Chapter 2

Presley didn't miss a beat.

She walked over, snatched the bikini off the chair, and dangled it in front of the camera.

"Yeah, I bought it. What about it? Did I do something wrong?"

"I stopped at the store on my way to the airport. Pink's a good color on you." She held it higher. "What was I supposed to do, buy your size now? How was I supposed to know you'd pull this."

She tossed it at me.

I caught it, flipped the tag out, and turned in a slow circle so everybody got a look.

3XL.

"This is what she got me," I said. "This is what you were all laughing at."

Nobody answered. The girl filming lowered her phone a little.

"She was just messing around," the girl with the towels said quietly.

"Did you laugh?" I asked.

She shut up.

Presley jumped in before anyone else could.

"Hey, leave her alone. You've gotten real sensitive, you know that? You were never like this before. Somebody talked down to you and you'd just stand there staring at your shoes."

She smiled a little.

"I kind of miss that version of you."

I folded the bikini and put it in my bag.

Presley reached for it. I grabbed her wrist and held it.

"What are you doing?"

"Keeping it."

"What for?"

"So I don't forget something." I let go. "Thirteen years and you haven't changed at all."

"Changed how?" She yanked her arm back and her voice went up. "Name one thing I've ever done that I should be ashamed of."

She turned to the camera.

"You guys tell me. I fly her out here, I get her a gift, and she walks in and gives me attitude."

[is she okay??]

[Presley you're way too nice to her]

[I'd have thrown her out already]

"And another thing." Presley looked me over again. "The makeup, the hair, the way you walked in just now. You're copying Lux Ferran, aren't you?"

Lux Ferran was the model Meridian put on every cover last year.

She was also one of mine.

"That's why she looked familiar." The girl with the towels was on it right away. "Same flick on the eyeliner."

"You can copy the look. You can't copy the life." Presley crossed her arms. "You could get your whole face redone to match hers and you still wouldn't get within a mile of her world. You've still got that smell on you, and lipo doesn't suck that out."

I said nothing.

Telling her who I had signed wasn't worth the breath.

When I didn't bite, her voice went soft.

"But seriously. You standing here today? You should be thanking me."

A couple of people stopped smiling.

"If I hadn't stayed on you back then." She drew it out. "You'd still be 220. I threw your lunch in the trash. I asked you in front of the whole cafeteria if you wanted seconds. I put your pictures in the group chat for the entire grade. That was all to get you moving. Be honest with yourself. Without me pushing you, would you have ever lost a single pound?"

"Right?" The guy who'd been holding her umbrella rubbed his hands together. "Presley never sugarcoated anything back then."

The winter I turned sixteen, she wheeled the scale out onto the gym floor and parked it at my feet, then had the class line up and read the number out loud.

She stood up front clapping and yelling that the floor was about to give out, everybody run.

I hid in the equipment room until it got dark. Somebody had cut a slit down the back of my jacket. I never let my mom see it.

I looked up at her.

"You call that motivation."

"That's what it was," she said.

"Presley, I didn't lose the weight because of you."

I took a step toward her. I had half a head on her. The sand shifted under her feet, but she didn't back up.

"I lost it because I'm hard to kill. All that laughing didn't get the job done."

"Ooh." She raised an eyebrow. "She talks back now."

"And I'm the one who gets to hold my head up today," I said. "Not because I'm thin. Because I've never made a dime off stepping on somebody."

Presley looked at me, then laughed out loud.

"You want to know the saddest part?"

She brought the camera in close on my face.

"You can be as thin as you are right this second and that Two-Twenty is still up there in your head. She's still with you. She's never leaving. That's why you had to come today."

She set the phone back on the tripod and grabbed a napkin to wipe her hands.

"Oh, by the way, this party was my fiancé Grant's idea. He said I should let my old classmates see how good I've got it now."

"What about you? Don't tell me you're still single."