• I sat in the theater, nervous as heck, trying not to show it. Ari was sitting next to me, cracking jokes that I laughed at to not make him feel bad. I was too nervous over something that wasn't really important anyway, but to me, it was the most nerve racking thing of this week. I slowed my breathing and steadied myself. "You okay?" Ari asked in the middle of a hilarious random question. "Fine," I smiled at him. "Okay so-" and he began off again. He shut up when the lady came on stage and started talking about a whole bunch of crap like, "you all did wonderful" and "it was hard to choose" and I tuned this out, it bored me. What captured my attention was when she said "Graphite." she said fourth place, which wasn't me. Third place, that wasn't me. Second place, that wasn't me. Everyone smiled at me, leaning and looking at me. And......first place, which-wasn't me. My heart sank low into the pit of my stomach as no one from Sacred Heart clapped, but everyone's jaw dropped. "Yours was way better than most of theirs." Karina leaned over to me and said. Erin and Elizabeth nodded in agreement. Ari looked at me and said, "Are they blind?" Ari's joke made me fight against my tears harder. I chuckled softly, trying not to show the extreme of my disappointment.