"And the winner of the 2013 Winston High Ballet Dance competition is…Angela Wild!"

'Clap, Grace. Just clap.' Grace Peterson told herself as she stood there on stage, beside all the other losers. 'You can't let anyone see you cry. There's nothing worse than an entire auditorium of students and teachers seeing you cry.' She looked at the audience as they clapped along. 'Except for losing' she thought.

Angela kept jumping up and down with the biggest smile Grace had ever seen spread across her face. Now Angela had tears streaming down her face. 'She can cry,' Grace thought to herself. 'She won – she can do anything.' Once Angela finished hugging the rest of the contestants; who had jumped along with her, she took a few steps forward to Principal Andrews who had the golden trophy in his hand.

She didn't hug Grace. Why would she? Grace refused to play along with the rest of the dancers and pretend to be happy for Angela when all she wanted to do was to tear that trophy from her hands. Grace looked at the audience and found her parents; also clapping. After all, they were the ones who taught her that no matter who won you should always clap. Don't be a sore loser – they'd say. But they never told her how much losing hurt.

Grace stopped clapping and bent down to lift her silver and slightly smaller 'Second Place' trophy from the stage-floor. She gave it a glance. Second place; she read the letters written on her trophy in contempt. That was just another name for 'Not good enough' to her. Her eyes moved back to Angela Wild. "She wasn't that good" she muttered to herself in anger and disappointment.

"Did you say something, Grace?" Bethany, another participant who didn't win leaned over to Grace's ear and whispered elegantly. Grace turned to her in surprise; she was sure no one heard what she said. And if they did; that no one cared.

"Oh no, I didn't say anything," she replied automatically. Here in Winston High – School of Liberal Arts; whenever you said something nasty and someone heard you, you always, always said you didn't say a thing. Bethany nodded and went back to staring at Angela with envy and insincere happiness in her eyes. Grace joined her.

Grace didn't have anything against Angela other than the fact that she beat her. They weren't all-time rivals, and they didn't hate each other. She would've given Bethany the same scowl if she had won. Grace chuckled. Bethany winning. That thought made Grace smirk. If she hadn’t won, then there was no way that Miss Two Left Feet would. Grace noticed that people were still clapping so she quickly joined them. Why were they still clapping?

All Grace wanted to do was get off the stage and hug her parents. Then again, she also wanted to lash out at them. They never really gave her a change to pick an interest other than dancing when they named her 'Grace'. She now felt like she had failed them. Like she didn’t live up to her own name anymore. 'Why is this taking so long to end?' Grace wondered in agony. 'Why is she still standing there and smiling with that trophy in her hand?'

She thought the ceremony would never end, but then something strange happened. As Angela stood at the end of the stage, waving her left hand at the crowd as a thank you and her right hand holding on tightly to her golden award; her eyes looked different than they had before. Earlier, they were shining brighter than the stage lights that were pointed at her. Now – her eyes looked plain; like she wasn't really there. The tight grasp she had on her trophy grew weaker. No one seemed to notice but Grace. She wanted to shout to her and ask her if she was ok, but something inside her wanted the next thing to happen even more. Something inside her wanted Angela to faint and fall off the stage.

Everyone was in shock. Angela's friends rushed over to her. She wasn't breathing. Principal Andrews yelled for someone to call 911. Someone did, and a few minutes later she was put inside an ambulance, now with no expression on her face. As if she didn't just win the biggest award in Winston High. She wasn't an award winning dancer; now she was just an unconscious girl on her way to the hospital.

The auditorium cleared in a matter of seconds. Now Grace was the only person there. When her parents were about to leave, she told them she would meet them at home; that she needed to be alone for a moment. She looked around her and noticed Angela's trophy, lying on the floor. No one had bothered to bring it to her for when she'd be conscience again. Grace dropped her meaningless trophy and ran to the golden one which lay on the floor. She stared at it with one thought going through her head; this should be mine.

Ever since she was five she knew she wanted to dance; and to be good at it. With that desire, her striving for success would often take over her human qualities like principles, honor, righteousness. Those words meant nothing to Grace at the moment. All she had ever dreamt of was right in front of her; only it wasn't really hers. 'I could scratch the name off' she thought as she looked at the brown letters that read 'Angela Wild' at the bottom. 'No one would ever know.'

Was it really worth it? Having a trophy that wasn't hers. Pretending to be the best at what she loved, only for her own satisfaction. Winning an award with no ceremony and none of her loved ones cheering her in pride. Those were the things that really mattered to her. Not the gold-covered dancer shaped object that winners received at the end. She wanted it to be clear to everyone and not just herself that she was the best. But since no one was there, she decided to bend down and grab the trophy.

"No, this is wrong" she said while shaking her head in disgust. "I'll just go to the hospital and give it to her." She held on to the golden trophy and headed out the front door of the auditorium, leaving her own trophy behind.

She walked over to her car in her all-black dance outfit and the golden trophy in her hand. She drove towards the nearest hospital, pleased with her self-control and willingness to do the right thing, but that disappeared when she glanced at that first place trophy resting on the passenger seat beside her. The anger and resentment returned with every second that passed by as she stared at that trophy. Grace was so caught up in the fact that she lost, she didn't notice the red light in front of her and kept on driving until a driver from her right hit her from the side.

Silence. The only thing Grace heard was her own breaths, as her chest went up and down partly from lack of air, but mostly from the fear of pain. The air bags released air, and shrunk back slowly into stretched out balloons. That's when Grace noticed how strangely her right leg was positioned. Then the pain started to get worse. She felt like she was going blind from how much it hurt. She wanted to scream, but she knew there was no point; she let the ache take over her.

A few minutes or so later, she heard a faint ambulance siren, which got stronger with each second passing by. She begun to feel slight comfort in the situation, but she suddenly realized one important thing: she would never be the same dancer she had been. It would take her months just to be able to walk again. The recovery process would take so long, let alone to even try and return to where she had been only moments ago; second best. Earlier, she was so heartbroken about not being the best, and now all she wanted to do was be able to get out of her car. But she couldn't. When the paramedics arrived, they helped her out and put her into the ambulance. As they drove away, and tears began dripping down her face, she truly understood how things had gotten completely out of hand that night. How she had let a simple trophy shatter her self-esteem. That was when she decided: she was never going to let anything stand in the way of her being happy again, even herself.