Top Class (On Top Sequel)

Chapter 30

Lucy POV

New Years was coming and with it the cast list for the spring ballet. Just like all the times before, I became nervous and excited about the list. What dancer wouldn't?

Any dancer who lived at an academy with teachers who read out the parts to the dancers or make a list and place it on a bulletin board for all to see are the dancers that end up with emotional problems. I'm just saying.

I mean honestly! Some of us may joke about how our dance classes were full of our "best" friends who don't judge us for shit but in reality we all know deep down that ballet schools hold some of the nastiest girls on the bitch scale.

Think about it: A domain of girls who spend their free time after school building enough muscle to make them think football players are babies in comparison to ballet dancers. We also strengthen our mental discipline to make all of us stubborn as hell and make others think that we have all got to be tough as nails and competitive as fuck to enjoy the art.

It's no surprise that writers have come up with the stereotype of a ballet dancer also being linked with assassins, manipulators and killers. We literally spend our time judging every girl's potential around us, getting jealous as all hell, most of us ending up with perfectionist tendencies that make us as dancers, reliable, but then screw with our mental health. At the end of it all, we go home at the end of day all worn out and exhausted, just to be ready to wake up the next day with our legs throbbing and bodies aching from the day before. Why do we do this to ourselves? Because of that fucking list and now it was happening again and this time it was coming around the time when I was at that age bracket and year qualifications to be a lead or a main character. If I didn't get such a lead I know what Ms. Olivia is saying to me, even if she doesn't say it aloud.

I may sound like a drama queen, saying all of this over a list and then on top of that, questioning whether or not my teacher thinks I can go professional or not. But in all honesty, when doesn't a ballet dancer at this age question this? I have a feeling that a majority of ballet students who call themselves die hard ballet dancers have to go through this phase of questioning about going professional or not.

It's just how it works.

So now you wonder what am I doing to be thinking of all of this dramatic and depressing stuff? I'm not in Paris anymore that's for damn sure.

I was home with my parents and my brother Daniel. Or at least they were all in the house somewhere. I was sitting nestled up on the coach with a bag of Dove Dark chocolate dipped pretzels leaning against my left leg. Alice sat next to me, with a bowl of apple sauce balanced on her feet where she sat in butterfly while her attention stood fixed on the TV. Jade sat on her own coach, completely lounged out with her eyes deeply focused on the movie playing. For what it was, I was surprised to find her so into it. On the opposite coach from Jade sat Aria with a notebook in one hand and a pen in the other, barely paying attention to the movie.

The movie that was playing was Barbie in Swan Lake and holy hell it was God awful. The Barbies either wore their hair all the way down with crowns that magically stayed on their heads when they did what the group of us guessed were pirouettes or their hair would be up in giant balls of hair at the top of their heads as if qualifying that bun as a ballet bun. Jade, Alice, Aria and I all were calling a hard no on that.

But then there were their unbendable ballet arms that made no sense to us.

"I mean, they are in swan lake: the ballet known for having dancers with the most bendable arms out there. Why couldn't they just do a little bit more editing in this movie?" Alice demanded. I turned to notice the Barbies were now trying to execute the swan arm movement and were instead looking more like a jumbled mess of stiff arms and legs going around in circles.