Racing the Mirror

The gummy vitamin sat on my tongue like a judgment. Orange flavor, probably, but it tasted like insecurity.

"Did you take your multivitamin?" Mom yelled from the kitchen. "It's good for your development!"

"Yeah, took it," I lied, spitting it into the trash when she wasn't looking. Because that's the thing about being fourteen — you'll choke down literally anything if someone tells you it'll make you taller, or clearer-skinned, or somehow less ... you.

The problem was Lucas.

Lucas who sat behind me in bio and smelled like cedar and confidence. Lucas who'd joined the swim team sophomore year and now moved through hallways like he owned them. Lucas who I'd catch staring at me sometimes, or maybe I was just projecting because I spent 70% of my brainpower staring at him.

"You should join swimming," my best friend Mia said at lunch, reading my mind with her terrifying accuracy. "They need people. Plus, have you seen Lucas in a Speedo?"

"I've absolutely not been looking," I said, lying again. "And no. Have you seen me in a swimsuit? That's a horror movie I'm not filming."

"So start running," she shrugged. "Cross country starts next week. No swimsuit required."

Running. Right. Because the solution to body dysmorphia was apparently more activities where my body was the problem.

But here's the thing about desperation: it makes you do things that seem rational at 2 AM when you're scrolling through before/after photos and wondering if maybe this time, this ONE time, you could be the kind of girl who Lucas would actually see.

So I started running.

Every morning at 6 AM, when the world was still fog-blue and nobody was watching. My lungs burned, my legs protested, and I hated every second of it. But I also loved it, a little, because for forty minutes, I wasn't worrying about whether my arms looked weird in short sleeves or if Lucas noticed I'd cut my hair. I was just moving.

Two weeks in, I actually looked forward to it. The rhythm, the endorphins, the way the world made sense when it was just pavement and breath.

Then Lucas joined me.

"You run every day," he said, falling into step beside me like he'd always been there. His hair was wet — swim practice, obviously. "That's hardcore."

"I'm not hardcore," I panted, trying to die casually. "I'm just ... trying something new."

"You should come to the pool after," he said. "We do open lane swim on Fridays. No pressure. Just... it's good for you. Like, mentally."

And that's how I ended up standing poolside in my oldest, most modest swimsuit, clutching a towel like it was armor, while Lucas somehow convinced me that swimming was just running horizontally.

"Your form's actually not terrible," he said after, when we were sitting on the edge, feet dangling in the water. "You're strong. I can tell."

"I take a vitamin every day," I blurted out. "The gummy kind. It's supposed to help."

He laughed, but not mean. "Cool. I forget to take mine. My mom's always on my case about it."

We sat there for a while, knees barely touching, both of us wet and tired and absolutely normal.

"Same time tomorrow?" he asked.

"Yeah," I said. "Same time."

That night, I actually swallowed the vitamin. It still tasted like insecurity. But maybe that wasn't entirely a bad thing. Maybe insecurity was just another word for I'm trying, and trying was the bravest thing you could do when you were fourteen and the world felt like it was watching.

Lucas waved at me in the hallway the next day. I waved back. And for the first time, I didn't wonder if he was looking at my arms, or my hair, or anything except me waving back.

Progress, I guess. One vitamin, one run, one swim at a time.