As I paced up the smooth sidewalk of a cramped church, that is also a studio, my heart pounded, and the butterflies in my stomach fluttered more rapidly than they ever have before. It was May, the end of my sophomore year, and the day I hadn’t been looking forward to all week.  This was a tremendous moment in my life that I wanted to ace. Voices echoed in the room as I walk up the hazel stairs that creak because they are ancient. An intimate cheery voice asserted, “Hi, Mikayla, how are you today?” It was my dance teacher, Sissie. I respond with a lie and a fake smile: “I’m fine.” It turns out I wasn’t fine at all. I had been a nervous wreck, but I looked for my friends, who would be my competitors that day, to see if they could cheer me up before this audition.  We sat in a cramped clump on the tiled floor and murmured to each other. Truthfully, they were nervous rabbits just as I was. They didn’t have anything to worry about because most of them were better than I, which meant that I just had to work extremely hard. Maybe that’s why I felt apprehensive, or maybe it’s because I blew this same audition last year and didn’t want to make a fool out of myself again. Either way, I came to show them that a had improved since last year.

“Dancers, the audition for tap team will start soon,” Sissie informed us. “You have a few minutes to warm up.” We acknowledged her with a nod of the head.  I spoke to my closest friend and told her good luck, although she didn’t need it, and she did the same for me. The nine of us scarcely stepped silently onto the cool slate colored dance floor to warm up. Scrape!  Rat-tat! Scuff! Roaring sounds of tap shoes filled the room as we tried to get the jitters out of us. I practiced specific steps that I foresee they would ask for and tried to practice them like I had been all year. I realized I was ready to begin, and that was satisfying because auditions were ready to start.  “All right, ladies,” Sissie clapped her hands together, “it’s time to start. Please line up into two rows.” The butterflies burst back inside me. I took a deep breath and hoped for an ace.

A white pull out table with five judges on foldable chairs sat in front of us with clipboards full of scorecards, pencils, and eyes that stared each one of us down right to our very core. They introduced themselves and told us not to worry and just dance to our best ability. They had to notice our clammy palms and our hearts pounding out of our bodies like drums in a marching band.

The audition kicked off with a few simple tasks that made me feel better about myself and helped me gain confidence; however, after awhile, we started to move onto complicated tempos and steps, which messed me up. I became unable to stay with the tempo and started mixing up feet, doing flaps instead of shuffles. I didn’t spot my turns like I had been taught when I was eight. I didn’t do as well as I did in class. Feeling like a total disappointment, it just became, worse for me because the judges requested us to do combinations one at a time. ‘I’m going to fail,’ I thought to myself. ‘I might as well pack up my things and leave.’ I realized I was psyching myself out and setting myself up for failure, but it was hard not to; I’m a shy quiet girl. I always have been, and I don’t think that’s going to change. Butterflies flutter in my stomach even if I have to answer a question in a class of fifteen people. Doing something like a combination by myself would be the death of me. I was a complete failure. I was such a failure. I preformed as asked and did so horribly that I wanted to run out, but I didn’t. I settled down and tried to gain some of the confidence that was lost. By the time that I did, auditions were over. Sweat and disappointment lingered in the air when I left the charcoal dance floor.  After this blown audition, it was difficult to hold back the tears, but I managed to hold them back long enough until I walked inside my home.

“How did the audition go?” my parents inquired. Tears emerged, rolling down my rosy cheeks. I told them everything that had happened; they hugged me, “It will be okay, Mikayla.” I didn’t think it would be okay, but, of course, they didn’t see it as atrocious as I did.  I replayed the audition in my head over and over again.  Every time I tired to correct all the errors I made, but the outcome never came out the way I wanted it to. It was like watching a terrible movie. At first, the movie seemed like it had potential, but once the movie was half way through, it was horrible. The audition was my bad movie, and it kept playing in my head for the rest of the day.

A few weeks later, the results came in. I knew that I didn’t make it, but there was still a little hope left in me. Slugging like a sloth over to the cream walls, I slid my finger down the page to find my name. Mikayla never appeared on the paper, not even as an alternate. After looking in disbelief, I turned around, stepped out of the studio, and decided I would work even harder this year than I did last year and would come back next year with fire. Some people shined like stars that day. I might not have been one of them, but maybe next time I will be a star, and my name would be on that paper.