Emery’s whole life had been one big performance. So as she waited backstage for her number to be called, she did not feel the curdling anxiety in her gut that all the other girls were surely feeling. For performing was all she had ever known.

Though, she was beginning to grow impatient and her foot, that she had wrapped pristinely in her favourite pointe shoes, was tapping methodically against the cold black floor.

Emery knew the judges would not be looking for her talent but rather for her flaws. Their hungry eyes would lap up her stumbles rather than her soars. Eyes passing over her perfect arabesque to watch as she then misses a step.

But Emery was used to the art of performing. Whether it be a perfectly timed smile, the batting of her eyelids or a flawless pirouette.

She had honed herself and her craft into something faultless.

Sometimes she would have to lock herself in her room for a few days, shelter herself away from the demanding world just so she could remember who she truly was.

Purge herself of the personas she adapted, cleanse her mind of sweet words and fake smiles just so that when she looked in the mirror she could once again recognise the girl that looked back.

She had learnt from a young age that to get what she wanted in life she had to be flexible. She had to be able to bend herself into the shapes people so desperately wanted her to fit.

If she could achieve her dreams it did not matter whether or not she lost herself along the way. Atleast that’s what Emery would tell herself late at night as she stared at her ceiling, wondering if she really knew herself at all; if anyone really knew her for that matter.

She had watched from the sidelines as girl after girl had walked on to that stage and begun their dance. A stage that seemed small to Emery, for the world was her stage, and in comparison this one was nothing.

A few had stood out to her, their dances beautifully breathtaking. But she had also watched the judges faces sour. Looking to one another shaking their heads, scribbling in their notebooks with poisonous ink. Their minds had been made before the first damning strum of the violin.

Another thing Emery had learned: you could be the best at what you did and yet it still would never be good enough. You could be the best dancer in the world, but if you weren’t the dancer they were looking for it didn’t matter. Some of those girls walked onto that stage head held high, confident, sure of themselves. And those were the girls the judges had turned down.

They didn’t want a girl who knew her own worth, they wanted someone who didn’t realise just how good they were. A girl they believed to be meek.

A girl that would submit.

After what seemed like an eternity to her they eventually called Emery’s number. Like a swan skipping along the surface of a lake she glided across the stage, made her steps small and graceful as she made her way to it’s centre.

Looking at her pointed feet she slowly raised her head and smiled sweetly, softly at the judges before looking away again.

Shy, meek, malleable.

She heard their whispers of agreement and saw the stars that gleamed in their eyes. Watched as the poison in their pens turned to sugar.

Though she wouldn’t dare show it, on the inside Emery smiled. A viciously ugly smile, a smile that she supposed was truly her own. A smile that would have had those judges cringing back in outright horror.

Let them think her weak, let them give her what she so fervently craved.

Success.

Allowing her chest to swell with warmth she quieted her own voice in her head, replacing it with the voice of the girl they now believed her to be.

Emery did not mind letting herself go, because beneath it all, beneath her masquerade she knew that she had won.

And oh didn’t victory taste ever so sweet.