I Won The Contest But I Had To Give Out My Prize

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Hi, my name is Alicia. The story I’m about to tell you was such an emotional rollercoaster for me. There was a betrayal, there was a feud, and there were plenty of surprises.

Anyway, this story started when a new girl came to our high school. Her name was Sara, and she had moved from another state with her mom. At school she was always sad, tired, and too shy to talk to anyone. Later I learned that her father had gone to prison, and that they were not doing very well. Sara tried to help her mom with several jobs that her mom had, and she was under a lot of pressure mentally.
So, seeing that she was having a hard time communicating, I decided to take the first step. I sat down with her at lunch and it turned out that she was really really nice. We liked the same bands, the same movies, and generally had similar views on life.

Pretty soon Sara became my best friend. She would come over for sleepovers, which only happened at my place, since she was embarrassed of where she lived with her mom.

So, one day a competition was announced at our school. WIthout getting into too much detail, it was a competition involving ecological projects for our state or even for the whole country. I promise not to bore you with what the projects were about, but the key thing was that the person who had the best project at school was supposed to go to New York City to present it at a conference. And that’s when I knew I had to win.

A lot of you might not understand this, but going to New York City was always a dream of mine. Since I was a kid, I watched movies set in NYC, heard songs about it, and I fell in love with the city - even though I had literally never been there. We live in Montana, which is pretty far away, and my parents prefer to spend vacations camping, but the most important thing is that… they are raising me this way. If I want something, I need to work hard and earn it myself. And this competition was a perfect opportunity.

So I started working on my project, and… there was not much else in my life that I paid attention to for a while. I studied tons of literature, some of it was really complicated pro-level stuff; I did not get much sleep, and I was worried that I was getting too distracted… So after a couple of weeks I started to feel exhausted, and that was when Sara invited me for a sleepover. I mean, this was the first time she ever mentioned going over to her place. So, I agreed. I needed a day off anyway.

And I gotta say, Sara knew really well how important this project was for me and how crazy I got about.

So their apartment turned to be tiny but cozy, and there was nothing to be embarrassed about really. She had her own room and that was where we hung out. Sara went to the kitchen to get us some snacks, and I looked around her room.

At first I didn't pay much attention to a pile of papers on her table. They were none of my business anyway. But Sara was away for so long that I looked at them again… and I was shocked. It was so obvious that she was working on a project for the same contest.

When Sara came back, she realized I had seen the papers and tried to explain. I did not want to listen. I just stood up and left.

As I was walking all the way back home, I was furious. I was not mad at her for taking part in the contest – of course not. I am all for a fair competition! I was mad because she did not tell me. That was shady! I mean… I told her every single detail about my project, she could easily be stealing my ideas.

I am a bit embarrassed to say this right now, but at that moment, for me… this meant war. My project was almost ready, but I started improving it literally night and day. Sara tried to talk to me several times, but I just ignored her. And the worst part was that when I looked at Sara’s papers that night I saw a pretty good point that I could use in my own work. I hesitated, I knew I was wrong, but the stakes were too high and I was getting a little crazy.

Long story short, the contest week was close. There was a whole panel of fifteen people that were tasked with rating the projects: some of them were our teachers, some were local ecological experts, some were people from city council, and there were even several students. For the next 5 days they were supposed to see the presentations and choose a winner.

My presentation was perfect, of course, but the hardest part was waiting. This was like the longest week of my life. The only thing that saved me was the fact that a girl I knew was on the panel, and after I kept bugging her for two days straight, she told me what everyone thought of my work. Every single member thought my project was by far the best. I was overwhelmed.


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