SEASON ONE, EPISODE NINETEEN

IS IT OVER?

A.J.

          A.J. COULDN'T BREATHE.

          It wasn't the fact that everyone was staring at her that bothered her the most; after all, after all those months she'd spent on Broadway had prepared her for that. That was not the problem. The problem was the reason why people were staring at her and what they were whispering about. They were thriving over the exposure of her personal life without her consenting to it, using her own life as a weapon against her, to dethrone her, to humiliate her.

          The worst part is that they had succeeded in their aspect. A.J. was utterly mortified, trying to make her way back to her dorm room, but the moving crowd was walking in the opposite direction, which made it ten times harder for her to escape. Even those who weren't blocking her path, the ones who stood on the outskirts of the ironically straight line she was trying to walk on, didn't allow her to move as fast as she wanted to.

          She could hear every single thing they were saying about her. Some of them weren't pretty. She felt dirty, disgusted with herself, remembered she hadn't even told her parents yet, and now they were bound to find out the truth about their own daughter through social media. Trust had always been a big deal for her family and she knew they were going to act as though she didn't trust them or like she had broke their trust in her. She was supposed to be perfect; she was supposed to date Nick, to date other men, and she had even managed to ruin that.

          The glaring headline of that blog post burned the back of her eyelids, flashing in burning red, and that's when she was certain they had won. They wanted to see her break and all it had taken was a stupid post on a stupid blog; it wouldn't be long before word got out to sites like TMZ or show choir blogs, and she knew what she had to do.

          First of all, she had to catch her breath.

          Locked in the safety of her empty dorm room, she leaned her back against the door, chest heaving as if she had just finished running a marathon, and the corners of her vision blurred, then blackened. She couldn't see anything, so she stumbled across the bedroom until her knees banged against something, sending her crumbling down to the floor. Her sobs didn't sound like sobs anymore—she sounded like a drowning victim, helplessly gasping for air, despite knowing she was doomed.

          A.J. struggled to get up from the floor, her pulse echoing in her ears like gunfire, and curled her fingers around what she thought was the leg of one of the beds. Though she was no quitter—after all, who had fought so hard for her dreams?—she had no energy left.

          After what felt like an eternity, three soft knocks on the door disturbed her and she jumped as her vision slowly returned to normal. There was no one in NYSPA she wanted to see at the moment—not even T.J., not even Miyu—and, whoever it was, needed to leave her alone. With her luck, it was probably someone who wanted to pour more salt in her wounds, laugh at her a little bit more, threaten to expose the truth to even more people.

          "A.J.," Miyu uttered, from the other side of the door. "Can I come in?"

          "No," A.J. blurted out. "Go away."

          "This is still technically my room." A shuffling sound outside of the room rose A.J.'s suspicions even more. "I'm not alone here, so, if there's someone you want to talk to, that person is probably here. There's T.J., Diana, Levi, Sasha—"

          "Just leave me alone, Miyu, please!"

          "I called Mom and Dad," T.J. informed, and A.J.'s heart sank into her stomach. She was already picturing her parents stomping their feet and complaining over having to interrupt whatever they'd been doing up until that point just because their daughter was unable to fend for herself. "I didn't tell them what happened, but I said it was an emergency and that they had to get here as soon as possible. They're on their way and they're worried, so we need to start thinking about how to explain the situation right now."

          She huffed, pressing the heels of her hands against her closed eyes, and was glad she still hadn't eaten. If she had, all her stomach's contents would be coating her carpet by now. "I need to be alone right now, Teej."

          "I'm coming in," Sasha announced.

          "Like hell you are."

          "Watch me." The door swung open to let Sasha enter the room and she closed it right after. She was whiter than a ghost and a wave of anger washed over A.J. for some strange reason. It had been a long time since the last time A.J. had forced herself to hate her, yet her presence in her room wasn't pleasant to her. "You look like shit."

          "Fuck you," A.J. spat. Now that she could finally move a muscle, she slowly rose from the floor, even though her legs were too wobbly for her liking. When she locked eyes with Sasha again, the guilty look on the latter's face felt like a hand tightly squeezing her heart. "You need to leave."

          "I would, but I feel like this is somehow my fault."

          "Was it you? Did you leak it?"

          "What? Of course not. A.J., you have to believe me." She reached out a shaky hand towards her and A.J. shook her head, eyes filled to the brim with tears. Sasha's hands slowly squeezed her shoulders. "The reason why I feel like this is partially my fault is because they only did this after you decided to convince Isabella to give me the solo. Now, I have no solo and your personal life has been exposed to the entire university. I'm so sorry. They had no right to do that—not just to you, but to anyone. It's seriously messed up."

          "I—"

          "I know."

          She didn't. There was no way she could possibly understand what A.J. was going through, but she still offered her a hug. It was probably the first time she had ever done so—the last time had been A.J.'s initiative—and all it had taken for it to happen was for A.J. to have a goddamn meltdown.

          She was hyperventilating again, failing to ignore the incessant buzzing of her phone inside the pocket of her jacket with all the notifications she was getting, and she was faintly aware of how far the news had reached by that point. It was on social media now, the photo someone had snapped when Miyu kissed her plastered everywhere, and she was certainly trending.

          It was over.

          "We're going to find out who leaked it and they're not getting away with it," Sasha promised, taking a step back. "You need to calm down now"—A.J. gritted her teeth, as that was a lot easier said than done—"and call your management team and your publicist. I'm pretty sure they're going to think they have a PR nightmare in their hands."

          "Isn't it?"

          "It could be, but only if you decide to treat it as such. You have a chance of turning the narrative around, of making it favor you; they leaked something that didn't concern you and you're going to get your fair share of nasty comments, sure, but I checked social media. There's an absurd number of people offering you their support, people who understand what it's like to be outed. Remember what happened to Lee Pace? He's out there publicly voicing his support for you. There are people reminding everyone this is something you should have done on your own terms, just like how you did it in the choir room last week. That Janet chick from your Spring Awakening revival is online fighting trolls for you. Don't tell me you're all alone in this because you're not. There are all those people—thousands of them—and there are the people on the other side of that door." She pointed towards the closed door of the dorm room. "Your twin brother. Your best friend. There's an entire show choir club ready to fight for you like you fought for it. But you can't let this be the death of you. You have to turn it around, A.J.."

          A.J. pulled her phone out of her pocket. After scrolling through what seemed like a million Instagram notifications, she saw the two notifications that mattered—one was a text message from her mother, letting her know they'd seen what had happened and were on their way. The other was a text from Nick, vowing to support her any way he could.

          Lying was not an option. She knew that much. Even if her publicist wanted her to pretend like she and Nick had gotten back together, that the stunt with Miyu was a stage kiss pulled out of context, people would still know the truth and they'd keep fighting for it to get out.

          She wasn't going to force Nick and Miyu to lie alongside her. It wouldn't solve anything.

          "Please leave," she eventually asked Sasha. "My parents are on their way. I have to call my manager and my publicist."

          Sasha nodded. "I'll let Isabella know you won't be coming to today's rehearsal. She'll understand."

          No one would. That was the whole point.

          SECTIONALS WERE A FEW DAYS AWAY. A.J. never returned to rehearsals, and even getting out of bed to attend her lectures proved to be a harder task than it should be. After a truly hellish week, during which she'd stayed utterly silent on social media as per her publicist's advice, plenty of things had happened.

          She had never attended so many meetings during her career. Between team meetings and talking to the Dean, she wasn't sure when she'd have a moment to breathe. However, by the time she found that opportunity, it came with a price and she'd had to make one of the hardest decisions of her life.

          Her publicist had agreed on releasing a statement about what had happened, addressing the situation and being assertive about it. A.J. was coming clean, to twist the narrative and revert the power back to herself, but she wanted to do so at her own pace, small steps at first. Her parents kept pressuring the Dean to find the culprit—or the culprits, as they certainly couldn't have worked alone—or NYSPA would be dealing with a heavy lawsuit in no time. There was only so much NYSPA could do, regardless of how miserable A.J. felt, and they certainly wouldn't be spending more time working on the case than the absolutely necessary.

          After all, it meant other people would have less competition now. Where was the fun in that?

          Her decision hadn't been easy. It had involved plenty of tears—mostly furious tears—but it was something that had to be done. Only three people had been informed of it and had sworn to keep their mouths shut until A.J. decided to speak up and tell everyone else.

          That day was Thursday, two days away from Sectionals.

          It was the first time she was stepping foot inside the choir room since that fateful day and her heart raced in anticipation. They were all looking at her when she entered the room, with T.J. and Sasha following her close behind, and they refused to leave her side when she stopped by the grand piano and faced her crowd.

          The blog team sat at the back of the room, as per usual, and she refused to give them the satisfaction of even sparing as much as a glance towards them.

          Some guests were also present—Levi's girlfriend, Red, and Brody's fiancé, Jesse, for example—which meant they'd have to hear something that didn't concern them in the slightest, but A.J. still felt the need to do it regardless of their presence. It was something she had to do, even though it was going to hurt, and it would be as easy and quick as ripping off a band-aid.

          "A.J. would like to tell you all something," Isabella announced. "Following certain recent events, I expect all of you to take this information like mature adults, even though some of you have been behaving like middle schoolers."

          A.J. nodded in gratitude and stepped forward, taking a deep breath. "I'm going to make this quick and short so you won't have to deal with me for too long. I'd like to thank those of you who have supported me during the past week; your nice comments haven't gone by unnoticed and I owe you my life, quite literally. It hasn't been easy, but my team and I are taking care of it." She shot a brief glare towards the blog team. "When I decided to revive this club, I was doing it for myself. I was fresh out of Broadway and didn't want people to forget about me, so I took it upon myself to restore this club to its former glory. Now, I realize it's bigger than me and it's bigger than you—it's about all of us. It's about the underdogs. It's about doing what's right and proving other people wrong, even when they expected you to fail. We won Invitationals. I have no doubt in the world we're going to win Sectionals two days from now.

          "However . . ." She sharply inhaled. T.J. gently squeezed her shoulder. "I can't keep doing this. I can't be part of a club who willingly screwed me over, went behind my back, and decided to out me to the world without my permission just for revenge. I don't know what you were planning on accomplishing. If you wanted to make me feel like shit, you got it. If you wanted my PR team to go through my Instagram account and delete every single hate comment for hours, you got it. If you wanted me to feel unsafe while going outside, you got it.

          "And for what? Are you happy? If ruining people's lives makes you happy, I think that says a lot more about you than it does about me. So, congratulations. Whoever you are, you've proved to the entire school what an incredibly shitty person you are."

          "A.J.," T.J. muttered.

          "I'm getting ahead of myself." She gritted her teeth. "My point is: I waited an entire week for the person behind that photo and that post to come forward. My parents are minutes away from suing this entire place because of you and that could mean the end of this club, the very thing you've been swearing to protect ever since hitting the publish button. No one has said a word. Therefore, I'm resigning from the Twilight Tone—effective immediately." People gasped. People whispered. "Isabella, T.J., and Sasha all knew about this. Sasha has been practicing the solo that was mine, yet it had always belonged to her. You're going to win Sectionals without me. You're going to win Regionals and Nationals without me.

          "I won't be coming back. I need to step away from this club and from all the harm it has brought me." Miyu looked straight out betrayed. "Your funding will be assured, so that's one less thing you'll have to worry about. As for everything else . . . there are so many insanely talented people in this club. You don't need me to win." She rubbed her arms as chills ran down her spine. "There was a time when I thought you did, but now I realize I was wrong. On Saturday, you're going to win. And you're going to prove me right—you're going to prove I did the right thing by reviving the club."

          She gave them some time to process the news. When no one spoke, she spun around on her heels and began her journey towards the door, knowing damn well it was going to be the last time she'd ever walked through that door.

          "Allison," Miyu called, and she instantly stopped in her tracks. There were a few confused mutters in the choir room, coming from all those people who had never bothered to Google her and find out her real name but had had no trouble profiting off her misery. However, even those faded into the background. "Please. Please don't quit. We need you."

          Next to Brody, his fiancé had turned so white it looked like his body was devoid of blood. A.J. couldn't bring herself to care or wonder why he had reacted like that.

          "You need each other," A.J. replied. "You need to trust each other. Don't stab each other in the back, not again. You're supposed to be a team."

          "No, we're supposed to be a team," Levi argued, "and that includes you."

          She shook her head. "Go get them. Make me proud."

          And, with that, she was gone.