From Eden

one

"Brooke," I called urgently, unable to tear my eyes from the letter I had recieved in the mail earlier. The lines of Times New Roman font blurred when I focused too hard.

I was aware how ridiculous I must have looked, standing frozen in my pajamas at the kitchen table, slack-jawed. When my sister didn't reply, I ripped my eyes from the paper and shuffled chaoticly through the rest of the mail, finding another letter for Brooke Hyland; the return address was the same. I shredded open the letter with my thumb and messily unfolded it. "She has got to be fucking joking."

"It's illegal to open other people's mail, you know," Brooke had snuck up on me. Unfazed, I turned and shoved the letter into her face before she had another chance to be annoying.

"Read this shit," I said, my eyes wide. She looked at me like I was going insane before turning back to the letter. Her mouth opened like she was about to say something, but she must have just decided against it. Once she began to read it, her eyes widened as well, and she shot me a silent, shocked glance. "I know. Keep reading."

"Is this a joke?" She asked, her mouth dropping when she got to Abby's personal message. "Is some fan pranking us? Are you pranking me? I know you've been bored lately, but God, Paige."

"No!" I shouted. "I got one too. Why would I write myself one if I was trying to prank you?" I went and held up my letter aggressively, my heart thumping.

"Okay, okay," Brooke put her hands up and backed up a bit. Her eyes scanned the paper again, as if she didn't believe what she read the first time. "This is so strange. We have to tell mom. I wonder if any of the other girls got one?"

"I think, if this is real, Abby's got to be fucking with us," I said, rereading my own. "Why would she want us, the horrible, lazy slug dancers, who haven't even danced in a decade, to choreograph for her?"

"Power hungry? Superiority complex?" My sister ran a stressed hand through her hair and leaned on the kitchen counter, staring at the letter. "We should call mom, and maybe Christi."

"Mom probably will call Christi on her own," I said, taking a deep breath. I bit my lip as Brooke dialed mom's number, and started to space out. This was insanity. If this really was real, like I said out loud, why would she want the Hylands to choreograph for her? Was her business struggling that much? And why would she think for a second that we, including the other past dancers, would drop everything we were doing to help her out? We had lives of our owns!

Kind of.

My life was not going the way I planned it to, to be frank. I had graduated college with a bachelor's in marketing about a month ago, and I couldn't find a job for the life of me. It was kind of crazy, the way marketing is supposed to be such a broad major, yet I couldn't seem to land jobs anywhere. Since I was still an influencer, I pulled money in for a bit, but my numbers were going down on my accounts for some reason and I was starting to get nervous. It was the worst time to be shadowbanned. Since money was spotty, there was no way I could afford my own place at the moment, especially since it was only me now...

Jayvon and I broke up just after graduation. He claimed after we both graduated that he wanted to 'stay single' and 'see the world'. I was entirely heartbroken; we had been together for almost five years. It made me think, the way he did it, that he was just using me the entire time he was in school. I was just a pretty girl to lean on when he was going through shit, and after graduating, he didn't need me anymore. It kind of send me into a depression.

So, I lived at home, I was depressed, and I couldn't find a real job. Not that I was looking anymore, anyway, to be honest. I told my parents every time they asked that I wasn't finding anything, or that my interviews went badly; in reality, I sat at home, watched TV, smoked, and slept. Like literally, my day before going to get the mail was wake up at eleven, go on my phone in bed, smoke a whole blunt on the back porch, and drink homemade coffee. I did try to eat a bagel that afternoon, but the nicotine covered my appetite. It was also the reason I felt so nauseous and aggressive about receiving the letter from Abby.