Fat children all have at least one thing in common: being fat isn't really their fault. 

They’re still under lock and key, with their parents force feeding food into them. In my case, fat was inevitable. 

With divorced parents, I hit the jackpot: two Thanksgivings, two Christmases, two dinners on Saturdays, and at least two cans of spray cheese in my dad’s pantry. Not to mention the caramel drops my grandma had in a bowl on the counter, which I would gulp down in pairs every visitation. I even believed the abnormal amounts of food I consumed were okay. I believed that licking the butter out of the plastic prisms was “dieting”. It’s better for me than eating bread, right?

Well if you can believe caramel drops and spray cheese are healthy substitutes for dinner (as I did), you can believe just about anything. So when I finally outgrew the fat and traded it for an ass, and boys started saying they liked me, I believed it too. Oh? Boys like cursing? Well then for fuck’s sake I’ll like it too. 

The thing is, Fat Payton still was inside, and she was hungry. She liked being called hot, even if the “you’re intelligent’” dropped out. She liked being materialized, even if it meant casting away her mind.

When Aidan came along, she told herself he was different. Newly-Thin Payton told herself Aidan liked when she talked about her day. He said he loved her tiny shoe doodles, he loved her giant elephant tears that fell as she acted on stage. He said he loved the parts of her that were recovered from the crime scene that was the murder of her former pounds. 

However, Aidan also loved the murder itself. He loved the crime scene’s white outline against his dark pavement, and he dug his hands into her remaining scars. Late at night he would return to pick apart the evidence and drill into her questions and interrogations until even coffee couldn’t keep her alive. 

And in that way he fucked New Payton. He groomed her soul like she had groomed her body, building her up and then shoving her down. He fucked her with a phone pounding in and out and in and out, his charm going off inside her and reminding her that all she ever would be was a fat little girl with a daddy complex. He fucked her with his words that she’d sit night after night awaiting. He fucked her until she lived off the electricity, the buzz that went off when he came into her mind, overwhelming her with danger and emotion and excitement.

That rush never really went away. Even after Aidan was locked up and gone.

She still feels jitters when a new boy brushes her hand. She knows the scared excitement at a hand up her shirt, or lips at her neck. The pounding that the word “beautiful” will cause. New Payton is enveloped in a different world now: the amazing-yet-terrifying world that beauty has given her. The world where she feels the sensations of being touched, and is given wonders to see and feel. A world where the moment she steps out of the house she is an object of admiration. 

This world, this new world, she knows has made her selfish.

She knows that each time she pushes away a boy’s hand from between her legs, Fat Payton is being tortured, but she pushes it away anyways. She hears her former voice pleading to get out of the house each Friday night, but she spends the night at home with hands around her ears trying to block out the voices and just rest. New Payton knows that each opportunity she’s given to be touched and spanked and grabbed and licked that she should give herself fully, sharing the body that she worked so hard for. The body that Fat Payton had wanted to be praised. 

But New Payton is selfish.

She pushes away the hands that come for her. She pushes away the tongues from her inner thighs. She pushes away Fat Payton’s childhood dreams and locks Fat Payton’s butchered parts in a box that she swallowed with some green tea long ago.

But Fat Payton is still a voice in New Payton’s head. Like the caramel drops on her grandmother’s counter, each perfect thought sits there with golden wrapping, waiting to be unraveled and soaked up. Each thought is mixed up in a sheet in which another romance may await her, each candy a kiss, warm and smooth. And New Payton remembers their sweet taste. She remembers the pleasure she got from the drops melting in her mouth, and the love she felt each time the bowl was refilled. Each time she could go back and ask for more, more, please, more. The times she screamed “yes,” when she was given another handful, and the times she fears she will again scream “yes, yes,” in the future.

But New Payton also remembers the stomach ache. She remembers the inevitable pain that came with every joy, the hurt that came with trusting her body to something too good to be true.

Like she does now with caramel drops, New Payton avoids passion.

She avoids pleasure.

I, New Payton, avoid what is uncertain.

Formerly fat children have one thing in common: one bite, and we’re hooked yet again.

-Payton Russel

Payton Russell is a freshman Acting major at TXST University. She grew up in The Woodlands, TX bouncing between two parents' homes, and it was between these homes where she found a love for writing, singing, and theatre. She is a producer and a playwright, having produced the Cold Brew Collection at Texas State University, a series of 5 short plays, and she looks forward to continue exploring her individual voice within her writing.