Chapter 32E
Sleep threw her into a nightmare.
She was in a place without light. Her body had morphed and mutated in a way she couldn't understand. She felt like a plastic action figure melted with a hair dryer. Deformed and ruined. Wreckage fit for the Pacific Garbage Patch.
She couldn't breathe. Something heavy lay atop her chest, pinning her flat. A ponderous mass crushed her like an anvil—a mass that somehow was part of her—with her lungs pumping and flapping uselessly against its weight. Her ribcage sunk down and down, collapsing beneath a crushing tightness that grew heavier with each passing moment.
No air.
No air.
Dying.
No air.
She sank into the swallowing cocoon of her own body, so massive that it was collapsing in on itself like a black hole. Her mind was spinning-whirling-flying toward the event horizon…
…and she blinked awake in bed.
* * *
Morning. Probably. Crepuscular blue light traced a wan slant through the window, falling over her naked, panting chest. It gleamed with sweat, heaved with shallow respiration.
The nightmare lay over her like stink.
Just a dream.
But something still wasn't right.
She blinked, steadied her view of her torso like a camera's rack pull, and frowned at what she saw on her chest.
Are those boobs mine? They look different. Mine normally lie perfectly flat when I lie on my back. You could do your ironing on them. But now, they're casting shadows over my chest, like mountains when the sun's low. And the nipples look so big…so engorged…
Must be someone else's titties on my chest. Half-asleep, the thought nearly made sense.
Then she blinked again, groaned, and sat upright.
She felt the weight of her boobs as they slid greasily down her chest. Two jiggling pear-sized mounds of mammary-meat, soft and plump and perky, tumbling with gravity, stopping with a jolt. She cupped them, eyeing them suspiciously. They felt puffy and doughy and and dense. Her nipples seemed more substantial, more present.
They existed more than they did yesterday, however little sense that made.
Seriously, what's going on with my boobs? She hefted and jiggled her bare tits, feeling their mass and weight.Why were they so sore? So sensitive?
And so…big?
Was she pregnant?
Micah said they'd grown, but they can't have. I can still fit into a 32C. She rummaged on the floor for the dirty worn bra.
She strapped it on…and gasped. The 32C bra was choking her.
"Huhhh…!" Selena jerked; felt panic hammering against her ribs. It was as though she was being garrotted by gaslight in a Victorian-era alleyway. Fabric hands seemed to crush and squeeze around her flesh, sending mortifying spills of boob out around the edges of the straps and band. Her tits gushed like bread dough, flowing out of the bra every way they could.
Sucking in shallow breaths, Selena's skin erupted in shivers.
The bra fit yesterday. This is impossible. Unreality shuttled through her. Is this a dream-within-a-dream thing? Do I wake up for real right now?
Selena hurriedly stripped off the bra, and stood bare chested in her bedroom, staring at herself, facing a funhouse mirror version of herself. An impossible body. Yet she still couldn't be certain she was bigger.
She hunted around her dresser, found a tape measure, and took her bra size again.
Chest? 32". All was right in the universe.
Bust? 35".
Selena let the tape go slack, heaving out a relieved sigh.
Same measurement as yesterday. Her tits weren't growing, except perhaps in her head.
Of course. Silly to even check. Breasts can't grow a whole inch in 24 hours. Medically impossible. She was still dripping with the brain-rotting residue of her nightmare, imagining things that weren't real. Micah had thought she was bigger, but Micah had suffered multiple traumatic head injuries on the pitch.
Next stop, an A cup.
Nothing would stop this train.
As she began to get dressed, a shy little thought arrived. From her subconscious, perhaps.
Girlfriend…hate to tell you this, but you cheated with the tape.
She snarled, rage spiking inward. "Did not! DID NOT!"
It's supposed to be loose against the skin. You pulled it tight, making your measurement smaller. Her inner Jiminy Cricket wouldn't leave the subject alone. Measure yourself properly. If you were 35" at the bust by pulling that hard…what do you measure loose?
Selena swallowed, hands clenching to fists. It had been an extremely hard taping. Her breasts hurt with the force she'd applied against her bust. She'd witnessed flesh swelling like breast dough, muffin-topping above and below the tape, and even now, there was a red line of circulation laid across them like a stripe. A cold drop of sweat explored her skin, tickling and twisting its way down her back. It was warm indoors, but not especially.
She wouldn't be able to stop stressing about her breasts until she did it.
Once more, she put the tape around her bustline. Not tight. Loose.
36".
A depth-charge of shock—of absolute disgust—exploded out as she saw the number on the tape.
THIRTY FUCKING SIX.
A whole extra inch of chest, gained in one goddamn day. How? Goddamn how? Where did that inch come from? This is bullshit. I'm doing something wrong. The tape's at an angle.
She tried a different angle, got 36.3". Tried another, got 36.5". Then she threw the tape away before it made her vomit.
Horrified, hyperventilating, headfirst-sliding into panic, Selena wracked her mind for reasons this wasn't happening—couldn't be happening.
I need to be an A-cup by May! she wanted to scream. I can't afford to grow bigger!
Her phone rang.
No caller on the id.
She picked it up, and heard static. A faint hissing sibilance, like a radio station tuned to the edge of the signal, one band crashing into the next, both stations chattering each other to oblivion with noise.
When she hung up, a wave of dizziness rolled through her like a wrecking ball. She spasmed, and the convulsion made her tits jiggle with new heft, new bulk, new heaviness…
Staring down at their swaying globelike hemispheres, she felt the flight instinct of a pursued animal stalked by a predator. Run. Get away.
She couldn't.
The predators were part of her body.
* * *
After an hour spent freaking out, Selena realized the obvious answer.
The measuring tape was wrong.
She couldn't recall where the tape was from—why would you remember a thing like that? Maybe she'd swiped it from a college roommate, maybe from Miley Cyrus, maybe from the wardrobes backstage at the old Disney or Nick studios? Maybe it was defective—a QC issue had put a dotted line at the wrong spot, or something. Who knew?
But she could not regard its measurements as gospel.
I bet if I used the same tape measure I used in the ad shoot, I'd still be a 32C. I'm gonna go to the soundstage when it opens, and do exactly that.
She had the morning off, so she spent it at Trent Agostini's loft. He was her third boyfriend.
He was passed out on the pot-stinking couch. She woke him up with a blowjob. Over the next four hours, they had lazy, louche sex on the couch, in his bed, and finally in the shower.
"I love you, baby-girl," he said, holding hands in the afterglow of the bed session. "We're gonna get married someday, right?"
"Of course!" she said with bright plastic disingenousness.
"Right on!" he drawled, kissing her. "Let our love shine for the world to see. When, though? Give me a date."
"Soon, baby," Selena squeezed his hand, brushing her sweat tousled hair from the pillow. "When my career slows down. Everything's so busy. It's just rush rush rush, all the time. But soon we'll get married. Bet on it."
Then Trent asked her why he never let her take her to any of the lame hipster bars he hung out at. Asked why she never allowed anyone to see them together. Asked all sorts of risky questions.
He wants us to be exclusive. Uh-oh.
Selena made up a bullshit answer. "I dunno. What we have just feels so special I don't want to ruin it by going to a place with other people. It kind of ruins a moment to have paparazzi running around everywhere, don't you think? Don't worry. Soon we'll do it."
A smile dimpled her mascara-smeared face. Soon means never, baby. No matter how big your schlong is, or how good your BC Kush is.
If she was papped with Trent, Micah and Jared might see. Jared was chill with her fooling around with other guys, but Micah would get mad. Or was it the other way around? Fuck it. Too hard to tell. Better if all of these guys were kept on separate tracks.
"I need a shower." She said.
"I need to fuck again."
Her hand closed around his cock. It twitched to life. "Two birds, one stone."
Trent watched Selena's breasts ride down her chest as she sat up.
"Sel, maybe it's the light…but are your jugs getting bigger?"
* * *
Chapter 32F
Heart thudding, knuckles white, weaving through traffic, La Roux on the radio, panic stabbing out from the bassline.
Calm down or you'll crash. That'll be an interesting test of how big your breasts are. Five broken ribs or six?
She laughed at the thought, but only once. "Ha."
Selena drove to the soundstages she'd used for the commercial, and demanded to be let inside. She tried to sound normal, but probably failed. She felt like she'd go insane unless she could measure herself with the tape.
The tape. It had gained almost mystical significance in her mind, like a religious artifact. I have to have The Tape. All will be right with the world if I just have The Tape.
She would bleed for The Tape.
Kill for The Tape.
The wardrobe stylist at the ad studio didn't understand the urgency. "Mrs Gomez, if you need a measuring tape, they're ten dollars at any seamstress's supply shop."
Her eyes burned with frantic cobalt-fire need. "Listen, lady, I need the exact one I was measured with yesterday. The exact one. Thousands of dollars could be riding on this. Millions!"
That got a suspicious eyebrow-raise. "The wardrobe kit you used yesterday belonged to Emma Doughty, our in-house makeup technician. Right now, she is on location in Scottsdale. She will be back, oh, a week."
"Then," Selena said with teeth bared like fresh ice, "I will be back in a week."
She swung her ass around and left.
* * *
Days rolled forward with a frantic, nonsense bounce, like a leashed dog dragged behind a moving car.
Selena resolved to not measure, touch, or worry about her breasts. No point, until she had the measuring tape. She wore a 32D around the houses, because fuck you. She ate virtually nothing. She took amphetamines and DNP and ephedrine and caffeine. She even popped the cap on one of those Flatter Chest, Fuller Life products, and swallowed two of the pills. Let's hope I'm not secretly a Somali orphan. She screwed Jared and Micah and Trent and Ethan and some below-the-line dude from MTV whose name she forgot in an hour.
She did everything she could to forget about her potentially-expanding chest.
The way it wobbled when it shouldn't have wobbled. The way deep oscillations vibrated through her tits she braked her Lambo suddenly, or sat down in a chair. The way she couldn't jump without pain ripping hotly across her chest, as though her boobs were seeking to take flight from the nest of her body. The way even a 32D bra seemed like a snug fit. The way her boyfriends—with the exception of Ethan, who had his own issues—seemed to notice. Always staring at her tits, going wow, making goo-goo awestruck faces when her bra snapped off, desperate to touch and feel and suck her jiggly globes.
Most of all, she tried not to think about the possibility that things were getting worse.
She got a call from Charity Lispector, the head of Flatter Chest, Fuller Life.
"Good evening, Miss Gomez!" A waspish middle-aged woman's voice jagged across her hearing with sandpaper roughness. Selena winced.
Charity had the smallest tits Selena had ever seen. Her chest was basically concave. She didn't need a bra, she needed plugs. Selena wondered if this woman had founded Flatter Chest, Fuller Life out of personal inadequacy. If I can't have boobs, none of you can have them.
"Oh, hi Charity," she said, bright and sparkly as her boobs throbbed in her bra. "How are you?"
"Fine. Checking in on your progress. How are we looking for the big A cup reveal in May?"
"Um, my progress is…great!" Selena sweated guiltily, scratching the band on a 34D bra. The 32D had proven too uncomfortable to wear.
"What are your current measurements?"
"Sorry, this is not a good time!" she half-shrieked, wild with panic. "I have to go now! Bye!"
Charity heard that note of fear, and pursued it like a hawk.
"Sel, is anything wrong? We've got a lot riding on your 32A reveal. If you can't make it on time…well, I need to know now, so I can make other plans for the sponsorship. If anything's wrong, we can help you…"
"I said bye!"
She hung up. God, even thinking about her breast size triggered a little terror attack.
Then she made eye contact with Ethan Krantz, her fourth boyfriend, whose apartment she was currently in.
"Ugh."
Her other, other, other side piece, Ethan was a small, sensitive, empathetic guy, with box-framed emo glasses, hair in a swoop, and a t-shirt that said THIS IS WHAT A FEMINIST LOOKS LIKE.
"Was that the breast reduction sponsor?" he asked. "Were they actually asking for your measurements?"
"Yeah."
"That's horrible, Sel!" he wrung his hands with ludicrous theater-kid seriousness. "They're turning you into an object."
"They're paying a million billion squillion dollars for me, so that object is a goddamn priceless antique. Ethan…I have a question…"
She grasped the band shirt she'd stolen from Jared, pulled it up over her head, then posed in front of Ethan with her hands on her hips, hitting cheesecake shots.
"Are my boobs the same size as the last time you saw me? Or are they…"
She spat out the word.
"…bigger?"
She unhooked her bra, and let it fall. Her boobs swung down heavily, their surfaces glowing by candlelight. Ethan was a bona-fide Scented Candles Man. The only such that Selena knew, or desired to know.
Please say I'm not. She needed to hear that no, the curves of her breast's slopes weren't filling out, they weren't hanging heavily with weight, they weren't casting longer shadows down her belly than before.
Ethan held out his hands in surrender. "Sel, I never look at your…chest when we're…intimate. You're not a body to me. You're a person!"
Clenching fists, she smiled hideously. "Answer the question or that person will walk outside your apartment and key your car."
He shook his head, raising placating hands. "No…you're not any bigger."
Did he even look? She sighed, and leaned against an ornamental Buddha statue. "Are you telling the truth?"
"I would never lie to you, Sel," still with that stare, that seemed to be going right past her. "You deserve the truth."
I'll take it. She wanted desperately to believe that the plan was still on track. "I'm gonna be an A-cup soon," she said. "You won't find me any less attractive when I have no breasts, right?"
"No!" He solemnly stared with eyes that reached past her face. "If anything, I find a small chest more attractive. You'll be hotter than ever in my eyes as an A cup!"
As he said this, his gaze kept flickering down from her face to her hooters, which swung and dangled pendulously, casting long shadows down her taut, toned belly. Was there…something there? Something he couldn't say? She couldn't tell and couldn't read his eyes.
I just have to trust him.
"For the ad, they made me read a line about how men secretly want small tits."
"And that's absolutely true, Sel. All my friends prefer smaller breasts."
He stepped forward, opening his arms for her.
"Remember, the smaller your breasts are, the closer I can get to your heart."
Then she fell forward into his embrace. "Oh, shut up and fuck me already." This dude was so fucking cheugy, but sometimes that was just what the doctor ordered.
I can still make it, she thought as they began stripping each other. Five weeks to an A cup. And I'll be hotter than ever.
"It's us against the world," Ethan smiled as they embraced in bed. "Bodies change, but who you are never will. Believe me, Sel, you are not your body. How you look does not matter."
* * *
After ten minutes of sex and fifty minutes of talk—Ethan shared his thoughts on bell hooks' radical praxis with regards to manspreading, while she tried to find an excuse to leave—she got a call.
Not from the stalker. Not from Mr Static, who never spoke except in a voice of roil and hiss. From the ad place that that Flatter Chest, Fuller Life had contracted for the advertising spot.
The makeup technician had returned.
They had the measuring tape.
Yes! Buoyed by exhuberance, Selena drove through LA traffic to the studio, let herself in—all the staff were looking at her like she was a weirdo by now, and she wondered what the front desk girl had told them—and grabbed the key off the check in girl.
She walked down the hall, past a variety of best-boys and gaffers, then let herself into the soundstage.
It was large. Dark. Now that the camera mounts and riggins were disassembled, it seemed sepulchral in its emptiness. Her footballs landed like thunder on plasterboard floors. Her nose wrinkled: someone had repainted the soundproofing. In the dressing room, she found the makeup kit. Trays and pans. Lip gloss. Nailpolish and nail remover. Little wads of foam, so you could stuff a bra if you had the opposite problem she did. All the cantrips of a busy woman. And with them…
…a coiled-up tape measure, laid as neatly as a restaurant aperitif.
And here we go. Selena smiled, resisting the urge to fist-pump. She snatched it up, and unrolled it.
She unhooked the bra, wincing as a loose wire scraped the hemisphere of her busty left jug. Why was she so sensitive? Didn't matter. It was all a fantasy. And now she would prove it.
I don't know what nightmare or crack fantasy this is, but with this tape, it's in the past. I'm locking it there, and turning the key.
She raised her arms, looped the tape fast, and took her underbust measurement.
32", on the dot.
Excitement scurrying across her skin, she loosened the tape, and wrapped it around the bulging curve of her bust.
35 inches. She chanted, trying to manifest it. 35 inches. Come on tape, your mouth to God's ears.
Then she opened her eyes, and looked at the notch of the tape as it crossed over itself on her chest.
38"
Disbelief smashed into her. Her vision swam. The tape fell with a clatter.
Selena Gomez screamed and screamed. Her balloonlike boobs jiggled and wobbled as howls tore out of her lungs. The sound pierced and tore through the vast room like an ice drill, stark and cold and endless, driven out of her by anguish and horror. She heard people running down the hallway, heard them asking if she was okay—which she fucking wasn't.
Not a C cup, a D cup, or even an E cup.
She was a 32F.