“Another crucial rule,” Zaidee continued. “During your stay in the mansion, there may be times when you’d rather not be filmed. Unfortunately, that’s something you gals are gonna have to learn to live with. Remember, above all else, From Fat to Fabulous is a television show. You can’t ditch the cameras just because you’re having a bad day.”
She paused, letting what she’d said sink in. Then she continued, “In addition to our roving cameramen, there are twenty-five cameras stationed throughout the house. Some are obvious, like this one,” she said, gesturing toward the swiveling camera mounted in the corner. “Others, not so much.” She pointed toward a small vase sitting atop the mantle that I could only guess housed a camera. “So please, keep in mind that at all times we’ll have eyes and ears watching you. Okay?”
“When do we get to see where we’ll be sleeping?” Luisa asked.
Zaidee grinned. “You won’t have to wait much longer.”
On that note, she left, promising that the host of From Fat to Fabulous would be in soon to take us on a tour of the house.
Luisa turned to me. “You want to be roomies, Kat?” she asked.
“Definitely,” I said, feeling relieved. I had envisioned myself being the last one picked.
“Maybe we can share the middle bedroom. If that’s okay with everybody else, of course,” I added.
“I wouldn’t go making plans if I were you. I highly doubt they’ll let us choose,” Alyssa interjected. “We’re probably going to draw straws.”
I hoped Alyssa was wrong. Knowing my luck I’d get stuck rooming with Regan.
A few minutes later, a tall, good-looking man with light blond hair and vivid blue eyes entered the room. I wondered where he’d come from; I hadn’t heard the front door open.
He smiled brightly at us as he stood in the center of the living room. He was wearing a pair of leather shoes, pressed black slacks, and an expensive-looking gray sweater. He had the fresh-faced good looks of a J. Crew model, with classic features and an all-American build. I stared down at my blue-jean skirt and red button-down top. It had seemed like a good choice earlier, but next to this Hollywood guy, I felt horribly underdressed.
For a long time, the host didn’t say anything, he just stood there, watching us. The cameramen hovered, filming us from a variety of angles. There were three of them in all, plus a man holding a gigantic boom mic, much bigger than the ones I’d seen them use before. This was obviously a very important moment on From Fat to Fabulous. I had a fleeting temptation to break the ice with a joke, but decided against it.
“Hello, girls, and welcome to From Fat to Fabulous,” he finally said. His voice was deep and smooth. “I’m Jagger Roth, your host for this magnificent, life-altering adventure. Over the next fifteen weeks you’ll embark on the biggest weight-loss journey of your lives, a journey with some very high stakes involved. For some of you this experience will be exhilarating. For others, it will be devastating.”
He was going overboard just a touch. From Fat to Fabulous wasn’t a matter of life and death.
“All of America will watch your lives unfold. Some of you will crumble; others will rise above the rest. Who knows,” he said, glancing around, “what type of stardom may await? I see breakout potential in all of you. Any one of you girls could become the next big thing.”
“Yeah,” Luisa snickered, “emphasis on the big.”
“I see you’ve all spent some time getting acquainted, and that’s good. The information you’ve gathered from your fellow housemates will be of great importance in the next few minutes. The more you know, the better chance you have of winning this next competition.”
We all looked around the room suspiciously, trying to mentally catalogue everything that had been said during the course of the afternoon.
“But before we get started with our premiere competition, allow me to take you on a long-awaited tour of the mansion. Since you arrived in the house earlier today, the rooms upstairs have been locked.” He paused, staring at us deviously. “No more.”
He produced an oversized key ring, the kind bailiffs carry in old black-and-white prison films. “Follow me, girls. Your destiny awaits.”
First Jagger took us to a spacious home gym, located, ironically, off the kitchen. It had been outfitted with three treadmills, two exercise bikes, an elliptical runner, and a StairMaster.
“By working out in here, you can each earn up to a thousand dollars per day for your Fat2Fab Bank. All it takes is two hours. Two hours a day and you can earn a grand,” he said.
A handsome, muscular guy came strutting over. “You’ve heard of Gold’s Gym? Welcome to Greg’s Gym!” he boomed, flexing one of his biceps. “I’m your all-in-one personal trainer, nutritionist, weight-loss guru. When you got a problem with weight, you come to me. I’m your go-to guy.”
I didn’t see how a Fabio wannabe could help me shed pounds. I made a mental note to stay as far away from steroid freak Greg as possible.
We trailed along behind Jagger as he walked quickly up the stairs. The camera crew followed in close pursuit.
When we reached the top of the landing, Jagger stopped and spun around so that he was facing us. “As you will soon find out, the mansion is equipped with several bedrooms. Some are luxurious, and some are not so luxurious,” he said. “Most of you will be sharing, but one lucky soul will have her own deluxe suite equipped with a king-sized bed, private sitting room, and a spacious bathroom with a Jacuzzi tub. The rest of you will be bunking down in one of the two remaining bedrooms—each with its own pros and cons. The fate of the game may rest on your sleeping arrangements.”
Regan gasped.
“What do you mean?”
“All in good time, all in good time,” Jagger said mysteriously. Using one of the keys from the gigantic loop, he unlocked the middle of the three rooms, the one Luisa and I had discussed sharing. He waited in the hall while we wandered inside. The room was bare, but spacious, and had been outfitted with two double beds and a small sofa.
“Not too shabby,” Luisa commented. “I could sleep here. What do you say, Kat?”
“You guys are so naïve.” Alyssa smirked. “Didn’t you listen to what Jagger said? We don’t get to pick our rooms, we have to compete for them.”
“Not necessarily. He hasn’t told us how the rooms are going to be divided up, only that our sleeping arrangements will impact the outcome of the game,” I reminded her.
Jagger let us look around for a few minutes before calling us into the master bedroom for a quick peek.
“Oh my God!” Regan stopped so quickly I nearly slammed into her. “It’s big!”
That was an understatement. Gigantic would have been more on target. You could have crammed my entire apartment into that bedroom—twice.
“Kat, what do you say you and I share this room?” Luisa joked.
“Over my dead body,” Alyssa said. Jagger gave us a few minutes to look around before summoning us back to the tour.
He gestured across the hall from the master suite to a room he dubbed the “Confession Chamber.”
“You’ll have diary sessions in here every single day,” he announced, rapping lightly on the door. “You may decide to go in of your own free will, or you may wait until the producers instruct you to enter. The choice is yours.” He didn’t open the door to show us the inside. “It is now time to go back downstairs. We have many other rooms to see,” Jagger said, “and important matters to discuss.”
He led us on a lightning-fast tour through the rest of the house, listing the various amenities of different rooms. Every room in the house was the same in one way: None offered the Internet, a television, or a phone. The only perks we had were out back—a large swimming pool and a hot tub.
Well, I thought wryly as he showed us the pool, I won’t be using that.
“Twice a week, you’ll meet with me out by the pool to have a private one-on-one interview. Nothing formal, just a nice, casual chat about how things are going for you on
the show,” he informed us.
When we reached the kitchen things became markedly more interesting. “While living in the Fat to Fabulous mansion, you’ll be required to follow a routine,” Jagger said. “Breakfast will be at nine o’clock each morning, lunch at noon, and dinner at seven P.M. As you can see, the refrigerator is stocked with healthy items.” He opened the door to reveal a stash of fruits and vegetables that hadn’t been there earlier. “But you will only be allowed to snack between the hours of two P.M. and four P.M. At all other times the refrigerator will remain locked.”
“I thought you weren’t going to starve us?” Janelle asked, looking concerned. “Yeah, why shouldn’t we be allowed to eat whenever we want?”
Alyssa chimed in. “It’s not like the stuff in that fridge is going to make us any fatter.”
“Au contraire,” Jagger said. “You won’t starve. Should you become overwhelmed with hunger pangs or late-night cravings, there’s one place in the mansion that’s always serving.” He moved to the far end of the kitchen and began pulling open a thick, wooden door. There was no sign on the outside, nothing to indicate the virtual treasure-trove that waited inside.
“The Tomb of Temptation,” Jagger announced, looking gleeful. “Go on, girls, take a peek.”
I remembered it from the article. One giant sin-fest waiting to happen. Gingerly, I walked in through the door and came face-to-face with the largest pantry I had ever seen in my life; it was almost as big as the entire kitchen. The Tomb of Temptation was filled with shelves lined with every type of junk food known to man. One wall was packed with sweets: cookies, cakes, candy bars, donuts, pudding. Even chewing gum. The opposite wall housed an assortment of Cheez-Its, nuts, crackers, breads, and every brand of chips I’d ever heard of. “All right, back up slowly and nobody gets hurt,” I joked, making my way out of The Tomb of Temptation and into the kitchen. I needed some breathing room.
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!