With cutlery shaking and her juice doing the whole 'ripples from the T-Rex in Jurassic Park' thing Paul braced herself for what likely would be a large jostle of the table from an equally large student. And she was right. And with private horror the beneath wanted to sit next to her.
Remarkably the table did not collapse from another occupant sitting at it. Such occupancy that there was in the other seat. It was a girl with skin shades darker than Jafit's southern Europe and Middle Eastern blend. But she clearly outweighed the overly voluptuous exchange student. This mystery chick had wide out hips and a huge stomach mostly contained in her own uniform.
"Hi," said the girl, wiggling into her seat as she flashed white teeth in a smile. "I haven't seen you here before, my name is Arisa Spencer!"
Paul did her best to pretend her mouth was glued shut with peanut butter. There was too much of this Arisa Spencer to take in. She might have outweighed Paul by three times at a generous estimate. Such as the generous amounts of breakfast Arisa had piled on her own tray.
"Mmm," Paul mumbled, thankful to have the refiled glasses of orange juice. Something to drink and plug up her mouth from making her gut reaction critiques of the other girl. Asocial as Paul was she never intended to instantly make enemies out of other people.
"Are you new here? I am," Arisa said before taking in a mouthful of french toast. "I wasn't sure if I would get into Buttercombe. I mean, I've had good grades but my mom and I were so nervous for my interview, you know? But for being a freshman it sure is exciting!"
"Interviews?" Paul transfer procedures hadn't involved a traditional interview, although it made sense for a private academy to have a more extensive screening process. She had a long phone call at one point but it sounded like nothing Arisa described. "I wasn't worried about anything."
"Wow! You mean you weren't worried about being rejected from here?" Arisa spoke with awe, chewing into a sausage. "I was so nervous, I think I was getting distracted and mom usually gives me a chocolate bar if I am..."
Paul paused before her next swallow of juice. Chocolate bars? Arisa certainly looked like she had been given several. Several as in metric tons. Paul had to blink as Arisa had also paused in the conversation to eat. And eat. She was piggishly devouring everything in her plate. Not Jabba the Hutt table manners, though, as Arisa was quite prim with her silverware to avoid sloppy spills on her uniform. Although she was a tad noisy and didn't keep her mouth closed all the way. What was most worrisome was the speed. A plate equal in size to Paul's first, the one she had mulled over for a few minutes before giving into hunger pangs, was polished off in seconds. When she wasn't talking Arisa was continuously eating. No wonder she was so big!
At that point Paul was staring. The larger girl was oblivious to this, wiping her mouth with a napkin after demolishing two plates of food in a minute. "Where're you from, your first year too?"
Paul shrugged. "First here. Although I'm a sophomore grade." There hadn't been much of a single place to call home from all the moving around her family had done. Even the place Paul's parents had settled before Buttercombe, when Rebecca was starting her tour, didn't feel all that permanent given her past history.
"My mother always hoped I'd come to a place as prestigious as Buttercombe. She's originally Thai, you see, and there weren't many options for schools of this calibre." Arisa patted her stomach. "I'll be right back, just going to get some more food."
No way. The behemoth couldn't still be hungry. Arisa had just eaten through two more plates than Paul's entire meal, and she had made three trips. Okay, Paul's were smaller portioned plates and not filled to the brim, but the principle was the same. And Arisa was this large before coming to the highly obese population of this private academy? Just how fat was Thai food? Although it sounded like Arisa born and raised stateside from the first impression Paul had gotten.
Paul should have taken this moment to skedaddle like fast. Unfortunately another side effect of this drastic dietary change was that all this heavier was making her more sluggish. Non of her classes started yet and Paul had pretty much passed by most of the campus since coming to Buttercombe (excluding the times over the week Jafit had been expecting her to share meals) so there wasn't anyplace else she could think of going. Why couldn't that town next to Buttercombe be closer? Paul could do with a change of pace.
Guzzling her juice by that time Arisa had arrived with her next tray. With even more food, pancakes, bacon, eggs, gravy, cheesy grits, a lot of doughnuts and sweets tucked everywhere. Arisa did far less talking this go around, eating without abandon as she worked her way through the lavish breakfast. How someone could put that much food away bewildered and almost horrified Paul, a savant herself on methods of gastronomic volume manipulation. She was locked into observing Arisa the same way monster movies and car crashes always kept your attention. In fact she was starting to feel queasy...
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