The Wager

The day before college orientation, my online boyfriend told me he was playing dice with his frat brothers and accidentally lost me in a bet. Before I could even process what that meant, he added me to a massive group chat with over a hundred people. The group description had just been updated: [Congrats to Carter for winning a 200-pound girlfriend!] Immediately after, a photo from my high school days was dropped into the chat. In the photo, I was wearing an oversized, baggy hoodie. I was so overweight you couldn’t even see my neck. The chat instantly exploded. "Holy shit, that's not a girlfriend, that's a human boulder." "A bet's a bet! Carter has to do the couple's challenges with her tomorrow night." Quickly, someone started taking actual bets. They were betting on whether I would actually dare to show up tomorrow night. My online boyfriend dropped a thousand dollars, betting I wouldn't show. "Sorry, bro." "You rolled the dice, and you won her." The guy named Carter never said a word. Instead, the girl everyone had already crowned as the incoming freshman class queen bee suddenly tagged me: "@Sierra, you're definitely coming tomorrow night, right?" I watched the notifications multiplying by the second and smiled. No one knew. To prepare for our first real-life meeting, I had already dropped from two hundred pounds down to a hundred. And no one knew that in the past two months, I had been asked for my number more times than in the first eighteen years of my life combined. I quietly put down three hundred dollars. Betting that I would show up exactly on time. Then, amidst the chorus of jeers and mocking messages, I sent a single text. "A bet's a bet." ... I stared at the group description for a solid ten seconds. [Congrats to Carter for winning a 200-pound girlfriend!] It was followed by three firecracker emojis. With over a hundred people in the chat, the messages were flying by in a blur. "Rolling a six for the kill! Liam took a massive L on this one." "What loss? He just dumped a tank. Massive win, if you ask me." "@Carter, come on man, give us a victory speech." Then, that photo was dropped into the chat. It was taken during my sophomore year track and field day. Back then, I weighed nearly two hundred pounds. My hoodie was stretched tight across my body as I sat in the very back row of the bleachers, looking down and eating a bagel. The person who took the photo was clearly far away. But no matter how blurry it was, it couldn't hide my shockingly large frame. The person who posted the photo was my online boyfriend. Liam. Just one minute ago, he was still sweet-talking me in our private DMs. "Baby, it's just a joke between the guys." "I lost a game and had to give Carter your Snap. Just play along with the couple's challenges. Don't take it seriously." I didn't reply. The group chat was dying of laughter. "Dude, with that build, Carter's gonna need a U-Haul to pick her up tomorrow." "What were the couple's challenges again? A bridal carry? That's gonna send Carter straight to the ER." "Might as well change it to lifting a minivan. Probably easier." Liam sent a facepalm-laughing emoji. "Take it easy, guys. Don't make her cry." It looked like he was defending me, but in reality, he was grinding my face further into the dirt. My fingers went cold. We had been dating online for eleven months. When he had insomnia, I stayed up all night playing games with him. When he lost a tournament, I comforted him from midnight until dawn. When he was stressed before finals, I sent him a voice memo every single day to cheer him up. I even made sure to put Miami University as my absolute top choice. Because he said: "Sierra, let's go to the same college." "When orientation starts, I promise I'll be waiting for you with flowers." And yet, the day before orientation, he used me as a gambling chip and handed me off to someone else. The betting pool quickly gained traction. [Betting on whether Sierra will show up to the freshman party tomorrow night.] The odds kept climbing. The pot for me not showing up had already surpassed three thousand dollars. Liam dropped a thousand right then and there. "No way she shows." "She's too shy. She cries if you even look at her wrong." I finally laughed out loud. So he knew I would cry. And he still gathered over a hundred people, waiting to watch me do it. Just then, a new message popped up. Chloe: "Guys, stop being so mean to her. There's nothing wrong with being a little chubby, as long as she has a good heart." She was the undisputed queen bee of the incoming freshman class. A couple of days ago, she posted a set of beach photos—white dress, long hair—and the comments were flooded with hundreds of guys drooling over her. She tagged me. "@Sierra, you're coming tomorrow night, right?" It looked like she was trying to defuse the situation. But she immediately followed it up with: "Everyone is just joking around, really. Please don't let your appearance make you insecure." The chat instantly filled with praises of "Chloe is so pretty and sweet." I didn't rush to reply. Instead, I clicked the betting link. Three hundred dollars. Betting that I would show up exactly on time. The chat went dead silent for two seconds, then exploded with a wall of question marks. Liam DM'd me immediately. "Are you crazy?" "These guys are brutal. Why the hell are you going to show up?" I looked at myself in the mirror. Long hair cascading over my shoulders. A waist so narrow it looked like it could be spanned by two hands. My facial features, once completely buried under layers of fat in high school, had fully defined themselves, striking and undeniably sharp. In the past two months, I had been asked for my number twenty-seven times—at the mall, on the subway, at the gym. A talent scout even cornered me for half an hour, asking if I was interested in modeling for commercials. Liam knew absolutely none of this. Because I wanted to save the best version of myself for the day we finally met. But looking at it now. He didn't deserve that surprise. I wiped away a tear that hadn't even had the chance to fall, and typed four words into the group chat. "A bet's a bet." The next second, Liam called me. I didn't answer. He called three times in a row, then finally sent a string of voice memos. "Sierra, can you stop throwing a tantrum?" "Those are the rules of the game. I lost. You're temporarily paired up with Carter. Just finish the three challenges tomorrow night and it's over." "We're all going to be classmates. Don't embarrass me." I laughed out of sheer disbelief. He treated me like property to be given away, and then blamed me for embarrassing him. I clicked on the group file. The so-called "couple's challenges" consisted of three items. First: Feed each other a piece of cake in front of everyone. Second: Hold hands for a photo and post it in the main freshman group. Third: The guy has to hold the girl in a bridal carry for ten full seconds. People in the chat were already holding a mock funeral for Carter. "Who came up with number three? That's attempted murder." "Carter is 6'2", but even he can't bench press two hundred pounds." "It's fine. He lost a game, now he's just gonna lose a couple of vertebrae." The guy named Carter hadn't said a single word since the beginning. His profile picture was just a black square, and his feed was completely empty. But everyone in the group seemed to be low-key terrified of him. They were quick to mock me, but when they tagged him, it was always just harmless teasing. No one actually dared to pressure him to respond. I was just about to close the app when my best friend, Maya, FaceTimed me. The second I answered, she exploded. "Sierra, does Liam have his brain shoved up his ass?!" "Betting his girlfriend away to his frat brother? What does he think this is, hot potato?!" I paused. "How do you know?" "Screenshots from that group are already floating around our high school alumni chat!" Maya paced back and forth across the screen, fuming. "The guy who posted the photo? I've already memorized his name. The second we get to campus, I'm throwing a potato sack over his head. You're on lookout duty." I couldn't help but laugh. Seeing me laugh only made her feel worse for me. "What are you going to do? Just drop a current selfie and shut them all up?" "No." "Why not?" I opened my closet, letting my eyes sweep over the dresses hanging inside. "What's the point of a photo?" Photoshop, stolen pics, AI filters. If they don't want to believe it, they'll find a hundred excuses not to. I wanted them to see it with their own eyes. I wanted them to regret it with their own eyes. Maya instantly understood, her eyes lighting up. "You're actually going?" "Yeah. I already put down three hundred bucks." "Hell yes!" She slapped her desk. "You're not just going. You're going to show up looking so incredible they all lose the ability to speak." "Didn't Liam bet a thousand you wouldn't show? Take his money first, then make him trend for being the biggest idiot on campus." Just then, there was a knock on my door. My mom walked in carrying a plate of sliced fruit. She saw the dresses laid out on my bed and paused. "A party tomorrow?" "Yeah." She hesitated for a few seconds, asking carefully, "Are you meeting that boy you met online?" I went silent. For Liam, I had spent an entire year losing weight. At my most desperate, I was eating nothing but a few lettuce leaves a day. I would get stomach cramps from the hunger at night and had to clutch a hot water bottle just to fall asleep. Eventually, my bloodwork came back a mess, and a nutritionist forced me to stop the extreme dieting. That's when I started proper portion control and strength training. Two hundred pounds. One hundred and seventy pounds. One hundred and thirty pounds. And finally, ninety-nine pounds. My mom had helped me replace my entire wardrobe seven different times. She had seen me step onto the scale countless times, my eyes red, terrified to cry. She knew exactly how much I had been looking forward to tomorrow. But she didn't know that my anticipation was already dead and buried. My mom set the fruit plate down. Before she left, she gently stroked my hair. "Sierra, no matter what anyone says, whether you're skinny or not, whether you're pretty or not, you will always be my precious girl." The moment the door clicked shut, my nose burned. My phone buzzed. In the group chat, Carter had finally appeared. He ignored all the jeering and sent a single, short message. "She is not a betting chip." The chat instantly went dead silent. A few seconds later, he tagged me. "If you don't want to come tomorrow, you don't have to." Liam popped up immediately. "Carter, man, it's just a game. Don't take it so seriously." Carter didn't respond to him. I stared at the words "She is not a betting chip," and for the first time, I clicked on his profile. For some reason, something about him felt... familiar. Liam and I met playing a competitive online game. I was a senior in high school, weighing two hundred pounds. The guys in my class called me "The Double-Door Fridge." The girls pretended not to be involved, but they would suddenly lower their voices and giggle whenever I walked past. Once, during P.E., we had to run the 800-meter. I came in dead last, panting so hard I almost passed out. The boy I had a massive crush on was standing near the finish line. He took two steps back in disgust. "Don't fall on me." "It'd be like an earthquake. Who could even catch you?" The entire class burst into laughter. That night, I hid in the game, completely silent, not wanting to say a single word. That was when Liam added me. After he heard my voice over the mic, he wouldn't stop asking. "Your voice is so sweet. Are you sure you aren't a professional voice actor?" We started playing duos regularly. He would turn on his mic and defend me when random teammates got toxic. "It's just a game. Why are you screaming at a girl?" He would stay up and talk to me when I was upset. "Who says being chubby is a bad thing? It's cute." "Sierra, no matter what you look like, I'll always like you." I believed him. Because of his "no matter what you look like," I actually felt, for the very first time, that maybe I was worthy of being liked. Until six months ago, when he accidentally stumbled onto an old, linked social media profile of mine. It had my high school name and my real name. After that, he became noticeably distant. We used to send dozens of texts a day; soon, it dwindled down to just "good morning" and "good night." I asked him what was wrong. He said he was stressed about finals. Thinking back on it now, it had absolutely nothing to do with stress. It was obvious he had found my photos. But he didn't break up with me right away. Because I could help him rank up in his games, I could help him with his study notes, and I was always there to comfort him when he was having a meltdown. He couldn't bear to throw away such a useful emotional dumping ground. So he dragged it out until the day before college started, and used a game of dice to neatly, "honorably" kick me to the curb. My phone rang again. This time, I answered. Liam's tone was incredibly impatient. "What's the deal with you and Carter playing tag-team in the group chat?" "He defended me for one second. How is that playing tag-team?" "You think a guy like him defends a girl for no reason?" Liam sneered. "Don't think just because you have a nice voice, you can actually hook him. Carter's standards are even higher than mine. If you show up, you're just going to humiliate yourself." I went quiet for two seconds. "So, you think I'm not good enough for you?" "That's not what I meant." "Then why did you bet a thousand dollars that I wouldn't dare show up?" He choked on his words. After a moment, he spoke, his voice dripping with frustration. "Fine. You want the truth?" "Sierra, I know what you actually look like now." "Dating online was fine, but in the real world... we just aren't a match." "Don't blame me. It's just human nature for guys to like pretty girls." "The fact that I didn't just block and ghost you is me trying to save your dignity." Gripping my phone, that last, lingering trace of dull pain in my chest finally went ice cold. "Wow. Thanks. That's so incredibly classy of you." Liam completely missed my sarcasm, his tone softening a bit. "Just don't come tomorrow. I'll send you the three hundred you bet." "Chloe is going to be there. Standing next to her is only going to make you look worse." I asked slowly, "Are you guys close?" The line went dead silent. "Don't overthink things. There's nothing going on between us." I laughed. It looked like tomorrow's party was going to be even more entertaining than I thought.