My body is sticky and damp, and I want to shower. I endure. I want to eat and drink, but I can’t — the muscles would look softer. I endure.

I adjust my shiny blue bikini covered in rhinestones, hang long earrings, fix my fake lashes. The standard of feminine beauty. Proportions. Bodybuilding. My life.

The makeup hides the dark circles under my eyes, but I still see the exhaustion. Is it worth it?

The locker room is cramped, smelling of self-tanner and sweat — we’re not allowed to use deodorant.

“You ready?” asks Phoebe, my friend and rival. Her body is strung tight like a wire as she rehearses her posing in front of the mirror, every muscle sharpened and perfectly defined. We can thank starvation and obsessive calorie counting for that.

I nod, fastening the heels with their slippery insoles.

“Don’t chicken out,” she says, winking. “We knew what we signed up for.”

She shifts her pose, turning her back to the mirror, tightening her glutes, arching her lower back. “I could barely sleep these past three nights,” she admits. “Always doubting. Comparing. Overthinking.”

I smile back sadly. Watching her, I think of the first day we met at the gym, when obsession was still just a hobby.

We fumbled through workouts, our grips wrong, our backs sore for days. We laughed at the bruises and the mirror selfies that showed little to no progress.

Then came the friendship — sportswear shopping, shared hard rock playlists, nudges to keep going. When we finally stepped onto our first amateur stage, we owned the lights and the attention. We believed it was all worth it — the hunger, the pain — because the applause felt earned, ours. It gave us the rush to dive deeper. And when the rush faded, we looked for something stronger to keep it alive.

Then came the hunger.

At night, I’d lie awake, hearing my stomach growl, my body begging for food, and I’d stroke my belly and whisper, “Hold on. Soon. When we take first place.”

Weeks turned into months. My calendar stayed blank. No cramps, no ache, no blood — my body protested, but my mind was too disciplined to interfere. At first, it felt like victory, freedom from weakness. Then it felt like a part of me was missing.

“Soon we’ll finally get to eat,” Phoebe says as we stand backstage, waiting for our names to be called.

I smirk. “Finally, no more oatmeal and egg whites for breakfast.”

Phoebe pretends to gag, and a few girls shoot us weird looks; we just giggle.

“Eating that crap every morning for two months was my personal nightmare come to life.”

We kiss on the lips when they call Phoebe’s name, and she steps onto the stage. I clap for her, warmth spreading through me; her strawberry taste lingers on my lips; it steadies me better than breath.

The road to this moment has been brutal, and would’ve been three times harder without Phoebe.

I pinch the skin on my stomach, checking out of habit for any layer of fat.

I wait for my turn, shifting from foot to foot. I think about the path that brought me here. No amount of training or starvation has ever felt enough to make me confident stepping onto that stage.

I still wasn’t proportional enough. Not pretty enough. Not good enough.

And then I realized — if I wanted my effort to mean anything, I had to cross one more line of professional sport: steroids.

The memories of the day when my mother learned about it made my jaw tense.

Her hands trembled over the teacup. “Have you completely lost your mind? You’ll ruin your body.”

“It’s impossible to reach results without it,” I said, twisting my fingers in frustration, staring at the cookie bowl I couldn’t touch.

“I’ve heard it is possible!”

“Yeah, you’ve heard. You assume. But I know. Don’t believe anyone who says professional sport is clean. They lie because they’re ashamed.” Like me.

I didn’t stop taking steroids for the sake of my goals. But I started looking in the mirror more often, studying my face, hearing my mother’s words again and again.

Was I starting to look like a man?

I began wearing my hair down so people wouldn’t forget I was a woman, and I got my lips done to make my face softer, more feminine. Every month that my body stayed silent, I wondered if it still remembered how we used to be.

My name rolls off the announcer’s lips. My heart races. A smile spreads across my face. Exhale.

“You’ve got this,” Phoebe says as she steps back in. “Careful on those heels, the floor’s slick.”

One step. Then another. Smile, flirt, sway the hips — just the way the judges like it. I focus on the smoothness, the grace, the taut pull of my muscles as I pose. I toss my hair just right. I’m proud of what I’ve built. I believe I’ve become perfect.

Now the lights blind me. I endure. My smile unshaken. Somewhere, something brittle cracks, but the judges never see.

***

Anna Pedko’s short fiction has been published in a literary magazine, Tint Journal. She holds a degree in English Literature and has experience in bodybuilding.