I try to make myself remember the dance we’ve rehearsed over and over again, but I can’t seem to imagine it. My mind is a maze and I’m chasing a shadow.
Bekah Cotter passes El a tub of Vaseline. “Put it on your teeth and gums,” she says. “Helps you smile.”
We both glance at each other and shrug before dipping our fingers in and smearing the Vaseline across our smiles. It tastes disgusting.
“Thanks,” I tell Bekah.
Mallory stands a few feet in front of us with a black headset on. “Go, go, go.”
We rush out past her, and the minute the lights hit my skin, my memory comes back to me. We rotate in circles so that everyone has two and a half seconds to say their names.
The song finishes and the lights cut out. I can’t even process how quickly this is moving. It feels like life on triple fast forward, where everyone’s voices sound like chipmunks.
Next is the swimwear competition.
It hadn’t occurred to me that I would have no privacy when changing into my swimwear. But here we are, and privacy there is not. I strip down as strategically as I can, with my swimsuit half hiked up over my thighs and my skirt bunched up around my waist. For a moment, I allow myself a glance around the room. I find that I am the only person not minding my own damn business. I’m gonna be perfectly honest here and say that there are boobies everywhere and no one even cares.
I bite the bullet and rip off my shirt. After shimmying the rest of the way into my swimsuit, I tuck the red heart-shaped sunglasses Bo gave me all those months ago into my hair. I hadn’t even thought twice about them until I was cleaning stuff out of my closet last week.
We file into the wings and Mrs. Clawson runs up and down the lines, spraying our asses with Aqua Net. “Can’t have those swimsuits ridin’ up,” she says.
I watch as Ellen walks out onstage. She’s freaking out on the inside, I know it. But she’s all confidence in her green two-piece and espadrilles.
I know I shouldn’t, but I glance down at my black sandals and my red suit stretched over my round belly. But that’s not even the thing that bothers me.
Everyone has one thing they absolutely hate about themselves. I could be lame and say that I hate my whole body, but what it all comes down to is my thighs. Thunder thighs. Cottage cheese. Crater legs. Ham hocks. Mud flaps. Whatever you want to call them. My legs don’t even look like legs. I’m pretty forgiving of the pudge, but in the rare moments spent in front of a mirror in nothing but my skin, all I see are two pillars of cellulite that carry me from place to place and rub together, creating one hellish case of chub rub. (Chub rub, by the way, is fat-girl talk for the most miserable inner thigh chafing of all time.)
Mrs. Clawson taps my shoulder, letting me know it’s my turn.
I pull in a deep breath, and smile. Smile, Dumplin’, I hear my mother say.
I may be uncomfortable, but I refuse to be ashamed.
Maybe it’s because I can’t see the audience. Or maybe it’s because no one is yelling for me to get off the stage, but my thighs survive their moment in the spotlight. I don’t scurry away like I did that day at the pool. No one boos. The world doesn’t end. The audience doesn’t go blind.
There’s something about swimsuits that make you think you’ve got to earn the right to wear them. And that’s wrong. Really, the criteria is simple. Do you have a body? Put a swimsuit on it.
Amanda waits for me at the other end. “You looked super fine out there!”
I squeeze her arm. “Thanks. You ready for your soccer showcase?”
She nods. Her cheeks turn light pink. “I joined the soccer team,” she says.
“Did you really?”
Amanda grins. “I figured if I could survive this, I could limp my way onto the soccer team.”
“That’s amazing,” I tell Amanda as Ellen comes to stand beside us.