The Pointe Of The Game

Chapter 14

Olivia Beckham

I turn off my alarm and groggily sit myself up. I have to wake up early on a Saturday for dance. They're lucky I like them. Because there are very few things I would wake up for at this time on a Saturday. We have practice from 5:20 am to 3pm. Because it's our first day back, we have a lot of crap to run through and we need to start numerous dances for the starting competition season and for upcoming performances. I get out of my bed and stumble to my closet to pull out the dance set I'm going to wear today: a pair of light pink leggings and a white compression shirt that ends where my leggings start. I throw my hair up in a low ponytail and then braid the ponytail. I put some bobby pins where my fly aways are to make sure my hair doesn't come out. I grab my favorite UGGS and I put them on. Then I grab my turners, toe tape, and pointe shoes and put them all in my duffel bag. I go downstairs and grab my water bottle and add water and ice to it. I run upstairs and give my dad a kiss on the cheek to tell him I'm leaving. He doesn't have work today but my mom does at nine this morning. I go back downstairs and pre start my car before opening the garage and putting my bag in the back of my car. I get in the driver's and use the fob on my keys to close the garage again. I then put my car in drive and head to my studio.

I get to my studio and see only a few cars in the parking lot. Even though practice doesn't start for another 10 minutes, I go to the locker room to drop off my bag and keep my pointe shoes, turners, water bottle, and toe tape. I walk into our studio to see the lights turned off and no one inside. I flick on the light switch and set my stuff on the side of the room.

I go to the center of the room and start stretching my legs because I want to practice my leaps and turns before coach and the other girls come in.

After a few minutes of stretching my legs, I walk to where my turners are and put one on. I walk back to the center of the room and get into position to turn. I prep and then go into my turn. I do this about 20 more times before moving onto my single stag leap, doing that another 20 times. I do this for every turn and leap that I know until the rest of our company starts to trickle in. I then stop and start to catch up with some of the girls until Rachel and Makenna show up with WAY too much energy for five in the morning.

They both run up and hug me at the same time before speaking excitedly about everything that went down in their dance campout that they both drove down from at THREE in the morning and STILL have a lot of energy. Man, if only I could operate on the amount of sleep they can.

We catch up and they tell me all about what's happening in their life recently. Rachel is in the talking stage with some guy that's in her science class and Makenna is about ready to break up with her boyfriend because he keeps telling her that he's going shopping but then he goes and hangs out with her brother. They've become best buds and she doesn't like that.

Finally our dance coach, Mrs. Silman walks in and we start guided stretches and workouts. Amelia was right, she didn't stretch all break and it shows. Coach definitely gets annoyed about it.

After stretching we get into running our dances millions of times. Coach wants them to look perfect. We get onto our day of running dances and perfecting every little error and flaw in our dances.

By the time it's three, I'm exhausted. We've been dancing non-stop and you can tell. I'm ready to go home. Even though I live for dance, I still want to go home and relax after ten hours of dancing. I haven't eaten anything since lunch yesterday maybe? I don't know, it could've been breakfast because I don't like lunchtime very much. But for some reason, I'm actually hungry and my wrist still hurts again like when I first hurt it. It burns like a ghost pepper in your stomach. I've never actually had one of those. I've just heard they're really spicy.