Pinks, purples, blacks, and whites swirled around her. A huge mass of tool and toe shoes was blurred together in one moving shape for her to watch and Rose’s head spun with them. Her stomach was turning uncomfortable vaguely reminding her of the time she was the first person to taste the milk after her family’s refrigerator broke down last July. Bathroom. Where’s the bathroom? She thought.

“Rosalie! Rosalie Carter!” She looked up and found herself back in the hall of the New York National Dance Academy. Other ballerinas with hopes of dancing their dream rolls in “the Nutcracker” crowded the hall. Some ran up and down the hall, others stretched in secluded corners, or pressed their curious noses up against the glass window of studio 5C nearby.

“For the last time, Rosalie Carter!” the voice was sharp and frustrated now as it called her name.

Rose jumped up from the crouching position she had taken in the corner and ran for studio 5A. Turning sharply into the room, she nearly collided with a tall and severe looking woman. She wore a black skirt-suit and red lipstick on her pail and wrinkled face. A beak-like nose poked out from under her thick rectangular glasses. Her Raven black hair was streaked with silver and pulled into a tight ponytail making her look even more like a bird. She was not at all what Rose expected from Mary Bradly, the top ballet director in the country.

“Patience may be a virtue, Miss Carter, but punctuality is what is required to be a professional dancer. Come.” She said and turned her back on Rose. Careful to look towards her feet as she walked, Rose followed Mrs. Bradly into the studio.

“Center stage. Why are you here, Miss Carter?” she barked.

“I want to dance.” Rose answered, eyes barely straying from her shoes to look up at the woman.
“Louder!” She demanded, still examining Rose down her beak-like nose.
“I… I” Rose stammered. Her head and stomach both began to spin again.
“Never mind.” Mrs. Bradly said, pinching the bridge of her nose under her rectangular glasses. “Just dance.”
This is what Rose had been waiting for. This was why she was here. The music began and she started to dance, but soon realized that her feet were not listening. They stayed clinging to the ground as if they were afraid of heights.
“Sometime today, Miss Carter.” Mrs. Bradly sounded tired and aggravated and only made Rose even more uneasy.
Rose closed her eyes. “Just breathe.” Her mother’s voice told her. “You dance when you are happy. Just be happy. It will come and you will fly. You always do.”
When she opened her eyes, she was in her large backyard, a memory of when she was young. Rose was six and dressed in her fairy wings and sitting in a tall tree. She remembered that she had convinced herself that she was meant to fly, so she jumped.
Rose recalled the lessons she learned that day: One, jumping out of trees usually results in a broken bone. Two, if she wanted to fly, she would have to find another way. That was when she found dance. Dancing was how she learned to fly.
She felt her body moving now. The music flowed through her and guided her as she danced. In that moment, she could not see Mrs. Bradly’s harsh, quizzical glare. She could not feel the splitting pain in her foot from balancing all of her weight on just two toes. The spinning feeling was gone and all that remained was her and dance. She was home.
When she finished, she stopped moving, the music tapered off, the room fell into silence, and she waited. Mrs. Bradly’s expression was in the same sharp frown as before. “Miss Carter, why are you here?” she repeated.
Rose finally knew her answer. “Because for me, dancing is the closest thing you can get to flying.” When Mrs. Bradly did not reply, Rose curtsied politely and quickly exited.

Days passed, but it felt like years. Each hour dragged out like watching the second hand on a clock tick slower and slower until it seemed to stand still. The day the cast list went up could not come nearly fast enough.
Exactly one week after her audition, Rose returned to the New York National Dance Academy and walked once more to the hall outside studio 5A. On the wall across from the door to the studio, a group of people crowded around a single sheet of paper.
Some of the people were crying, a few were talking animatedly into their phones, others stood fixedly at that one piece of paper. Soon all of the chatter and noise turned into insignificant buzzing. All of those people blurred into little smudges in her peripheral vision. The only thing she saw was that single piece of paper.
Rose ran her finger down the side of the paper until she either found her name or the end of the page. Finally she saw it.
*Rosalie Carter - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Clara
*Principle Ballerina (main character)