Ample Springs Academy: The Stretching Room
Sophie Johnson’s College Diary April 7th
Dear Diary,
I can’t believe I haven’t written since last year. My last entry was before fall break! So sorry, Diary.
I have so much to tell you: Half the choir had to get bigger robes before our winter recital… I finally made a soufflé in culinary club that wasn’t a mess… (Though my fails were still tasty af) The softball team even won a game, even though some of the girls were so obviously cheating on Coach Hays’s diet… There was even the day they had to get Hunter Martin out of the dorms with a crane…
But first, I have to tell you about a secret. Lizzie would kill me if she knew I was writing this down, but I just can’t help it… It’s too awesome. Anyway, Beryl showed me how to put a password on this file, so it should be pretty safe. Beryl is a freakin genius with tech, she even showed me how to run Stardew Valley on my laptop so I don’t always have to play on my phone.
Anyway, it all started in the dining hall. They were doing sizzling pasta, which is everyone’s favorite. It’s such an L when it’s just sizzling salad. It’s ironic that the one with the better name is so weak. I mean, who even eats salad at ASA? It’s not like anyone really diets. Why would they need to? I guess most of the softball team tried to follow Coach Hays’s rules for maybe, like, a week. And I’ve heard there are even girls who don’t want bigger boobs. I just don’t understand that.
So, sizzling pasta. I had shrimp with bowties, which Andrea says we should call far folly or something. I like to get the vodka sauce, because I’m not old enough to drink until next summer. Annie says all the alcohol cooks out of it anyway, even if the sauce was made with real vodka, which, according to Andrea, it definitely isn’t. Those two are such nerds. Like, “um, actually, there’s no rEaL VoDkA…” And it’s like, can I live? FFS
Anyway, we were having pasta. I had two plates, and was going back for cheesecake (cherry, my fav) when I saw Lizzie going through the pasta line a third time. I decided to get a third pasta of my own (Not because I was copying Lizzie or anything!), but I could barely finish it! I had to force down the last few bites, and I was so full I had to skip dessert! I couldn’t concentrate on my prob + stats lecture at all, and it was lucky that was my only class after lunch. I came back to my room and laid on my bed so I could die in peace.
Annie must have got sick of my moaning, because she asked if I was OK. I told her I ate too much and she gave me some antacids, and those helped a little.
“I don’t know how the other girls do it,” I said. “Lizzie had four plates and still ate two pieces of cheesecake!”
“Well, Lizzie is a Junior. It takes a lot of food to grow M-cups.”
“I’m trying, but it’s just so hard! I felt like I was gonna puke, and I didn’t even get any cheesecake… They even had cherry today!”
Annie looked thoughtful for a long time, then she finally said, “You should ask Lizzie about the stretching room.”
“Stretching room? Is that some exercise thing?”
Annie just shrugged and went back to her desk. She wouldn’t tell me any more, no matter how much I asked.
So, after dinner (I was still so full I could only eat half a cheesy bread), I asked Lizzie about it. She looked all around the dining hall like someone might be listening, then got really close. She’s so cool, with her short hair and the tattoos that sometimes peek out of her uniform. I was pretty sure I could even smell her body wash or something, but I couldn’t tell what it was.
“What did Annie tell you?” She whispered.
“She wouldn’t tell me anything.”
Lizzie looked just as thoughtful as Annie had, staring at me until my poor stomach felt even more flip-floppy.
“First, you have to swear to secrecy.”
“Seriously?”
She definitely wasn’t joking.
“OK, fine, I promise.”
“Swear it.”
I think I rolled my eyes. “I swear by the Light and my hope of salvation and rebirth to bear your secret to my grave.”
Then Lizzie rolled her eyes and called me a nerd. I somehow didn’t mind it the way she said it. She gave me a room number in Collins Hall and said 9 o’clock.
“Is that a dorm room?” I asked.
Lizzie nodded. “Be there on time.”
Room 108 looked like a normal room. I’d only been in Collins once or twice, but everyone knew the girls who lived there were kinda weird. Lizzie was waiting in the hall. She knocked, and we went in. I recognized the girl in 108, but I hadn’t met her. She was a Junior named Allie, who I heard had O-cups. They almost covered her whole desk!
“Another newbie, Liz?” She asked.
Lizzie nodded and pointed me at Allie’s closet. I could tell it was a solo room because there was only one bed. Annie and I got along great, but I think it’d be nice to have my own space.
“This is crossing the Rubicon,” Lizzie said.
I definitely should have gotten that reference, Diary. I was so embarrassed.
“The point of no return,” She explained. “Your last chance to back out.”
I shook my head, and Lizzie slid the hangers around, then moved a big board covering a door. I promise you, Diary, there was a doorway in the back of Allie’s closet, like freaking Narnia! Lizzie used the light on her phone as we went into a pitch-dark hallway and some creepy af stairs to the basement. I never thought about the dorms having basements, but Collins does, and I was pretty sure students weren’t allowed down there.
How do I even describe it? They strung up Christmas lights for light, so I could see, but it was still pretty dark. A big, open room with couches and chairs like the ones in the dorm lounges, but worn out and with holes where stuffing peeked out. There were five girls sitting around, all quiet, listening to earbuds or reading. One I thought I recognized from Econ looked like she was studying. The girls had these little hoses connected to big drink coolers, and were drinking some kind of smoothies.
The sixth girl wasn’t sitting. She was checking one of the coolers when we came in, and she came up to us.
“Hey, Lizzie. I thought Caitlin was coming tonight.”
“She asked me to cover. Apparently, she waited until the last minute to study for her Calc 2 midterm.”
“Classic Caitlin.” She noticed me, finally. “Fresh blood?”
Lizzie nodded. “This is Sophie.”
She shook my hand. “Ember. Welcome to the Stretching Room.”
I looked around again. “I… don’t understand.”
Ember patted my shoulder. “Lizzie can show you the ropes. I’m starving.”
Ember plopped into one of the armchairs and started drinking from one of the hoses, getting on her phone. I didn’t know how old she was or what year she was in, but she was a little bigger than me. Lizzie steered me to a table I hadn’t noticed, piled with ingredients and big fancy blenders.
“What is this place?” I asked. “Nobody’s doing any stretches.”
Lizzie’s grin was lowkey scary. She set out four little plastic cups, then filled them from bottles from a mini-fridge on the table.
“You’re on the softball team, right?”
“I’m just the towel girl.”
“Regardless. What does Coach always say about exercise?”
“That… it’s important?”
Lizzie sighed. “I thought you had a 3.7 GPA. What room is this?”
I was so confused. “The… stretching room?”
She sighed again. I don’t think she meant to sound condescending, but the next part still made me feel like a dumb Frosh, even worse than that whole Rubicon thing: “And before exercise, we…?”
“Stretch? I still don’t get—“
She got really close again, and without all the dining hall food smells, I figured out what Lizzie’s body wash or whatever smelled like… Cherries. “Why did you ask me about this place? What do you want, Sophie Johnson?”
What I really wanted was to taste her dark lipstick. I can’t believe I just wrote that. I should delete it. I can’t. Thank god for password locks.
“I want, um, bigger… You know. I want to know how you and the other girls can eat so much,” I whispered.
Lizzie set the four cups in front of me. “Change and improvement take work. Practice and dedication. Think of your stomach as a muscle, and meals are like workouts. We come here to stretch ourselves so we’re prepared for those workouts. Now, try these and pick one.”
I looked at the cups, but when I reached for one, Lizzie blocked me with one of her black-nailed hands. “You’re not allergic to peanuts or anything?”
I shook my head, then tasted the smoothies. One was a chocolate with cherry, then a banana with peanut butter, mixed berry, and something like sherbet with orange and lime. I almost picked the second one, but the chocolate cherry reminded me of the cheesecake I never got. (It had nothing to do with Lizzie’s body wash, I promise you.)
Lizzie took me to a couch beside a blonde girl I didn’t recognize. She had boobs like watermelons, and she was so bloated she had her skirt unbuttoned. I tried not to stare at the bit of her tummy peeking out under her blouse. She smiled at me as she took tiny sips from her hose.
Lizzie connected another hose to the cooler and handed it to me. “Just think of it as a straw.”
It was like a bottomless smoothie. No matter how much I drank, there was always more. When Lizzie called me a good girl, I got so fluttered I drank even faster.
When I finally staggered back to my room, I was fuller than I’ve ever been in my life. But it was almost midnight, so I just laid down and slept it off. The next day, I had three omelets for breakfast. I’ve been back to the stretching room five times in the past two weeks, and Annie says I should go see Ms. Glen to get measured for bigger bras already.
I had so many questions, so I asked Lizzie whenever we were alone in the dining hall. Allie’s old roommate found the boarded-up stairwell behind her closet, and they’d started the club three years ago. They took donations, but nobody had to pay. I asked her where the ingredients come from.
“This is your second year here, yeah?” Lizzie said. “Does it seem like the Academy is short on food?”
I looked at my third plate of meatloaf and shook my head.
“Ample spends almost as much money feeding our bellies as they do feeding our brains.”
“So, you’re just, what… stealing it?” I whispered.
Lizzie grinned that scary grin again. “Some of the kitchen staff set stuff aside for us. And they’re… compensated for their discretion.”
Bribes. She was talking about bribes. Like a real-life movie!
“But someone still pays for that…”
Lizzie shrugged. “Donations help, but Georgine covers most of it.”
I’d never met Georgine Creswell, but she was famous because her mom owned a big hotel chain. She was the exact kind of girl Lizzie hated, with all her rants about billionaires and oligarchs. But I guess everyone has their line.
So anyway, that’s the story of how I finally hit H-cup. I can eat so much now that my jaw gets tired way before I get too full, it’s amazing. Georgine is graduating this year, so I don’t know how long the Stretching Room will be around. Maybe she’ll keep paying for it after she’s gone. Maybe some other trust fund girls will step up. Maybe by next spring, I won’t even need the smoothies anymore.
I sure hope not. I’ve tried all the flavors now, and they’re all amazing. Lizzie says they put powder in them, like bodybuilders use, plus sugar and lots of real cream. And of course, water from the Springs. Sometimes they have new recipes, but the chocolate cherry is still my favorite. It’s like drinking liquid ice cream, and I love filling myself up with it. All those calories… helping my girlies grow, making my stomach big and strong so I can eat even more and grow even bigger.
If I catch up to Lizzie, maybe I can get her to finally notice me. But even if she doesn’t, I’m going to catch up to her anyway. I can’t wait.