“Here it is,” she said. “She left you two letters…Anything else?”
“No…”
She tilted her head to the side and tapped her lip, looking as if she wanted to say something, but she smiled and left the room.
Locking the door, I tore the first letter open and read it.
Dear GBH,
Thank you very much for hiring me as your undergraduate intern. I’ve had quite the experience working for you and am honored by all I’ve learned. However, due to personal reasons, I am resigning as of today.
I apologize for such short notice, and I wish your firm continued success in your future endeavors.
—Aubrey Everhart.
I sighed and opened the other letter that was addressed directly to me.
Dear Mr. Hamilton,
FUCK. YOU.
—Aubrey
Overrule (v.):
To reject an attorney’s objection to a question of a witness of admission of evidence.
Aubrey
New York City was an entirely different universe. It was nothing like I expected, yet everything I wanted all at once.
The sidewalks were persistently packed with people rushing to get somewhere, the streets were seas of taxis, and the cacophony of sounds—the shouting from the street vendors, the rumbling of the subway below, and the endless chatter between the executives and casual-ites all blended into an almost pleasing melody.
Not that I had much time to listen to it, anyway.
The second I arrived in New York last week, I’d checked into a cheap hotel and rushed to register for the NYCB audition.
Every day for the past week, I jumped out of bed at four in the morning and headed to Lincoln Center to learn the required audition piece—the hardest choreography I’d encountered in my life.
It was faster, choppier, and the instructors refused to show it more than twice a day. There was no conversation outside of tempo counts, no questions were allowed either. On top of that, the company’s pianist only elected to play the accompanying music at full speed, never slowing down to make the learning process easier.
There were hundreds of girls vying for a place in the company, and from what I gathered from conversations here or there, most of them were already professionals.
I didn’t let that deter me, though.
When the grueling practices came to an end, I took that chance to find a new place in the city to dance on my own: A rooftop in view of Times Square, an abandoned historical store on the Upper East Side, or in front of bookstore windows in the West End.
Despite my immediate love for this city, it wasn’t enough to distract me from my heartbreak. Nor was it enough to distract me from the fact that today, official audition day, I was late.
Sweating, I jumped off the subway and ran down Sixty Sixth Street—paying no mind to my burning lungs.
Keep going…Keep going…
A man to my left stepped out of a cab and I immediately jumped in.
“Lincoln Center, please!” I shouted.