Hannah couldn't wait for in-person classes to resume. She was excited about returning to campus after being cooped up back in her hometown with her parents, separated from all her friends at university.
She hadn't minded Zoom classes all that much, especially after her friend Vanessa had shown her the feature "hide self view." She didn't like looking at her own image in her webcam. It didn't exactly flatter her pale, freckled complexion. When her mind had wandered during class, her eyes would drift to her own small square, and she would internally critique her round cheeks, her high forehead, her nearly invisible light-blonde eyebrows, her thin lips, and her red hair in its messy bun. She would wonder if she would ever look old enough to get into a bar without being carded.
She had taken to having Zoom calls with her friends outside of class, as well. She and her two closest friends, Vanessa and Joshua, would convene on a group video call on the odd Friday night to catch up. Joshua had a Zoom license, so the three friends could talk to their hearts' content without being cut off by the 40-minute time limit imposed on the free version.
It always brightened Hannah's day to see her two friends, albeit virtually. They would swap stories of what they had been doing to pass the seemingly endless hours in lockdown, share gossip about their classmates, and just muse on life experiences and philosophies, the way they used to do in the common room until the wee hours of the morning.
Hannah's mood buoyed as soon as she joined the call. There was Vanessa looking as beautiful as always: her brown eyes twinkling out from below her curls, her delicate features brightening into a radiant smile. "Good to see you, Hannah!" she chimed. There was Joshua, wearing the thick-framed coke-bottle glasses he wore after he had taken his contacts out, looking slightly tawnier than she remembered, but with the same no-nonsense short-back-and-sides haircut. He was sitting in what appeared to be an immaculate bedroom, a sagging bookshelf visible off to one corner.
Joshua was a sweet, quiet boy who seemed younger than his nineteen years. He had lived on the same hallway as Hannah and Vanessa Freshman year, and the two girls had made efforts to include the reclusive young man when they went to the dining hall for meals. He soon felt comfortable enough to come out of his shell with the two of them, and the discovered him to be whip-smart and gifted with a wry sense of humor. He had been spending more time outdoors since returning home.
"My mom keeps yelling at me to wear more sunscreen," he told the girls. "She says I don't even look Taiwanese anymore. I guess I do look kinda Filipino..."
The girls laughed. "Well, let me know if you wanna use any of the whitening cream my mom's always giving me," Vanessa chimed. "I told her 'No, way, why are Dominicans so into whitening cream, even after we saw what it did to Sammy Sosa?'"
"I can't exactly relate," said Hannah, sheepishly. "I'm about as white as they come."
"Hey, Vanessa, you should give the whitening cream to Hannah. Maybe it'll make her turn invisible!"
The three friends chuckled, Joshua hardest of all.
"Why don't you try getting some sun?" Vanessa suggested. "I mean, use some sunscreen, of course."
"Well, I would," said Hannah, not quite sure how to say what was on her mind, "but my bathing suit... It doesn't, uh, fit me anymore."
"Really? You don't look like you've gained weight," said Vanessa.
"Well, I can assure you, I have." said Hannah, her face reddening as she looked down at her desk.
"I've gotta go," said Joshua, "but I'll leave the meeting open so you two can talk about girl stuff."
The girls bade Joshua a good night as he turned off his webcam and mic.
"Well, that's a first!" said Vanessa, "Usually Joshua will stay on the line for as long as humanly possible when you're on the call!"
"Oh, stop it, he does not have a crush on me." Hannah retorted. Vanessa had frequently teased her about the way Josh would fawn over her. At this point, it felt more like a running joke.
Vanessa regaled Hannah with some tales of her online dating misadventures, some of which Joshua would not have been able to handle. Whenever Vanessa or Hannah spoke openly about their sex lives, he would turn bright crimson and look anywhere but at the faces of his two friends. Vanessa joked that he looked like an eighth-grade boy who'd been dragged into a lingerie store by his older sister.
"Suffice it to say, the Passport feature has allowed me to discover that there truly are douchebags all over the world."
Hannah laughed. "And that dick pics are universal."
Vanessa grinned wryly, "Well, we already knew that. Speaking of dirty pictures, you're not the only one who's having trouble fitting into her bathing suit. The only nudes I have are all at least 8 months old. Now I feel too fat to take any new ones.
Hannah's face grew serious. "Vanessa, I need to talk to you about this...bathing suit situation."
"It's not a big deal, Hannah! All of us put on a little weight in lockdown. What else is there to do?"
"It's not that--it's where I put on all the weight."
"Oh, did you finally grow a butt?" Vanessa teased.
"No," said Hannah with a roll of her eyes, "still just rockin' a tiny white girl butt. I'm carrying a lot of weight in my... In my chest."
Looking down abashedly, the swell of her nascent bust under her navy-blue sweatshirt filled half her field of vision.
"Wow, so you've... You've gone through, like, puberty?"
"I'm 20, Vanessa! I already went through puberty, so what gives?"
"I mean, I guess you're a late bloomer...You gotta let me see."
Hannah squirmed in her desk chair.
"Show me dem titties, girl!" Vanessa barked, in her best parody of a misogynist. Hannah laughed despite herself.
"Hold on a minute," Hannah replied. She felt extremely self-conscious about her breasts, even around Vanessa. She took a deep breath to compose herself before pulling her baggy sweatshirt over her head.
"See?" she said, sitting up a little straighter so as to get her chest into the frame. She arched her back slightly displaying her ample bust beneath the cotton t-shirt which had once fit with room to spare. The fabric was now stretched taught between her massive breasts, her normally light-pink nipples darkening as they responded to the night chill and hardened to points that poked through the thin material.
"Take your top off!" Vanessa rasped, continuing her impression of a strip club patron.
"Wait, I'm not wearing a bra. Hold on."
"Aw, c'mon, it's just me!"
"I'm shy!"
"Fair enough." Vanessa had said with a sigh.
In his bedroom, Joshua paused the video game he was playing. He had been unable to sleep, after all, even with the soothing sound of his two best friends' voices softly emanating from his laptop on his bedside table. He picked up his computer and placed it on his lap, sliding the cover over the lens cap as an extra precaution.
Hannah hadn't been bothering to wear bras due to the fact that she hardly ever met anybody in person, and it was just as well--she had grown out of her B-cups as her breasts had continued to swell to... well, whatever size they were now. All she knew was that they were verging on cartoonish in size. When she caught her reflection in a mirror, she would be reminded of the class clown in middle school putting two gator-skin dodgeballs up his shirt to pretend he had big boobies.
Now she reached into her wardrobe and retrieved one of her cutest bras, one that she was very disappointed to have grown out of. It was an electric-blue Victoria's Secret bra, with a little pink bow right on the sternum.
She lifted the hem of her t-shirt up to where her ribs met her bust, bracing herself for the discomfort of pulling the shirt over her plump, tender breasts. Her boobs lifted with her shirt and then tumbled out, one a split-second after the other and swung freely, slapping gently against one another from the momentum of the drop.
Hannah then wrapped the bra around her torso. She put the cups against her back so that she could fasten it at the front and then slide it around, a maneuver that had once posed her no difficulty.
Now, since her growth spurt, she had to carefully line the clasp up with the canyon between her pendulous breasts, or else she wouldn't be able to see what she was doing.
"Hey, I ain't got all day," came Vanessa's voice. "Hang on!" Hannah cried from out of frame, "I'm tryna wrestle my boobs into this damn bra."
Sliding the cups into position, Hannah threaded her slender arms under the straps and then tried to scoop each of her breasts into its cup. She went back to her desk and slid into frame.
Joshua's eyes bulged out of his head. He scrambled for his coke-bottle glasses and hurriedly put them back on, almost poking an eye out with a wayward stem. He couldn't believe that he was seeing Hannah in her bra. He couldn't believe WHAT he was seeing IN Hannah's bra. He would have killed to see Hannah in her underwear back when she had been a B-cup; he had had a crush on her since the second month of school. Now he began to feel his body temperature rise. He was tempted to click "record," but he knew the girls would notice.