Bella is tired of smiling and nodding at Adam. Think, she tells herself, for God's sake he's on the phone with his girlfriend and you're hoping she gets sick, dies even, before Friday.

The phone calls Bella gets are most often from her mother, her sister, or one of her friends. She had a boyfriend in her freshman year here, lost him that summer after. She knows she has gotten way overweight since. She knows that the more she wants to be thin, the more desperate she gets, the more chocolate doughnuts she will send on their way to softly pad her heart from the world. She has decided to have her stomach stapled or tied or she wouldn't care if they took the damn thing out. All she needs is a couple hundred dollars more.

"Hey Chandler," she turns to her friend, "how much do they pay you at Big Y?"