The Truths Behind the Life of Maeve Sun Lively

18

THE GIRLS HAD ALL BEEN given their sweaters, jackets, sweatpants, shirts, whatever clothing, you name it. All of them having the logo of the whole show, which was a light blue bubble letter 99. Now, they wear it with a sort of pride, their faces lit up with excitement that a little kid would have after receiving their Christmas presents. I think it's a waste of money to be honest, creating all these clothes for these ninety-nine girls when ninety-one of them are going to be eliminated. What's the point?

It was early in the morning, and we were all gathered in a huge open area, a little like a large lobby, rows of huge block stairs turned into seats for the girls gathered at the back of the area. The long half circle stair seats are painted into five different colors. The color light blue for group A (The girls' clothes are also in the color of their group), light pink for group B, green for group C, yellow for group D, and lastly purple for group F.

The cameramen and director are already filming, as Ron and the rest of us instructors read out loud the sets of instructions from our given cards for the first round of elimination game—except we don't mention the elimination part which makes sense—and everyone listens intently.

My eyes searched for one person around the crowds of light pink clothes. It took me about ten minutes, but then I finally spotted her. She had her long hair tied into a high ponytail, her neat bangs the same as yesterday. She was talking to some girl I saw her engage in conversation with the day before, someone also from group B, a small smile on her face as she talked.

"Sun Xue Li?"

I turn toward Ron, the rest of them are waiting for me to read my cards. I quickly look at the words on my card instead of at the direction of the seats in group B.

"In the next hour, you'll be learning the theme song to this show. You are given the total of twelve hours to learn it, then there'll be a small contest to see who will be in which spot for the opening stage. The opening stage, meaning you know, obviously the opening stage for the first concert, it is divided into three moving stages. And you'd want to be on stage one which is in the center, the one that has the total of twelve spots, also the one the audience will first notice more. And then there is stage two and three, the side stages, where the rest of you will go. And adding on, your first concert is in exactly three weeks."

They start to gasp and maybe even scream a little. Talking and murmuring, I could already hear their complaints. And I wanted to ask them if they don't think they can do this, why did they come here in the first place?

"Alright now, calm down. Instructors, why not let us show them their theme songs first?" Ron peeked forward to look at all of us.

Right, it was the theme song, that dance and song Mason showed me and told me to learn. And luckily I had listened.

We set our cards and mikes down as the backstage people come and apply the lavalier microphone onto our faces.

The music starts from the speakers and that's when we started, my body, I don't think, has probably danced in maybe a whole month in front of an audience since I got sick. But now, as I moved again, I was starting to get back the sensations of dancing back.

"Ninety-Nine, we are descending 99..."

We sing the song while dancing, but I think I was probably the most professional for this out of all the other instructors. When the song was over, the girls all started clapping and screaming my name. I liked that feeling and praise.

But it's not so soon that they're already freaking out, saying twelve hours isn't enough to learn this whole song while dancing and singing it.

On the cameras it would look like we, the instructors, are mainly teaching them. But really, we just give out a few advice and leave. The real jobs are up to the actual dance and vocal teachers that come in to help them. Or most of the time, the girls have to help each other and figure it out themselves.