Catherine growled as she packed her duffel. This was not how she had planned to spend her long weekend. The 17 year old senior had planned on having a lazy weekend with her friends, maybe head to one of the parties that were supposed to be happening. She had been working hard, spending extra time in the chemistry lab at school trying to get her college applications in tip-top shape, and had been looking forward to a break. Instead, her mom had volunteered her to babysit Tina Canaris, the bratty daughter of her dad’s work colleage, for the entire weekend, while her parents were out of town. Catherine had pleaded, bargained, and threatened, but her mom hadn’t budged. The Canarises were friends of the family, and she had held firm on doing this favor for them.
Catherine had then tried calling Mrs. Canaris herself, and—politely—implied that the older woman might be better served getting someone else to watch her daughter. At the conclusion of the ensuing guilt-trip, Catherine gritted her teeth and said how much she was looking forward to seeing Tina and how much fun they were going to have together. At least the pay was going to be good.
Catherine zipped up her bag, now stuffed with a few changes of clothes, some books, her iPad, and her Switch, and slung the strap over her shoulder. As she strode through the house toward the garage, a green bottle sitting on the kitchen counter caught her eye.
It was her research project, the one she was working on for her college application. She had noticed, way back in freshman year, that the squirrels at the high school were unusually big, as far as squirrels went. Eventually, though, the fat squirrels just became part of the background at school, and she had forgotten about them. Until last year, when she had been out on the lawn eating lunch while a gardener was working in the flower bed. She had been idly watching the man pull weeds and prune flowers when he had accidentally knocked over a bottle of fertilizer. He had quickly righted it, but a small puddle was spilled on the sidewalk. A nearby squirrel, smaller than most of the others around campus, darted over to the puddle, sniffed it, and then lapped it up. Then, before Catherine’s wide eyes, the thing grew! It hadn’t been too much, but it has definitely noticeable, and the fat rodent was now on the same scale as the other bloated squirrels around campus.
Catherine had been at that point in her junior year where she had been starting to think how she could bolster her resume to get into Polytech’s prestigious program, and now she had an idea. Here was a question that sat at the intersection of all her interests in science, chemistry, and biology. How could plant food make an animal grow, nearly instantly? She had been working on the question, and its applications, for the last year. Catherine figured if she could isolate and enhance the effect, she could present it’s applications for the ranching and dairy industries. Imagine, cattle the size of elephants!
So she had gotten several bottles of the plant food, called Jumbo Gro. That had turned out to be tricky, as it evidently wasn’t manufactured anymore. Fortunately, the school seemed to have bought a ton of it before production ceased, so she was able to get some by sweet-talking the gardener. And after a year of work, Catherine had refined the Jumbo Gro to the point where a small amount would grow a mouse bigger than a housecat. And significantly more rotund. In fact, one of her lab mice, who now lived in a cage in her basement and who she had affectionately dubbed Jumbo, was so bloated he looked more like a fuzzy volleyball with a little wriggling nose sticking out. His limbs were completely useless, enveloped by the swell of his body.
She should feed some of the stuff to Tina, Catherine thought sourly. The brat could stand to get knocked down a peg or two. Tina was an avid gymnast, and had Olympic aspirations. Catherine had no idea if she was good enough for that or not, but the 12 year old girl certainly checked all the boxes of a champion gymnast. She was probably around four and half feet tall, and she was ripped. And that was the problem. Catherine wasn’t exactly fat, but she was curvy tending toward chubby, and Tina never missed an opportunity to imply that Catherine was a fat, out of shape cow. The girl would make cutting remarks about Catherine’s diet while eating the scientifically calibrated vegetarian dinner her trainers prescribed, and she made sure that her shirt got pulled up, “accidentally” or otherwise, to show off a six pack that Catherine didn’t think any 12 year old should have. Once she had done it while pulling up Catherine’s own shirt, gleefully comparing her own chiseled midsection against Catherine’s soft muffin top.
Catherine looked at the bottle of refined Jumbo Gro thoughtfully. She’d never thought about giving it to people. She wouldn’t give Tina much, just enough to bloat her up and out and make her think her gymnastics career was dead in the water. You couldn’t be a champion gymnast if you were over 6 feet tall and looked like you had swallowed a 200-lb beach ball. It would have to be temporary, of course— Catherine had already developed a counter-agent to the Jumbo Gro’s effects— but maybe the experience would teach Tina some humility.
But still… Could she really give untested chemicals to an unsuspecting middle schooler? Even a frustrating little meathead like Tina? It was horrendously unethical. And if the school found out… Maybe Catherine should take some of the Jumbo Gro herself and see how Tina reacted when her babysitter showed up at her door almost 8 feet tall and with a figure like a half-ton pear. Maybe Catherine could give Tina some sob story about how she was right and Catherine was just a fat slob and this is her life now— try to stir some shred of conscience. And if that didn’t work, Catherine could just prove that not even Tina’s six-pack abs and bulging biceps and single-digit body fat percentage could do shit to keep a 1,000-lb girl from doing whatever she wanted.
Catherine smirked at the image of staring down at the already short Tina from ceiling height, seeing the tiny girl’s face just peeking out from under her bulk. Still… ethics aside, blowing up Tina beyond any hope of athletic achievement had an undeniable appeal. Catherine shrugged and grabbled the bottle of refined Jumbo Gro and stuffed it into her duffel bag before heading out to her car. She could decide on the way to the Canaris’ house.
View Portfolio
Visit Notebook
Send Gift Points
Awards
Badges
Send Email
Community Newsfeed
General Discussion
Sponsored Items
Book of Trinkets
Static Items
Books
Groups
Interactive Stories
Audio
Campfire Creatives
Community Notes
Crossword Puzzles
Documents
Folders
Images
In & Outs
Madlibs
Photo Albums
Polls
Product Reviews
Quizzes
Survey Forms
Web Pages
Word Searches
More by this author