With the beginning of another school year, the competition inside the walls of NYSPA is stronger than ever as a small group of students decides to revive the disbanded show choir club.
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SEASON ONE, EPISODE NINETEEN
IS IT OVER?
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A.J.
A.J. COULDN'T BREATHE.
It wasn't the fact that everyone was staring at her that bothered her the most; after all, after all those months she'd spent on Broadway had prepared her for that. That was not the problem. The problem was the reason why people were staring at her and what they were whispering about. They were thriving over the exposure of her personal life without her consenting to it, using her own life as a weapon against her, to dethrone her, to humiliate her.
The worst part is that they had succeeded in their aspect. A.J. was utterly mortified, trying to make her way back to her dorm room, but the moving crowd was walking in the opposite direction, which made it ten times harder for her to escape. Even those who weren't blocking her path, the ones who stood on the outskirts of the ironically straight line she was trying to walk on, didn't allow her to move as fast as she wanted to.
She could hear every single thing they were saying about her. Some of them weren't pretty. She felt dirty, disgusted with herself, remembered she hadn't even told her parents yet, and now they were bound to find out the truth about their own daughter through social media. Trust had always been a big deal for her family and she knew they were going to act as though she didn't trust them or like she had broke their trust in her. She was supposed to be perfect; she was supposed to date Nick, to date other men, and she had even managed to ruin that.
The glaring headline of that blog post burned the back of her eyelids, flashing in burning red, and that's when she was certain they had won. They wanted to see her break and all it had taken was a stupid post on a stupid blog; it wouldn't be long before word got out to sites like TMZ or show choir blogs, and she knew what she had to do.
First of all, she had to catch her breath.
Locked in the safety of her empty dorm room, she leaned her back against the door, chest heaving as if she had just finished running a marathon, and the corners of her vision blurred, then blackened. She couldn't see anything, so she stumbled across the bedroom until her knees banged against something, sending her crumbling down to the floor. Her sobs didn't sound like sobs anymore—she sounded like a drowning victim, helplessly gasping for air, despite knowing she was doomed.
