The Next Big Thing (14 page)

A place like that was diet suicide. I didn’t know how I’d ever be able to lose my two pounds a week with all those goodies in the house.

When we were once again seated on the living room’s purple sectional, Jagger hit us with a surprise.

“There’s something you all should know. The bedroom lights are hooked up to a timer system. At eight o’clock every morning the lights will come on and at eleven P.M. each night they’ll shut off.”

My jaw dropped and I noticed several other girls look at him in surprise. He had to be kidding.

He wasn’t.

“This schedule has been designed with your best interests in mind,” Jagger explained. “If you lie in bed all day you will never accomplish your goals. Without a strict regimen, many of you would be doomed to fail.”

Jagger was starting to get on my last nerve. I, for one, have never been able to accomplish much in the morning. No matter which way you slice it, I am most alert and alive at night. I wanted to ask if someone had written him a script, or if he was making up the bullshit as he went along. Unfortunately, the bullshit was only beginning.

“Each of you will have a bank, which I’ll add money to as we progress. Every Sunday you will participate in a weigh-in. Those who have lost two pounds or more for the week will be rewarded with an addition of ten thousand dollars to your personal account. If there’s a gain or loss of under two pounds, nothing will happen. However—” Jagger paused, trying to drum up drama. It didn’t work. We’d all read the publicity; we knew what was coming. “—if you
gain
two or more pounds you will lose
twenty
thousand dollars! At the end of the game, whoever has accumulated the most money will take home her bank. The rest of you will leave empty-handed.”

We knew all this already! I wanted to get on to the good stuff.

“During the course of your stay in the
From Fat to Fabulous
mansion, you will take part in a series of contests. Some of them will be individual competitions and some will be group competitions. Sometimes the rewards will be cash, sometimes there will be even greater things at stake. There is no pattern to the frequency with which these competitions will appear. So I advise you to do your best in all of them; you never know when another opportunity might come around.” Jagger paused, fixing us with a pointed gaze.

“Your very first individual competition will begin . . . now!” he boomed, startling me. “Tonight we’re going to play a little game called In for a Penny, In for a Pound. If you can guess the pounds, it will be worth a lot of pennies.”

I listened intently as Jagger outlined the competition’s rules. It sounded unbelievably cheesy. We would be given a stack of five large yellow cards, each one bearing the name of one of our competitors. With a black Magic Marker, we were to write down the other players’ weights.

“Some of you may know your housemates’ weights, some of you may not. If you aren’t sure, I’m afraid you’ll have to guess,” Jagger explained. “You’ll have five minutes to write down your choices. Bear in mind, you cannot change your answers once the time is up. Whoever gets the most correct wins ten thousand dollars for her bank and the right to
choose where she—as well as everyone else—will be sleeping.”

“Wait a minute, wait a minute,”
Alyssa cut in. “Let me get this straight. First place gets the first choice of bedrooms, right?”

Jagger nodded. “But then shouldn’t second place have second choice, third place third, and on down the line?”

“I’m afraid that isn’t how things work on
From Fat to Fabulous,
” Jagger said. “If you want any say in where you’ll be bunking these next fifteen weeks, you’d better win tonight’s competition, Alyssa.”

“
Fine, whatever.”

Jagger moved around the room quickly dispensing materials. Once he had finished, he announced, “Your five minutes starts . . .
now!
”

It was supposed to be a dramatic moment, but nobody reacted. We just sat there calmly, looking around at each other. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Luisa sizing me up. She must have felt pretty dumb, having blurted out her weight the way she did. I picked up the card that read
Luisa,
flipped it over, and wrote
213.
I was secretly glad I hadn’t told her anything about my size.

“Four minutes, girls,” Jagger warned. Thumbing through the stack, I pulled out
Alyssa’s card and jotted down
185.
Maggie was pretty heavy, but she was also pretty short. I thought it over for a minute then put down
175.

By far, the hardest two to gauge were Janelle and Regan. Janelle was built like an Amazonian woman—toweringly tall with big bones. I had no clue what she clocked in at. I deduced
260
was a safe bet. And Regan, bless her heart, was enormous. Feeling a pang of guilt, I wrote
400 pounds
and prayed she wouldn’t hate me for it.

Under normal circumstances, I would have been nice and chopped fifty pounds off, but this was a competition. I wanted to win that master suite as badly as the next person.

“Okay, girls, time’s up.”

Alyssa
was still scribbling frantically and Jagger had to issue two warnings before she finally set down her marker.

“This whole thing’s
fucking rigged,” she griped.

She was starting to agitate me.

“Kat, you’re up first. Time to step on the scale!” Jagger boomed.

“What!?” I exclaimed. “Why me? Shouldn’t we be going alphabetically?” My face was flaming with embarrassment.

“The order was determined earlier by random draw,” Jagger responded.

I knew there was no point arguing, so
I made my way slowly to the front of the room, kicked off my flip-flops, and hopped up.

“And the scale says . . . two-hundred and thirty-one pounds!” Jagger declared.

I felt sick. Either
From Fat to Fabulous
’s scale was wrong, or I’d packed on four pounds since leaving Memphis!

“Let’s see what your housemates said. If you want to get the pennies, girls, you’d better guess the pounds!”

He started on the left, with Luisa. She held up her card, looking crestfallen. “I got 201,” she said. I felt a huge smile spread across my face. Next, Maggie produced her response:
225,
which wasn’t bad either. In fact, it was pretty close to the truth. So far, I liked what I was hearing. But it was Janelle’s answer that excited me the most.

“Kat, I had you pegged at 183,” she said, shaking her head. “Damn.”

I wanted to hug her. Who cared if she was totally off-base? It was a huge compliment, no pun intended. All these years, I’d had no idea I looked much smaller than my actual weight! I was feeling pretty good, until Regan’s turn came.

“I’m sorry, Kat.” She stared down at the floor. She held up her card and the sight of it nearly knocked me off my feet.

“Three hundred pounds!” I exploded. “You think I weigh
three hundred pounds
?”

“It was only a guess!”

“A damn
awful
guess,” I snapped. Regan had a lot of nerve. And to think, I had actually felt
guilty
about putting down four hundred pounds on her card.

Alyssa
wasn’t much better—she had me figured for 275 pounds.

“Sorry, Kat,” she said smugly. “I just call ’em like I see ’em.”

I made my way back over to the couch, and plopped down. I was steamed. More than anything, I wished I could go back and change my guesses. I’d write down six hundred pounds for Regan and four hundred pounds for Alyssa. That’d fix them good.

I was so caught up plotting revenge I didn’t notice Maggie had climbed onto the scale until I heard Jagger call, “Two hundred and ten pounds!”

My guess had been off by thirty-five pounds—she carried her excess weight very well. As it turned out, most of us had screwed up, putting Maggie down for a much lower weight.

My luck went from bad to worse. Janelle, as it turned out, weighed only 219 making my guess of 260 seem ignorant and malicious. Most of us overestimated on Janelle, with the exception of Maggie, who nailed it with 220. I was nearly ten pounds too high on
Alyssa, who actually tipped the scales at 176. The only one I got right was Luisa but, then, so did everybody else. The biggest shock of the evening came when Regan stepped onto the scale. She weighed in at 341 pounds—sixty pounds lower than my guess—but that wasn’t what surprised me. When Alyssa’s turn came to hold up her card, she had written Regan’s weight down at 250 pounds, twenty-five pounds
lower
than what she’d put for me!

“You think I weigh more than Regan?” I demanded, squaring off against her.

“You can’t be serious,” Luisa backed me up. “Look at them!”

Regan sniffed. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“No offense, but we’re not exactly the same size,” I told her, softening my tone a little.

“It’s my opinion, Kat,”
Alyssa said. “It’s not scientific.”

“You didn’t answer my question.”

“Fine then. If you really want to know, yes, I think you look bigger than Regan,” Alyssa huffed.

I glared daggers at her. I would get
Alyssa back if it killed me.

When all was said and done, Maggie prevailed. “I knew all those years working for Weight Watchers had to pay off someday.” She beamed.

“Congratulations, Maggie!” Jagger enthused. “You’re the winner of the premiere competition on
From Fat to Fabulous.
In addition to your ten-thousand-dollar cash prize, you are now the proud occupant of the coveted master suite. And what’s more, you have the enviable task of selecting where the other housemates will sleep.” He handed her the key to the room.

Maggie grinned. “Thank you, Jagger.”

“Enjoy your new bedrooms, girls,” he advised. “Remember, the fate of the game may rest in your sleeping arrangements.” He hurriedly exited the room without so much as a good-bye.

“How would you girls like to do this?” Maggie asked. “The fairest thing might be to draw names out of a hat.”

“No, the fairest thing would be if we went in order,” Alyssa interjected. “Luisa came in second, I was third, Kat’s fourth, Regan’s fifth, and Janelle’s last. That’s the way we ought to divide up the rooms.”

It was obvious what
she was doing. The next best bedroom after the master suite had two beds in it. If we did things her way, Alyssa and Luisa would get to share it.

“No way,” I argued. “I think Maggie should decide. If
she
wants to have a random drawing, that’s what we’ll do.”

Maggie looked exasperated. “How about we take a vote? All those in favor of doing it
Alyssa’s way, raise your hand.”

I had expected the split to go in my favor, with three out of the five people voting for a random drawing, but Janelle screwed things up. “I can’t help it,” she said, shrugging. “
Alyssa’s idea is the fairest.” So there we were: me, Regan, and Janelle bunking together in the smallest of the three bedrooms.  
 
 
 

“This sucks,” I complained, as we dragged our suitcases upstairs and into our new quarters. I surveyed our surroundings. The room was tiny in comparison to the rest of the house, probably only measuring ten feet by fifteen. There were three small beds lined up parallel against the wall. “It’s not much bigger than my bedroom back home. We’re going to
be tripping all over each other.”

I wasn’t exaggerating. Between the three single beds, two dressers, and the ever-present camera crew, there was scarcely enough room left over for our luggage.

Here we were in a giant mansion full of sizeable rooms and they had stuffed us into a space not much bigger than a walk-in closet.

“Good going, Janelle,” Regan scolded. “If you hadn’t messed up the vote we’d have had a shot at getting the better room.”

“True,” she admitted. “But then you could have gotten stuck sharing with Alyssa. This way, Luisa will have to put up with her. They may have the bigger room, but I prefer our situation.”

That shut us up.

“Well, who wants which bed?” Janelle asked, looking around.

Regan snagged the spot by the window, while I settled down on the bed next to the door. That left only one option—the cramped space in the middle. Good intentions or not, Janelle was partly responsible for our situation. It seemed fitting that she get stuck with the worst sleeping arrangements.

We spent the next half hour unpacking and making small talk. I learned that Regan had an older sister whom she hated, and that her parents had been together since they were fourteen.

“Wow, I can’t imagine,” Janelle commented. “I’m only twenty-nine and I’m already twice divorced.”

My eyes bulged. “Are you kidding?”

She shook her head. “I wish I could tell you I was, but no.”