How'd I get fat? Well, that's kind of a weird question, but I guess it's worth answering.

When I was a freshman in high school, I bought a pair of dark blue sweatpants with the understanding that they were always going to be far too huge for me and I'd put them on whenever I was insecure about my weight. I'd console myself with the knowledge that, hey, at least I wasn't a fat whale who fit into them.

Now that I'm 19, I've come to the rather startling realization that I'm a fat whale who doesn't fit into them. That's right, there's a big tear right in the ass and I can see my pink panties right now. But I'm not some fat-loathing wreck who's about to go puke until I get thin; no, it's actually the contrary. I rather like being an obese whale, thank you very much.

My name is Nikki Wood. I weigh 630.8 pounds. And, unlike most girls, I know exactly how it happened.

The Beginning: Buying the Pants

I always hated going shopping with Rachel. It wasn't that I hated shopping- no, I loved shopping- it was that Rachel was, to be blunt, so, so fat. She weighed 520-ish pounds and we were only 15! Unfortunately, the mall had a store dedicated to clothing the huge, which Rachel used to drag me to all the time. After all, it was the only place she could go; with her cartoonishly large breasts, balloon belly, ass that took up two chairs, and thighs that seemed like they wouldn't separate, my dark-haired friend didn't have a lot of resources for clothes.

To provide some contrast, I had a mild hourglass, with a decent butt, small waist, and C cups, meaning that I was the approximate size of an average Rachel dinner. What blew my mind even further was that she didn't even seem to mind being so huge; in fact, she absolutely reveled in it. She would intentionally wear super-revealing clothes, always pig out in front of everyone, and made more fat jokes about herself than anyone else did.

I wanted to poke around in Gamestop to try to catch a glimpse of this guy Dan I'd been crushing on for a little while, but no, Rachel needed sluttier clothes and she wanted me to tag along. While she was in the dressing room squeezing into a pair of daisy dukes that were sure to look revolting, I was browsing the section that contained clothes for girls fatter than Rachel. It was then that I found them.

The pants.

My first instinct when I picked them up out of curiosity was to laugh. I didn't even think anybody had the kind of ass that would fill those pants! And the thighs! The waistband was so stretchy… I needed to own these. 20 bucks was a small price to pay.

Rachel burst out of the dressing room, shirtless, having busted the jean short shorts and her black bra didn't seem to be holding on too well either. I knew that I'd never be as fat as her, ever.

The First Inkling That Something Might Be Wrong

I'd bought the sweatpants two months ago and, as a direct result, had seriously mellowed out about counting every last calorie. I could now enjoy some ice cream every once in a while or, God forbid, a second slice of pizza. I'd even developed a whole new respect for chocolate pudding, which I used to refer to as "fatty goop." Looking back, I can sort of see how my diet started to slip, which I learned thanks to an incident with my favorite jeans.

They'd always been tight to show off my impressive backside, but I noticed that day that getting them on was slightly more difficult. Almost as if I'd gained weight or something. It wasn't too unthinkable; I'd assumed that my boobs were just growing naturally, but maybe they were being swelled with… fat? No, no, impossible. But, then again, my belly was starting to feel a bit less firm than usual… and I had to admit that my favorite red panties were pinching into my waist a bit.

After three or four minutes of struggling, I'd gotten the jeans up to just below my butt and I finally had a reason to dislike my booty. I pulled and pulled as hard as I could and I was only able to slowly hike my pants onto me, taking about a minute for that small stretch alone. I couldn't even close the front of them.

Beginning to feel bad, I tore my jeans off and put on the sweatpants, simply grateful that I was thinner than them. Holding them up with one hand, I walked into the kitchen and stared into the freezer, grabbing a carton of chocolate ice cream to complete my night of sweets and TV.

Higher Than Ideal

It took another three months before anything truly confidence-devastating could happen. After the last day of finals, it was time for my annual checkup and I was feeling a bit apprehensive; although I didn't want to admit it to myself, something inside me knew that I'd been putting on weight, particularly in my belly and ass. I had never really addressed it, though, as whenever I noticed how much bigger I was I would just put on the sweatpants and… well, eat.

Although I'd bought bigger clothes, I stubbornly refused to go more than two sizes up, which left me in clothes that were still tight, but less so. I was wearing a pair of tight black pants and a pink top that showed off my expanded breasts excellently, but also showed some belly, which I ignored.

When I was called into the doctor's office, I also sort of noticed that, to my horror, I was starting to develop a slight waddle. The nurse administered the usual eye test and figured out my height and then came the weigh-in. I stepped onto the scale, which always made me self-conscious because it made a loud CLANG regardless of weight, and faced away from the numbers. I knew I'd gotten fatter, but I refused to find out how much so.

"Alright then," the nurse said cheerily, "I'm gonna go, and Dr. Walker should be here in a few minutes. If you could just please remove your clothes to your underwear, and if it makes you feel more comfortable then you can throw on that gown," she gestured to the hospital gown sitting beside me.

"Okay," I smiled, but my face immediately became a frown when the nurse left the room. Someone else was gonna see me in my underwear? After I'd gotten chubby? To me, that was hell, but I sucked it up and removed my clothes anyway. That was when I looked in the mirror and had to accept that maybe I'd put on a couple of pounds.

My butt had grown, to my horror, jiggly beneath my black panties, which cut into my cheeks a bit. My stomach, which had progressed to something too big to be a potbelly but too small to be a gut, hung and wobbled a bit and, when I tested out "pinching an inch," I discovered that I could pinch about three. My boobs, now swollen with flab, were bursting out of my bra.

Seeing all of this, I hurried to throw the gown on over the front of my body just before Dr. Walker, a middle-aged tall woman with black hair and a few wrinkles, entered the room and held out her hand for me to shake. "Hello, Nicole. How are you?"

I smiled politely as I shook her hand. "Fine, thanks. And you?"

"I'm alright," she said as she grabbed a blood pressure meter and patted the couch-thing that I never knew the name of, her hand crinkling loudly against the sanitary paper. "Now, if you could just hop up here, please." I did so and realized, scared, that my butt had padding when it was only covered by my underwear. My real terror didn't come until the blood pressure cuff was wrapped tightly around my left arm and I found that I actually had… arm-flab.

But I kept my cool as she took my pressure and wrote down the results, but my façade of stability started to fade as she told me to stand up and face away from her so she could observe my spine. I had to remove the gown, but thankfully she couldn't see my belly yet. Unfortunately, my gross love handles were still visible, spilling over my panties.

"Okay, turn around, please?" I groaned to myself as I did so, exposing my belly to her.

Nothing else too bad happened for the remainder of the checkup until Dr. Walker told me my results: blood pressure good, general clean bill of health, but the bad part was news that she delivered with nonchalance: "Weight's quite a bit higher than ideal, though."

I simply nodded with a look that conveyed semi-annoyed acceptance, but on the inside I was a rage of emotions over confirmation that it was now a fact: I was overweight. Quite a bit overweight.

The Last Day of Summer

Two and a half months later came a day that was universally hated by the under-18 population: the final day of summer. And, aided by the sweatpants of denial, I had made the vacation a heaven of ice cream and lounging around. I'd suffered the effects, as well: the previous year, I was wearing small bikinis, and by the end of that summer I'd missed medium entirely and now larges were getting snug.

The only thing that made me feel comfortable in a bikini was being in a bikini around Rachel, because at that point she'd make Jabba the Hutt look like Jenny Craig. In the seven and a half months since I bought the pants, my gargantuan buddy had bloated to almost 600 pounds and wasn't showing any signs of slowing. Her ass took up three- three- seats on its own, her tits were so ridiculously large that everyone incorrectly thought they were fake, and her gut was roughly the size of an overinflated yoga ball.

Of course, I was no supermodel either. Ironically enough, I'd let Dr. Walker's assessment that I was quite a bit high than my ideal weight get to me and make me seek subconscious comfort food. One day at the beach, I'd eaten three ice cream cones and followed those up with a cheeseburger, then promptly went home and napped in the sweatpants.

On the last day of summer, I'd gone to the beach with Rachel again, but since she was off gorging herself with burgers I was forced to sit there alone. As I laid back on the beach, I took another look at my body and wasn't quite happy with recent developments. My belly was sticking far enough out to be slightly visible beyond my fat-bloated boobs while I was lying down. My thighs were starting to touch a little, and when I got up I discovered that my ass had left a crater in the sand that indicted something far bigger and rounder than a simple "booty" anymore.

Now that I was standing, I'd seen the ass-crater, I felt fat, and I had no access to The Sweatpants, I didn't know what to do with myself other than track down Rachel and have a little snack. To find her, all I really had to do was follow the noise of a crowd chanting "Stuff! Stuff! Stuff! Stuff!" I pushed through the crowd to find my morbidly obese friend rapidly cramming all sorts of food into her mouth while people cheered her on.

Then something really scary happened: I realized that that girl may be me someday. Disgusted, I made my way out of the crowd and semi-waddled- oh my God, how gross, I semi-waddled- to a hot dog stand, where I ate two and then passed out in Rachel's backseat, waking up halfway through the ride home.

Naturally, the first thing I did was throw on my sweatpants, heat up some leftover pizza, and go to bed, dreading the beginning of school.

Obese

Four months into the year and I was fatter than ever, having gone up several clothes sizes in the past near-year. My fashion sense had gotten looser, as the only part of my body that I especially liked anymore were my boobs, but to show them off I'd need to make the world see my overstuffed gut.

This particular moment of fatness overlapped with the day of gym class every girl loathed: height, weight, and BMI. All taken by the fitness-crazy gym teacher. And we weren't allowed to keep our shirts on while getting weighed.

Given that I'd annihilated an entire pizza the night before and gorged myself on six large pancakes with whipped cream that morning, and then it was right after my lunch of two bottles of chocolate milk, three cookies, and a small bag of potato chips, I was terrified. Yes, I was starting to realize that I'd gone beyond overweight and into fat, even gluttonous, but I refused to diet because I was still downright swimming in The Sweatpants.

The suspense was killing me as, one by one, girls were called into the teacher's office and came out moaning about how fat they were. Angela Brennan, whose ribs were visible, shot out wailing that she was so fat and needed to go on a diet. If Angela was fat, then I was downright obese. I wouldn't have been surprised if I was, either; my gut hung to about my crotch and my butt had grown to a size where it spilled off of both sides of all of my chairs and tore a small hole in the backside of my already-big jeans.

"Nicole Wood! You're up!" The coach's female voice bellowed. As I did something that was just barely not a waddle to her office, I passed Rachel, who was jiggling out with a shirt that only covered her boobs.

Wearing an enormous grin, she whispered excitedly "82!"

It sounds ridiculous, but I wasn't at all surprised that Rachel was more than twice as fat as she'd need to be to be considered morbidly obese. She was so fat that just being around her was making me fatter in that, last Halloween, she'd convinced me to put on eight and a half pounds in chocolate and now that it was almost Christmas she's have me eating cookies by the plateful.

"Hi, Nicole," my blonde ultra-toned gym teacher said with the air of coldness that she'd been giving me since I'd started gaining weight, "Remove your shirt and step on the scale." I did so and it made a loud CLANG reminiscent of Dr. Walker's scale, but my teacher's surprised jump indicated that it didn't always happen.

This time, I knew I had to suck it up and face the numbers, watching the fit-nut's hands fiddle with the weights until her voice read out "220 pounds."

220 pounds? Two-hundred-and-twenty goddamn pounds? Oh my God, I thought, I was going on a diet the second I got home. Ms. Williams took my height and then plugged it into her computer before reading out "30.7." She turned to me somberly. "Nicole, I hate to tell you this," she said in a tone that sounded more annoyed than sympathetic, "But you really, really need to lose weight. You're just barely obese now, but if you lose, oh," she paused to think for a moment, "Ten pounds, you'd fall back into overweight range, but even that's overweight. Now, I don't mean to violate your personal space, but," she put her hand on my exposed pregnant-looking belly, "This… needs to go away." She patted it a few times, causing pressure to build up and I knew what was coming but couldn't stop it. "Okay?"

I nodded, but when I opened my mouth to speak I instead unleashed a large belch from all of the food that I'd consumed since last night's pizza feast. Ms. Williams looked somewhere between surprised and angry and I burst out without my shirt as I heard everyone laughing at me.

The Snapped Stair

The next four months brought food, food, and more food, and as April came and the weather began to heat up I found that calling my new softness "winter weight" would be pushing it a lot. The "diet" that gym class had convinced me to go on began with a big bowl of "fatty goop" when I got home and ended with that night's dinner of two hot dogs.

I knew that I'd gotten a whole lot fatter, but I had to still just be in "obese," however bad that may have been. There was no way I'd entered "morbidly." No way. As I waddled around shirtless, I realized that I no longer needed to hold up The Sweatpants; my waistline was doing that on its own. It then occurred to me: maybe I should weigh myself on my own.

I entered the bathroom and pulled the scale out from under the sink, stepping on it and realizing that I could only see the numbers if I sucked in my gut and craned my neck over my tits. The dial spun until it finally settled at 266 pounds. I gasped and raised a hand to my mouth; 46 pounds in 4 months? What had I been eating, lard? At this rate, I'd end up like Rachel, immobile and moved out to the West Coast.

I noticed that I was starting to sweat, but refused to take off the heavy pants that still allowed me to delude myself into thinking I wasn't twice as heavy as would be healthy for a girl my size. I figured that the best solution would be to go into the attic and grab a fan for my room so I wouldn't be pouring perspiration at all hours of the night.

I entered my parent's bedroom and reached up to grab the hook in their white ceiling, and as I pulled down a wooden ladder folded down as well to grant me access to the unbearably hot attic. Then something occurred to me: I hadn't been in the attic in over a year, and the steps had always been creaky. Now that I was officially obese, was I going to make it up? Oh, of course, of course, I thought. After all, I might be fat but at least The Sweatpants are loose on me. I grabbed the sides of the ladder and stepped onto the first stair. I smiled; yeah, it creaked, but it was supporting me. I took another step tentatively, but stair number two held me as well.

You know how they say "third time's the charm?" Well, that day I learned that the third time is always just awful. On the third stair up, all 266 pounds of me proved too much for the dumb little wooden step to handle and it smashed, making me fall to the floor on my ass. To my horror, I bounced a bit.

I got to my feet (with a bit of difficulty, I might add,) folded up the stairs, kicked the shards of step three under my parents' bed, and locked myself in my bedroom to eat potato chips. At least The Sweatpants were more resilient than the stair.

The Summer Job

After another month, I figured that I should get a summer job to give my savings the extra boost that they needed if I was to afford a car by next March. Given that I'd put on a bit more weight (okay, fifteen pounds is more than "a bit," but still) I wanted to work somewhere simple with very little temptation, like Borders or the library. Since they were both semi-decent distances away from my house, walking to work might help me cut the fat a little bit too.

Naturally, my joke application to Glut Burger was the only one that got accepted. The combination of being a fast food joint and the place being called Glut Burger didn't give me high hopes of losing any weight. After working there for a week, I was sure that my diet was doomed because of one simple fact: since it wasn't the busiest place even at lunch, my manager encouraged employee snacking to not let the food go to waste. After my third week of work, I had to trade in my XXL uniform (which made me feel gross) for an XXXL uniform (which made me feel downright gigantic.)

The addition of greasy fast food to my already food-packed lazy days didn't help, nor did the fact that walking to work and back wasn't enough to work off half a burger, let alone the three or four daily ones I was munching on. It got so bad that, by the first of July, I'd outgrown a bikini I ordered off of the internet in mid-June.

I was an even bigger cow when I was given the responsibility to closing, as being alone made me feel comfortable enough to help myself to some fries and maybe a milkshake. I'd feel better if the other employees looked at least pudgy as well, but I was the only one who was above 200 pounds. Even on my days off, I'd usually come in and exploit my employee discount for a burger or two.

My rapidly worsening obesity began to worry my mom toward the beginning of August and she came to talk to me about it after I'd just gotten home from a long shift, having changed into a loose cotton shirt and The Sweatpants.

"Nikki," she said, sitting down on the bed beside me, "It hurts to have to tell you this, but… I'm worried that your weight is getting a bit… unhealthy," she spoke slowly and deliberately, as if she thought that one wrong word would set me off. "We're not going to make you do anything, but we'd really, really appreciate if you could maybe try to lose just a couple of pounds… for your health?"

I smiled and nodded. "I know, Mom, we don't need to sugar-coat it. Over the past year and a half, yeah, I've gotten pretty fat. But… hey, it's not like I'm obese or anything," I flat-out lied, "And I promise that I'll whip myself into shape by next summer, okay?"

That seemed to satisfy her. "Okay. How was work?"

"Good," I shrugged, but on the inside my first reaction was "Delicious."

As the summer wound down and came to an end, my manager had noticed that I was having some serious issues with my uniform and graciously granted me permission to wear any pants that I wanted for comfort reasons behind the counter, but I just had to deal with my huge boobs and gut hating my shirt. Naturally, I wore The Sweatpants to work every day and my tendencies to snack on the job became far more pronounced. Now that I had pretty much no pressure on my waist, I was allowing my daily intake at work alone to be between three and five cheeseburgers, a large fry, and usually what amounted to one and a half large vanilla milkshakes.

The week before classes began, I turned in my uniform, took one last free burger to go, and promptly weighed myself when I got home to see what kind of havoc three months of Glut Burger employeehod had done to my figure. What made matters worse was that I now had to use the camera on my phone to take a snapshot of the numbers because I couldn't see over my mountainous chest and belly.

I stepped on the scale, reached around my gut, snapped the picture, and promptly became confused because I was being told that I only weighed 5 pounds. Yeah, if only. I stepped off and picked up the scale to observe what went wrong, and the answer was actually rather scary: after the wheel hit 300 pounds, it just kept rotating. Simple addition put me at 305 pounds. That number was pretty shocking to me, yes, but at least I was still skinny in The Sweatpants. Of course, after that consolation was when it hit me:

I was now morbidly obese. Great.

Trick or Lots and Lots of Treats

Since gaining all this weight, I'd also gained a whole new respect for Halloween. It gave me an excuse to shovel candy down my gullet and insist that, since it was Halloween, everyone was pigging out. The previous year, I'd gone to a party with Rachel and gained a horrifying eight pounds in one night, but this year I was staying home and handing out the candy. I wore The Sweatpants and my biggest pink shirt and insisted that my costume was "a girl who recently lost a lot of weight." Hey, it was barely less plausible than "fat girl trying to feel skinny."

My parents went off to watch over a party that a friend of theirs was hosting, leaving me, now slowly inching my way towards 320 pounds, alone with six large bowls of candy and nothing to do. Well, nothing to do but eat. The first treat I snuck was something small and deliberate. I rooted around in the first bowl for a single Tootsie Roll and unwrapped it slowly, trying to work out whether or not gorging myself on all of the candy was such a good idea. After all, I'd promised my mom that I'd go on a diet and in the two months since then I'd packed on almost 20 pounds of pure fat.

It was then that I revised my diet plan: I'd start dropping pounds when I couldn't fit into my favorite pants anymore. So, with my diet postponed and the misconception that one tiny little Tootsie Roll wasn't gonna make me fatter all by itself, I put it in my mouth. Then, since it was so good and one little Three Musketeers wasn't gonna make me fatter all by itself, I ate one too. And since one little Hershey's Bar wasn't gonna…

Okay, you get the picture. I guess my point is that I'd already emptied one bowl before kids even started showing up, and I even "amended" my mom's two-pieces-per-kid policy down to one for reasons that should be obvious to you. As I sat hunched over that orange bowl stuffing my face almost as fast as I could unwrap candy, I didn't care if I was skinny, chubby, fat, overweight, obese, or even Rachel-sized; the only thing that mattered was that I was gorging myself on chocolate and it was goddamn delicious.

"Uh… Nikki?" I heard a voice and I looked up at the door, my cheeks bulging with Reese's Peanut Butter Cups, to see my rather attractive classmate Dan, who I'd had a crush on for almost two years now, standing there in torn clothes, with a few fake cuts and slightly greenish skin coloring with dark makeup around the eyes. "We're having a party down the street, wanna come?"

"Shorry," I said through my mouthful of food, "I gotha sthay here and ghive out candhy." I didn't like to talk with my mouth full, but considering I'd just been caught gorging myself on candy that was supposed to go to little kids I figured that courtesy was mostly out the window. I swallowed all of it and let out a small burp, blushing. "I really would love to, though. Maybe next year?"

"Yeah," he said, somewhat disappointed, "Maybe next year. Now I'm off to eat." He held his arms out in front of him and began to shuffle away stiffly, moaning "Brrrraiiiiiinssssss…"

"He's kind of cute, "I giggled as I tore open a bag of Skittles, poured some into my hand, and swallowed them. I placed my other hand on my huge stomach and realized that, although I'd eaten a lot, it wasn't really too full yet. I started to eat a bit faster, as less and less people were coming. My parents sure had grossly overestimated how many people would come to our house. So, since it was the day where I could pig out and be okay with it, I would just have to make up for them.

Another group of kids did show up eventually, but by then there was only a bowl and a half of candy left and I was a really scary sight. As I'd overheated, I removed my shirt and put some bruise-y makeup on it to give an appearance that, however vague, looked a bit unsettling. The entire lower half of my face was covered in chocolate and I was letting out mild belches every five or so minutes. Stuffing my face with candy had become a slow and sluggish task, and I almost felt like some kind of overstuffed evil queen being approached by terrified peons. And being in that position was pretty scary, too, because when I bent over to hold out the bowl and tell the kids to take one I just ended up burping in their faces and grunting "One."

Each took a Hershey's Kiss and hauled ass away from me, leaving me to my fattening feast. A few minutes later, as I dropped the sixth bowl to the ground with a clattering noise, I massaged my aching gut and let out one more thunderous burp, bumping the front door closed with my ass as I laid down on the couch to sleep off the feast.

Winter Weight

I always freaking loved Christmas. The music, the fun, the general feeling was always fantastic to me. The holiday had come at a great time, as well: I'd hit 345 pounds two weeks ago and needed a crapload of new clothes. I just assumed it was normal; I mean, everyone puts on winter weight, right? Of course, as I'd somehow managed to gain nearly 200 pounds in almost 2 years, my winter gain felt a lot bigger than everyone else's. All of the chocolates and cookies and cupcakes and candy didn't last long with me around. I didn't really like always eating so much, but I just couldn't help it and, honestly, I didn't really mind too much anymore. I swore I'd just lose weight over the summer because I was never gonna work at Glut Burger again.

I couldn't even fit into the foxy Christmas underwear that I'd bought on the first day of December. The bra and panties were red and lined with white fluff, and even at my extreme weight I felt truly sexy wearing it. Of course, now that my adipose-swollen tits were busting out and my gigantic bubble butt was straining the fabric to the point where it was just barely hanging on, I'd retreated back into The Sweatpants, which let me stuff my face with Christmas cookies and not feel an ounce of guilt.

But things didn't really heat up until the night before Christmas, when I got up for a midnight snack and let things get a little out of hand. It was 3 A.M. and my mom had already finished going about her business. She stubbed her toe getting back into bed, which woke me up and sent me into full "I won't sleep unless I eat something" mode. Scratching my mostly-bare ass and yawning, I waddled down the stairs and flipped on the lights in the kitchen, opening the fridge to see what my options were.

Nothing. My parents had clearly caught on to the fact that, if there were sweets in the house on a school vacation, I'd eat them faster than you can say "Nikki, you got fat." However, I did still have one option… but I just couldn't…

But…

I guess I could. Reaching into the back of the fridge, I grabbed the cake that I'd bought for my friend's Christmas party tomorrow that I was going to attend because my extended family was busy. The intention was to split it up tomorrow, but it wasn't exactly a huge cake and I was exactly a huge girl at that point.

Slamming my fat ass down on the wooden dining room chair with a weird "plop" sort of noise, I decided against utensils, grabbed a handful of chocolate cake with chocolate frosting and chocolate syrup and stuffed it into my mouth with a loud moan that was almost orgasmic in nature. I greedily licked the remnants off of my fat fingers before digging into another two handfuls, not even caring about how much weight I was clearly putting on. It was then that I realized:

I didn't care about how fat I was and I wasn't wearing The Sweatpants.

This knowledge was relieving, empowering, and a little bit scary: why didn't I mind being fat? I'm a seventeen year old girl and I'm probably a little heavier than 350 pounds… and I'm okay with it? Oh, jeez… am I like Rachel? These worries quickened my gorging speed and I pushed an empty plate away from me with a belch after only five minutes, going into the bathroom to survey my enormous body.

My gut, still just one big, flabby mass rather than the collection of rolls that some big bellies often became, hung and jiggled greatly with each of my movements. My breasts, still big even in proportion to the rest of my largeness, begged for release from my white bra, and its matching panties were barely hanging on against the force of my gigantic, wobbly ass, which led into a pair of thunder thighs that now touched no matter how hard I tried to spread them.

I smirked; this wasn't just winter weight. This was me being really, truly obese. And, finally, I wasn't a wreck about it anymore.

Merry Christmas.

Valentine

To reflect my newfound confidence, I stopped dressing so loosely and I'd almost completely abandoned The Sweatpants in favor of shorts and tank tops. Of course, with my confidence I stopped having so many reservations about what I ate and started getting fatter faster; in only two more months I weighed in at 380-ish pounds on the brand new scale that I'd secretly bought and stashed under my bed. My mom didn't seem all too pleased, but she didn't confront me about it for whatever reason.

While my gain was previously uneven with no specific body shape, my new poundage had shown me that I was really, really bottom-heavy. Yes, I was sporting a DDD chest and my belly was still big enough to fuel pregnancy rumors, but I simply got wider the further down on my body I went until my booty, which was now big enough to make me need between a chair and a half and two pretty much everywhere. I'd always had wider hips than shoulders, but now that I was fat it was getting ridiculous.

On Valentine's Day, I made sure to dress my best: while the old me would have worn The Sweatpants and a loose t-shirt, I stuffed myself into tight jeans and an orange tank top with straps that cut into my shoulder-fat. It still felt awkward; I wasn't horribly ashamed of my obesity anymore, but I still wasn't a huge fan. I straightened my hair, which had grown to hang to my lower back, and put on just a tiny bit of makeup (as I'd learned last year, too much eye makeup makes you look really, really slutty.)

Also contributing to my quickening weight gain was the fact that I'd managed to get a car earlier than I'd expected, meaning that I could now stop at Dunkin' Donuts for a pair of chocolate glazed every day before school in addition to my usual breakfast. Making matters even better was that Valentines' Day was on a Wednesday, when both of my parents were working and I was determined to get a date with Dan "the Hot Zombie" by the end of school. Making sure not to leave any room in my stomach for butterflies, I ate seven syrup-drowned chocolate chip pancakes, three glasses of orange juice, two donuts, and a bottle of chocolate milk for my breakfast, which had me belching under my breath all through my first class.

My bigger-than-usual day-starting meal had another purpose as well: I eat when I'm stressed, and the prospect of telling Dan about the feelings I'd developed on Halloween of all days had gotten me worried enough to make my antiperspirant fail horribly, which forced me to keep my arms as my soft sides most of the time. I couldn't tell him in History or Spanish and he wasn't in my gym class, but something that did happen in gym was that we had to get our BMIs taken again, and we all remember how that went for me last year.

With Rachel being a whale out in Oregon somewhere, I was now the fattest girl in class by about 150 pounds and everyone knew it; all eyes were on me when Ms. Williams called "Nicole Wood!"

I sighed and waddled to her office, now noticing that my ass cheeks rose and crashed down heavily with each step. When I entered, she looked at me coldly, but barely surprised. "Top off. Get on the scale." I peeled my top off and exposed my pink bra, allowing my fat gut to flop free over the unbuttoned front of my jeans. I stepped onto the scale, which CLANGed as usual, and watched Ms. Williams move the weights around until settling on 387.5.

"54. Nicole," she sighed angrily, "We talked about this. You are morbidly obese now. You need to lose weight." She patted my stomach again. "If this thing was as big as it was last year, even that'd be an improvement. Okay?"

I responded to her in the same fashion as last year, only louder this time. I squeezed my top back on and waddled out, taking my seat and picking my book back up, ignoring the stares and whispers I was getting.

The next class was study hall, where I slept for 45 minutes, but after that came Chemistry, which I was hopeless at anyway so I figured it was time to make a move. We'd been let loose to do a lab about gas pressure or burning copper in hydrochloric acid or something else I didn't understand, but thankfully I had the mega-smart Bart Hanson for a lab partner, so I went off to talk to Dan because Bart didn't trust me near a Bunsen burner anyway (jeez, you almost sear a guy's junk off once and suddenly nobody trusts you!)

Dan was shorter than me by about an inch, which would feel weird if, at 5'11", most guys I met weren't shorter than me. He had shaggy brown hair that fell over his goggles a bit and his green t-shirt was tight on him. As he lit his burner and adjusted the flame I leaned over the other side of the lab counter, half-unintentionally showing some cleavage, and smiled at him. "Hey."

"Hi," he said, tossing a pair of goggles at me and hitting me lightly in the boob with them. "Don't stick your face into fire, Nikki."

"Sor-ry," I said, speaking the "sor" and burping the "ry," pushing the fire toward him in the process and causing him to jump backward and shout. "Oh my god, sorry, sorry!" I yelled, standing up straight and quickly waddling over next to him. "You okay? I asked in the nervous, breathy voice that both Dan and fire often made me speak in.

"Yeah, fine," he laughed nervously, noticing my hand on his shoulder. "Just a little hot."

"Yeah," I giggled like an idiot, hesitating before quickly taking my pudgy hand off of his hard, bony shoulder. "So where's your partner?"

He looked around a little bit before shrugging. "Who cares? She never helps anyway."

"I could help," I volunteered on impulse, and he raised his eyebrows in mild surprise.

"What about Bart?"

"He doesn't let me use fire anymore."

"Right. Just, uh… yeah, just stay here and watch the flame while I get the beaker. And try not to char anybody's dick off."

"Oh my God, that was once," I giggled as I tried and failed to look annoyed, flipping my hair behind my back so that it didn't get lit up. As I leaned over to look at the fire at eye level, in the process sticking my butt out into the aisle, I heard a slow and steady "rrrrrrrrrrip" that clearly signified the classic "fat girl's torn pants" dilemma. I shot up into a standing position and rand my hand lightly across my backside, feeling that there was now a long, thin rip that showed off my panties. Now, I'd gained a new confidence about my weight but I hadn't gained any confidence about my undies being visible, so I made sure to have my ass pressed hard against the lab counter when Dan came back with a glass container about halfway full of brown metal, which he grasped in a pair of tongs and held over the fire as it grew red.

"Burn anyone or anything?"

I shook my head. "Nope. Surprised?"

"Very," he said, smiling at me as I grinned back. "Bart doing alright?"

"He's probably done by now, I don't care." Just as I finished my sentence, a metallic clatter was heard, followed by a FWOOSH of fire and a very, very agonized shriek from Bart's general direction of "OW, MY BALLS!"

Dan's first instinct was to look to me. With both of my hands over my mouth in shock, I could only squeak "I didn't do it!"

All through lunch, all anyone could talk about was the horrible injury that he'd sustained. As I didn't have many solid friends as much as people I talked to occasionally, where I sat depended on the day, and it just happened to be one of those days where my table only consisted of Dan and my semi-friend Maddy. Given that two of us were there for the incident, it came up rather quickly.

"Anything fun happen today?" Maddy asked, sounding bored as she took a bite out of her sandwich.

Needless to say, she didn't expect Dan's answer of "Bart Hanson burned his crotch." The bluntness of the phrasing made me laugh, too, even though I'd seen the whole thing. As painful as it sounded, we all had to admit that the concept was really, really funny. Most of my laughter came from a mouthful of chocolate chip cookie, which made me blush, as except for Halloween I'd generally been good at hiding my gluttony from Dan.

Even after I'd finished both of my cookies and my small bag of chips, my meal wasn't over yet. I still had to deal with the part of lunch that I'd been so good at hiding from my crush for the past year or so: other peoples' leftovers. It wasn't like I went around eating off of other peoples' plates, but since I now had an embarrassing reputation as a glutton people seemed to use me to dump their unfinished lunches into like a garbage disposal. As long as they hadn't already taken a bite of something, I figured it was fair game.

I turned redder and redder as Dan witnessed me receive three small bags of Doritos, a cupcake, and half of Maddy's sandwich. He didn't say anything, but I knew he couldn't be thinking anything positive. Since things couldn't possibly get any worse, I ate all of it, releasing it with a belch as we were dismissed from the cafeteria. I think the hole in my jeans got just a tiny bit bigger. I didn't even get a grace period between my meal and seeing him again, as we had math together next- and to make matters worse, I sat right behind him.

As I sat in my chair with the usual "plop"-ish noise that came from my butt-flab hitting the plastic, I became worried; that lunch had been very, very small for me, and my gut was sure to start groaning right in Dan's ear less than five minutes into class. I was entirely right, and I saw his head turn just a little bit as it happened so that his right ear was facing me under his hair just slightly more than before. Great, now my fat belly was making a scene. Just fantastic.

When Mr. Cooper told everyone to compare our homework answers with someone near us, I immediately tapped Dan on the shoulder a few times and did a finger-wave. "Want to not talk about the homework?"

"More than anything," he agreed, pretending to be sharing answers with me as our teacher turned his attention to us. "And I don't wanna talk about Bart anymore, either. I'm getting sympathy pains."

I giggled yet again, realizing that all the giggling was making me look like a complete dumbass. "Okay, fine, what'd you get for number do you want to go out with me on Friday?"

"I got 'yeah.' Did you?"

I'm gonna pause the story for a second to ask you a question: are you as stupid as I am and have turned on a flashlight right into your eye? Or turned on the light in your bedroom while you were looking into it? Have you held your phone at an awkward angle on a sunny day and flashed a blinding gleam into your eye?

My face was about ten times brighter than any of those. I'd always had a big mouth and my grin was taking up about half of my face. "I… I didn't even mean to say that out loud! Really?" I began to crack up, still under my breath to avoid making a scene.

"No, I'm kidding. Of course really, what kind of asshole do you think I am?" Dan laughed, having turned bright red. The nervousness in his voice reminded me of the way I sometimes spoke to him, and I knew that he wasn't just messing with me: He really did want this. Unfortunately, that day's calculus lecture didn't leave any room to talk about it. That was what English was for.

As our English teacher was out, my favorite old mildly senile substitute let us use the period as a study hall, where half of the class worked quietly, 8 people napped, Paul Sullivan skipped as usual, and Dan and I talked in the corner. Planning the date was the easy part. We'd nailed down the dinner/movie format before the second bell even rang. The rest of our time was spent discussing what I saw as the most important issue facing the budding relationship: my weight.

"Yeah, I know, you're fat. And?" His casual attitude made me slightly less anxious and loosened the knot in my stomach a bit.

"And… well, how do you feel about that?" I asked, biting my lip.

"I… well, it's not a huge deal, but I sort of like it," he admitted, whispering into my ear to keep his secret. His breath on my ear gave me goosebumps. But did I luck out or what? The guy I'd had a crush on for two years had a thing for overweight girls. "I mean, I liked you even before you started to… you know, but when I noticed, even though I didn't want to say anything, you were driving me nuts."

I blushed again. "So you really don't care if I'm fat? Because, fair warning, this probably isn't the biggest I'm gonna be. I mean, I gain weight fast. Like, ten pounds a month."

Even he looked a bit surprised. "Ten pounds a month? Whoa, that's… that's pretty awesome, actually. And you don't care?"

"I used to… then I stopped. I mean, what's the use of hating yourself, right?"

"Exactly!" Dan agreed, banging his fist on his desk in the moment and attracting everyone's attention. "Uh, sorry, guys."

I only had one worry left. "And you don't care that people are gonna laugh at you for going out with me?"

"Don't worry, Nikki. I'll be laughing at them because they don't get to have you for a girlfriend," he smiled, taking my hand lightly.

"D'aww," I cooed before I knew what I was doing. "Wait, so on Halloween… when you caught me eating…"

"Oh, that was downright hot," he admitted, "I went home and treasured that moment for the rest of the party."

Right then, it hit me. I was happier than ever, I didn't have to feel insecure about my body all the time, and I'd even landed a relationship with my dream guy. Even though I hadn't worn them in months, buying The Sweatpants was the best damn thing that ever happened to me.