The Star, Alya

2

"Nerves and anxiety in the stomach is the engine roar before it soars."

Melanie quickly ate her morning cereal. She was far from nervous to the point that she couldn't even focus on the sweet taste of the Frosted Flakes. About a month ago her mother gave an application to the school containing Melanie's records. All it really contained was doctor information, her current grades from her school that she attended to, and background information to see if she was involved with any drugs or criminal activity. Of course, Melanie knew that she was safe from that. She would never do anything so vulgar as stealing or murder. As for her grades, she was a straight A student, so she also had no worries for that part as well. The doctor part....well, they didn't really judge you on that part. So all and all, Melanie wasn't worried about the application acceptance part. What she was most worried about was the audition part. To Melanie, that was like the final test to acceptance, and unfortunately today was the day of the audition.

"Melanie! Its time to go!" her mother called. She was standing at the door, keys in her hand meaning that she would not be waiting for another minute.
She got down from the kitchen table and put her cereal bowl in the sink, milk spilled everywhere on the sides of the sink because of her quickly rushing to get her shoes on.
"Don't throw you bowl in the sink please." her mother gave her a stern look. She already had enough broken dishes from Melanie rushing all the time.
"Sorry." she quickly pushed her feet in her shoes and walked out the door.

The whole ride to the school was somehow emotionally exhausting. Her stomach had wasps inside instead of the fluttering feeling of butterflies like when you're in love. This was a whole new feeling of anxiety for Melanie. She's never felt this nervous before, even though she's auditioned for many school plays, but those were just school plays. This, this is an audition for a whole new beginning. A whole new start. Her knuckles were turning white from gripping her script that was placed neatly on her lap. The short play that she was going to perform in front of the judges seemed stupid to Melanie, though she knew it'd be powerful enough to show her true skills. The play was about a young girl who just recently lost a close relative, and it was just the girl talking about her feelings and how she can get over her recent loss. In the scene, she is supposed to cry silently with real tears. Lucky for Melanie that wasn't a problem. She had cried many times in school plays, and was oddly used to giving fake cries. The play is hopefully supposed to leave the judges in awe, making them speechless.
'Why did I let my mom pick the play?' Melanie thought as she gripped the script tighter.
Apparently, her mother saw this and spoke up.
"Stop gripping the script, you'll ruin it. Besides you'll be fine look, we're already here." sure enough, her mother parked into a vacant parking lot in front of a freshly made giant school.
"Why isn't anybody else here?" Melanie asked her mother with a puzzled look.
"I booked you for the first audition, I thought you might want to get it out of the way."
It was true. Melanie did want to get it out of the way, but she never really wanted to go first. "Okay..."

They walked down the long blue and white halls, walking behind what seemed to be a secretary who must have worked there.
"The stage is just to your left, when they call your name go up and do your magic~!" the secretary seemed overly joyful. Like none of Melanie's worried aura rubbed off on him. His overly flamboyant voice seemed to stick in Melanie's mind.
________________________________***_________________________________

They waited for what seemed like and eternity. What were they doing? Did they have to check her application again? Various thoughts similar to these flooded her mind. She snapped out of her thoughts when she heard a deep male voice shout her name.
"Melanie Thorn!" the male shouted.
The voice made Melanie jump off of her seat and she quickly moved to the stage.
"Good luck!" her mother whisper shouted to her.
When she got to the stage, she saw three people seated at a table not too far away from the stage. All of them seemed to be important people. Melanie summed them as one of them being the principle, one being the vice principle, and the last person being unknown.
"Mr. Loomer,  our secretary already gave us the copy of the script, so you can start when ever you're ready Ms. Thorn." the assumed to be principle said.
Melanie took a deep breath and said her first line.

"Why him?" her voice laced with sorrow, and she somehow managed to have a crack in her voice. She had already memorized the whole scene like her life depended on it.
"If only I had told him to stay with me, he'd probably still be here!" she sounded frustrated. She paced quickly backed and forth on the stage, making it seem like she was in deep thought.
"This is all my fault, its all my fault, this is all my fault!" she stopped pacing and covered her face with her hands. She slumped down against a nearby wall and pretended to cry. She released her hands away from her face, showing shiny glimmering tears rolling down her red cheeks.
"I can't do this..." her voice sounded hoarse.
'Perfect, just gotta deliver the last line......the......the last line? The last line! What is it, what is it?!' she was mentally freaking out.
"I must not blame myself" the assumed to be principle said with a cold tone. Melanie looked up in horror,

'I blew it....'