Chapter 2

On my way home that evening, another guy stopped me to ask for my Snapchat.

After politely declining, I walked slowly down the street by myself.

The summer evening was chilly under the overcast sky, and it looked like it was about to pour.

I caught my reflection in the glass window of a boutique shop.

My face was small and delicate, with sharp, naturally alluring features.

I remembered what Maya always said to me with envy, "Even girls who spend six figures on plastic surgery don't have a nose as perfect as yours! Every time we go out, everyone's staring at you. It's insane!"

I knew I was pretty now.

When I went out, guys would often pay for my drinks, ask for my contact info, and I had even been approached by talent scouts.

But before dating Carter, my life was completely different.

I had been overweight since I was a kid. In high school, I weighed nearly two hundred pounds. My eyes were almost swallowed up by the fat on my cheeks.

"Fatty."

"Ugly girl."

I had heard every insult in the book.

Because of that, I was incredibly insecure. The bigger I got, the more I hid in baggy clothes, which only made me look worse. I had crushes, too, but whenever those boys found out I liked them, they reacted as if they'd been deeply insulted, yelling slurs at me.

But whenever I tried to lose weight, my parents always told me I didn't need to. They said I was cute just the way I was.

They were both on the heavier side themselves, so they didn't see obesity as a problem.

My teenage years were spent entirely in the shadow of other people's mockery.

Until I met Carter in an online game.

He was captivated by my voice and insisted on adding me. After playing together a few more times, we became close.

After some time, Carter confessed his feelings to me.

I stayed up all night agonizing over it.

I knew Carter was well-off. While we played together, he gifted me countless in-game skins and tried to send me real-life gifts, which I always refused.

And even though he didn't have clear photos of his face on his feed, there were plenty of pictures of him vacationing all over the world, showing his back.

He had a great build, and the hotels he stayed at were incredibly expensive.

I knew he only liked my voice. If he saw the real me, he would never love me.

But I really, truly liked him.

Carter was so cheerful. Back then, whenever I was sad, he would always comfort me.

He would even send out gift cards in the game's public chat lobby, paying strangers to leave nice messages to cheer me up.

In the end, I said yes.

I hid my weight and all my personal details, terrified that he might look me up.

I even tried to test him once.

"What if I'm not pretty?"

He replied instantly, "With a voice as beautiful as yours, how could you not be pretty? Babe, stop teasing me."

"Babe, when can we finally meet? I miss you so much."

"Babe, let's go to the same college so we can see each other every day."

I stared at the screen for a long time, and finally made up my mind to lose weight.

From that day on, I went on a brutal fitness regime.

It didn't matter if I was too hungry to sleep, if my stomach burned with acid reflux, or if I collapsed from exhaustion after working out.

No matter how much my parents begged me to take just one bite of their high-calorie food, I refused.

I just wanted to be skinny.

I lived like that for nearly a year. I didn't touch a single high-calorie meal. Countless times, I cried myself to sleep from hunger, but the thought of him kept me going.

Finally, I did it.

From 180 pounds to 160, then 120, and finally, 110 pounds.

I started learning how to take care of my skin, do my makeup, style my hair, and dress up.

During this time, Carter suggested visiting me several times, but I always made up excuses to dodge him.

I always felt like I wasn't pretty enough yet.

Until the boys in my class started looking at me differently. I started receiving love letters.

Walking down the street, guys would blush, ask for my number, and tell me how gorgeous I was.

Only then did it hit me: I had actually become beautiful.

I finally gathered the courage to meet Carter. I applied to the same college as him, and we agreed to meet up during freshman orientation week.

But...

It turned out I was just a game to him.

I thought all those sweet words were real.

But now that I thought about it, he had never even told me his real name.

Even the name "Carter Bennett" was something I found out through Maya's gaming crush.

From beginning to end, he had never truly loved me.