Adlewood Academy

To Ava, Adlewood wasn’t just a school. It wasn’t just the most prestigious performing arts academy in all of the UK. It wasn’t just a place to learn, hone your skills, and make friends. Adlewood was a place where stars were born, and every morning when she woke up, she reminded herself of that.

As prestigious as Adlewood was, acceptance wasn’t handed out like samples at Baskin Robbins. There was a procedure, if you will, that all prospective students had to go through. It began with a transcript and a sample piece, a live audition was thrown somewhere in the middle, and the process ended with an acceptance letter sealed with the Adlewood emblem.

Had Ava gone through the process in a similar fashion as the other students, she would have been one of the last ones to get in, if at all. It wasn’t that Ava wasn’t talented, because she was. Her talent was dancing, acting or musical instruments. Her talent was singing. She had one of the most amazing voices and anyone who had heard her could attest to that. It was the fact that every acceptance letter came only after a live performance. Live being the keyword.

Ava had the talent and skill to win over anyone’s vote, but she didn’t have the confidence to show them that. She couldn’t perform, because anytime she tried, her throat would close up, her palms would sweat, and her mind refused to put thoughts into any pattern with a normal semblance. Ava didn’t just have stage fright; she had full on stage sarcoma, complete with a twitching eye and dry tongue.

If Ava had been forced to perform like all the other applicants, she never would have been accepted, which was why she was lucky enough to have a father on the board of admissions. She didn’t even have to fill out her application, because her father did it for her, and she’d already been chosen before they knew if she had any skill at all.

Adlewood was small enough that nearly nothing stayed secret, so the other students knew all about her father’s position and many of them hated her for it. She didn’t have to work like they did, therefore, she didn’t deserve her spot at the school, and she wasn’t always inclined to disagree. They were right that she’d got in purely on her last name, but that didn’t mean she didn’t have talent.

If the other students could just hear her sing, they’d know that Ava was at Adlewood for reasons other than her father’s name, but she didn’t give herself the opportunity to prove it to them. She was too terrified.

In all of her singing classes, she was the one in the background who refused to pipe up, and her grades paid for it. She had one of the lower GPA’s at Adlewood, and if it weren’t for the exams that were given in private, she’d have failed out her freshman year.

All that being said, Ava had only one goal for the finals showcase: not to fail it. She knew she’d have to go out on the stage, perform in front of the entire student body, and not mess it up. She’d had to the year prior and completely bombed it, dropping her GPA down another fourth of a point, and her grades this year couldn’t take it again. She was determined to get up on the stage, strum her guitar, sing a few notes, and walk out of there with a C.

She knew that, one day, if she ever wanted to have a career in music, she’d have to actually learn how to perform, but she could work on that later. For Ava, it was one step at a time, and the finals showcase was still a very big hurdle for her to jump.