From 280 Pounds To The Red Carpet Chapter 01
The Video
I was two hundred and eighty pounds, locked in a bathroom stall with a sign taped to my back that readοΌ
DO NOT FEED THE PIG.
Jessica dropped the video in our reunion group chat the night before.
The messages started flooding in within seconds.
Tyler Reeves: holy shit shes coming to the reunion??
Matt: think the hotel chairs can hold her weight?? ππ
Kayla: she prob cant fit through the door at this point π
Jessica, the girl who bullied me for three years, tagged me directly.
Jessica Hart: hey girl!! everyone really wants to see you π₯° you HAVE to come tomorrow okay?
It didn’t take long before someone started a betting pool.
Jessica put down ten grand. Betting I wouldn’t come.
Then Tyler Reeves jumped in. The guy I’d had a crush on for three straight years.
Tyler Reeves: if she actually shows up ill give her a hug right there in front of everyone.
Tyler Reeves: call it an apology for back in the day π
The whole chat lost it.
I stared at that video, and my fists were shaking.
Nobody knew.
I’d gone from two hundred and eighty pounds down to one fifteen.
I’d just signed with Stellaris Entertainment, the one agency Jessica had been dying to get into for years.
I put down my own bet. Fifty grand. That I’d show up.
Then I typed one message into the chat.
Sera Malone: A bet’s a bet.
The chat went dead for a solid ten seconds.
Then it exploded.
Matt: fifty thousand?? aint no way ππ
Kayla: where tf she get fifty grand π def borrowed it
Tyler Reeves: lmaooo this is gonna be good. just so we’re clear nobody backs out right
Jessica was the first to jump in.
Jessica Hart: sera sweetie dont be impulsive π₯Ί everyone’s just messing around. if you’re tight on cash you should really take that fifty grand back
Three years of high school. She pulled the same thing every single time.
She had people knock my lunch tray onto the floor in the cafeteria, then covered her mouth and giggled:”Just helping you diet, babe!”
She snapped a photo of me in the locker room in nothing but my bra and sent it to the whole school.
She forced me onto a scale, and made me say the number out loud in front of everyone.
And then someone taped that sign to my back. DO NOT FEED THE PIG.
I walked around the whole day not even knowing. By the time I found out, the video was already everywhere.
Now she’d posted that video again.
Just to remind everyone that no matter how many years passed, I was still her favorite joke.
I checked the betting pool. Jessica’s ten grand, plus another thirty grand scattered across everyone else.
All betting against me.
Just me on the other side. Fifty grand on showing up.
I typed again.
Sera Malone: Don’t worry. I can afford to lose.
Jessica instantly replied with a π€ emoji.
Jessica Hart: good! i was worried you’d chicken out and want a refund lol
Someone else chimed in.
Matt: maybe shes doing really well for herself who knows
Kayla: yeah right lol what’d she do stop eating?? thats how she saved fifty grand ππ
The screen was nothing but laughing emojis.
I was about to close the chat when a private message popped up.
Tyler Reeves.
Three years I was in love with this guy.
Went to every single one of his games. Liked every post he ever put up. Left a note in his locker telling him how I felt. And he screenshotted it, sent it to the whole group chat.
And asked the whole class: “You think if she sat on me, I’d survive?”
The whole class lost it.
Now he was messaging me privately: “You’re really coming?”
“We were kids back then. Didn’t know any better. Don’t take it too personally.”
I almost laughed at that.
So all they had to do was grow up, and everything they did just gets written off as “being young.”
“Also, I said I’d hug you in the chat just to lighten the mood.”
“Don’t get the wrong idea. I have a girlfriend now.”
I finally replied.
Sera Malone: Got it.
He jumped in right away, like he was scared I still had feelings for him:
“She’ll be at the reunion too. Just, you know, be cool about it. Don’t make her uncomfortable.”
I didn’t reply. Put my phone down. The doorbell rang.
Nora Castelli, my agent, walked in dragging two massive garment cases, took one look at me and frowned.
“Aren’t you going to a reunion tomorrow?”
She popped open the cases. Inside were a bunch of gowns nobody had even seen yet.
I glanced at them.
“That’s way too extra.”
Nora nearly choked.
“You’re officially signing with Stellaris at eight PM tomorrow night. The launch gala is on the top floor of The Monarch.”
“You wanna show up in a hoodie?”
She held up a silver-white gown against me, then immediately shook her head.
“No. Too sweet.”
Then she pulled out a black velvet gown. Nothing extra, but the waist on it was insane.
“This one.”
“Tomorrow, every single person who ever looked down on you is going to question their entire existence.”
I looked at myself in the floor-length mirror.
The woman in the mirror was someone I barely recognized. Curves in all the right places. Tight waist, full hips.
Nothing like before.
From two hundred and eighty pounds to one fifteen. Five years to get here.
Nobody knows how I survived those years. I couldn’t even look in a mirror.
And nobody knows that Stellaris Entertainment, the agency Jessica failed to get into three times in a row, just put their highest-tier contract in front of me.
Nora handed me the schedule.
“Signing in the morning. Fitting in the afternoon. Be at The Monarch by seven.”
“Eight o’clock sharp, the post goes live.”
I looked down at the itinerary. The reunion was on the third floor. The Stellaris gala was on the top floor.
One of them wanted to drag me backward. The other one was about to change my life.