Don’t Judge Me by the Scale

A 198-pound girl has liked Caleb Grant, the campus heartthrob, for three years. At his birthday party, a game goes wrong: she is told to kiss the person on her left, and Caleb turns his face away in disgust, refusing to be "mauled by a pig." Her roommate Chloe Hart joins in the mockery, but the boy seated on her right speaks up: he would.

Before the party, she had learned makeup and squeezed into a new dress, only for Chloe and her other roommates to laugh at her, calling her a pig playing dress-up. She washes the makeup off, folds the dress away, and nearly cancels, but Caleb insists she come to Nova Karaoke, Room 406. Clutching a plush rabbit she sewed herself, she walks into a room of over twenty guests, where whispers about her size and her cheap gift follow her to Caleb, who barely glances at what she made.

Humiliation closes in from every side, yet one quiet voice at the party has already answered it.