts pooled out across the top of her belly. Her cheeks and double chin expanded and melted together until her features were essentially stranded in the middle of a fat, round head with no defined shape and zero hard edges. Still, there remained the same thin lips and wide eyes—a reminder that this blob was still somehow Sabrina. What must she have eaten to get this big? How many years must she have spent sitting on her ass, stuffing herself? At this point, the legs were completely redrawn, spread wider across the paper to account for all the fat that was bunched up between them. It was almost unrealistic that she was still standing up without aid. Eventually, she stopped drawing the bathing suit pieces altogether, unsure of how to continue to clothe somebody so massive.

    It was euphoric, looking at herself this way. Utterly addicting. Sabrina couldn't stop. Whimpering and gasping from pain and arousal, the stuffed, sloppy artist piled fatter and fatter features on top of herself. The paper trembled beneath her, ruddy and torn from constant erasing. Frequently, she removed her left hand from the page, letting the paper slide around so that she could touch various parts of herself and imagine having to stick her arm out so far that the elbow locked just so that she could reach them. The chair creaked incessantly beneath her as she moved. Sabrina continued furiously drawing and touching herself without restraint until, all of a sudden, her eyes were forced shut, her jaw snapped open, and an involuntary moan forced itself out of her throat. Paralyzed by explosive orgasm, Sabrina's pencil slipped right out of her fingers and clattered against her desk. She'd never experienced such an intense sexual pleasure. When her eyes reopened, they lit upon a crude drawing of herself, fatter than anyone at the high school by at least a few hundred pounds. She was alone in the picture—she'd never actually gotten around to drawing either of her friends.

    Sabrina, for the longest time, thought she had known exactly what it was that she liked, even if there wasn't some neat label for it. She liked seeing people get fat, and that was all there was to it. Now, however, it was even clearer and simpler than that. Sabrina's kink was weight gain, and that was true no matter how she experienced it. Whether that was the gargantuan amount of past weight gain implied by the obesity of a person like Mary Gianni or the gradual weight gain of a longtime crush, it was the weight gain itself that defined Sabrina's sexuality more so than gender or intercourse or anything normal like that.

    Experiencing weight gain directly, in turn, had been one of the most unbelievable pleasures Sabrina had ever experienced. This time, she was the one growing out of clothes and drawing attention. These embarrassing little folds and lumps and bulges belonged to her, not anyone else. She could feel their weight shifting with every movement. It still felt somewhat alien. Her fattest parts hardened and bunched up when she squeezed them, then softened and flopped around when she relaxed. It was comfy and satisfying, like being made of oobleck. Suddenly, it was so clear: this was the epitome of experiencing weight gain.

    Some numbers, like savings account totals and high scores, are simply never high enough. Sabrina's weight was now one of those numbers. 153 pounds was great—better than it had ever been, by a longshot—but it was not nearly high enough. There was infinite room for improvement.

    Sabrina shuffled off to wash her hands before dinner. Pizza sounded good for tonight—it'd be a torture to get down, no doubt, but ordering way too much pizza on a full stomach was easily the hottest thing she could think of. Silently, she nibbled on the greasy corners of a Bloom bar as she searched the web for a local restaurant's number, then dialed the first one she found.

    After placing her order from a local establishment (which, like most of the restaurants around here, offered a ridiculously good teacher's discount), Sabrina plopped back down onto the couch, reveling in just how hard she was able to hit the cushion. She then picked up that same sketchbook and began to flip through its pages. Looking back, she couldn't help noticing that she'd drawn many of these fat pinup and fan-art girls somewhat similarly, especially over the last couple of months. Most of them had huge eyes and fair skin—sometimes, even a couple of piercings. In the context of these earlier works, Sabrina's newest picture almost felt like the last in a series of attempts at the same exact drawing.

    "She looks pregnant," one student whispered. "Have you seen the way her belly sticks out?"

    "No she doesn't!" Another student piped up. "You're so mean. She doesn't look pregnant."

    "She will soon if she doesn't already," a third one chimed in. "Look at the way she's eating."

    Ms. Amanda Harris—the teacher in question—was currently parked behind her desk, popping bon-bons into her mouth and drumming her fingers as the slower students finished up their tests. To say she looked pregnant these days wasn't much of an exaggeration whatsoever. Her round belly pushed outward across her lap, heaving complacently as she filled it with fatty candy. All over, her modest dress was stretched uncomfortably taut around the folded girth of her form.

    "I never expected her to get so chubby," one of the girls muttered to her friends. "I met her when my sister had her a few years ago and she was thin as a rail."

    "She's way beyond chubby," another one said. "Harris is fat as hell."

    Amanda was oblivious to their whispers. Having finished her chocolates, she crumpled up the container and shoved it into her desk to dispose of after class. A few years ago, she wouldn't have been caught dead eating in front of her students, even if it had been allowed at the time. However, much like the rest of her peers, her resolve had crumbled as soon the school's new principal had lifted the ban on teachers eating during class.

    If she'd only rationed her candy better, Amanda might've been able to make it to free period with something to munch on consistently. Unfortunately, her appetite hadn't allowed her such a privilege. Ever since Leah Benson had introduced her to these bon-bons, she'd been unable to control herself around them. As usual, she was condemned to sit there and ignore her purring tummy for the last three minutes of class as the final few of her slower students scraped away at their tests. Being that it was the last test of the last unit of the marking period, more of the kids seemed to be taking their time than usual.

    "Alright everybody," she said. "There are three minutes left before the end of class. Don't forget the extra credit questions on the back. When you're done, you can bring your paper up to my desk."

    The sound of the bell ringing was a huge relief. This was her last freshman class of the day, which meant it was all uphill from here. One last student, a fat, tan girl with black hair and a tight T-shirt, wobbled up and placed her paper on Amanda's desk. "Sorry I took 'till the bell, Ms. Harris," she said. "I wanted to make sure I got everything right."

    "That's fine Carly. I'm glad you took the time to check your work. Have a good spring break, okay?"

    Carly smiled shyly, but nodded viciously as she plodded out the door. "Thanks, you too!" Her shirt escaped the apex of her belly's dome as she waved goodbye, revealing a sliver of paler tummy and a deep belly-button. At the beginning of the school year, this freshman had already been very chunky, but by now she was getting to be a real butterball. 

    Amanda liked the kid; Carly was sweet, and something about her was sort of relatable.

    Once the last girl was gone, Amanda stood up, jiggled over to the trash can, chucked her candy wrappers into it and exited the classroom. Another day, another excellent bit of stealth-eating; the happy teacher was ninety-nine percent sure that the students hadn't yet noticed her habit of munching casually during their tests and lessons.

    Amanda Harris, though an exceptionally fast grower, wasn't the only one whose self control had buckled under the leniency of the school's most recent policies. At this point, it was highly possible that there was no longer a single Beaumont High employee left who hadn't succumbed to their new workplace temptations. Nearly every single member of the faculty was now visibly much fatter than they'd used to be. Even the new teachers were fat; it only took a few months for them to start showing their muffin tops. Inevitably, many students—especially the thinner, younger kids—gawked and gossiped about every one of the school's many ballooning teachers and administrators. The halls were filled with the sounds of their judgment.

    "I can't believe I used to think Mr. Lebowitz was hot. Now he's got that nasty beer belly."

    "It's honestly gross. Ms. Benson's so fat now, she can't even reach the top of the whiteboard without getting dry-erase marker all over her blouse."

    "I swear, I saw it! The main office secretary had the keyboard on her belly instead of her desk. No, I'm serious!"

    The faculty was a sight to behold, alright. Students couldn't get enough of the spectacle. In fact, the spotlight on faculty growth often served as a nice distraction from the fact that the students' bodies were suffering massively from the same overindulgence traps that their instructors' were.

    Absurdly numerous vending machines, gourmet cafeteria food, minimalist gym and health courses and constantly available treats were having an effect on the students that was just as drastic as the one on the teachers, if not even more so. Amanda couldn't stop herself from bumping into the sweaty fluff of the fatter teenagers as she walked down the hall. Nobody here was used to their own weight, so everybody threw their bulky bellies and butts around rather inelegantly as they waddled about. The air was full of body heat. Right now there were still some skinny ones left, but Amanda knew that by the end of the year there wouldn't be a single soul in these halls who wouldn't count as overweight.

    Finally, Amanda arrived at her destination. A group of chunky educators sat in the break room, huddled around a table that was loaded with takeout from a local deli. Evidently, Principal Grasso had bought lunch for everyone again. Amanda pulled out an empty chair and happily joined the other hungry ladies. "Hey guys," she breathed, plopping down into a wooden chair. The rest of the teachers greeted her warmly.

    "Mmph!...Hi 'Manda!" Susan Cross slopped through a mouthful of sub sandwich. She swallowed, then spoke a bit more clearly. "How's it going?"

    "Not bad. Really hungry though." She didn't hesitate to tear into one of the sandwiches before continuing to speak. "Ugh. You have no idea how happy I am that there's food in here."

    "When is there not food in here?" Martha chimed in. "I don't even ask if I should bring lunch anymore. I just assume he's bringing stuff in."

    "That's pretty risky," said Leah, speaking from the other side of the table. "I wouldn't risk it. Having to climb all the way up these stairs just to find out there's nothing to eat when I get there?" Her eyes widened. "No thank you!"

    Of course, this threat was nonexistent. The sheer volume of food packed into the massive refrigerator that stood like a skyscraper over the corner of the break room was enough to feed each and every member of the staff and then some for two or three whole days. Still, an excuse to bring more food was an excuse to bring more food.

    The four teachers currently stuffing themselves around the break room table were quite a sight to behold. Each one of them ate with cartoonish urgency, but all of them were crammed into outfits tight enough to make it obvious that they would've benefitted from slowing down a bit. 

    Susan was a pretty woman in her late twenties with dark, curly hair and a voluptuous, womanly way of carrying her excess weight. Her hips and chest absorbed the brunt of her caloric intake, but the double belly that filled up the space between them wasn't exactly modest either. Of the group, her arms were the thickest by far; her biceps were almost disproportionately fat compared to the rest of her body. Their blubbery bulk swung side to side as she ate, reacting with a delay to whatever gluttonous motions the young teacher carried out. She'd been gradually gaining weight her whole adult life, but had only really ballooned once Principal Grasso entered her life.

    To her right was Martha, the oldest of the four. Even though she was just below forty, there wasn't a wrinkle or blemish to be seen anywhere on her warm, olive skin. This teacher's body held most of its weight at the bottom, pooling around her legs and booty to form a sturdy, undeniable pear shape that was nearly shocking in its level of exaggeration. Her top half was almost skinny; however, everything below her thin arms, subtle chest and chiseled face was absolutely massive. Her desperate khaki slacks were far too small, clinging unconvincingly to every speck of cellulite on her thick thighs, stifling their natural wobble. Imagining how much they were likely to jiggle without such oppressive legwear was almost enough to make one seasick. Martha used to be able to blame her blossoming hips on lipedema alone, but having packed so many pounds on in the recent past meant that such a claim was no longer reasonable.

    Leah—a veritable ball of woman—was the biggest of the bunch. She had always been fat, but her obesity had just recently become severe enough that the doctor had tacked "morbid" onto it at her last checkup. She had gingery-orange locks, a bright pink smile and a body which looked almost irresistibly soft, like a cloud or a luxury pillow. Instead of a defined double chin or puffy cheeks, the fat of her face softened into its surrounding features in a way that was almost seamless. Everything about her made her look light and fluffy, despite the fact that she was well over four hundred pounds. Her weight was especially impressive when considering the fact that she was nearly tied with Amanda for the youngest of these four teachers.

    Next to these girls, Amanda almost looked thin. Out of context, one might find her physique the least notable of the whole bunch; however, anyone who had known her for any amount of time would surely have appreciated just how far she'd come since the school's leadership had changed. The relatively young brunette had been rail-thin all her life. Now, she was undeniably fat. She carried her weight in a soft, blobby way, mostly concentrated around her belly. Although her starting point was further back, it was clear that Amanda had gained far more weight than any of the other staff members. She was big, and at this rate she'd start outgrowing bigger teachers in no time.

    "Are you girls coming to the faculty party this Sunday?" Susan asked. Nobody's mouth was empty enough to speak, but everybody nodded vigorously.

    "I can't believe it's time for the mid-year party already," Leah sighed. She let out a tiny, silent belch before continuing. "I feel like the first quarter started just yesterday. Don't you guys think so?"

    "I think time is just flying because it's been such a good year so far," Amanda mused. "I feel like the past few have gotten less and less stressful. It's so much nicer now" Everybody nodded again. They all knew the reasons for this lessened stress perfectly well; after all, they were eating it at that moment. Amanda let out a silent belch and placed her hands on the dome of her belly.

    "A Faculty Party is such a good idea too," Leah said. "Like, we haven't even had one yet and I still feel like I can't remember a time without one. It just feels like such a natural way to kick off the holiday break."

    "Right? I'm so excited," Martha squealed. "Like, we've had this perfectly good event space this whole time and nobody's ever thought to put it to use for the staff until now. What the heck!" She gulped at her soda bottle.

    Of course, the staff had made great use of the cafeteria. Between classes, after dismissal, on lunch breaks; basically, any time they could stand to leave their respective classrooms. Ever since its food had become free for faculty members, not a single man or woman on the school's payroll was able to get through a typical day without exploiting the offer at least one time. It was a veritable school-wide addiction. Still, it was true that it'd never been used to host a faculty-only event outside of normal work hours, and the staff had every right to be excited about breaking it in.

    The ladies ate with gusto, attempting to satisfy appetites which had had their fullness thresholds eroded away long, long ago. Conversation got slower and slower as the meal went on, each lady gradually becoming too hyper-focused on whatever it was she was chewing to talk to the other girls. Things didn't slow down for a good ten or fifteen minutes. Eventually, Amanda and Leah were the first to finish, but that was only because they wanted to ensure they had time to stop at the cafeteria before their free period was over.



    As grossly oversized as it was, that gourmet cafeteria meal only lasted halfway through one class period. After that, Amanda had to rely on her classroom's vending machine to keep her going through the final two sessions. Nowadays, nearly every single room in the building had one; all that was missing now were the bathrooms and supply closets. The gym, Amanda had noticed the other day, even had a few extra, perhaps to accommodate for all the calories burned while the students attended their single quarterly gym classes. Each year, the main office sold cards which allowed unlimited access to the contents of these glorified junk food dispensers for free. Every teacher and nearly every student in the building had one. The snacks in Ms. Harris's machine kept her from starving, but they weren't her first choice. The day went by so much more slowly without something more substantial to munch upon.

    On the bright side, Amanda's last few classes were full of seniors, the company of whom she much preferred to that of the underclassmen. The twelfth-graders had been subject to the fattening ways of Beaumont High the longest out of any of the students, and as a result, they were the fattest group by a longshot. Literally all of them were overweight—most were obese—and none of them would be caught dead without a mouthful of food. Not a minute went by in any given classroom where one or two students didn't get up to swipe their vending machine cards, a behavior which most teachers allowed even during tests and quizzes. 

    This particular rank of students made Amanda feel absolutely at home. Large and complacent, the senior class had given up associating fatness with social groups long ago, opting instead to embrace one another's obesity and remove any semblance of judgment from the equation. At this point, there were just as many four-hundred pound "cheerleaders" as there were four-hundred pound geeks in the senior class, and given the school's gutted athletic programs, both did an equal amount of cheerleading. Their popularity ranks had dissolved with their self control; the goth kids still dressed goth and the preppy kids still dressed preppy, but the social barrier between the two had been completely removed since none of them were less than two hundred and fifty pounds.

    For these reasons, the seniors didn't care even slightly about the teachers' appetites. In fact, they'd probably have found it weirder if one of their teachers didn't get up every couple of minutes to gorge on something different from their classroom's double-wide vending machine. They would no longer be able to relate to such a person. Unlike their merely chunky underclassmen, these massive students were far too comfortably fat to judge any other fat person.

    All over the room, desks were swaddled by the fat of the bodies they supported. Teenage bellies oozed over the tops of tables, fat flanks muffinned out over metal bars and enormous asses smothered the plastic seats which groaned beneath them. Faces covered with makeup and crumbs stared blankly at the powerpoint that Amanda presented from the comfort of her desk. Female students wore dramatic lipstick to distract from their donut-thick double chins. Males grew out their beards.

    It was a fairly normal lesson; an introductory course for some basic trigonometry concepts that would be revisited after the break. Every once in a while, one of the students would jam their stubby fingers into the air and ask Amanda to repeat something, but otherwise, there was little opportunity for Amanda to eat without having to speak whilst chewing. To her delight, one of the students in the back—a tall blonde girl with thick, black glasses and full, pink lips—was having particular trouble understanding today, and her questions provided Amanda with quite a bit of free chewing time. Unfortunately, she also had the fattest upper arms of anyone in the room, and every raised hand seemed to leave her more tuckered out than the last.

    Her name was Wendy, and it looked like her 200-point participation grade was almost high enough to equal her weight in kilograms.

    "C—can you repeat the definition of 'cosine' one more time?" the girl wheezed. The blubber of her skyward bingo-wing hung out to her side, utterly swallowing the sleeve of her T-shirt. Her fat cheek brushed it as she spoke, sending dramatic ripples through its mass. Her face was red. Seldom did asking questions in math class require a high-school student to do so much heavy lifting, but even something as simple as hand-raising wasn't easy for a Beaumont blob.

    "The length of the adjacent side divided by the length of the hypotenuse," Amanda said, unable to take her eyes away from this student's mountainous bicep. It moved almost hypnotically. The girl nodded thankfully, returned her arm to her side with a sharp exhale and resumed focus on her notes.

    God, Amanda was boring herself with this lesson. She wanted desperately to go home, take her pants off, turn on Netflix and absolutely demolish a few boxes of Chinese takeout. Every second her fat ass wasn't on her living room sofa was a second she'd never get back. The bell couldn't possibly ring soon enough. She phoned in the rest of her lesson, not bothering to ask her students to get off of their cell phones or chew more quietly. She eyed the clock. Three, two, one...

    The twelfth-grade gourds rose slowly from their seats as the final bell of the day rang out, each one waddling out the door at a speed which corresponded to their respective level of obesity. The more mobile ones were out in seconds. The four-hundred-pounders struggled a bit with their desks, but made it out in decent time. One last teen—a titanic Asian girl who probably couldn't weigh herself on a scale that maxed out anywhere below five hundred pounds—took almost a full minute to wrestle herself out of her desk.

    "Need help, Carrie?" Amanda asked through a mouthful of Twix. She couldn't resist eating something literally as soon as she no longer had to teach.

    "N-no, I'm good," the student huffed. A few more moments passed. Finally, the spherical heifer popped herself free from her seat and waddled graphically out of the classroom. "I'll see you after break Ms. Harris," she wheezed as her sweaty bulk disappeared into the hallway. Her plodding footsteps got slower and slower as they shoved off into the distance, her breathing getting louder and louder until it drowned them out.

    Oh, Carrie. That poor girl was already hardly able to get around, but Amanda had a hard time believing she would be able to make it through break without getting even bigger. None of the students ever did.

    She sighed. Alone at last. Now, Amanda was finally free to loosen the pants that had been strangling her midsection for the past several hours. The clasp came off with only a gentle touch, having been ready to burst for quite some time now. She would fasten them again before heading to the cafeteria for her last school meal of the day, but for now, a break from the strain of her waistband was long overdue. With her gut wobbling out in front of her, Ms. Harris sloshed over to the vending machine and loaded her arms with candy bars until she couldn't hold any more of them, then plodded back to her desk and slammed her fat ass into the seat.

    The reclining office chair which Principal Grasso had given to Amanda last year was particularly handy on days like this. Her tummy needed as much room as possible in order to digest the things she'd eaten that day, so she laid her body back as far as the chair would allow her and let her bulk spread out naturally around and on top of her form. She sighed as the pain dissipated. Then, she began eating more.

    Eyes closed. Earbuds in. Mouth full. Amanda blocked out the outside world completely as she ate, wishing to savor every moment of this relaxation. She deafened herself so completely, in fact, that she didn't hear Jordan Lebowitz enter the room and sit politely down on the opposite side of her desk.

    He tapped her shoulder. "Amanda?"

    The potbellied belle nearly spat out her candy. She'd never been this embarrassed; at least not since the very first time she'd split her pants during lecture.

    "Jordan!" she sputtered. "Hi!" She swallowed the candy dumbly, shuddering as its thickness in her throat alerted her that she probably should've given it more time to chew. She scrambled to hide her exposed pot beneath her desk, but the bulk of her belly was too big to fit underneath the surface.

    Jordan bursted out laughing, prompting Amanda's blush to deepen even further than it already was. She tried and tried with her button, but nothing seemed to work. It'd just barely even fit before, and those last few candy bars must've really pushed it over the edge.

    "Tummyache?" he said, grinning proudly.

    Amanda giggled nervously, not sure how to react. "Yeah," she said. Wait, was he being sarcastic? That was embarrassing. "I mean... Oh, yeah, totally. You know." She made some kind of inelegant hand gesture, then stifled a silent burp and chuckled nervously. "Ate a little too much."

    If there was one person she didn't want to look fat around, it was Jordan Lebowitz. Not that he wasn't fat too—he did work at Beaumont, after all—but being newer to the school than most of his colleagues, he was easily one of the thinnest. He had a chiseled face with the lightest of beards, dirty-blonde hair and a dazzling pair of bright blue eyes. Amanda was typically turned off by the kinds of physiques you'd find at a place like Beaumont, but if anyone wore it well, it was Jordan. For the most part, his weight settled on his body in a way that looked more like muscle than fat. The only real exception was his gut. He sported an undeniable ball of blubber on his abdomen, just about the same size as Amanda's, which was straining the buttons of his shirts more and more every day. It was fat, sure, but there was still something very manly about the way he carried it.

    Amanda finally gave up on the pants, throwing her jacket on instead and zipping it up over her tummy to cover up.

    "Sorry about that," she muttered.

    "About what?"

    "... You know."

    Jordan smiled reassuringly. "Happens to the best of us," he said. "Especially... you know... us." He patted the dome of his own potbelly for emphasis.

    "I guess so." She smiled. As much as she didn't want her crush to think she was fat, the reminder that he knew he was chunky as well did make her feel a little bit better.

    "Care to share?" he asked, pointing at the candy on her desk.

    She raised an eyebrow. "Don't you have a card of your own, mister?

    "I actually skipped the card this year." Amanda's jaw dropped. "Yeah, I know. Crazy."

    "Don't you get hungry?"

    "Doesn't matter. Either way, my classroom doesn't have a vending machine. Figured I might as well save a few bucks on the card if I won't be using it much."

    "You poor, unfortunate man. I hear they're still selling them in the office if you change your mind."

    Jordan chuckled. "We'll see. I still say Grasso's trying to get those suckers out to all the ladies' classrooms first. Like a 'chivalry isn't dead' kind of gesture, you know? But with vending machines." He sat down next to Amanda's desk. She slid Jordan a candy bar, which he happily accepted. "The crappy thing is that it's getting tougher and tougher to get students to enjoy a class where there isn't free food these days. I'm noticing morale is pretty low with my seniors and I think that's why. All they want to do is eat."

    "I'll say," Amanda said.

    "Are you going to the faculty party this weekend?"

    The tubby teacher nodded, mouth too full for a verbal response. "Mhm." She swallowed. "How 'bout you?"

    "I am! Definitely." He patted his gut lovingly. "With the kind of cooking they do at this place, I could never pass up a chance to come in and eat off the clock."

    "I know right?" Amanda squealed, almost too excitedly. "Ugh, it's gonna be great."

    "Are you going with anyone?"

    "With anyone?" She snickered, trying not to let her chewed food out with the sound. "What is this, prom? Am I supposed to go with someone?"

    "I guess I'll take that as a no," he said, "but I can't say that response makes me very hopeful."

    Amanda's eyes widened. "Hopeful for what?" She realized suddenly that her coat had ridden up and her belly was showing again. He was staring directly at it. He ran his eyes up the curvature of her body, then landed them on her face. She blushed, straightened out and fixed her coat so that her tummy was covered again. "Did you, um... want to go together?"

    He smiled. "Would you be interested?"

    I'll have to start from the beginning, back when Harper and I were just children.

    Her family lived next-door to my grandparents, which is very fortunate in hindsight. Had she not lived exactly where she lived, I likely never would have met her, which is a scary thought considering how important a part she's played in my life just recently. Back then, though, she was only a minor character in the narrative of my existence. My grandmother, a socialite despite her old age, would often have Harper's mother over for coffee in the mornings while they were both out working in their respective gardens, or over for lunch on some of the more quiet holidays. If that happened while my grandmother was babysitting me, I'd get to play with little Harper. Sometimes, my grandma would even get to babysit both of us at the same time, which always resulted in hours of uninterrupted play.

    We'd often sneak off into the "woods" behind Harper's house—hardly more than a little cluster of trees in her backyard, but more than enough to form a forest in our young imaginations—and pretend to be all sorts of different things. If we were acting something out, Harper was always the one controlling the story. Whether we were outlaws, explorers or royalty on any given playdate depended on Harper's mood. I remember her taking a liking to Star Wars once she got a bit older, around early elementary school. Suddenly, that was a part of the pretending, and for the first time we were specific characters with specific genders, which threw me off at the beginning. We couldn't both be Princess Leia, so one of us always had to be a boy.

    A ball of energy, she was. Always running around, giggling and screaming. My memories of those days are fond, albeit very hazy. Being the same age, the two of us grew up together for the earliest years of our lives. We only saw eachother a few times a year, but we'd been friends long enough that neither of us could remember a time at which we hadn't been friends. In that sense, there was something mystical about Harper in my young mind; it felt as though I had known her perpetually, but I would never fully get to know her. I was in a perpetual state of getting to know more about Harper.

    Perhaps that's why she ended up sticking out in my mind as a landmark of my development in the way that she did. I remember one day in grade school, having not seen her in many months, when I looked at Harper and realized for the first time just how pretty she was. I remember wanting to roughhouse again, even though we'd stopped doing that sometime last year. These observations were thrilling in my young mind. Throughout puberty, I'd continue to run these feelings through my mind at night like water through my fingers, building and elaborating on them, coming slowly to realize new things about myself as I realized new things about Harper. I liked her in the way I was supposed to like a boy. That was the first major realization.

    Sexual tension increased as we developed. Harper, the more forward of the two of us, soon revealed herself to be curious in many of the same ways I was. Entering our preteen years, Harper and I were becoming more conversational, and she was comfortable asking questions and discussing things which were far more personal than anything I myself would've been willing to talk about had she not brought them up first. During these conversations, I'd catch her staring at me in the places I was starting to develop, silently praying that she wouldn't catch me doing the same.

    The next most surprising development in my sexual identity would be spurred by Harper several months later, after a particularly long time not having seen her. I remember that day more clearly than any I've described thus far. Harper showed up at my grandmother's that morning looking different than before; she'd gained a bit of weight, and for the first time, she was looking rounder as well as taller than the last time I'd seen her. Her breasts had grown, but I was surprised not to care all that much; for some reason, I was preoccupied with her newfound chubbiness. Her tummy pressed her shirt in a totally new way, one which I found myself unable to look away from. I was beyond enamored, beyond intrigued. For the first time, I became aware of my fetish.

    Harper was clearly noticing my development as well. She couldn't keep her eyes off of my breasts, which had grown dramatically in her absence—much bigger than hers, despite her growth elsewhere. We both knew that she was now too old to get away with any aura of innocence if she probed the sexual tension conversationally the way she used to, so she kept quiet about it for now. Instead, we faked conversation for the first time, communicating bodily interest only with our eyes. I sincerely doubt she was aware that it was her chubbiness rather than her own breasts that had me so intrigued, but it didn't matter; we both knew there was a mutual, unspoken and unspeakable attraction between us. We would each go home to probe and unpack these feelings later.

    Harper's energetic disposition failed to translate into an active lifestyle as she became an adolescent. She remained thoughtful, bubbly, forward and imaginative but there was no more running around. She became fatter as time went on, and I always found myself rooting for it. I wanted to take pictures or write about how she looked so that I'd never lose the image. I'd seen so many before and after pictures of people who'd shed hundreds of pounds of body fat, and I was genuinely scared that if Harper lost her extra weight, I'd never get to see her the way she currently was ever again. When I made my birthday wish that year, I wished she'd get fatter.

    The very last time I saw Harper while we were still children was the climax of this sexual tension. We were watching TV at her house while her mother and my grandma spoke and had their morning coffee across the fence. Nobody else was home. I told Harper I was cold. "Come here," she said. She patted the cushion. I joined her on the sofa. Pangs of ecstasy and surprise ran through me as she put an arm around me. I did the same for her, huddled against her soft body beneath a warm blanket. I remember touching the side of her belly gently and gauging its softness, delighted to finally have some way to assure myself that it was tangible and real. Of course, at the time, it was impossible for me to articulate all of that. I just knew that she was lovely and this was wonderful.

    "Is this okay?" I whispered, somewhat stupidly. She said it was, so we stayed like that for about fifteen minutes. The TV spat cartoons, but we weren't watching. I was very happy.

    For a while afterwards, I felt guilty about that night. Now though, with the hindsight of an adult, I think it was very sweet. We were two girls feeling our way blindly through our first crush, not sure whether or not it was okay to express what we felt. I think that gesture was nothing more than innocent assurance that the answer to that uncertainty was yes, that it was okay for a girl to like a girl and that neither of us were alone. We were telling eachother it wasn't really all that uncommon to be different before either of us had the language to actually say that.

    Eventually, Harper and I were old enough to stay home without being watched by an adult. As a result, high school passed without so much as glance at my longtime crush. I thought of her less and less as her absence wore on, but when I did, the thoughts that swirled through my head were always the same. Had she slimmed down? Was she even fatter now? Did she still like girls? Would she still like me, or had she ever? I felt like I'd never know.

    I wouldn't see her again until just before we each began college. Because of that, when I did finally see her again, it was almost a surreal experience. I'd hardly thought of her in years, so seeing her again brought back a flood of welcome memories and a warm wash of nostalgia. She'd finally decided to visit my grandmother again by her own volition, and it just so happened to be the same day that I'd made a visit of my own.

    Vividly, I can recall looking her over that day. She'd grown so much. She was a young woman now. Her cute, childish features had blossomed into more chiseled, decisive and defined versions of their former selves. She was recognizable, but so very different. She was still absolutely beautiful, but the things that made her beautiful had shifted.

    That afternoon was very bittersweet. Her and I talked that day, but we didn't get to actually converse all that much. Our relatives were doing most of the chatting for us, and there wasn't much to do but sit there and listen to them ramble while we pretended not to be all that interested in one another. But I was very interested in her. She was sitting there for the first time in many years and I was thinking about all of these old things and it was lovely, but nothing was happening that was supposed to be happening. Neither of us was whisking the other off into another room to be alone and catch up. Neither of us was talking about how much we'd changed or how much we hadn't changed. We just talked about how school was and what school we were going to and where we were working, and it was trash. On one hand, that was a drag. But on the other hand, simply seeing her and having some of those dizzying questions answered was such a weight off of my shoulders that I couldn't possibly be upset.

    She'd gotten fat. Not just chubby; actually fat. It boggled my mind that the girl before me was the same scrawny little Harper I'd played pretend with as a child. She was wearing a sweatshirt that left both girth and features up to the imagination to a certain extent, but it was obvious that she'd become rounder as time had worn on. I could see that her belly was the defining force outward on her sweats, rather than her chest, and I could make out where her muffin top bulged out against the sides of the garment. Despite her sweatshirt obscuring her body's exact size, however, Harper's face told me everything I needed to know about the effect these years had had on her physique. She hadn't lost the cherubic cheeks of her youth; rather, she'd encouraged them. They'd grown around her face and down onto her neck, joining to form a pocket of flab that became visible whenever her chin dipped below its resting state. She was lovely.

    In that moment, seeing her this way wasn't really viscerally sexual so much as it was whimsical. It was a dream to see her like this. She was fantastic and adorable and I'd missed her very much. I'd pictured her in many ways over the years, including ways which were much larger than this, but this was still the most satisfying way I'd ever thought of her because it was real and it was right in front of me. She really was this lovely, and she really was in front of me and I was seeing her with my own two eyes. I wanted to tell her how beautiful she was, but the social atmosphere was too claustrophobic. It would be awkward.

    She was staring at me too. At least there was that. Wether it was for good or bad reason, at least I was significant.

    Before she left, we exchanged phone numbers—an exchange made, oddly enough, at the behest of Harper's mother. "It could do Harper some good to get out of the house and hang out with friends. You know, get active and stuff," she'd said, coaxing a deep, embarrassed blush out of her daughter. The remark was benign, but everybody in the room knew it was only made because Harper was fat and I was a skinny girl her age. She was hoping I'd teach her daughter some good habits. This was ironic, considering there was likely nobody in the world more invested in Harper getting fatter than I was. We plugged the numbers into one another's phones, but I think both of us knew we'd never be actually contacting eachother with them. It was a formality. After the exchange, she left without a trace, and I was back to square one. I wouldn't see her again for another whole two years.

    Only when I went home that night did the visceral sensuality of the what I'd just experienced hit me. For me, seeing anyone get fat is thrilling. It's the most arousing thing there is. So to see someone like Harper become so overweight—someone whose weight gain I'd been dreaming of and had been in suspense of knowing whether or not it'd actually happened for such a long time—was intensely sexually powerful. It was satisfying at first, but only made me more lustful once that visceral sensation wore off. With zero social media presence and no excuse to actually reach out to Harper with a text or phone call, I spent the next few weeks trying to forget about her. Once college started, it became very easy.




    Two summers and four semesters later, grandma and grandpa were on a seniors-only cruise and I'd been entrusted with a house key so that I could water their plants, feed their cats, check on things, so on and so forth. It didn't take long to remember Harper. I swear, for the first week of their three week cruise, I spent an hour of every housesitting visit just sitting in their guest room, looking out across the two lawns at Harper's house and thinking about how incredibly close she was. There was nobody here to hear us talk. We could say anything. I didn't know what I wanted to say, but there was so much urgency in my body to say something to her, to reach out and just pour something out that I didn't even know was in me. I dressed as cutely as I could every day just in case she stopped over for some impossible reason. Shamefully, I fantasized about how much weight she might have put on in college.

    Harper certainly made me feel better about my lesbianism, but a grating self-consciousness still lingered when it came to my perception of my own fetish, especially in regards to my perception of her. That was where her and I stopped connecting. Maybe Harper liked girls too, but there was a one in a million chance that she was both a lesbian and a feedist. If by some slim chance she was one of those things, she probably wouldn't have any interest in me anyway; sure, I'd gained a few pounds from dorm life, but I was still a very thin girl. As I came to understand my fetish more, I came to realize that perhaps the unspoken connection between myself and Harper wasn't as simple as I'd previously considered. Nevertheless, I wanted her, and I longed for the security he provided in at least the one aspect of ourselves the two of us shared.

    I don't know if it was desire, ballsiness or an inability to wait any longer—more than likely it was some of each—but I eventually found myself combing through my contacts, finding her number and typing a message. I told her I was housesitting at my grandma's and I was bored and I wanted to catch up. She didn't reply for a few terribly long, agonizing minutes. Finally, she told me she'd be over in ten.

    Simultaneous waves of excitement and anxiety washed violently over me as I realized what was about to happen. Harper would be in front of me again within moments. I tried to make myself look presentable, but there was only so much around that house to make do with. I could tie back my frizzy hair and make sure I didn't smell, but I didn't exactly have much to work with. Eventually, once I felt I couldn't gussy myself up anymore within the bounds of those limited resources, I resorted to pathetically sitting and waiting. I turned on the TV so that I wouldn't look like a loser when I got here. Eventually, the doorbell rang.

    I opened the door and felt myself melt. She was so beautiful, everything I'd been dreaming of and more.

    Much more.

    Harper had become downright obese. Upon first grazing her body with my eyes, I could tell right away that college had decimated any scrap of thinness Harper had left in her body. She was round and everything on her was round too; her thighs, her face, her belly, her neck; all of it. She wore a deep red-violet sweater that did her figure no favors. The thickness of the fabric prevented it from wedging into any of the folds or valleys that must've been present on her body, but its form-fittingness meant her fatness was anything but well-concealed. At that moment, I couldn't help thinking that Harper was the perfect picture of a person who'd been forced to hastily come up with an outfit that was a happy medium between flattering and unrevealing—trying to somehow flaunt her best features without revealing how fat she'd become—and coming up with something that succeeded at neither. However, due to my obvious bias, I found this unbelievably alluring. The prospect that she'd tried to dress even somewhat attractively just to come over and see me was also promising.

    When we hugged, it was bliss. It was too good to be true. I thought about how small of a space I took up on her body and bit my lip behind her back. God, she was perfect.

    I brought Harper inside and the two of us sat down in my grandmother's living room. The sound of sitcom reruns churning out of the TV set provided some much needed background noise, making conversation a little bit easier for both of us. We may have been close as young kids, but now that we were both adults it was like starting the friendship over from scratch. I started by telling her the situation.

    "So you're home alone here?" she asked. I told her yes. "And your grandparents won't be back until when?"

    Her insistence on making sure she knew these things for certain only fed further into my rampant overthinking. Certainly, she must've been on the same page as me. Why else would she be asking things like this right off the bat, especially when I've already pretty much answered them? I tried to put those thoughts away and just focus on not being a creep, but it became harder every time she tried to ascertain our privacy or steal a glance at my chest. We talked about a lot of the usual things after that—school, work, friends, family—but nothing too personal. Eventually, fearing that I'd bore her if I didn't introduce some new element to the situation, I asked her if she was interested in me ordering pizza for the two of us.

    She thought about it, then declined rather unenthusiastically.

    "Are you sure?" I asked. "I'm pretty hungry."

    She caved quickly. I got the impression she was still trying to call as little attention to her obesity as possible, but it was a laughably futile goal considering just how big she'd become. I ordered a large pepperoni and some mozzarella sticks for delivery.

    "So much for cutting back while I'm home," Harper muttered. She put a hand on her tummy and chuckled. I felt myself blush and tried not to stutter into the phone.

    We put on a movie and watched lazily while we waited. When the pizza did come, I ate three pieces and Harper ate four. I'd be lying if I said it wasn't a turn-on that she ate more than myself, even if just by a little.

    As the night went on, I couldn't help noticing that Harper was showering me more and more with compliments. She kept telling me how pretty I was and how I'd grown up to be so beautiful. I kept trying to argue, but she shut me down every time. She hardly even let me return the compliments, as hard as I was trying.

    She really was so beautiful. Her features were so unbelievably pretty to me. They were classic. Every time I saw them, though, there was more of her to compliment them; more of her soft, unblemished cheeks and more of the jolly little second chin that brought out the happiness in her face like a second smile. It was blissful to see her transition to womanhood and to this new body type all at once. I tried to convey this without being creepy—omitting the parts about her weight of course—but it only resulted in my compliments being weak and easily deflected.

    When it was time to return to living room for the rest of the movie, Harper walked ahead of me this time. This gave me a perfect view of just how much her movement had changed with her body. The way she shimmied heavily across the hardwood floor of my grandmother's house stood in stark contrast to my memories of her sprinting gaily down these same hallways just over ten years earlier. She was incapable of that effortless movement now. Somehow, I almost found this new waddle more graceful.

    Harper sat down on the couch. I sat beside her, then flicked the TV back on and unpaused the movie we'd started earlier. Neither of us cared about it anymore. I grabbed the blanket that my grandma kept tucked under the end table and curled up beneath it. It was instinctive; I could feel such an intense want for her that I felt like I had to curl up in a ball and to keep myself from reaching for her and making things irreparably awkward. Also, it was cold.

    To my surprise, a few minutes further into the film, Harper moved. She scooted inelegantly towards me on the couch until she was right next to me. "Can I have some blanket?" she asked. "It's a little chilly in here." Of course, I obliged. She crawled underneath and moseyed even closer to me. Suddenly, I could feel the softness of her sweater, the warmth of her body pressing gently against my side. It was too much. I couldn't resist.

    I sprawled out against her under the blankets, practically on top of her, cuddling into her big body like a giant bean bag and resting my head gently on her shoulder. It was blatantly out of character for me to be so forward, but I didn't care at all. I'm almost certain I let out an audible squeak as my arms curled around her torso.

    After a silent moment or so, I became nervous. I looked up at her face to see an expression of pure surprise; no smile, no obvious sign that this was okay. I felt my face go red. After a few agonizing seconds, the most reassuringly adorable grin I'd ever seen crept out across Harper's face. I felt her wrap her arms around me too. I smiled back up at her, then closed my eyes.

    It was everything. It was all the satisfaction in the world. It was bliss and loveliness. Up until this point, the only intimacy in my adult life had come from two different boys I'd tried in vain to convince myself to be interested in during college. Needless to say, I'd never gleaned anything from those experiences. This was unlike anything else I'd ever tried. It was a wonderful feeling. For once, it felt earnest. Harper ran her hand up and down my back, sending chills through me with each motion. Little Harper was so much bigger than me now; it made me feel so safe.

    "You're adorable," Harper said. I didn't say anything back. Instead, I pecked her on the cheek, then returned my head giddily to her shoulder. Before I'd even opened my eyes again, I felt her pull me gently up into a kiss.

    She was a novice kisser, but I managed to apply some of what I'd learned from those college faux-relationships. Nevertheless, she quickly became more confident, taking charge of the action within a minute or two. I felt her hand slide up my shirt and rest on my waist. The stimulus was almost too much for me to take—Harper's lips dancing giddily on mine, my slender body pressing gently into her generous form, and now this—my brain hardly had time to process where the pleasure was coming from; it just kept coming, over and over in these wonderful, sporadic waves of ecstasy. I shuddered as her fingers continued further up my torso. Meanwhile, I discovered that her sweater had ridden up across the surface of her belly as we became more passionate. I placed my hands upon the soft, naked crescent of her flesh and nearly moaned. I'd waited so long to touch this.

    Harper leaned further into the kiss, inadvertently shifting my center of gravity so that I nearly fell off of the sofa. She caught me and prevented the fall, but realized there wasn't really enough room on this sofa for the two of us to be much more dynamic with our lovemaking than we already were. This was clearly an issue, as things were quickly becoming very electric between the two of us. I suggested that the two of us head to the guest room upstairs, and she agreed. 

    Once the guest room door was shut, Harper called her mother to let her know she was spending the night with me. I didn't do much to avoid distracting her from the conversation, however. She stared, wide-eyed at me as I took my shirt off and walked towards her, placing my hands on her bulbous hips and pressing my belly against hers. She told her mother goodnight was fast as she could, set her phone on the dresser behind her and joined me in disrobing. I helped her undress, enamored as her form was revealed to me for the first time. Then, we got in bed and took turns pleasuring eachother.

    We cuddled up against eachother after that, each of us just enjoying the warmth of the other. I kissed the little fold on the back of Harper's neck, prompting a tired giggle from my sleepy partner. Although I was the smaller of the two by far, it was clear that I had to be the big spoon when we snuggled; she had too much belly to wrap her arms around me in that position. I fell asleep with my hand on her hot, blubbered core.




    As I write this, I've just woken up in bed beside her. She is still asleep. She's breathing heavily, her dome rising and falling beneath the covers. She must've rolled onto her back in her sleep—something I'm sure her body facilitated so that she could breathe more easily, considering her impressive apple shape—and I must've rolled over to accommodate her, as I woke up with my back resting gently against her cushioned side. After grabbing my laptop from downstairs, I've returned to that spot, allowing her love handles to rise and fall against me as I type. She must be a heavy sleeper; the corpulent cutie still hasn't woken up.

    I just can't believe this is real. It's so dreamlike to have all of these wishes come true and to be able to sit here now and tell you about them. But they are true. She's right in front of me, beautiful as ever, and it's impossible to deny.

    Despite finally reaching this point, I can't help but feel myself pondering new questions. Will Harper and I date? If we do, will we let anybody know? As far as I know, neither of us is out of the closet, so it would be a big deal if that happened. What will happen when she returns to college? Will she move on? After all these years, I'm confident I won't.

    I briefly ponder if she knows about my quirkier taste in girls by now. But as I look at Harper—her big body heaving beneath the covers, double chin on full blast as her lips hang open to prevent herself from snoring, strands of her long hair caught in her underarm folds and trapped underneath her breasts—I recall how openly and confidently I'd touched those things, her most obviously fat features, last night. I'd straddled and squeezed every inch of that bulk with entirely indiscrete lust. If she still doesn't know what I think of her size, I'll be very impressed. Besides, she's still here, isn't she? So she must be comfortable. I bet she'll bring it up today, and I'll be able to confess. For once, I feel like I'm on the same page with somebody about my sexuality.

    Whatever the future holds, I'm very confident that Harper and I will remain in eachother's lives. I'm nearly certain of that. At the very least, we have the rest of my housesitting period to repeat tonight's events and become more reacquainted with one another. I'm so excited. In a few moments, I'll start small; I'm sure she won't mind me cooking breakfast.

   Professor Murphy was quick to inform us that, due to the fact that there were more students this semester than there were cooking stations, we were to work in groups for the entirety of this baking course. We got to choose our partners at the end of his introduction. I didn't know anyone, so I got stuck with Ashley.

   We introduced ourselves. I was a culinary arts major starting my first year at that college. Ashley was a Liberal Arts major with little to no actual interest in cooking. Immediately, it was clear to both of us which partner was going to be putting in more work this semester. As we spoke, she opted out of looking at me and instead kept her eyes locked onto her smartphone. It was almost relieving; as a pretty shy person, I wasn't exactly looking for a someone to talk to during class. Ashley, with her apparent lack of any motivation, seemed to be of much the same mindset. Neither of us were remotely disappointed with the fact that we'd be spending this three-hour-long, biweekly, double-semester course with someone who didn't expect any small talk.

   The following class period was our first with an actual assignment, and now that we were working together, it became apparent that Ashley's disinterest was even greater than I'd initially imagined. Murphy gave us a simple project—a batch of chocolate chip cookies—expecting us to have enough prior knowledge to make one from scratch. We were given a sheet of instructions, but he told us he wouldn't be offering help.

   Ashley was nothing but a detriment in the kitchen. All she did was eat while I worked. She stole a more-than-negligible amount of chocolate chips as I was making the dough, and once the it was finished and ready to bake, she made off with quite a few dollops of the stuff from my tray. Her appetite caught me off guard at first, being that I'd already had her registered in my mind as a skinny, somewhat preppy looking girl. However, now that I saw her outfit today, I was forced to reconsider that classification. Ashley's new top was far more form-fitting than the one she'd worn on the first day of class, revealing an asset of hers that I'd failed to notice up until that point: her doughy tummy. This was an exciting revelation for me; I'd always had a thing for bigger girls. Don't get me wrong, Ashley wasn't fat, but she surely had enough of a belly that I knew I could count on it to entertain me throughout the rest of this school year.

   Once the cookies were done, Ashley didn't hesitate to ask for a taste. I obliged. She ate four of them. At first, I was nervous about that, being that our batch was already short from her earlier snacking, but as I looked around the classroom, I could tell that most of my other classmates had encountered the same temptations as Ashley had. We received a good grade for my work.

   Between her abdomen and her appetite, I found myself thinking a lot that day about the potential of a girl like Ashley to get huge while she was in college. Her lack of motivation told me she wouldn't be exercising much. Her inability to cook told me she'd be getting lots of take out. Her incessant snacking was self explanatory. Ashley was a ticking time bomb of young-adult obesity, and I was suddenly very excited to see it go off. When it came time for each group to divide up their remaining cookies up and take them home, I told Ashley she could have them all. For the first time, I saw excitement in her eyes.

   All of the next few projects went the same way. Whether or not my donations were helping, my predictions about Ashley were coming true at a speed I couldn't have previously thought possible. By the third week of the semester, Ashley was already looking noticeably plumper, and whether or not this class was the only reason, there was no way six three-hour sessions of constant carb intake couldn't have been a factor. Surely, the number of calories she was getting from these classes was ridiculous. Despite the remarkable progress she'd made so far, I couldn't help wondering whether or not I could've been doing more to expedite my classmate's growth. On the following day, my questions were answered.

   Baking was my second culinary class of the day, so I always had leftovers from the first one waiting for me in my book bag to be dumped into the fridge when I got back to my dorm. On that particular session, I happened to take them out and set them aside while looking for something in my bag. Ashley noticed right away.

   "What's that?" She asked.

   I gestured to the container. "This? Just some chicken parm leftovers from my last class." Looking at her expression, I could almost feel her mouth watering. I saw an opportunity. "Want a taste? I could heat some up for you."

   "Oh no, that's okay," she said, "I don't want to take your food."

   "No, it's fine," I insisted. "Honestly, I probably won't even eat it later. Are you hungry? You can finish it if you want."

   She shrugged, then nodded, then pretended not to be excited as I popped a plate of the stuff into the microwave. She gobbled it up quickly as I began our baking assignment, and once she was finished, didn't rest for a moment before she started stealing my damn ingredients again.

   From that day forward, my leftovers were always included in Ashley's classroom experience. It was also around then that I started pushing the amount of butter and sugar in all of these recipes to the limit and making the batches extra-large. Ashley's weight gain sped up accordingly. It wasn't long before all of her shirts—which had already been tight to begin with—were unabashedly outgrown, and her pants were dangerously close. Her belly was now fluffy enough to stick out further than her already considerable breasts, and her yoga pants were swiping more loudly against one another as her thighs grew closer together. Muffin tops appeared over even her loosest and laziest sweatpants now, a phenomenon that told me she must've had a very soft body. Her arms and neck were thicker too. We were a month into the first semester and Ashley had already crossed the freshman fifteen off of her to-do list. She was kind of short, so each one of those pounds counted triple as much on her as they would on somebody my height. Noticing this only made things more exciting; I was totally invested in her waistline.

   Eventually, as the foods in my earlier class got more complex and less fatty, I became nervous that Ashley wouldn't have as much to snack on during class. So, instead, I began cooking things that were purposely fattening and over-proportioned back at the dorm and putting them in my bag alongside the actual leftovers. Then, I'd offer that to Ashley instead of my actual academic food. She never noticed the swap. One day, I had her eating several cheesy potato skins with sour cream and bacon, licking extra-buttery cupcake batter out of a mixing bowl, sneaking spoonfuls of chocolate icing and devouring multiple cupcakes all in one class period, then bringing home ten or eleven more cupcakes for later. Even having such a big belly these days, I was often shocked that she could put away so many calories all at once.

   Ashley was the biggest girl in class by the end of November. Having ballooned beyond any semblance of thinness, she was even starting to show signs of a second chin every time she looked down at her phone. She had been a fairly thin and pretty girl at the beginning of the semester, but now, she was fat. I was sure she'd be hard-pressed to get attention from most boys. That being said, I thought she was looking phenomenal. Eventually, she bought some new—albeit, equally lazy—clothes, which helped her to look like she gave at least a tiny bit of a damn about her appearance for a little while. Before long, though, she would outgrow those too.

   After a while, I began to worry that the amount of butter I was cramming into all of these recipes would start negatively affecting my grades, so I began making two smaller batches for each recipe to compromise. One of them would have the glut of butter Ashley was now used to, while the other would be the one that my professor would sample. This proved to be an even better idea than I'd initially thought when I remembered that Ashley would now be taking home an even more ridiculous number of baked goods each day.

   The fatter Ashley got, the more inelegant and unfeminine her body became. Her bottom got much flabbier and wider as she grew, but it hardly gained any depth, leaving it very little prominence with which to balance out the heaving mass of belly that jutted out from the opposite side of her body. Instead, her fat, dimpled and pitifully untoned asscheeks pushed pitifully at her yoga pants in what was probably the least conventionally sexy way possible. Her arms and legs were impractically thick, and the sugar-dusted fingers which tapped incessantly on her phone all throughout class were becoming plump and sausage-like. It was only December—nearly halfway through the course—and she was already nearly unrecognizable as her former self.

   It soon dawned upon me that I could've been offering Ashley both the food I'd cooked for her and the actual leftovers from my previous class, instead of only offering her the stuff I'd cooked at home. To my surprise, she managed to eat all of that the very first time I tried it. All of the other students, as well as my professor, were now struggling not to stare at Ashley while she ate. I often overheard them speaking, saying they felt bad for me for having to put up with my piglike partner. They were blissfully unaware of the fact that I was growing to adore her. She may have been conversationally dull, but I'll be damned if she wasn't becoming one of the hottest human beings I'd ever seen, and I felt like I'd had a hand in it.

   She came back from winter break looking like a Christmas ham, and when the midterms of our spring semester started, I noticed that she was starting to waddle. Her voice sounded different now; it was padded with fat. It was throaty, sexy and labored, seldom sounding except to ask for more food, and I was always there to answer its call. She was rounding out beautifully, and it was affecting everything.

   Unfortunately, though, the course was not going to last forever. Before I knew it, Professor Murphy was giving us our final assignment. We were to bake the best dish we could possibly bake, whatever that might be, and we were to do it entirely outside of the classroom. Working with our partners was optional, but allowed. Having not actually touched an oven once this semester without the professor standing over her shoulder, Ashley insisted that we work together. I met her in her dorm room that weekend.

   It was evident that she'd tried to gussy herself up at least a little before I came over, but the attempts were marred by the fact that her cute outfit was far too small to adequately fit her great, big manatee body. On that day, the Ashley that stood before me was legitimately obese. Looking at her from the front, she was jarringly round. Her neck and face were wrapped in fat. Her belly dominated her form.

   I offered to cook her dinner before we started the actual project. She was so complacent with her own gluttony at that point that she didn't even pretend like she didn't want me to do that; she just said yes and told me where all the food was, even though I'd brought my own. While I was cooking, I gave her a rather excessive amount of "leftovers" to munch on, all of which she ended up finishing. When I was done, we ate on her couch, and she downed an amount of pasta that was literally four times larger than my own portion. She ate ravenously, the momentum of her hands and jaw causing various parts of her body to jiggle excessively as they convulsed in an effort to contribute to the consumption. Once finished, she cast the plate aside and sprawled out across the bed, belly up. I almost doubted she could lie down any other way these days.

   "Wow. I'm so full," she told me through a mouthful of excessively buttery and cheesy carbohydrates. "You're such a good chef. It's really amazing. Thanks for making me so much food this whole time."

   "Well thanks, Ash, and you're welcome. It means a lot." Her words were somewhat forced, even if I didn't doubt their truthfulness. She sounded like she wanted something, but I couldn't tell what it was. She'd said she was full, which wasn't exactly a very good way to ask for more food.

   She sighed very loudly. Then, she placed both hands on her mountainous belly. "Ugh. I'm so full right now. My belly hurts."

   "Well that's what you get for eating so much of my cooking," I teased. "I know it's good, but you ought to pace yourself sometimes."

   She didn't reply. Instead, she grabbed one of my hands in her doughy fingers and placed it onto the dome of her belly. She started moving it across her own gut for me, then let go and allowed me to pick up where she left off. I complied eagerly. She wanted me to rub her belly.

   Judging her with any kind of conventional wisdom, Ashley would've looked utterly disgusting at that moment. Her obese, engorged body was packed into clothes that were far too tight, sweaty, dusted with crumbs and sprawled out, legs spread, in front of me. Her face, despite its cute features, was fat, flushed and even more food-covered than her body. I was enamored with her slobby physique. Touching it was ecstasy.

   I slid my hand under her shirt and continued rubbing. She moaned, clearly pleased. I proceeded to raise the shirt above her belly entirely. I started rubbing, but before I could get very far, she grabbed my arms, yanked me on top of herself and began french kissing me. She tasted like my cooking, and the enthusiasm with which she was tonguing my mouth told me that she probably tasted it on me as well. My fingers ran across her skin, affirming, one by one, all of the assumptions I'd made over the past few months about the way her fat would feel in my grasp. Certain parts were soft. Others, where her body bunched up against the mattress, were more taut. Straddling her without putting too much pressure on her engorged belly was difficult, but I happily managed. Eventually, we managed to get her clothes off. That's when things really got serious.

   As soon as we were done, the big piggie fell asleep. I'd fed her so well that it had gotten her fat and gotten me laid. That was a major ego-boost, if ever there was one. I tucked the blob in, left and took care of the final on my own.

   We passed with flying colors. The professor, noting my partner's appetite, work ethic and triple digit weight gain, apologized for pairing the two of us. I told him I didn't mind; I'd wanted to do my own work anyway, so she didn't drag me down.

   "Are you taking Baking II?" She asked. I nodded. Remnants of our final project were still on her now-smiling face.

   "Then maybe I'll see if I can get my advisor to let me switch into it before the next fall semester starts." She feigned innocence, but there was hunger in her eyes. "Maybe we can be partners again."