You're on your own kid by Taylor Swift

From sprinkler splashes to fireplace ashes, I gave my blood sweat and tears for this. 

The bright sun gapes through the half closed curtains and blind my tired eyes. The smell of sweet perfume mixed with hairspray fills my lungs. 

I sit up in a daze, still adapting to my surroundings. "Morning sleepyhead." My roommate, Maddie, sings as she aggressively attacks her hair with a bottle of hairspray. I check the time on my phone, 7:00am. My first class today is at 8:30am, meaning I have plenty of time to get ready and eat breakfast.

I awkwardly begin trying to get changed into my leotard and tights under my duvet. 

"It's okay babes. Don't worry, I'll just look away." Maddie laughs. I sigh in relief and start getting dressed on my feet like normal.

When I'm ready I let her know and she turns back around, attacking her hair yet again with the hairspray. "You think you've got enough hairspray on?" I joke.

"Better safe than sorry." She shrugs. Maddie ends up helping me out with a bun and gluing my hair in place with the hairspray. 

When I first got here I decided I wanted a change so I dyed my hair a light brown colour and got it cut to about my shoulders. It's still a little curly but cutting it short chopped away most of the curls, I feel a lot more mature in this style.

We walk along the corridors to the communal girls bathrooms. We get inside and take as little time as we can when brushing our teeth. 

It's surprisingly not too dirty but with almost everyone showering right now and the air is humid, making us both sweat. 

Once we've finished we make our way out and back to our dorm. I make sure to read over my timetable one last time.

Monday. Ballet, Jazz, Contemporary, Lecture, tap.

Tuesday. Lecture, Hip hop, Ballet, jazz, contemporary.

Wednesday. Contemporary, Ballet, Lecture, Jazz, Commercial.

Thursday. Ballroom, Ballet, Lecture, Contemporary, commercial.

Friday. Contemporary, jazz, commercial, guest class/teacher, ballet.

I place all the shoes I'll need into my bag and put some sweatpants on as we head down to breakfast. Maddie leads us towards a table with three other people. 

"Hey Rachel." Maddie taps the girl on her shoulder, she turns around confused and when she sees Maddie she smiles excitedly and hugs her. "Hi" she gestures for Maddie to sit down.

Rachel has long brown hair and freckles crossing over the bridge of her nose, her lips are plump and she looks super sweet. 

Maddie sits down and then Rachel notices me and happily tells me to sit down too. 

"Guys this is Maddie, we went to ballet together for 9 years." Rachel introduces. "This is my roommate." Maddie gestures to me, already starting to eat her eggs. 

"Well I'm Rachel Jones." Rachel extends her hand to me for me to shake, "I'm Paris Rooney." I shake her hand. Her handshake is firm but welcoming. 

"Wyatt Reid." One of the two boys reaches his hand out for me to shake, he has a thick English accent and a glowing smile. His hair is fluffy and flops around his face. I shake his hand and turn towards the other boy.

He looks up from the book he's reading and smiles, dimples appear in his cheeks. His eyes gleam a dark blue that reminds me of the ocean. He closes his book and reaches his hand out, "I'm Hayden Green." He tells me. I smile back and take his hand in mine. His muscles tense under his shirt as he shakes my hand.

"Paris." I repeat, being a little caught off guard by his looks, "Yeah, you mentioned." He laughs. I flush red a little. 

"Paris here, is a junior in high school. How weird is that?" Maddie senses my embarrassment and changes the topic. "What? How does that work?" Wyatt asks, his accent making the sentence sound strange.

"Well I'm sixteen- almost seventeen. And I applied early and somehow got early admissions." I explain. 

"Well that's great, I can't wait to see you dance, you must be really good." Rachel smiles kindly. 

We all eat our breakfast, taking time to get to know each other, turns out I have almost all my classes with at least one of them. We all have ballet and contemporary together. 

"You know, teachers love it when you arrive early to class to stretch so they don't have to take time out of their class to warm up. Should we head down?" Rachel suggests eagerly. 

We all head to ballet together after finishing up in the canteen. We get to class and for twenty minutes before we start stretching. The teacher, a skinny brunette lady who looks no older than thirty, walks in five minutes before class and smiles proudly. 

When the class begins, she realises nobody else took the time to pre-stretch so whilst they all warm up she comes and speaks to us. 

"My name is Madame Moreau." She introduces with a gentle french accent. "It's lovely to meet you, my name is Rachel Jones." Rachel smiles, looking a little nervous. 

"I'm Maddie Winters." 

"My name is Wyatt Reid."

"I am Hayden Green."

"I'm Paris Rooney." I smile. 

Madame Moreau smiles pleasantly, "Well I'm glad some people know proper ballet etiquette is to arrive stretched." She rolls her eyes. 

We all laugh politely and she begins telling us all about her career as a dancer. Turns out she performed the Royal Opera House when she was young, she played Clara in The Nutcracker. 

When we finally begin class, Madame Moreau does not hold back. We go straight into learning difficult dances leaving us all red and sweating. 

"You may take a break if you wish, if not I will play the music again and you can practice amongst yourselves." She announces, about 50% of the class scatters for a water break. Thankfully all five of my new friends stay to get extra practice along with about 10 other people. 

"Wrong answer. There are no breaks in ballet. If you sat down, get out of my class. If you are not committed you will leave without fuss and return to our next class with a better attitude." She yells. 

I see a couple people walking out crying as she restarts the music for the rest of us. We keep dancing until she dismisses us, on the exact time the class is set to end, no earlier no later. 

"Thank you Madame Moreau." Rachel smiles as we all walk out together. "Good work children." She smiles back.

We leave and split up, heading to our next classes, I make my way to jazz with Rachel who has the same class. "You're incredible, how long have you been doing ballet?" I ask her through deep breaths, still exhausted from ballet as we walk to class together which starts in 10 minutes.

She smiles to herself as she sips on her water bottle, "Thanks, I started when I was 4. You were incredible too- especially considering you're like 2 years younger than half the class." She jokes. 

"That's like the biggest honour coming from you." I laugh. 

"So what's your favourite style of dance?" Rachel asks me as she places her water bottle back in her dance bag. 

"Probably contemporary. I love ballet but contemporary has always been my best." I answer, "I'm guessing ballet is yours?" I grin. "How did you guess?" She gasps sarcastically then we both laugh. 

"Where did you say you were from?" Rachel asks after some small talk. "I'm from Connecticut but last year my family moved to Texas for a little." I explain. "Right, your accent sounds like it's got a little Texan in it." She explains. 

"Really?" I laugh a little, "Yeah, just a little." She nods. 

"I don't think you mentioned where you were from?" I hint. "I'm from New York. Just an hours flight." She converses. "Lucky, It was a six hour flight from Texas." I complain.

"God, that's not gonna be fun travelling back every long weekend and holiday." She laughs. I frown and bite my cheek, "Don't know if I even will go back." I shrug. "Oh, Sorry. I shouldn't have-" She starts apologising. 

"No. No. I just mean with the long flight it might not even be worth it." I lie to lighten the mood. "Ohh" She sighs in relief. 

Jazz class turned out to be better than I thought it would be. The teacher was pretty laid back and he let us leave five minutes early because we worked so hard. On the way out he even complemented my turns. 

Rachel and I continued talking on our way to our next class which starts in twenty minutes at 11am. Thanks to Professor Windsor, Rachel and I get to class right as the previous one was set to end. A few kids show up as time goes on yet still no site of our group. 

Between every class we get 15 minutes to get to our next one, rehydrate, stretch, change shoes and anything else we may need to do. 

We're only five minutes away from the class starting and still our group hasn't showed up. "I'm sure we were all in this class together?" Rachel doubts herself. We're both currently in middle splits facing each other. 

"We definitely were." I furrow my eyebrows. 

Suddenly our attention is brought to three infuriated students. They march towards us, Maddie flops onto the floor beside us and starts dramatically fake crying into my shoulder. 

"Professor Morden is a boring old twat." Wyatt sits down beside Rachel, then Hayden sits between them, forming a small circle of us. 

"He just kept talking and talking and when you finally think it's over, he keeps going until you consider jumping out the window but then you realise that you would just die and go to hell. Except now you know what hell looks like so you would just be back in that lecture hall again for eternity." Maddie complains, laying back into my arms dramatically. 

"I'm sure he wasn't that bad." I laugh. "If Bella Swan and Yoda had a baby it would be Professor Morden." Wyatt jokes. I can already imagine the boring, slow talking guy this is. 

"He's so full of himself, he thinks he's the smartest guy in the world but he has like no personality." Hayden complains. 

"And he kept us back 10 minutes later than he should've." Maddie sighs. "Well Rachel and I got out 5 minutes early." I boast. 

In response, Maddie just lets out a loud groan of annoyance. 

When the class finally begins our teacher introduces herself as Mrs Turners. She choreographs a couple counts of eight as a warm up. 

We all perform it back to her after learning it for ten minutes. Once we do it as a group, she has all the people standing at the back come to the front so she gets to see everyone. 

"Okay, I'm going to split you into 5 groups of four and have you perform it in a smaller group so i can focus on individual talent more." She orders.

She puts me with a boy and two girls I don't know and has my group go first. 

I perform the combo easily, however I notice two of the people in my group mess up a couple parts and one of the girls just fully forgets the dance halfway through and bursts out crying. The second we finish the dance the room cheers. "Next!" Is all Miss Turners says. 

I worry that I didn't do good enough but as I watch the other groups I notice a significant difference between our performances. Maddie and Wyatt mess up a couple moves but manage to recover well. Rachel does well with the dance but her movements look a little stiff and unnatural like she's uncomfortable. Hayden does incredible and I almost find myself feeling jealous of his flawless skills even though I basically have the same skills.

Once all the groups have gone Miss Turners has us gather round her. 

"Okay, I've separated you each into pairs as this years exam involves several partner pieces. You've all been paired with someone on your level. Let it be known that I'm listing these in order of ability so if your pairing comes close to the end of my list you may want to consider working harder. Okay first up, my two best dancers: Hayden and Paris. Congratulations." 

I smile proudly as the class applaud us, Maddie squeezes my shoulders in a subtle congratulations. I glance to my side at Hayden who wears the same proud grin, we both high five. 

"Next pairings are as follows:

Warren and Rachel.

Maddie and Wyatt.

John and Sarah. 

Spencer and Noah.

Ravi and Allison.

Dylan and Conrad.

Pauline and Naomi.

Martha and Kyle.

Linda and Evie." She lists.

"Now with that partner you're going to take some time as an icebreaker to discuss your favourite music. And then you can agree on a song you will use for your first exam piece." 

So Hayden and I sit together in the corner discussing our favourite types of music. We quickly agree to do Against All Odds by Phil Collins. 

Whilst we wait for everyone else to decide on a song we make jokes and small talk. 

Miss Turner decides once we've all chosen a song to start choreographing a duet we can practice together to help us get to know each other better instead of jumping straight in on creating dances with strangers. 

She ends up choreographing a pretty intimate and close dance. We all dance it in our pairs at the same time before she decides we will perform it in our pairs individually. 

Everyone performs, some doing better than others. Hayden and I go last. 

We stand up and get to the centre. She starts playing the music, a song I recognised to be sung by Billie Eilish. 

We start dancing together and don't miss a step. We move well together and the music seems to just add the perfect cherry on top.

When we finish everyone applauds and Miss Turner looks on the verge of tears. "Angelic! You're chemistry is incredible. It reminded me of my ex husband, we met when we were in a dance class much like this. Until last year I walked in on him having sex with his secretary, now I live alone with full custody of our three cats." She speaks. 

I tilt my head a little and smile hesitantly, "Thanks??" I try not to laugh as I glance over at Hayden who's got his head down hiding a smirk. 

"Very good. You're dismissed. Except for Hayden, Paris, Rachel and Warren, please stay back a moment." She waves everyone off. 

The four of us wait back and once everyone has left she begins talking. 

"I'm sure you all know about our annual performances. We invite ex alumni, thousands of agents and scouts, potential future alumni, executives, board members, etc. plus thousands of famous dancers and well known celebrities. Each year we choose 4 students total to show off our best dancers. A few teachers nominate 4 finalists and then all the thirty finalists go head to head competing for the spots. I've decided to select you four for my selection. If you're interested, you must attend an extensive selection process next weekend where we will then select the four dancers. Those other 26 dancers who are not selected will be ensemble. So basically you're already selected to be dancing back up. For the selection process we'll have some students from a neighbouring school coming in to help us decide, they won't have much knowledge about dancing so they'll mostly be here to see how it looks to unbiased audiences. The process will last a while so you're advised to bring pre-made meals for yourself and lots of water. It begins 8am next Saturday, then will end for the day at 10pm. The times will then be the same for Sunday."

I take a moment to process what had just been said to me. When I do my eyes widen and a smile creeps it's way onto my face. "Thank you so much for this opportunity." Rachel smiles sincerely. 

"Yeah, thank you." I agree, then we all begin thanking her gratefully. 

The second we exit the room together Rachel and I squeal and hug each other. 

(a/n. I know the start of part 3 is rough because there's no OG characters in it until Chapter 66 which is annoying but I swear it'll take off soon. Also I've noticed by reads are significantly dropping so idk if it's just because of the recent spam uploads to finish part 2 but if you're reading this thank you.)