I was in first period when I noticed something off about the air. It was a strange, metallic kind of scent that was just faint enough to ignore, but still noticeable if you focused on it. I was originally thinking it was a gas leak, but nobody else seemed to be aware of what was going on.
Second period rolled around and I noticed that the teacher had a little bit of a gut on her. It was round and taut, like she’d swallowed a bowling ball and it’d settled around her middle. She didn’t even seem to be aware that she had it, based on how she always seemed to be surprised when it bumped into things. I didn’t know it at the time, but most of the other students around me were experiencing the same thing around their own bellies. I was still my skinny, androgynous self, no round gut in sight, but I seemed to be the only one in the building like that.
The third period science class was when things were starting to get noticeably bigger. The scent in the air was suddenly too strong to ignore, but again I was apparently the only one who could smell it. My lab partner Judy was having trouble buttoning her lab coat due to her bloated abdomen, not that she was aware of it. She said that her coat probably shrunk in the wash, which was what a lot of the other students were claiming. Were they just oblivious to the fact that their bodies were staring to look like beach balls with arms and legs? It seemed like it, because I flat pointed it out to Judy, and she looked at me like I was crazy.
“Nobody’s turning into balloons,” she protested, “Are you high or something?”
I kept my silence until fourth period when I found my friend Brian blocking the door because he was stuck in the frame. By now everyone else looked like their torsos had been transformed into yoga balls, and their limbs were starting to swell up with them. Everyone was confused about why they all were getting stuck in the doorframe except for me. I asked if they were aware of the fact that they were turning into balloons, and to my surprise a few of them actually considered it.
“I don’t feel any different,” Brian shrugged, “and I don’t see anyone turning into balls, but I mean I did get stuck in the door so... Wait, how come you’re the only one who thinks everyone’s turning into balloons?”
I didn’t have an answer until lunch. I was sitting in my normal spot, watching the cafeteria like a hawk. People were similarly sitting down to lunch, or at the very least sitting as best they could with their orbicular bodies. I heard a few people wondering about why their seats were suddenly feeling tight, or why their bodies kept pressing up against each other. Everyone was starting to look like perfect spheres with stubby arms and little feet, and it was actually kinda of ridiculous.
Then, one girl wound up on her back, having trouble standing back up again, panicking as her short fat arms and little feet flailed around as she tried to right herself. That’s when I heard someone say...
“Holy shit! That girl turned into a roly-poly!”
It was only after someone fell over that anyone noticed what was happening. Soon more and more people started falling over, and more and more people were starting to be aware that they were all turning into bowling ball people. By the end of the day, everyone was aware that they had turned into balloons.
That’s when, all of a sudden...