What it's like to be a Cherry Blossom

Chapter 10: Cherry Blossoms

"There's no room in the cafe," Luna informed, saving us from walking all around the cafeteria. "We're going to have to sit outside."

"But it's so cold!" Faiza whined. She and Vale still weren't used to cold weather up here in New Hampshire. While Faiza was more...err... vocal about the cold, Vale never whined about it. She only held herself, trying to block the cold from her body, and she now wore a big scarf—which covered her neck and mouth— and a a fluffy hat. You could only see her nose and wonderful eyes, and just looking at them you could tell she was freezing.

"Let's sit at the picnic table over here." I suggested, only to see some other kids sit there.

"How about the picnic table under that Cherry Blossom tree?" Luna pointed, and quickly began to walk towards the table. Luckily, this time nobody else was looking for a place to sit.

We sat in the same order as we usually do. Faiza, Maiko and I on one side, and Valentina, Luna and Clara on the other. We chatted happily, teased Vale and Faiza about the cold, and gossiped a little here and there.

"Having Paige on the team is killing me. She might be the youngest rider, but she's so good! She's hoarding all the trainer's attention." Clara whined. Usually when we gossiped it always ended with us whining about The Untouchables, aka the popular girls, who were in our classes. We didn't mean any harm, we would just whine and pour out all of our emotions onto each other.

"Isn't Paige the eighth grader chick who skipped eighth grade and is now with us?" Luna asked.

"That's the one. She's supposed to be a year under us, but alas she is not," she giggled as she forced her accent in the last bit. "It's frustrating, having the youngest outshine the rest."

"But it must be a blast for her! The youngest outshining the rest," I said. I knew the feeling of being intimidated by the older ballerinas and wanting to outshine them. "Cut her some slack. She must push herself so much to be at your level."

"Yeah, you're right. I barely put in effort in these first lessons. I should probably start trying harder," she ended with an arrogant tone. "What about you Grace? Mai? How was life today with the most annoying girls in ballet class?"

"Colette was crushing other ballerinas' wishes to be casted as Clara from The Nutcracker. I had to stop her," I said, shrugging and a smirk plastered on my face. "Isn't that right, Mai?"

She turned her head abruptly. "Well, everyone needed to make her step down her pedestal, but the way you did it wasn't the nicest."

Clara and I were shocked. Not exactly what I was expecting from her. "But she wasn't being very nice either. She was tormenting the poor girls, and everyone is too scared of her to stand up against her." I defended.

"Well there's a good reason they're afraid of her and Sophie." She muttered.

"And why is that, Mai?" I pushed.

She turned her back at us and continued talking with Vale and Fai, not forgetting to say nevermind to us. Luna, Clara and I continued our conversation, jumping from Colette to Luna's Untouchable, Franziska Förstner. Both girls were at the top of the class, making them rivals.

"She's so frustrating!" Luna cried. "Today she was saying that her electric guitar was so much cooler than my electric violin. And she's has never seen my violin! Like, what the heck! And her guitar isn't cool at all, my dad owns a much better one. And on top of that, she refuses to listen to my ideas! Professor Sole paired us up only because we had such hard compositions and he wanted to make our life miserable!"

"And how is the song coming out?" Clara asked.

"Terrible! Our compositions might be at the same level, but they're so different. Franziska's is a pop ballad, and mine is a waltzy rock piece. She won't listen to my ideas on how to combine them. She's practically writing the piece by herself!" She scurried through her bag and pulled out music sheet. "Look at this! It's so messy you can barely understand what's happening. Over here, measure 47, we should have a key change, it makes it harder yet easier to understand, but she refuses to listen! Oh, and over here, it's an awkward melody. It changes out of nowhere and doesn't go along with the waltz or the rock or the ballad or even the pop essence of the piece! It's literally a bunch of random notes thrown in together!"