Read The Winner Stands Alone for Free Online

tight, and she doesnt have much time in
     which to land a contract. She went to various places during the first two days, giving
     people a copy of her CV and her photos, but all she achieved was an invitation to last
     nights party at a cheap restaurant, with the music at full blast, and where she met no one
     from the Superclass. In order to lose her inhibitions, she drank more than she should and
     ended up not knowing where she was or what she was doing there. Everything seemed strange
     to herEurope, the way people dress, the different languages, the phony jollitywhen the
     truth was everyone was wishing they could have been invited to some more important event,
     instead of being in that utterly insignifi- cant place, listening to the same old music,
     and having to hold shouted conversations about other peoples lives and the injustices
     committed by the powerful on the powerless.
    Gabriela is tired of talking about these so-called injustices. Thats simply the way it is.
     They choose the people they want to choose and dont have to explain themselves to anyone,
     which is why she needs a plan. A lot of other young women with the same dream (but not, of
     course, with as much talent as she) will be doing the rounds with their CVs and their
     photos; the producers who come to the Festival must be inundated with portfolios, DVDs,
     business cards.
    What would make her stand out?
    She needs to think. She wont get another chance like this, largely because shes spent all
     her savings on this trip. Andhorror of hor- rorsshes getting old. Shes twenty-five. This
     is her last chance. While she drinks her coffee, she looks through the small kitchen window at the dead-end
     street down below. All she can see is a tobac- conists and a little girl eating chocolate.
     Yes, this is her last chance. She hopes it will turn out quite differently from the first
     one.
    She thinks back to when she was eleven years old and performing in her first school play
     at one of the most expensive schools in Chicago. Her subsequent desire to succeed was not
     born of the unanimous ac- claim she received from the audience, composed of fathers,
     mothers, relatives, and teachers. Far from it. She was playing the Mad Hatter in Alice in
     Wonderland. She had got the partone of the best roles in the playafter auditioning along
     with a lot of other girls and boys.
    Her first line was: Your hair wants cutting. Then Alice would reply: You should learn not
     to make personal remarks, its very rude.
    When the long-awaited moment came, a moment she had rehearsed and rehearsed, she was so
     nervous that she got the line wrong and said instead: Your hair wants washing. The girl
     playing Alice said her next line anyway, and the audience would never have noticed
     anything was wrong if Gabriela, who knew she had made a mistake, hadnt promptly lost the
     power of speech. Since the Mad Hatter was an es- sential character if the scene was to
     continue, and since children are not good at improvising on stage (although they improvise
     happily enough in real life), no one knew what to do. Then, after several long minutes,
     during which the actors simply looked at each other, the teacher started applauding,
     announced it was time for an interval, and ordered every- one offstage.
    Gabriela not only left the stage, she left the school in tears. The following day, she
     found out that the scene with the Mad Hatter had been cut, and the actors would instead
     move straight on to the game of croquet with the Queen. The teacher said this didnt matter
     in the least because the story of Alice in Wonderland is a lot of nonsense anyway, but
     during playtime, the other girls and boys ganged up on Gabriela and started beating her.
    This wasnt so very unusualit was a fairly regular occurrence and she had learned to defend
     herself as energetically as when she, in turn, attacked the weaker children. On this occasion, however, she took