Back home, Alice went back out into the woods. She sat down on a stump and buried her head in her hands. The whole Thanksgiving gathering had been nothing short of a disaster. Despite all her promises to control herself, her appetite had gotten the better of her and she’d spent the entire day gorging on sweets and snacks. Even worse, it had all happened in front of her mother. And she’d been an absolute glutton at dinner, filling her gullet until she felt like a stuffed Thanksgiving turkey herself. There was no way that mom was still going to believe Alice when she said she was still on a strict diet.
Slouched forward with her head in her hands, Alice gazed miserably at her rotund body. Her fleshy belly sagged into several distinct rolls when she leaned forward. They were clearly visible through her shirt. Great, she thought, now I can’t even hide my pot belly under my shirts anymore. At this rate, I’ll grow out of everything I own by Christmas. That’ll be nice. Hey, Mom, can you get me bigger clothes for Christmas? Cause I’m too porky to fit into my old ones. She’d love that.”
Alice couldn’t deny it any longer. She was definitely gaining weight. She’d tried to convince herself that her pants were shrinking in the wash, that her boobs were swollen because it was that time of the month, and that the frayed stitching in her panties was due to too many violent rinse cycles. But after listening to all that criticism, all day, she had to admit that she was the fattest person in her family. Maybe the fattest person in the whole school. Hell, she felt like the fattest person in the state.
“Hello?” said a voice. Alice jerked her head up to see a gangly boy with a dark mop of unruly hair and a worried expression on his face. It was Tyler.
“Hey,” said Tyler, half smiling, “Long time, no see.”
“Oh…” said Alice, blushing crimson. She hadn’t seen Tyler in quite a while, not since the pizza place incident. She was still a little embarrassed about that whole thing, back when she’d been so giddy about not having to diet that she’d gone and made a total fool of herself in public. And in front of a boy no less! He had to think she was a total pig.
“What’re you doing here, Alice?” he asked. “Are you okay?”
“Sure, I’m okay,” said Alice, wishing that her hoarse, squeaky voice didn’t betray that she was on the verge of bursting into tears. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
“I dunno.” Tyler shrugged. “You just sound... kind of funny. I’m sorry for interrupting, do you want to be alone? I guess this is the sort of place people come to be alone.”
“No, it’s okay, might as well join me,” said Alice wretchedly. “Misery loves company.” She was just waiting for him to say something about the incident at the pizza parlour. What had she been thinking that day? She’d acted totally out of character, almost as if she was controlled by some sort of malevolent puppet master. No, more like she was a character in a story subject to the arbitrary and fetishistic whims of some omnipotent narrator!
Tyler must think she was a shameless exhibitionist. And a greedy pig on top of that. He’d probably gone along with the whole thing simply because he was too shocked to do anything else. If it had been anyone except Tyler, she might have even suspected that he went along with it so that he’d have something to laugh about with his jock friends afterwards. That was the sort of thing Chris – her stupid ex-boyfriend who’s been mentioned in passing in some previous chapter waaaay back in the day – would have done. But she’d seen Tyler in class, always quiet, always keeping to himself. He didn’t tease people. He meant well.
Tyler sat down. He fidgeted a little and cleared his throat awkwardly. “So..,” he began. “I haven’t seen you around school much. What have you been up to lately?”
Eating and getting fatter obviously, thought Alice venomously. How much weight had she gained since their last meeting? She tried to do some quick calculations but her head was swimming with numbers. She’d been ballooning so fast and so furiously that it seemed like every time she stepped on the scale, she’d see a new number.
“Nothing much. Went to visit some relatives for Thanksgiving. Nothing else to report, really.”
“Yeah, I went to a family reunion. It was okay. Lots of aunts and uncles asking why I’m not a math whiz like cousin Jane or a football star like cousin Irving. That’s always fun.”
“Heh. My relatives do the same thing. Except that they’re always talking about my wei… Oh. You might as well say it, too, Tyler, since I know you must be thinking it.”
“Thinking what?”
“That I’m huge. I’m a big fat blimp. I’ve gained ten pounds since the last time I saw you and I can’t stop! And I know you probably think it’s because I go around stuffing myself in public like I did that one time, but I don’t!” Yeah, but what difference does that make if I still do it in private, she thought to herself.
“I figured you didn’t,” said Tyler. “I mean, you were just so excited that your mom took you off your diet…I thought you were just celebrating.”
“It doesn’t matter! It’s just..I’m so fat!” Alice blurted. She waved her chunky arms down to draw emphasis to her rounded body. Her pudgy belly rose like a mountain before her, still overstuffed from her huge dinner. Her meaty tits tested her bra and, behind her, she knew that her ass must be reaching the point where it could rival Jen’s.
“I don’t know what to do,” she said. “I keep trying to diet, to lose some weight. But no matter what I do, I just seem to keep ballooning bigger and bigger. Sometimes I feel like there’s nothing I can do about it…like I’m a raft attached to a pump and being inflated constantly. Do you know how much I weigh now, Tyler? 175 lbs! I’m sure I’ll hit 200 by Christmas and who knows how heavy I’ll be by the end of the school year. I’ll probably be the size of an elephant.”
She sat down heavily. She was so depressed about her weight that she was almost surprised that the stump didn’t buckle beneath her bulk.
Tyler bit his lip uncertainly. “I don’t think you’re –“ he began but stopped. There was no use denying it, Alice was more than pudgy these days. She was getting bigger.
“I think it looks good on you,” he said.
Alice looked up suddenly, tears streaking her pretty, rounded face. This was something different. She’d expected that Tyler would try to tell her that she wasn’t fat. She could argue with him about that. But this took away her main excuse to feel depressed.
“And, honestly, I don’t know where your relatives get off on telling you that you’re too fat,” he continued, staring at his feet and shuffling back and forth. “I mean, it’s your body. It’s no concern of theirs. As long as you’re not unhealthy or anything, why should they care?”
“Wait, wait,” said Alice, “Go back to what you said before. It looks good on me?”
Tyler blushed just a little. “Um…yeah. I mean, you know, you wear it well. You’re cute.”
Alice smiled weakly. “Thanks,” she patted him on his knee. Tyler shifted awkwardly and stuttered something. Alice pretended not to notice but she couldn’t help but be surprised. She didn’t have much experience with guys. Her only previous relationship had ended badly when Chris dumped her for “porking up” too much over the summer. Even with her limited knowledge of male behavior, she could still recognize what Tyler’s uneasiness meant. He really did like her. He wasn’t just saying it to make her feel better. He truly and honestly thought she was cute.
********
Cute. Alice couldn’t stop thinking about that. Someone thought she was cute. Even with all her extra flab, Tyler still thought she was cute.
After the meeting in the forest, Alice felt a little bit better about herself. Perhaps she was fat, she thought. Perhaps she never would qualify as petit. But that didn’t mean she was an unattractive beast.
In the locker room before practice, Alice pushed her long blonde hair out of her eyes and examined herself in the mirror. She couldn’t help but notice the jelly rolls around her jiggly midsection, bunched up around the waistband of her undies. Her plump, rounded face now sported a definite double chin.
Alice pulled her sweater down over her big boobs and jumbo tummy. It didn’t completely reach her skirt and left a narrow strip of bare, pink belly flesh. She sighed, resigned that there wasn’t anything she could do to disguise her blimping figure. These cheerleading uniforms left very little to the imagination. Alice briefly wondered if Tyler ever came to see the school football games. Probably not. That’s just as well, I wouldn’t want him to see me busting out of this tiny little uniform anyway, she thought.
But there was always the big homecoming game at the end of the year. Everyone came to that. Even Tyler would have to be there, right?
Alice couldn’t believe what her eyes. Both Jen and Laurie had picked up some pounds over the break. Alice still thought she was bigger than both of them..or was she? She wondered how much the two girls weighed. If they were still lighter than she was, they weren’t going to stay that way long.
Laurie wasn’t even making a pretense of joining the vigorous workout. She stood apart from the other cheerleaders, chewing angrily on a chocolate bar and hurling insults at the rest of the squad while they worked.
Alice noted with just a hint of wicked glee that Laurie had filled out even more over Thanksgiving. It looked like she no longer needed Alice around to have an excuse to eat. Maybe Laurie was too cheap to have her uniform altered or maybe she was still in denial about her increasing pudginess, but her outfit was hanging on to ever massive, womanly curve on her body. Her tits jostled for space in the constricting top, mashed up and together by the unrelenting fabric.
Jen, meanwhile, sat across the field from them, jotting down notes about each cheerleader’s performance in a playbook. She sat at a standard high school desk-chair combo that some custodian had helpfully left on the field for some earlier function –maybe the drama club was out there doing something, I don’t know. In any event, Jen was having some trouble fitting her bulbous bum behind the desk. The space was just too narrow for her giant booty, which peeked out from under her too-short cheer skirt. The flashing white of her stretchy panties could be seen every time she tried to readjust her position and cram herself between desk and chair. She tended to scrunch up her face in distaste with every attempt, which only served to emphasize the prominence of her new double chin. Her chubby, almost chipmunk-like cheeks wobbled and her thicker arms jiggled as she struggled fruitlessly.
“Awful, just awful,” Laurie snarled, marching up and down the line. “You, like, should be ashamed to call yourselves cheerleaders. I cannot believe how out of practice you all are. I swear, if I don’t see some improvement, you are all off the squad! We’ve got the big game coming up soon and I don’t want anyone here messing things up when we’re out in front of the crowd. Especially you, fat ass!”
Laurie whirled about to face Alice, glaring into her eyes venomously. As she turned, her enormous bust swayed and shimmied violently and Alice could almost swear she heard the faint pop of failing stitchery. Alice briefly imagined the scene if Laurie’s magnificent hooters did break free from their bonds and smiled inwardly at the thought of the bitchy captain’s humiliation. But if Laurie was starting to rip her shirt, she hadn’t popped enough threads to burst it apart yet.
“I’m not going to mess up,” mumbled Alice, embarrassed. She knew she was fat. Why did Laurie always have to rub it in? And, in this cheerleading outfit, she was especially conscious of the size of her ass, of all things. It jutted out behind her and she felt that the short skirt did a poor job of covering it. If it weren’t for Jen’s massive cheeks, she would probably be famous for having the biggest, widest butt on the squad.
“Whatever, fatso,” said Laurie, grinning evilly. “Of course, I probably don’t need to worry about you being too fat and slow to keep up with the rest of us. Next week is the annual fitness test, as you know, and I’ll bet you fail miserably. And once that happens, I can finally get rid of you.”
That was enough.
“Bite me,” said Alice.
The entire squad froze. A slight smirk danced across Laurie’s face.
“Like, what did you say?” said Laurie. P<>“I said ‘bite me,’” said Alice, her courage building. “I’m sick of your attitude. You think you’re so great just because you’re the team captain and you’ve got massive boobs. Well, whoop dee do. I don’t think you’re a very good captain and I certainly don’t think that you’re a better cheerleader than I am because you’re thinner.”
“Ha! Of course, I’m a better cheerleader cause I’m thinner. That goes without saying, lard ass.”
“If you’re so much better, why don’t you prove it? All you ever do is yell at us. I don’t think you can do any better.”
Laurie stood straight, her huge, fleshy bosom testing the limits of her sweater. What was she now? Her chest was steadily swelling as she gained more and more weight, and Alice could only guess that she had to be in the double E cup range, possibly even an F. Her tubby tummy hung over the waistband of her skirt, the soft, jiggly flesh just beginning to sag.
“You don’t think I can do any better, do you? Ha! Shows how much you know, fatso. Why do you think I’m team captain and you’re just team…team…you’re just ordinary person on the team, huh?”
Alice shrugged. “If you’re so good, why don’t you actually try doing some cheers instead of bullying us around? A good captain ought to lead by example.” The assembled cheerleaders mumbled agreement uncertainly. They weren’t used to anyone challenging the status quo, least of all someone at the bottom of the pecking order like Alice.
“Delighted!” said Laurie sarcastically. “Jen, hold this!” She tossed her chocolate bar to Jen, who caught it and – with hardly missing a beat – began to nibble on it herself. “What do you want to see? A triple whirl barrel-stocker? A flange-whammy colon curl? How about something challenging- a nice end-of-term Octobased pyramizz-a-rosy?”
Alice’s head reeled. Those were all really complicated moves, moves that Alice knew for a fact she couldn’t do, even at her thinnest. Even if Laurie was getting out of shape, Alice didn’t want to challenge her to do something that she herself couldn’t at least match.
“Maybe later,” said Alice, trying to act nonchalant. “But first I want to see you do something that I know you can handle- how about a cartwheel?” The cheerleaders began to giggle and Laurie glared at them menacingly.
“Done!” Laurie tossed her head and threw back her shoulders – her enormous bosom pressing through the shirt’s material so tightly that you could almost discern the outlines of her nipples – and began to prance down the field. Her cheer sweater rode up slightly as she ran, revealing the pale, pasty flesh of her burgeoning gut, and the soft cellulite on her legs and thighs wobbled and jiggled with each footfall. When she moved quickly, there was no disguising the fact that Laurie was definitely getting fat!
And then she flipped over into a cartwheel. Or something close to one. The flip was awkward since she hadn’t taken her new center of gravity into account. She tumbled over with a grunt, her sweater sliding up around her head, getting caught only briefly on her titanic bust. The squad started giggling as Laurie struggled to her feet, her face wrapped up in the twisted sweater, her meaty, flabby stomach and heavy-duty bra in plain view.
“Everyone, get in a pyramid!” barked Laurie, obviously pissed. Her face was crimson, although it was hard to tell if that was because of the exertion of having performed a simple cartwheel or the embarrassment at having failed. The team didn’t move, except for Lizzie, who actually toppled over, she was laughing so hard. “Get in a pyramid right now! OR YOU’RE OFF THE TEAM!! AND I’LL MAKE SURE CHEER SQUAD NEVER GETS MENTIONED IN ANY OF YOUR COLLEGE APPLICATIONS!!!” That put an end to that. The cheerleader instantly stopped laughing and scrambled to obey.
“Alice, get on the top,” snarled Laurie.
“But,” began Alice, “that doesn’t make any sense. I should be on the bottom…” She knew she was the heaviest girl in the pyramid and, all matters of hurt pride aside, it only made practical sense for her to be on the lowest level.
“No, I want Denise on the bottom!” Denise’s head snapped upwards, her eyes betraying her confusion. Denise was the smallest, scrawniest girl on the team. If Laurie honestly thought she could hold them all up, she had to be out of her mind.
Alice clambored to the top of the pyramid and perched herself on Kristine’s back.
“Errrrrggh.” Kristine couldn’t suppress a strained groan as she felt Alice’s increasing poundage bearing down from above. Her arms began to shake and she broke out in a sweat. Farther below, Alice could hear similar reactions from girls all through out the pyramid.
A week ago, Alice might have felt embarrassed about this, humiliated because it was yet another undeniable sign that she was bigger and fatter than she’d led herself to believe and, worse still, everyone on the squad knew exactly how heavy she had become. Now, however, she didn’t feel that way at all. Instead, she just felt pissed. Pissed because Laurie was making them do this stupid exercise just to get even. Was she trying to force the cheerleaders to acknowledge that Alice was chunkier than she was? Or was she trying to turn them all against her by making her crush the entire squad beneath her flabby bulk? Either way, it was petty and vindictive.
And then Denise buckled. And the pyramid collapsed with a collective groan.
Laurie laughed. And behind her, Jen laughed so hard she fell over on her expanding ass. And then, still unused to her new center of gravity, had some difficulty getting up again.
“Geez, get off me!” mumbled Kristine, her face smushed into the grass. “You must weigh a million pounds! Ohhh, sorry, no offense..” Alice quickly slid off Kristine’s back, clutching at her foot. Kristine’s expression changed as she caught sight of Alice lying on the ground.
“Are you okay?”
“Owowowowowow!!” wheezed Alice, holding her foot tightly. “I think I broke my foot in the fall!”
“Yeah, right,” said Laurie. “You fell from, what, five feet? Nobody broke anything in that fall.”
“I broke my glasses,” said Denise timidly, holding up the two halves of her smashed spectacles.
“Shut up,” snapped Laurie.
****
“I can’t believe Alice tried to embarrass me like that!” snarled Laurie, lying on the couch in her living room later that night. “I’ll show that tubby bitch a thing or two. That twisted ankle might get her out of the fitness test, but I’ll find a way to kick her off the team.”
Jen grinned and nodded eagerly at Laurie’s tirade. Laurie eyed her co-captain disapprovingly. Jen’s button-fly jeans were absurdly tight around her chubby gut and wobbly butt. The top button was open, allowing the soft, pale flesh of her growing tummy to bulge through. Jen’s famously wide rump now extended over a foot behind her and almost as much to either side it seemed. The stitches in her back pockets were frayed and worn. The pocket over the vast, round orb of her left cheek had almost fallen off. Right now, Jen was making things worse by slowly but surely mowing through a pack of oreo cookies.
“Jen,” snapped Laurie, “Put down that cookie!” Jen pouted, sticking out her lower lip, but obediently replaced the cookie.
“It’s not fair,” she whined, “I’m hungry! You made me work out all morning without anything to eat. I deserve a break!”
“No, you don’t,” said Laurie nastily. “You’re working out exactly because you keep eating cookies. Face it, Jen, you’re starting to get kinda pudgy. The way you eat, I can almost see you getting fatter. I’m trying to help you. I like you and all, but I can’t have a fatty on my team. It’s bad enough that I can’t get rid of that cow Alice but I’m sure as hell not gonna sit around and see my co-captain blow up into the Goodyear blimp!”
“I am not blowing up!” snarled Jen, leaping to her feet. The sudden movement forced the second button on her button-flies to *pop* open.
“See?” said Laurie. “Listen, Jen, next week is the annual fitness test. This is our chance to make sure that blimpo Alice gets booted off the team. If I know her, as long as she’s got a sprained ankle, she’ll sit on her fat ass, eating. She’ll be so out of shape by the time it’s healed that there’s no way she’ll pass. Do you honestly think she’ll be able to do a pull-up? Ha! The only thing is, we won’t be able to justify kicking her off for failing if we fail, too. Didn’t you learn anything from today? We were lucky that Alice fell on her fat ass but we can’t count on that next time. Now do you understand why you’ve got to keep working, blubberbutt?”
Jen scowled and grabbed her pants to redo up the fly. She had some trouble and had to suck in her chunky gut to get the buttons to reach each other. “You’re porking up, too, ya know,” she said defensively.
“Yeah, right. Look, Jen, I know it’s hard to accept that you’re turning into a lardball but there’s no need to start, like, projecting it on me. Cuz that is so obviously not true.” She lurched awkwardly to her feet and thrust out her increasingly monstrous boobs. The size of her awesome knockers was matched only by her rising belly. Laurie was putting on weight all over, but her stomach and breasts were beyond belief. Her bulging belly spilled out of her sweatpants, the drawstring not drawn nearly as tight as it once was. Her breasts filled her short crop top so much that the bulging bottoms of her jumbo melons peaked out from beneath the bottom.
Jen struggled to do a sit-up. As she barely managed to push herself into a sitting position, she heard a series of soft pops. This time, the top three buttons on her button-flies had busted open, revealing even more of her swollen midsection and the top of her tight low-cut panties.
“But it’s not just Alice,” mused Laurie, striding back and forth and causing her large bust to jiggle and bounce. “I don’t think the other girls are taking this seriously either. Did you see the way they reacted today when Alice talked back? I almost think they agreed with her. Gawd, can you imagine what would happen if they all started thinking like her? We’d have a whole squad of blimps stuffing their fat faces all day.”
“Yeah, that would be awful!” agreed Jen emphatically as she struggled to do another sit-up. This time she was careful to hold in her breath, so her button-flies stayed closed.
Laurie rolled her eyes. “If you can’t keep your pants closed, why don’t you try something else. Like touching your toes?”
Jen muttered to herself but heaved herself up and obediently stretched her arms down to her toes. Or half-way there.
“I need a way to show them why they need to keep working hard to stay fit and trim like me.” She tossed her head haughtily, throwing her long raven tresses over her shoulder, and ran a hand along her thigh. She smiled, admiring her own body and completely oblivious to the fact that there was a lot more of her these days. “And I think I know just the person to do that…”