'Never flee the fear, for it is inevitable, it is bound to happen. So why not stand your ground and fight back ?' -
That's what I convinced myself, when I sat on a cold metallic chair, in a dead silent waiting hall with my feet and hands fidgeting so fast that the other girls sitting in front of me, eyed me as if I was a circus monkey.

The blue Plastic folder with as many certificates and recommendation letters as the number of hairs on my scalp, slipped and fell on the floor. Corners of my eyes unwillingly took in all the eye rolls from the other competitors for the same internship in city's renowned tech-firm -
'Nova-Gen™' - calmly sitting as if they knew they were going to get the job anyway.
It's not exactly a job, but yeah. When It could give you a little bit of pocket money to survive the high-school shopping sprees, and most important of all, could carve you a great future, I would darn accept it against all odds. I had been working hard my entire 16 years, only to get to this crucial point. No way I was going to screw it.

I bent down to pick up the mess of a folder scattered on the white and black marble floor, but right at that very moment my stupid grey sneakers squealed in ecstasy for no apparent reason.
I was embarrassed to the verge of feeling a knot in my stomach, tightening every second only to send waves of gags along the back of my throat, making me extremely pukish. I tried to gulp, but my tongue felt parched and dry.

I sat back smoothening my casual shirt. The receptionist with curly short hair watched the anxious-nervous me through but not-exactly-through her bifocal glasses with golden rim that hung at the edge of her nose, as if it was about to fall down any moment. Her long manicured fingers were paused in mid air as though they were being pulled by some sort of unknown force-field from hitting the keyboard buttons back again.
"Do you need some water, dear?" She scanned me from head to toe.

As bad as it felt, it wasn't false either. So I nodded, got up and went to her desk to get a small, but beautiful eco-friendly bottle of clear blue water, which I completely guzzled it gaining even more attention now.

The bell rang, my heartbeat sky rocketed in a second. The door swung open to reveal a young boy emerging out, with curly copper hair and a calm blue shirt, ironed crisp and stiff as he walked past me.

I was tempted to go after him to enquire about the details. But I was on the queue next and it took more time than it should have for me to realise the situation, as I sat there, watching him walk away until the very end of the hall and till his tall silhouette faded to disappear.

"Miss. Leela Das! Is that you?"
A familiar feminine voice hollered at me. Well, I was certainly lost, since the sound appeared so distant.
A jolt on my shoulder shook me back to the scene. Suddenly the voice of the receptionist became super-clear.

I sprung upright from the metallic chair as every other in the hall -I assumed so- either laughed or at least giggled. I took in a big swallow and made my dirty silver-blonde hair, before knocking the dark wooden door infront of me with a white plate which read,
'Dr.Nester Ollen, Director and founder of Nova-gen tech- Build your own future.'

I cleared my throat, so harsh, as if I was going to sing an opera song that would break a pyramid of vine glasses and set a new world Guinness record or something.
Nevertheless, I knocked on the door and rotated the cold metallic knob clock wise and peeked in, "may I, please..."

A middle aged man with black tux and black hair which was greying above his ears, pulled his lips off of a glass and instantly puckered them before he nodded an approval.

I hesitantly stepped in and immediately turned around to close the door but his deep rough voice announced just in time,
"Oh, Don't bother to. You see, it springs back and locks itself."
I almost face-palmed myself at my stupidity, as I turned back to face him with an embarrassed toothy grin.

The other panel members - a lady wearing a grey business coat and a sleek high pony tail; she and another aged man wearing a fog brown suit gestured at me to sit on a leather chair set in front of their long antique work desk.

Although I didn't dare to deviate my gaze to see the surrounding wall, it was probably painted off-white. Just similar to the hallway with several paintings, newspaper articles perfectly framed and hung over it with some unfamiliar patterns.

I swirled the leather chair and sat. But for my bad luck, it was too high up that my legs were dangling with no support. It didn't even astonish me as my petite body sunk into the squishy leather chair like a curled up ball. Anyways, I managed to straighten my back and sit upright so that I could face the enormous tall man's eyes.

The man was none other than the great 'Nester Ollen', whom I had dreamt of to meet for my entire life; the co-founder of Nova-Gen, who was the talk of the town ever since I have known.
I had only seen him in T.V talk shows. But today at this moment, there he was with all his glory, right infront of me, talking to me.
How cool is that?

"Miss Leela Das. So... can you sing?"

That line broke me out of my star-struck thoughts. I blinked in shock and my eyebrows shot up to my hair line, as my lips parted to say something but couldn't muster the courage to. A strange but promising smell of rosy-wonders and fresh-future that was present a few minutes ago, seemed to fade away with time.

Why didn't I take music classes instead of Karate? Ugh!

My coward heart tried fleeing the attack, but my imaginary hand whacked my cheek and commanded,
'Focus Lee! It's an interview, you idiot!'

"Um, No, I guess?" I squeezed my eyes.

"Just kidding!" He agreed and I let my low breath out. Phew!

"But seriously though, can you?" He chuckled a little.

Well, if he was going to be witty, so was I. "Can you, sir?"
I cleared my throat immediately, as my voice came out unintentionally shrilly. "Ahem!"

"Fair enough." He laughed, slightly bobbing his head - a thing he always did in the T.V talk shows. "So, I suppose you're​ warmed up now?"
He took my file and ran through pages, he froze his fingers in between to observe the details on them.

"Yes," I nodded. My crinkle of frown was making it apparent that I wasn't.

He passed the file over to the lady beside him, she flipped through them and finally spoke after a long pause. "Impressive!" Her smooth eyebrows arched up flawlessly.

"So...Miss Leela, what's this about?" The famous Nester Ollen himself pointed to a certificate inside my folder.

"Oh th-that's just....just from one of my mm-middle school annual science exhibitions. I uh..I was given first place for my work wh-which involved the demonstration of acoustic-levitation." That atrocious stutter though. Sigh!

My heart was practically banging on my chest and was ready to explode any time soon. Because there I sat, explaining some silly experiment that I had conducted during my shitty middle school of 6th grade. And as cherry on top of all that, I wasn't even confident of something I won a state-level prize for. How awful could it get?

He nodded slowly and put a golden fountain pen onto his lower lip thinking something deep, which had "NO" written in cursive on it for Nester Ollen.
But if it wasn't​ for the middle of an interview, I would have definitely giggled at that thinking about the consequences of just having 'NO' written all over your place, door, pen etcetera etcetera., as if saying flat- no for every darn thing.
Thank god, my initials never included 'N' or 'O'!
But then again, it was just my weird sense of humour.

"Mmm. Okay. Just wait in the lobby, we will notify you within an hour," said the lady, extending her arm to give me my stuff back.

That's it, that was that? I was expecting they would go on testing me with a list of questions that I could possibly never ever be able to answer in my life, or things that I probably would've not gotten into my dumb-head in the first place. Not at least in the last entire month I spent in library, cramming things like theories, inventions, history of Nova-Gen and what not? And worst of them was remembering those never ending list of events or dates.

"Thank you."
I got up from the chair fumbling to get a grip while I touched my dangling​ feet to the ground and went straight out of the door and via hallway towards the lobby.

A wave of relief swept across my mind and I let out a long rustling exhale. The scariest part was done.

But the same uneasiness returned back multiplied several times and clawed up my spine,
'will I be selected, at all?' I shook the thought off and entered the lobby.