Present!

“Present!”
Obediently, each girl in the line of twenty-five grasped the hem of her loose top and pulled it up to reveal her stomach.
Miranda was the last to follow suit. She was self-conscious at the moment, all too aware of the delicate-pink hint of stretch marks that had sprung up across the lower quarter of her gut in the past week. They were still subtle, still barely-visible even in the best of light, but she knew they were there. And if Miranda could see them, the coach certainly would.

She'd never had to worry about her skin before. Perhaps she was finally pushing the limits of elasticity. She had to use both hands to hold up her top – that was part of the presentation procedure – and she missed the soothing habit she'd developed of rubbing the soft swell of her upper stomach. She could only stand with her gut out, waiting for the inevitable.

Miranda's gut was coming along well. It bulged out radically in front of her, round and heavy. Most girls tended towards a proper double belly, their fat creasing along their navel, but Miranda's well-padded stomach was one expanse of quivering lard. It sat out firmly in front of her, preceding her breasts by several inches, a near-spherical lump of smooth, unblemished flab clinging to her midriff,
Well, unblemished but for the lightning-strike of pink along her underbelly.

The coach was walking down the line. She could see him addressing the other girls in turn, examining, poking, prodding. His sharp eye caught every and any flaw. She felt a little sick. Perhaps he'd miss the burgeoning stretch marks. Perhaps...

He was standing in front of Jolie. Jolie, the black girl, had a perfect double-gut, but a tendency towards cellulite was holding her back from being really great. That and the fact that she couldn't stomach more than a couple of thousand calories of shake without throwing up. The coach was complaining, pinching a thick fold of belly flab between finger and thumb and shaking his head. Jolie hadn't been keeping up lately. The cellulitic scatter across her lower belly roll was getting worse with every pound the she packed on, but she was already a full fifteen pounds behind target so she couldn't afford to slow down. The coach was saying something about a new cream. Jolie's face was stony, but her lips were tight around the edges. All the girls knew that unless something changed soon, Jolie would be done. There was no room here for shapeless, cellulite-mottled guts.

Or, a voice spoke in Miranda's ear, for sagging guts striated with red and silver stretch marks.

She ignored the voice. Her belly was coming along beautifully. A slight tone issue and a couple of skin complaints weren't going to sink her.
Again she fought the urge to give the soft padding of her upper gut a reassuring rub.

The coach was done with Jolie. He moved down the line, leaving her imperfect belly jiggling as she shivered. It was cool in the hall, but the girls had been told to present their bellies, and they would continue to do so until told otherwise. Half of Miranda felt bad for Jolie, but it was no secret that every time another girl stumbled it was to the advantage of all the others. There had been of sabotage before. Medicated creams replaced with moisturiser. Moisturiser replaced with medicated creams. Shakes replaced with medicated moisturiser. It was an unpleasant business, but Miranda could understand why it was done. If she saw a chance to swap out Jolie's cellulite cream with a useless placebo, would she even hesitate?

The coach was drawing close now. The girl next to Miranda – Anna-Bee-Something – was unremarkable in almost every regard. Decent belly form, decent gain, decent skin, decent flab tone. Not exemplary in any way, but never really failing in any way either. Miranda could see her eyes flicking over to Miranda's belly, and with a pinch of mortification she realised that the other girl was eyeing the stretch marks on her underbelly. Were they really so obvious? She shifted, turning away slightly from the other girl. She could feel the elasticated waistband of her shorts digging into the superbly soft lard that had only so-recently become a problem as her skin struggled to keep up with her gain. Perhaps 12000 calories a day had been optimistic. She'd been leaping upwards for so long, never running into any issue except the slight issue with tone she could never quite clear up and a brief stint of acne. Perhaps...

Suddenly, quite abruptly, the coach was right in front of her. Her fingers twitched as all her instincts screamed for her to drop the hem of her top and hide her imperfect gut from those shining eyes, but she knew better than to hide her belly when she'd been told to present.

“Miranda. How's the tone issue?”
“Better. I think the new shakes are helping.” She spoke through her teeth. Suddenly, his hand shot out and hefted her belly. He held it for a moment then let it drop, watching as the pillowy mass of flab jiggled itself to a standstill.
“Getting there. Definitely getting there. Get those shorts changed though. Yours definitely isn't a gut that can afford a constricting waistline impeding development. Another twenty pounds and we'll have to think about moving to you away from shorts altogether, but that'll be another few weeks yet.”
“Yes, Coach.”
“Maybe then we can finally put this tone issue behind us,” he said, and Miranda almost began relaxing. Perhaps the stretch marks weren't as noticeable as she'd thought, “After all, looks like we're going to have other things to worry about. When exactly were you going to mention those stretch marks?”
The bottom dropped out of Miranda's stomach.
“I- I thought-”
“No excuses, Miranda. Lift your gut.”
She could feel the other girls watching as, mortified, she pinned the hem of her top under her chin and hefted her belly with both hands. Like this, in the harsh white light of the hall, the stretch marks were painfully obvious. She was pretty sure she heard one of the other girls gasp.
“Pinkish colour... appear new...” the coach's finger traced the slight weals marring her underbelly, “Looks like we might have caught it early enough. Maybe.”
Miranda felt ill.
“I was going to mention it, but...”
“No excuses, Miranda. This could be career-ending if we can't contain it, and you've already wasted valuable time.” He hissed, air whistling through the wide space between his front two teeth. “Miranda, your belly is everything. If one morning you woke up and you had a rash clear across that pretty little mouth of yours, wouldn't you do anything and everything to get it sorted out? Or are you really telling me that you'd ignore it until it turned silver and stuck around for good?”
He stroked the worst of the stretch marks. It was redder than the others, on the lower left side of her pillowy pot-belly.

“I'm going to prescribe a topical cream to be applied once an hour until I say otherwise.” He leant in close, eyes bulging very slightly. Miranda stared up at him, face still pointed at the floor to keep the hem of her shirt pinned beneath her chin. He wasn't a loud man – Miranda was fairly certain that he was a doctor by trade – but he had a certain obsessive energy about him. She couldn't imagine arguing with him. If he told her to jump, she'd ask from which window. “You have promise, Miranda. More than most. I'm not going to lose you to something as petty as a stretch mark. Pull yourself together and you'll go far.”

Miranda was shivering. She could see her belly jiggling slightly past the modest swell of her breasts. The coach patted her belly reassuringly, then moved on down the line. Miranda could tell that her cheeks were a bright, embarrassed pink. She'd never had to deal with this before. The phrase career-ending echoed in her mind.

Her hands were free now, and she rubbed her belly in an attempt to soothe her splintering confidence.