Dear Elizabeth,
Although your academic and personal qualities are exceptional, you were not selected for admission to this program. Something, something something, you can still come to our traditional program and your scholarship is $13,000… pay us now…

I cleared my eyes and opened them again hoping that my eyes had seen the wrong letter. I looked again, closer for accuracy.

Dear Dumbfuck,
You suck at life and we don’t want to have anything to do with you.

I reached for my inhaler and tissue box: a pen and paper.

dear AdmiSSions,
With all the love I had shed fondly mooning over pictures at your dumbass website, with all the nervousness I had trembled through to make sure that my responses were soliloquies of eloquence at your waste of time interview, with all the hope I had invested into what I thought would be my home for the next few years and the place of my reunions later in life, even having missed the day before midterms to visit your sorry f***ing ass campus, there’s no wonder I’m bitter. You can take your catchy little phrases and hope and messages of inspiration and shove it somewhere. Clearly you had no idea, I’d be dry sobbing and hyperventilating and hiding this letter from my parents, because if you did, you’d have enough heart, as your school claims to be the soul of this program, to let me into the only place I want to be.
With love, or some other strong emotion,
Elizabeth

On my way to dance, I stopped by the post office, bought the ugliest stamp I could find (to match the hideous envelope that had oops! been fished from the garbage among the cat food and slime) and mailed it to my ex. Ex-university, that is.

I raged my way through warm ups and splits and my knuckles kept a snow white even as we were merely standing in rest at the barre.

When my friends asked me what was wrong the next day, I claimed that the bags under my eyes were those of lack of sleep. “Studying hard, as usual?” they’d smile and I shrugged and nodded. A day, two days, and soon my parents were expecting the letter from “your future school”.

“Mom, Dad, it’s fine, remember, we timed that it would take about a week for it to get here, as we have seen with all the other mail they’ve been sending, and it’s still late February.” Maybe they’ll just forget and I’ll please their pocketbooks with the decision to go to one of the state schools I’d been accepted to, and who were showering me in scholarships.
I had no such time to come up with an inconspicuous way to present my “change of heart”. The next day in the mail, I was horrified to find that the bastards had the nerve to pester me for something dumb like financial aid. I almost threw the letter out, but like I had done with the first letter, I sneaked up to my room to see what the knaves had entertained themselves with writing. The envelope definitely reeked of some financial crap.

Dear Elizabeth,
We are most sorry to inform you that we mistakenly sent you a letter intended for someone else. We are pleased to offer you acceptance to…

The last thing I remember thinking before everything went dark was: I’ve got to get that letter…