Fabian

"There's no sleep for the wicked my dear"

"I need a break! COME ON!"  I gasped as Aria, my best friend refused to turn the treadmill off. "There is absolutely no way you're going to win this pageant if you're still fat with those twiggy little legs is there Zoa!" She scolded. I am 5'5 and 115 pounds I have absolutely no idea why any of this is necessary.

Aria needed me to compete in a beauty pageant in her place since she didn't meet the age requirement. She turned 18 at the time of the pageant and all contestants were required to already have been of age. This stupid little competition had a crazy large cash prize of 100,000 dollars. A whole 100k for snooty perverts to judge the way I walk on a fake carpeted stage.

 "Why am I even doing this Ari, I can barely even walk in heels yet!", I groaned. "There's no sleep for the wicked my dear.", she mocked. "Besides, Nona needs the money. She wouldn't survive without the treatment."

Ari's grandmother had a rare form of liver cancer that was quickly metastasizing to her brain. The poor woman was bed-bound when all she wanted to do was get up and bake us her white chocolate brownies like she used to when Ari and I were kids. I never got to see her while she was sick though. The infection was so bad that any outside bacteria could have put her health at more risk than it already was. Ari's grandmother, or 'Nona' as she was affectionately called, needed treatment as well as a few surgeries to get rid of the cancer or at least give her a longer life. Treatment that Aria and her family could not afford.

I had to take one for the team this time.

After all the cardio Ari forced onto me, we finally left the gym. I stumbled out of the screen doors barely able to hold myself up because of the gripping ache in my legs. "I really hate you right now Ari", I groaned. "Well get ready to despise me. The competition is in 2 weeks and you are nowhere near ready. Tomorrow we are running cardio in heels." She said. I groaned once more in desperation.

Aria was a perfectionist. The typical blonde hair and blue eyes propped over a tall skinny yet curvy frame. She kept up appearances always. Aria had been in pageants since she was little. Her goal in life was to be miss universe, and to do that she needed a clean slate and to always stay "Perfectly primped and pretty". That is what I now had to become.

I, on the contrary, was nothing like Aria. It's confusing as to how we even became friends. I'm short, thin, with a full head of thin dreadlocks that i always made sure were neatly tied up into a ponytail. Being of some African decent (My dad being white and my mother black) I stood out in our little, mostly white, suburban neighborhood. Not to mention the fact that I already look about a year younger than I actually am.

"I'll see you later!" Ari shrieked as I stepped into the store I work at.

"Uh huh" I said, fed up of my shift before it even began.