STUFFED

Cafeteria Buffet

Tomorrow comes and it's another day of school.

For the most part school was alright but obviously things had changed. In high school your body was your status symbol. It goes without saying that Courtney dropped from the top to the bottom of the heirarchy pretty quickly. She didn't mind. 

The girls she once considered her friends would walk by her in their perfectly pressed uniforms and not even acknowledge her presence; probably because she ditched the team. It couldn't have been because of her weight gain because that wasn't really noticable yet. Was it? Anyway, at least she knows who her real friends are. The majority of her friends go to different high schools in the area and the couple that are at her school, she never sees.

Courtney had never really been blatantly bullied for her appearance, it was mostly just people giving her the cold shoulder or whispering behind her back but she knew it was bound to happen. The tension in the air just felt like it was all building up to something. Everyday Courtney would enter those front doors expecting the worst and everyday she would leave unscathed.

Just when she was settling in, and had finally convinced herself that nothing was going to happen, something strange happened. 

Courtney was sitting alone at a corner table in the cafeteria. There was a lot of foot traffic rushing by where she was sitting but she mostly held her head down and kept to herself. She sat there, folding and unfolding a muffin wrapper when something makes a thud on the table. A stack of chocolate chip cookies encased in saran wrap appears infront of her. She looks up to see where they came from but she can't see anything past the rushing hoard of students. Her curiousity gets the better of her and she frees the baked goods from their casing. 

They pass the smell test so she takes a bite out of one. They pass the taste test too. The cookies were actually really good. It doesn't take her long to finish them all and, when she's done, Courtney sheepishly rolls the saran wrap into a ball and pushes it off to the side. 

She pulls out her phone and scrolls through it, waiting for the bell to ring so she can head to her next class when something knocks her phone out of her hand; an entire tupperware container. She slides it over infront of her and notices it's pretty dense. She removes the lid to find it stuffed to the brim with brownies. Thick, dark, rich brownies. She's less suspicious of this offering as her appetite takes over her reason and judgment. She bites into the first one and quickly puts her hand underneath her chin to catch a string of drool escaping from the corner of her mouth.

The savoury chocolate clouds her judgment and Courtney shoves one after the other into her mouth. She snaps back into reality and becomes aware of her surroundings when her mouth is too full to close and she can barely chew. She covers her open mouth to shield her gaping hole stuffed with chocolate but also to keep the brownie from crumbling out of her mouth. Courtney angles her body away from the dining hall so no one can see her.

She chews slowly and after a minute she swallows and gets everything down. She runs her tongue along the inside of her teeth, trying to pick off the sticky parts of brownie still stuck to her teeth with little success. She wishes she had something to wash everything down. When she turns her body back around two cartons of milk are sitting on the edge of the table unattended, as if manifested by her thoughts.

Again, she looks around and has no clue how they got there. Courtney cautiously reaches a hand out to the cartons while scanning the room; waiting for someone to repremand her or accuse her of stealing their food, but no one does. She drinks the first and then the second. The cool cream is just what she needed to contrast the dense chocolate.

When the next food item drops down on the table she doesn't question it because they're one of her favourites, oreos. She opens the packaging and pops two in her mouth. And then two more. Courtney only takes breaks to wash the small cookies down with the left over milk.

It doesn't take long for the amount of food dropping down onto the table to pick up pace and the smorgasbord of options gives her tunnel vision. She is no longer concerned about where or who the food is coming from. Her only concern is how fast she can get it into her mouth. The food is coming in faster than she can eat it. 

In a span of 7 minutes she devours a burger, fries, a can of sprite, four sprinkled cupcakes, and now she was currently working on a corndog. She dipped the tip of the battered meat into some chili and then drizzled it with a lot of ranch before sliding it past her moist lips. 

As usual her greed is louder than her body's scream for help and Courtney pushes herself past full. 

The bell rang signalling the end of lunch, but Courtney ignored it at first. She was working on a hotdog and a couple candy bars and didn't notice when the cafeteria was almost completely empty. A member of the janitorial staff came up to her and told her she had better get a move on to class. 

She complied reluctantly, peeling her legs from the plastic bench. It wasn't until she slowly stood upright that she realized how full she trully was. She wobbled a little bit and had to put her hand down on the table to steady herself. It hurt to stand up straight so she leaned over a little bit. Hunched over and in pain Courtney made her way to the stairs.

She tried to catch her breath but her stomach had expanded into the area previously meant for her lungs making her breaths quick and shallow.  

Grabbing hold of the railing she lugged her body up four steps before needing a break. As she stood there Courtney's stomach made a long deep slurching sound. She groaned back at it.

She desperately wants to undo her pants but her shirt isn't long enough to cover that and she'd rather suffer in silence than be walking around her high school with open pants. 

The stairs take her forever but she finally makes it to the top.

Courtney is filled with dread when she makes it to her locker and remembers which class she has next. 

Gym. 

The food coma is just starting to set in. In gym today they are meant to do fitness testing. A lot of running and jumping. Things she would have a hard time doing on a good day, nevermind now in her current state. Stuffed to the brim and breathing heavily just from making it up the stairs.

Courtney drags herself to the locker room and plops down on the uncomfortable wooden bench placed in the centre of the room. She pulls a pair of trainers out of her backpack and drops them on the ground. The rubber soles make them bounce away from her and she has to lean over top of herself to grab them. Once her gym strip has been wrangled, Courtney starts the journey of tying her laces. 

She remembers the days when this wasn't so hard. When she would bend down multiple times in a practice to re-tie her shoes. The action that required such little thought back then had her huffing and puffing now. Court had to take breaks periodically to sit upright and catch her breath. Her face was turning red from the struggle. 

Once when she looked up, she caught a couple of her old teammates snickering at her. 

She chose to ignore them. She just needed to get through this class unscathed and then the rest of the day would fly by and she would get to go back home. With an extreme amount of focus and effort, Courtney finally gets herself fully dressed and meets up with everyone in the gymnasium.