We Awaken by Calista Lynne

carried on. Opposite from where I entered sat another woman with a similar bearing to the first. She was behind an identical white table, although this one had a tripod-mounted video camera sitting on it. She was not smiling, but also not frowning. That was a start.
    She gestured toward the empty space in front of her as a signal to begin, and I rattled off my slate. I could hear the tremor in my voice as I told her my name, hometown, and life goals. Then I handed her my phone, taking a moment to track down the music, and once it came pouring out of the speakers my body fell into the familiar moves of the dance.
    The melody was so much louder in this room, as if the mirror was reflecting sound as well as light. It took a great deal of willpower to not be shaky and out of breath, still not fully recovered from the sprint to get there.
    Ninety seconds.
    All I needed was a minute and a half of perfection and nothing else; everything had built up to that since I was a five-year-old in a tutu. With an emptying breath, I rolled up onto my toes.
    Every step I took was a prayer that this one woman watching would see something worthwhile. Having the music so loud was almost as extreme as when Ashlinn had had me dance without any at all. Unlike that instance of dancing for an audience of one, this time I was able to successfully transition from a chassé to a pirouette and not end up on my face. At least I had that going for me. My feet were crescent moons, arched in pink leather and cramping.
    I tried to leave my mind blank of everything but the next move, even if that meant I had to focus on the pain, on the overexertion of my arms and legs. Ballet was pushing your body past what evolution meant for it to be capable of, to break the laws of nature in a quest for beauty. Dammit, I trained at East Coast ballet studios. Angry, retired, ex-Broadway dancers own every one and didn’t give wiggle room. If I could do one thing, I could kill this audition.
    After the music stopped, I held my position, trying to read the woman’s expression the whole time. She wasn’t looking up at me but down at some papers lying on the table. It made me worry if she had actually seen any of my performance or if she would just watch all the videos later. Without music the room was frighteningly quiet, and every breath sounded like windstorms. She finally looked up at me with a masklike expression that nothing could be inferred from. Something came over me in that moment, and I stared her in the eye.
    “That was for my father.”
    As I grabbed my cell phone, she just nodded and gestured toward the door, telling me to meet with an admissions officer. I’d get my results in a month.
    The admissions officer was a man named Neil, although boy was a better term; he barely looked older than me. His hair was modern, shaved on one side, and he had a smile that could only have come from years of living in an orthodontist’s chair. My lingering nervousness dissipated slightly at his friendly demeanor, but I still felt uneasy. There was no way to know if my dancing had been good enough, and I had nothing left but to analyze my slipups for the next four weeks. Neil and I sat at the third white table I would become acquainted with that morning, and I was relieved to see a few other stragglers finishing up their interviews.
    “So, how do you think you did?” he asked, leaning over the table. He sounded like someone trying desperately to seem more relatable and cool than he truly was.
    “It probably wasn’t the best audition in the world. I did show up late and sweaty. But I really put my everything into it.”
    I flashed him a smile straight out of any romantic comedy.
    “That’s what we like to hear.”
    He returned the smile, but I couldn’t tell if it was condescending or not. He shuffled around some papers, and I twiddled my thumbs uncomfortably but tried to keep my eyes trained on him. Perhaps I was asserting dominance, or maybe just pretending I wasn’t