Young Writers Society

This is just a draft and I'm looking to greatly improve, all criticism is greatly appreciated!

You go your whole life as a prodigy knowing that you're special. The word special means that you, and only you, are accepted. You are marveled and listened to, and taken seriously. Everyone looks at you different, everyone loves you, envies you. When you’re just a child, just a person beginning to realize who you are, it’s like being born addicted to a drug. You start doing this thing so well, you start getting the attention, you start noticing how much more important you are than everyone else. And it drives you insane. Out of your mind with all of this self importance.

You are the one they’re all watching. You, this child, are more advanced than some of these adults who are paying to see you, taking pictures of you, even though you’re not their kid, you’re someone elses. But they take their pictures just the same. They are in amazement.

But you don’t care. It’s not that you don’t like what you’re doing, like some spoiled brats. You’re (at first) not doing it for the money, you’re doing it because of the fame. And the fame keeps coming the more you practice, the better you get and you get obsessed and you don’t stop, and your parents don’t let you stop and suddenly you have a giant house and you have the car you want and the boyfriend you want and the clothes you want and everyone wants to be your friend, and grades don’t matter and you’re already sixteen and you’re the best and the money keeps pouring in and the attention doesn’t stop and you’re getting thinner and thinner and then it all comes to a

halt.

I can easily talk about a ridiculous story about how “I didn’t choose cello, cello chose me and I love it”, and of course put you all in stitches about how dedicated I am but please. I play cello, I’m good at it, that’s it. I was born and raised into the wealthiest family on Cape Cod, I learned to be smart before it was required. And I’m smart enough to know that no one cares about how you got started, they only care about the now.

And now, Hartwick has become the enemy, I never know I was going to have. This
“private school of the prodigies” has shattered my every whim and destroyed my every dream. It has put me in my place and squeezed all of the hope and kindness out of me. Not that there was much to begin with. I’m not that girl that has “big dreams”, that is a movie attitude. At Hartwick you cannot have dreams, you have goals that you reach and then you make new ones.

I transferred as a senior because my parents wanted to tell all of their friends that their “prized and only daughter” went to the most prestigious advanced talent high school in the country. And I wanted to go because I wanted to say that about myself as well. My other private school was boring enough when I was acing every class and was not allowed to be in the orchestra there because I was too quick for everyone else. I laughed at the challenges presented to me there, because they weren’t challenges, they were just problems. I was still on that drug then, that drug of being everyone’s focus of attention, because I was the cello girl. The one that played at Carnegie Hall and won numerous awards. I figured I was so good, that when I transferred to the Hartwick Academy it would just be another chance to show up more people than usual. I would still be on that drug, just among people who were on it too. Even though I thought in the back of my head that no one would surpass my alleged “God-given” talent. So I broke up with my boyfriend from my old school who wasn’t worth my time anyways, bought a new car, a new cello bow and set out to conquer another problem.

Hartwick striped me down on the first week. The school, the people, the orchestra, it made my heart collapse, it made my brain slow to an average person’s speed, my playing stopped being above average. I wasn’t the cello girl, I was the fourth cello girl, I was one of many. I wasn’t anyone. I was just another. Another one of those, another one of these. I was in an ocean full of people who were better than me, and for the first time in my life, I was fourth. I don’t do fourth. I don’t compute the number four. I am not the number four.

I am the number one.

Third chair was Violet Crenshaw. She was tall and exotic looking and just by the way she walked anyone in the room could tell that she’d slept with half the guys in the orchestra. She played well, but I was easily better than her. Her looks, and the way every male in the room could use a napkin to wipe their drool when she walked into the room were intimidating. Coming from a girl who had enough makeup to use on a hundred people. Violet was everything I’d ever wanted to be, and more. She could have whatever she wanted without working for it, and that type of success came with no price.

Second chair was Violet’s boyfriend, Blake Herrington. He had more money than my parents three times over. His uniform alone must have cost two hundred dollars. And he looked damn well good in it too. Blake was, in a word, vicious. He was nasty to everyone, and got what he wanted by intimidating the other, more weaker kids. This one guy named Henry literally gave him his lunch money. And everyone knew Blake didn’t need it. He did play better than me though. He made me look like I was seven years old just beginning to play. He was quick and precise and intense, it was fascinating. Violet and him together were the strongest threat I’d ever seen.

When you’re first chair in an orchestra, you are the best. Being the best means you’re perfect. There’s not one better, you are the top dog, you’re the one and only. You have power and importance and everything in between. The first chair cellist of this orchestra was this guy named Anthony Evans, but everyone just called him Tony. He was tall and broad shouldered, and was probably the handsomest boy I’d ever seen in my entire life. The first thing that stood out to me was that he wasn’t wearing a full Hartwick uniform. He was just wearing a vest, the dress pants, loafers, and a stiff white collared shirt with the sleeves rolled up. Hartwick wasn’t a place you mess around in. But he didn’t seem like he cared. Tony didn’t care about anything, it seemed like. He was so relaxed and so obviously and sickeningly arrogant compared to Blake or Violet, who were always on their toes. Tony got first, and as soon as it happened, I knew Blake had a problem.

I was still stunned by the fact that not only was I not first, no one cared about how talented I was, because I wasn’t talented, I was average. But then I had something else to focus on.

“I hope you know that you’re not going to have that chair for long.” Blake said to Tony. Everyone within a three seat radius stopped what they were doing to have a listen, which I found strange. What could this conversation hold, these two arrogant guys fighting over the top seat...a few digs, a swear or two and then a feud. It wasn’t anything new. Rich kids were born and bred not to show much emotion, but I could tell that Tony was different. He reeked of new money.

A few cruel words later and the two boys were in a fist fight.

Thank you for reading! :)