I Lost 90 Pounds, Only to Find He Tried to Give Me Away novel · Chapter 3 of 32

Chapter 3: Both Pictures

Callie posts both photos herself with her rank and signs up for varsity tryouts, only to find her name struck off the list for account sharing.

By nine, the post had eleven hundred reactions.

By ten, somebody had made it a meme.

The fair picture said "Before."

The green dress said "After. Still a catfish."

Betsy read the comments out loud in a news anchor voice until I took her phone away.

"I'm building a case," she said. "For when I kill them."

"Nobody is killing anybody. We're getting breakfast."

The dining hall at Hartwell was the loud kind, trays and blenders and a hundred conversations.

It got quieter when I walked in.

A table of boys by the waffle station turned around in their chairs.

One of them puffed out his cheeks.

His friends laughed into their orange juice.

Betsy stopped walking.

"Do you want me to go over there?"

"No."

"I really want to go over there."

"Get your eggs."

I got coffee and a banana and sat down with my back to them.

Then a girl at the next table turned her laptop around so her friend could see, and I saw it too.

Sutton's stream, from last night.

She was in her gaming chair under a pink ring light, still in her bonfire jacket.

"Okay, chat, so this is real," she was saying. "Nine hundred calories a day, for him. Babe, that's a cry for help, not a love language."

Her chat was flying.

"And she's like, 'I'll see you at tryouts.'"

Sutton did my voice low and slow.

"I'm so scared. Lock the doors. She might eat the arena."

The girl at the next table laughed.

Then she saw me and slammed the laptop shut.

"Sorry," she said. "Oh my God. Sorry."

"It's fine," I said.

It wasn't fine.

My coffee was shaking in the cup, and I put it down so nobody could see that.

Betsy had come back with a plate of eggs.

"I saw," she said. "I saw the whole thing over her shoulder. I'm going to bite Sutton."

"You're going to sit down."

She sat down.

She pushed half her eggs onto a napkin in front of me without saying anything.

I looked at them.

I didn't eat them.

I picked up my phone instead.

I went to my camera roll and found the fair picture, the real one, the one my mom took.

I was laughing in it.

I had powdered sugar on my chin and on the big red shirt.

I'd forgotten I was laughing.

Every time I'd looked at it this year, all I'd seen was the size of the shirt.

I found the bonfire one in the group chat and saved it.

Then I opened my own account, the one with my real name, and put them side by side.

"What are you doing?" Betsy said.

"Posting them."

"Callie. They already posted them."

"Not like this."

I took a screenshot of my Hollowcrown profile.

swannsong.

Support.

Rank 271, North America.

I put it under the pictures.

Then I typed the caption and didn't let myself fix it.

"Both of these are me. One of them was having a better day. I'm swannsong, I'm rank 271, and I call. Varsity tryouts are Thursday, 6 p.m., Satterfield Arena. Come watch."

I hit post before I could think.

Betsy stared at me.

Then she grabbed her phone and stood up on her chair.

"Betsy."

"Hartwell!" she yelled. "Hey, Hartwell! Check your feeds!"

Half the dining hall looked up.

"That's her," Betsy said, pointing down at me. "Rank two seventy-one. Which is better than every single one of you. Waffle boys, I'm looking at you."

The boy who'd puffed out his cheeks went very red.

"Get down," I said, laughing, and pulled on her hoodie.

She didn't get down until a dining hall worker asked her to.

By lunch my post had more reactions than the meme.

The comments were a mess.

Some were kind.

Some were the guild, under new accounts, posting pig emojis.

Betsy answered every single one of the pig accounts.

"Bold of you to post from an account made at 9:14 this morning."

"Your account is five hours old and so is your sense of humor."

"Why is your profile picture a boat? Who hurt you?"

At 4 p.m., one message came that wasn't a comment.

It was from lanternfish.

I didn't know the name.

Then I did, because there was only one person it could be.

"I won't text you again unless you text first. I'm sorry. Good post."

That was all.

No essay.

No eleventh draft.

I read it about nine times and didn't answer.

"Is that him?" Betsy asked from her bed.

"Yes."

"Do I hate him?"

"I don't know yet."

"Okay. Tell me when you know. I'll get ready either way."

I spent Monday through Wednesday playing ranked until my eyes burned.

I won forty-one games.

I climbed to 258.

Thursday at 5:45, I walked to the student union with my headphones around my neck.

Betsy walked behind me holding a sign that said SWANNSONG in glitter glue.

Satterfield Arena had its name in brushed steel letters over the doors.

A paper list was taped to the glass.

TRYOUTS, it said. SUPPORT / SHOTCALLER.

There were six names on it.

The fourth one was mine.

Somebody had drawn a single black line through it.

Next to it, in red pen, in neat capital letters, was a note.

"INELIGIBLE: ACCOUNT UNDER REVIEW FOR SHARING."

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