Lacey opened the door to her 18th Century British Literature class and immediately knocked over a desk, since she was staring at her cracked iPhone 7 and not at her surroundings. Considering she was fourteen minutes late to an hour-long discussion, the professor was already speaking at the front of the room. He paused to glare at Lacey, who shifted away from the door and slid with an audible thump into another seat without once breaking eye contact with her phone screen.
Lacey switched idly from Twitter to the camera so she could see how bad the damage was from her casual stroll from her apartment to the classroom. It was probably less than 100 yards away, but she was so out of shape that even that distance on foot was enough to make her unwashed hair stick to her sweaty forehead.
Ugh, thought Lacey. I still haven’t showered since the bars last night. If this class didn’t depend on attendance I would’ve skipped it. Who makes a class this early on a Friday morning?
The class began at noon, but to Lacey it may as well have been five AM.
Lacey pulled her greasy hair into a high ponytail and switched from her camera to Instagram. There were a ton of photos from last night’s excursion to the bars, and Lacey’s thumb was starting to hurt from double tapping over and over again on her little and then grand little’s photos.
Wow, Ashley looks really good, thought Lacey. All those Zumba classes seem like they’re actually paying off, even though the way she wouldn’t shut up about them was so annoying. Maybe I should do Zumba. Maybe I should start running or something.
Lacey had an all-inclusive pass to the university recreation center, including access to any workout class she could ever want to take, but that was conveniently forgotten as she pulled out her laptop and started researching how many calories you could burn by throwing up six vodka tonics. This was Lacey’s junior year, and she was feeling a bit heavier than she had when she got into college. Unrealized by her, “a bit heavier” was actually around fifteen extra pounds of stored fat largely present on her stomach and hips.
Since she was drinking roughly five nights a week, was especially fond of margaritas and melted cheese, and hadn’t seen the inside of a gym in about a year, Lacey’s body was making its disgruntlement known.
Lacey kept scrolling through Insta, and in every picture she saw of herself, she was less than thrilled. The one that Margot posted made her arms look fat, and in Sophie’s photo she had a double chin. What the hell? She just didn’t have a good angle these days, for whatever reason.
In blissful denial, Lacey moved to Facebook and clicked largely out of habit on the On This Day tab. A few photos of her from years ago, back in high school appeared, plus a couple of idiotic status updates that made her cringe and scroll quickly past them. The photo was from a beach day her senior year of high school, and Lacey was the only one in it who wasn’t blurry. Her hair was longer, and the photo was taken from exactly the right angle. She looked amazing, nothing like those photos from last night. She looked so, well, thin. Lacey clicked “Share,” and cobbled together some status about how much she missed the blurry other faces in the photo, most of whom she literally had not spoken to since the photo was taken.
“Miss this so much!! Love you girls! We have to do this again ASAP !!”
At a university a hundred miles away, one of the blurry-faced girls in the photo received a notification on her phone that she’d been tagged in a photo. Julia opened it to the same fucking throwback photo that Lacey had posted once a year for the past three years running now.
That fucking bitch, thought Julia, as she untagged herself and hid the post from her timeline. She’s the only one in that picture who isn’t sneezing or something. We get it, Lacey, you used to be hot. Get over yourself.
Her confidence restored with the posting of her Flashback Friday photo, Lacey heaved herself and her sticky thighs from her desk chair. There were only five minutes left before the professor released the class, so as far as she was concerned, she was excused. Her stomach, still bloated from an excess of gin and tonics from the night before, grumbled. Lacey shot off a text to her little.
I’m dying for mozzarella sticks. Meet me downtown in a half hour?.
Nice Move80
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Shannon Layne
My favorite things are tiaras, compliments, and free drinks, which are becoming harder to come by the more I tend to show up at the bar in sweat pants. The proudest moment of my life so far has been landing an actual, paying job that allows me to Facebook stalk people for a living. I tweet about my mom way too often, who is constantly trying to remind me that I'm not nearly as cool as I think I am. Please send me funny stories to read at work here: shannon.laynee@yahoo.com
@shannonlaynee
@shannonlayneee
