After The Next Step wins Nationals, Amanda has a lot of thinking to do after leaving Elite behind, struggling to find out where she truly belongs even after redeeming herself and saving The Next Step from forfeiting the opportunity of a lifetime. N...
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Amanda's POV
"THE NEXT STEP! THE NEXT STEP! THE NEXT STEP!"
The crowd at the jam-packed auditorium was going wild with hoots, applause, cheers and standing ovations as my team chanted nonstop at their triumphant, well-deserved victory.
My team...whoa...I never thought I'd actually be saying that about The Next Step—for real, at least—after all I've put them through. After what Lucien made me put them through. Well, I'm trying my very best not to think about that right now. What matters, at least for now, at this very moment is that my new team, dare I say, my new family (because I now consider them as such), is overjoyed and thrilled beyond words that we won Nationals for the very first time. We? No, they! They were the ones who worked hard to make it to where they are now with and without me, before they blew my cover and after. They deserve this win more than anyone else, and by "anyone else," I mean Elite. The Next Step won this competition fair and square the way they did Regionals. Elite did not and unfortunately, I was a part of it.
Back in Regionals, we just did what we did and competed to the best of our abilities and the height of our caliber but now that The Next Step made it into Nationals, it was honestly the biggest surprise of my life because I knew that I did my job and I did it exactly the way Lucien wanted. But how did they manage to get Michelle back when I distinctly remember her saying she wouldn't return to dance? That's a question yet to be answered. I knew I underestimated them at the time because I never knew everything they were capable of. Of course I knew they were capable of at least something. They won Regionals for goodness sake and fairly! What I didn't know was how intelligent they all were, putting their heads together as a team, even in the nick of time. Ever since I became captain at Elite, I was forced with a gradual cultivated mindset to believe that The Next Step was the weakest competitor we had in the Canadian dance world by who else? Lucien. I don't exactly remember how he planted that mindset into me ever since the start. It couldn't be because the original owner of the studio, who I hear was Miss Kate's mother, was a woman. I didn't see much bias in that because I myself am a young woman and Lucien appointed me as dance captain. Maybe Lucien just has a way of saying things persuasively...manipulatively...schemingly. That's the kind of man he is. Crafty as they come.
There aren't a lot of studio owners I know in the region, or country for that matter, with a menacingly cunning mind like his. Just him. In fact, I considered Lucien and his plans to be honorable all because I believed that everything he had planned out would make us a winning team and that's exactly what I wanted out of it. I love success as much as he does. I live and breathe it. Success resonates every fibre of my being and there was nothing else in this world that could change it and it all began with my love of dance that grew to my love of competition.
