Chapter 1: "One Pill Makes You Small"

My approaching high school graduation weighed heavily on my mind as the last few weeks of my senior year slipped away. "The Change" that all high school graduates had to undergo the summer after graduating was a compulsory rite of passage that gave us all artificially beautiful bodies and faces in a limited number of types. There were only twelve "models" to choose from for either sex. I didn't know if "The Change" was plastic surgery, full-scale body sculpting, or even the transference of the brain from the original body into a robotic body. I had no idea. I was dreading it, and I didn't want to do it. The government's justification was that "The Change" made people immune to common diseases and stopped the appearance of aging. People still aged, though. Average lifespan remained unchanged. I was suspicious of the supposed benefits. There were effective medical treatments for almost everything, and people still aged. It was positively weird to see people who looked young suddenly drop dead. Occasionally, someone would die almost immediately after "The Change" had taken place. Those incidents were always hushed up, but high school students had ways of finding out information that was supposed to remain secret. The government wanted us to think that everyone lived to a ripe old age after "The Change." I thought only of how to get out of it.

I had a small circle of friends, and they all sort of looked alike even though "The Change" had yet to take place. I thought that it was because of those pills that everybody received the first of every month in the mail. The pills came in boxes clearly labeled for boys, girls, men, and women. You were a boy or girl before "The Change" and a man or woman after "The Change." I had always balked at taking my pills, and my parents finally gave up on me. My friends all took the pills every morning as they were supposed to. The girls were all thin and slight-figured, and the boys all looked like athletes. I suspected that the girls' pills all contained appetite suppressants, and that the boys' pills all contained steroids. Who knew what was in the adults' pills. I, myself, did not look like any of the other girls, and that was partly why I had no desire to undergo "The Change." It may have been crazy, but I thought that I was beautiful.

In a school full of thin, slight-figured girls, I was soft and sensuously rounded from head to foot. In a school full of short girls, I was medium height. In a school full of bony-faced girls, I had chubby cheeks and a baby face. In a school full of girls who had twig-like arms and legs, I had muscular arms and legs. In a school full of girls who had A-cup breasts that were barely visible, I had C-cup breasts that jiggled a little and moved when I moved. In a school full of girls who had straight hips, my hips stuck out and were soft and fleshy. In a school full of girls who had no ass, I had an ass that bounced and jiggled as I deliberately swayed my hips down the hall. I was the only girl in the school who had a squishy roll of fat right below the waist. It was just big enough to defeat my attempts to hide it under pleats. When I wore pants and sat down, I was also the only girl who had flesh spill out over her belt at her sides. In a school of size 2 and 4 waifs, I was a chubby size 12. And yet I felt beautiful when I looked at myself naked in a mirror. Everything was soft, smooth, and continuous. No bones sticking out or even visible. No sharp edges. No hollowed out spots. I had full, rounded cheeks on my face. My breasts were fleshy and had a pleasant give when I poked them. My hips pressed in when I touched them. My butt gave me a very nice cushion to sit on. The roll below my waist looked like it was supposed to be there. When I turned sideways in the mirror, my breasts had a nice bit of projection and tilted upwards. My stomach rounded outwards just a little below my breasts, and the roll below my waist rounded upwards and outwards from my crotch and formed almost a shelf right below my belly button. Was I supposed to think I was fat because of this? I poked my index finger into the roll below my belly button and watched it sink about an inch. I turned slightly in the mirror and examined my profile. It was heresy, but I liked my chubby body and chubby face. Soft and smooth looked better to me than bony and angular. I thought that I was prettier than any of the available models for girls which I saw daily, of course, in the form of the adult women all around me.

I looked at my face in the mirror. Curly, burnished copper hair down to my shoulders and freckles in a swath across my nose and cheeks. I did not need "The Change," I felt, to be beautiful. I was already beautiful. I was so glad that I had had the good sense not to take those pills that came in the mail every month. What I saw in the mirror existed only because I had refused the pills. The pills killed girls' appetites. At school, while the other girls always ate a salad at lunch, I ate a full plate lunch like the boys. The girls stared in horror every day as I ate my lunch, but I didn't feel guilty.

One pill makes you small. Every day as I surveyed the slightness of the other girls in the school, I thought of Alice in Wonderland. Those damn pills had robbed the girls of what nature had intended for them. Ditto for the boys. Even in the chess club, there were no slight, bespectacled, intellectual geeks. There were no intellectual types in the school at all. Not even the teachers. All we did was memorize.

One pill makes you small. And stupid.

End of Chapter 1

This story is based on the Twilight Zone episode "Number 12 Looks Just Like You." Viacom owns the copyrights.

Version 2 of Chapter 1