Emily's Secret

3. Another day at the school cafeteria

I told you that I was fat, so I know that a lot of people reading this have already formed a bad opinion of me. They think I must be too lazy to diet or do exercise, or that all day I pig out and eat massive quantities of food.

But it's not like that at all. I don't eat any more food than the other girls at my school, and all of them are skinnier than me. And of course, I tried to go on a diet. After two weeks, I lost maybe one pound at most, but I was going crazy. All I could think about was food. I just couldn't take it anymore and I ate a huge meal and gained back the pound that I lost. Skinny people who are born that way don't understand how impossible it is to go on a diet if you have genes that are fighting against you and want to make your body fat.

And I also tried exercising. After a month of working out, I gained weight instead of losing it. I'm sure the weight I gained was muscle, but no one ever congratulates a fat girl for having muscle, they just see the fat that covers the muscle and they think, there's a lazy fat girl.

Really, I think it's the pretty popular girls who are the lazy ones. I have straight As in all of my classes, while they just coast by on their looks and don't even care about their grades. Or even worse, they will make pouty faces at a male teacher, and cry about how they meant to study but for some reason they couldn't because they had to wash their hair or something stupid like that, and then their grades mysteriously get bumped up. A fat girl has to work harder for everything.

* * *

I bet you're wondering what happened after Rob said down next to me in my first period class. Sorry to disappoint you, but nothing happened. I ignored him as best as I could and tried to pay attention to the teacher. It seemed like I was the only girl in the class who was ignoring him. All during class, the other girls in the room were sneaking glances at the hot new boy.

Then second period came. And guess who shows up? That's right, Rob again!

Then the same thing happened in third and fourth period! How was this guy getting assigned to all of my classes?

At lunch, I sat down at a table with Alice. I was half expecting Rob to show up and sit down next to us. Because he keeps showing up everywhere I go. And of course, he did have the same lunch period as me, but he ignores me and goes and sits by himself at a different table, but one that wasn't too far away from me.

I guess it made sense that Rob wouldn't have anyone to sit with at lunch. This was his first day at school, and he didn't know anyone here. I didn't even see him talking to anyone before or after any of our classes. Rob sat there, barely touching his lunch (which was weird because you'd think a big guy like Rob would have a big appetite), acting totally unconcerned that he was sitting by himself.

But he wasn't by himself for very long. Three pretty popular girls soon sat down at the table with him. Then they are laughing and talking to each other, Rob looking cocky and like he owns the school, and the girls smiling at him and giggling and acting like they're eating lunch with a rock star.

Did these girls have no shame? It was disgusting the way they were forcing themselves on him. What happened to the days when girls waited for the guy to make the first move? Why couldn't they show more decorum?

While I was thinking these thoughts, Squi came over to our table and sat down next to Alice and across from me. In case it's not obvious, Squi is a guy. What kind of a girl would be called Squi? His real name is Chris, but everyone called him Squi. Squi was one of the few guys at school who you could say was friendly with me. That's because Squi was a nerd, and that meant he was almost as low on the social totem pole as I was.

I say almost as low as me, because Squi actually had a lot more friends than me. He usually sat at a lunch table full of nerds, where they animatedly talked about whatever nerds talk about with each other. Probably strategies for playing the latest VR games, or they played Dungeons and Dragons. In case you're not familiar with Dungeons and Dragons, it has been around for decades, before anyone even had computers or phones. It was unpopular and forgotten for a while, but it made a really huge comeback two years ago and now, according to Squi, everyone was playing it. By everyone, he obviously meant everyone who was a nerd. I can't imagine that any of the popular guys on the sports teams were into it.

Squi had tried to invite me over to his Dungeons and Dragons group several times. And that was actually really nice of him, but I always declined, because I don't think that pretending to be a wizard or a dragon slayer was something I could get into. And also, if truth be told, some of Squi's nerd friends had bad body odor. Luckily, this didn't apply to Squi who, apparently, knew the importance of showering and using deodorant.

"Hi Squi, what's up?" I greeted him.

"Hey," he said. He paused, and when neither Alice nor I responded, he got directly to the point. "So what's up with that new guy? Why are all of the girls talking about him?" And he furtively looked over at Rob's table, where he was still talking to four popular girls. I know, before I said there were three girls, but somehow a fourth girl had joined the table when I wasn't looking.

I said nothing. I was tired of the day being all about Rob. But Alice proceeded with a long explanation about how hot he was, with Squi not understanding the attraction.

While they talked, I looked back at Rob's table. There was Charlotte at the table, one of the pretty popular girls, and I noticed that there was bottle of red juice on the table in front of her, placed precariously close to the edge. It was the kind of juice that would surely stain someone's clothes if it spilled on them. And then an evil thought came into my head. If I could use my telekinetic superpower to move that bottle just an inch in her direction, it would fall off the table and onto her lap, which would serve her right! As I explained before, it's not a very useful superpower. The heaviest thing I can move is a dime, and that bottle weighed a lot more than a dime. But I was mad at all those girls for shamelessly flirting with Rob, so I decided to give it a try.

It's hard to describe exactly how the power works. You have to concentrate, but it's a different type of concentration than solving a math problem, and it's more than just looking at what you are trying to move. But I focused my mind and concentrated on moving that bottle in Charlotte's direction.

* * *

Author's note:

So what do you think is going to happen to that bottle of juice?

Special thanks to emilytaylor223 who encouraged me to write these first three chapters!