It is 1:42 P.M. All twenty-two of my teammates are aligned beside me. The lights are shining on us, making us feel like we are right next to the sun. Sweat is trickling from our foreheads, making us shimmer in the light. We are on edge, wondering what is going to happen. We look out to see cameras, and thousands of people all staring at us, with blank faces. I’ve never felt so nervous. As I touch my hands together, they slip from sweat. It’s been thirty seconds, but it feels like a million years.

Suddenly, a man’s voice is broadcasted throughout the auditorium. His voice is high pitched and causes an uneasy feeling inside me. He starts explaining what is about to happen, but I can’t listen. I just stand there, staring at a charcoal grey board on the stage. It has sparkles reflecting off it from costumes, and streaks like someone drug a heave piece of furniture across it. He’s still talking, I want him to halt, but I can’t communicate to him. He stops, in silence, I want to throw up my sandwich that I ate for lunch. Finally, he says, “Third Place.” He pauses for a dramatic effect, and he then calls out one of the teams standing next to me. They had on orange warm ups with tan jazz shoes, but I’m too nervous to notice anything specific. They trudge up to the four- foot trophy happily, but sad that they hadn’t won first place. I sigh with a relief that my team didn’t get third. There is one more team standing next to us, and they are intimidating. They wore black warm up suits with their hair in buns on the very tops of their heads, and all of them had intense facial expressions that made me feel unwanted.

I’m more nervous now than before, and I hear the man’s voice trying to budge its way through the microphone. He starts to talk again, this time saying, “First Place” I’m not sure why he skips second place, but I don’t care. He pauses for what seemed like an eternity, and then he yells in his high pitched voice, sounding like Mickey Mouse, “Dance Explosion!” I just stood there, not comprehending what he just belted out to the whole auditorium. Then I hear screaming from my teammates, they sound like they had just won gold at the Olympics. I then realize the man had called my teams name. My team. I flood with emotions wanting to scream with happiness, but also wanting to cry because we have worked over nine months to perfect this dance, and it paid off. I decide to just be happy and cheer. I look around at my teammates to notice that they are all engulfed in tears, and I am not. I should be, but I don’t cry as easy as everyone else. I’m just thrilled at the fact that we were World Dance Champions! I also see the team that was so intimidating to me, look so defeated.

We ran up to our trophy like it was our baby, we had never seen before. As we leap up to the trophy, we notice that it is six feet tall! It towers over us like a giant would. Everyone in the crowd cheers with happiness. We all want to touch it and just bathe in our victory that we deserved. We stand up there looking like disco balls, from the bright light shining on our sweat and tears. We are too shocked to care. We stood up there like we were on top of the world. I look through the light, like trying to find a plane in the sky on a bright summer’s day and can vividly see my dance owner Shannon she’s in tears, and she never cries.
The announcer man announces second place, which was the team in the black warm ups. They walk up to their five foot trophy with a strut, not mad, but happy that they had made it to the competition. I look at one of the second place team members. She had brown hair with blonde highlights. Also she had freckles all over her face, and a dimple on her right cheek. She looked annoyed that she hadn’t won, I could tell by the way her eyebrows were pointed toward her nose and her forehead was wrinkled, with her eyes narrow and dark. She was a sore loser, anyone could tell.

Finally, my team and I sprinted off the stage to see my dance teacher, she was balling her eyes out. She ran towards us. It felt like she was running in slow motion. We ran at her, our feet stomping on the grey cement floor, and the smell of hair spray flew into my face as my team began to run in front of me. We jumped on her with such a force, almost knocking her down. We all got off her and went to our bags and called our parents. I look at my phone, and it said 1:50 P.M.