Moore Than She Bargained For

Katie just had no idea why she wasn’t losing weight. She’d done everything her friend Diana had suggested, and even had come up with one idea on her own. She had the couch moved further back from the TV and a bit to the left so it was also further away from the refrigerator – Diana and Mary, her two strongest friends, did most of the work. She’d heard soda was supposed to be bad for you, so she started ordering sweet tea whenever she went out to eat. Above all, she kept taking those weight loss pills Diana gave her, twice a day. But there it was on the scale, 305 pounds. That was up five pounds from last time. Or was it down? Maybe it was the same? Katie had trouble concentrating on numbers lately.



Katie had a hard time remembering much of the past, but one thing she did know was she used to be a lot skinnier – her closet once had a lot of clothes in sizes that were now far too small for her to even imagine fitting in. Diana and Mary had raided much of it for their own wardrobes, but Katie still insisted on holding on to some outfits that she knew she’d look totally cute in once she was skinny again. The one thing she’d given up much more readily was a shelf full of books; Katie wasn’t even sure why she had them to begin with, as she could barely look at the cover of one without wanting to fall asleep. Some of them even looked like they were about math or science or something boring like that. She’d much rather watch reality TV. Anyway, her friends had happily loaded all those boring books into Diana’s car and took care of it, sent them to a goodwill or the dump or whatever. There was some other box of stuff they also took away, but Katie didn’t get a chance to go through it before they left; it seemed to be a bunch of pictures and other like, memory stuff. Katie couldn’t help but think there was a word for that she used to know. Mentos? She had trouble remembering big words like that sometimes.

Anyways, Diana had grabbed that box quickly, almost like she didn’t want Katie to see anything, but she still sneaked a look at a first couple things piled on top of the box. One photo had looked familiar – a slim blonde, a somewhat chubby brunette, and a redhead who was almost as big as she was now, all posing together at what looked to be a party. The blonde looked like it could have been her when she was thin, and it even looked like she was wearing an old pink tank top from her closet, one that Diana had permanently borrowed. Much harder to explain was that the brunette looked uncannily like a chubby version of Mary. On top of that, while it was a little harder to tell for sure because her face was much rounder, with a prominent double chin, but she could swear the redhead almost looked like Diana. But that was impossible, she couldn’t remember her friends ever being so fat. Even stranger, the blonde in the photograph was taller than her two fat friends, whereas Katie was about a foot shorter than Diana or Mary, and sometimes she felt like they were growing, or she was shrinking? The picture had to be three other people. Diana and Mary were probably helping someone else move their old junk, probably some other friends of theirs; though they came to visit pretty often, they went out a lot too, and probably had lots of friends she’d never even met. Anyways, on top of all of those pictures was a college diploma made out to someone named Ms. Kathryn Moore for studying psychology. That must be some other person, because she thought she’d remember something big and important like graduating college, and she couldn’t even spell psychology. Anyways, Kathryn sort of sounds like Katie, but it’s not the same name at all; Moore did sound like her last name, but she wasn’t sure if it was spelled with two o’s or one, like “more”. Maybe it was three? Wait, was it Katie, with an “i-e” or Katy with a “y”? Maybe both, like “Katyie”? Yeah, that must be it, thought Katyie. That’s me, good ol’ Katyie More, she thought, reassuring herself.

Speaking of “more”, the chip bag she had been eating from was almost empty; she thought she should get up and get another. Thinking too hard always made her hungry, though doing pretty much anything made her hungry too. She struggled to get off the couch and started heading toward the kitchen. Halfway through, she already started feeling a bit winded; but then she remembered what Diana once told her - the worse you feel after exercise, the more you know it’s working. Katyie reached up to grab the chips – this was another weight loss trick Diana had told her; place the snacks higher up in the pantry and you’ll have to stretch to reach them. She got on her tiptoes and stretched as high as she could, only succeeding in sending the chip bag falling to the floor. Katie bent down to scoop up the bag; as she stood back up, chips cradled in her arms, she smiled, thinking of how proud her friends would be of all the exercise she did today.