Kiri and Lacey had been close friends since they met in Junior High School. Both fairly plain looking girls, with more or less plain interests, they rapidly found themselves invisible in their school, which was quite large, a place where the only people who were noticed being those who tried to be noticeable. Well, for some it was easier (and less intentional) than others. It was a fairly stereotypical breakdown of different cliques and groups - nerds, jocks, cheerleaders, gamers, preps, and so on and so forth. Outside of these different groups, who by purposeful choices or simply by being who they were became the only people that anyone in the school paid attention to, everyone else simply lingered in the background, most of them blissfully content with their unimportant lives, like extras in a film.
But Kiri and Lacey weren't like these people. They really *did* want to be noticed. But they simply didn't have the bravery, the confidence, the creativity or the eccentricity to stick out like the various popular groups did. Even the teachers were affected by the differing levels of interest that each student evoked - classes often felt like a bad episode of Boy Meets World, with the same people always being the one's to answer the questions, get in trouble, or say something funny or awkward. Everyone else just seemed to be filling space. Kiri and Lacey tried to speak out, tried to raise their hands to answer questions, tried to study really hard to become the smart kids in class, or to dress up and get made up to be the pretty girls, but they always came up flat (no pun intended) compared to whoever they were trying to compete with. It was like there was a limited number of *real* seats in class, and everyone else just had to sit back and watch the show, like coach potatoes grimly observing the passage of their own lives.
Sound depressing? Well, that's how Kiri and Lacey saw it. Really, they got attention too, just not from the people they wanted. Various other members of the "unnoticed" as they called them (a group in which they resentfully placed themselves as well) attempted to become friends or even to dote upon the moderately if unexceptionally pretty girls, but to no effect or avail.
And they were pretty girls. Kiri was always fairly tall for her age, and during the summer before high school she (much to her pleasure) had what she imagined to be her final growth spurt, sprouting up to 5'11, just shy of the six foot mark she had always desired. In concert with her long, straight and shimmering blonde hair (she'd always taken great care of it), her large, pale blue eyes and her subtle but infectious smile, Kiri wasn't all that bad to look at.
However, she had been plagued (ironically) by the fact that her bitterness regarding her (perceived) 'class' standing in the school caused her rarely to smile, and to suffer from a lack of confidence that caused her to hunch and to wear most unflattering clothes. Of course, it didn't help that she didn't have much on her to flatter - as a cost of her height, Kiri was more or less straight up and down all through Junior High. And while it was much to excitement that over the summer she (finally) grew breasts, the absence of any real curves and the mediocrity of even her most recent endowments left much to be desired in comparison to many of her female peers.
Lacey suffered from a similar frustrating balance of physical and personal traits. Lacey was strikingly beautiful, with voluminous curls of bright ginger red hair and striking, wide eyes that garnered a penetrating gaze enhanced by the deep hazel colour of her irises, her facial structure and overall physical appearance hinted at a wonderful and unlikely blend of Anglo-Saxon and Hispanic origins; Lacey had won several youth beauty contests in elementary and her first grade of junior high, a testament to her (perhaps unnoticed) beauty.
However, Lacey came from a poor family, and so her clothes were mostly hand-me-downs from her much heavier sister, leaving her with the appearance of a cute, young, but underdeveloped girl, instead of a striking youth and model. This was exacerbated by the fact that, while she was quite well proportioned even in junior high, that she was an astoundingly petite girl, standing only 5'0 tall once she reached high school. This rapidly removed her from the opportunity of setting herself apart from the dull masses by winning more modeling competitions – the height requirements always outstretched what she possessed. While her growth spurt over the summer was just as exciting to her as Kiri's, its relative results were far less impressive compared with her new peer audience at the high school level, and probably would barely have been noticed had she been held back and remained in the Junior High arena. In proportion to the rest of her body, she was quite curvaceous, but relative to the rest of her peers her desirable set of bodily proportions remained unnoticed.
It was their first week in High School, and the girls had already scoped out a sweet spot to hang out. The school was basically a square shaped equivalent of an infinity sign, with two auditoriums at the center of each loop. At the outer point of the four corners of the school, there were small green-rooms filled with plant life and trees, and there were several benches and tables to sit at. The girls had found a table where they could sit and mostly be obscured by a large fern, but still people-watch during class changes. The pair sat, looking somewhat defeated, and watched the diversity of passersby in their new 'home.'
"I feel stupid for being excited now," said Kiri, hunched over at the picnic table, which was just too small for her long form, "I would say that I'm at *best* average, if not a little small compared to most of these girls." The girls had each shared their excitement in the week before school began regarding their summer growth spurts, both of them believing that their new ‘assets’ might earn them an escape pass from the ranks of the ‘unnoticed.’ However, after observing the rest of their peers, and noticing that they were far from the only girls to enjoy the benefits of a summer growth spurt, the pair had felt rather deflated and had quickly lost this sense of optimism.
Lacey looked over, spurning any attempts at hiding her fury at Kiri's comment, "Small? *You're* small? Kiri, you're almost six feet tall -" Kiri interjected, emphasizing "*ALMOST*," but Lacey contined “- you're crazy tall, you're like an Amazon compared to most of these girls! Look at *me*, I barely come up to the boobs of most these girls!"
With exasperation, Lacey, who had been sitting mostly upright, leaning slightly to the side to peer at the passing crowds, dropped her forehead flat onto the table in front of them with a loud *thunk*.
Kiri paused for a moment, rubbing the back of her friend's head. "I know it might feel crappy to be small, but at least all the guys *look* tall to you! Most of the girls here, at least among the juniors, are taller than the guys! They're gonna freak out when they see me and run away," Kiri finished, rising from the table and walking rigidly about, as if to emulate Godzilla or some city-smashing colossal robot. “That’s not to mention the fact that it’s hard to be attracted to guys who still look like children…” she lamented, hunching over further at the table.
Lacey, who had rolled her head to the side to look at her friend, couldn't help but giggle. "And I know ... you were talking about boobs, not height ..." Lacey said, taking the moment to lift her head up and stare down at her chest. She knew there were boobs there, she had to carry them around everywhere, but to the outside observer her large-sized brown t-shirt draped over her, leaving virtually no hint of the curves beneath. The curves of her lower half offered no reprieve in bringing out her womanly proportions, equally blanketed by an overlarge pair of grey sweat pants, narrowly held up by a string drawn to its fullest tension.
Kiri smiled weakly, and her face moved into a gesture of empathy and understanding as her head tilted to the side, "Yeah, your clothes really don't do you justice. You have great tits! It’s just hard to tell when you’re stuck in Layna’s old, baggy clothes.” Layna, Lacey’s older sister, was quite chubby in high school, and also had several inches on Lacey, though still only coming up to about 5’3 in grade 10. However, this weight, while torturing her in her early youth, had panned out in the long run, as Layna had grown steadily over the course of high school, her extra weight turning out to be a delayed and over large repository of ‘baby fat,’ that ultimately contributed to an impossible-to-miss bombshell body. Layna was four years older than Lacey, and had graduated high school the previous year. She had won prom queen and student council president – the girls of the school feared and envied her, the boys could barely keep their jaws from dropping and were helpless to her every wish.
“I don’t want to talk about her,” Lacey said sharply, stuffing her face into her arms, which she had lifted onto the table to use as a pillow, “sometimes I wish I could be fat, if it meant that I’d end up like her,” she mumbled, her words barely audible, muffled by her arms and the sleeves of her over-large t-shirt.
Kiri nodded knowingly, “I’d give up being tall if I could be as beautiful as her,” she said, slouching even more at the desk.
Nina was giggling endlessly, listening to this conversation in the corner. “They’re perfect, the most perfectly perfect of perfectest perfects!” She said, bubbling over with excitement, bouncing around the green room. She was, of course, invisible to the girls, and inaudible to boot, but had been listening to their complaints and laments from the beginning. “These two are going to loooovvvveee the Coin Game…but we still need more players. I’ll have to keep watching, and see who they want to play with!” she said, with a giggle that hinted uncomfortably at a deeper malevolence, an unkindness not expected from such an innocent form.
Nina was not going to have to wait long, for just moments after she resettling in her corner, Lacey’s head rose from the table, her jaw dropping as she saw …