Chapter 3

A year later, my ankle had healed, but the memory of the fall haunted me. I was more cautious, more nervous. My mother, however, was a beacon of encouragement.

"This time will be different, Jocelyn," she promised. "We've learned our lesson. No more fancy tricks. Just your pure talent."

The next big opportunity was an audition for the San Francisco Ballet School's summer intensive, a direct pipeline into the company. I was eighteen.

Debra became my personal nutritionist. She blended "power smoothies" for me every morning.

"All the nutrients you need to be strong and light," she'd say, handing me a tall glass of green sludge.

I was wary, but I drank them. I needed to believe she was on my side. I needed her support.

The day of the audition, she made me a special, extra-large smoothie. "For energy," she said, smiling. "You're going to be brilliant."

An hour before my slot, my stomach started to cramp. At first, it was a dull ache. Then, it became a twisting, agonizing pain. I broke out in a cold sweat. I felt a desperate, urgent need for a bathroom.

I spent the next forty-five minutes locked in a stall, wracked with violent cramps and dehydration. I could hear my name being called over the intercom, over and over.

"Jocelyn Fuller, please report to the stage. Final call for Jocelyn Fuller."

By the time I stumbled out, pale and shaking, my slot was long gone. I collapsed in the hallway. My mother found me there, feigning shock and horror.

"My poor girl! It must have been food poisoning! That salad you had yesterday!"

Later, a sympathetic doctor told me my symptoms were consistent with ingesting a massive dose of a powerful laxative. When I confronted my mother, she just laughed.

"A laxative? Don't be ridiculous. You have a weak stomach, that's all. You can't handle the pressure. You choked. Just like you did at Juilliard."

She twisted the narrative until I almost believed it myself. Maybe I was weak. Maybe I just couldn't handle it.

The final "half" attempt was the regional scholarship, the one that ended with the faked theft. That was the one that finally broke me. The public humiliation was worse than any physical injury.

After my "confession," I spiraled. I stopped eating. I stopped sleeping. I locked myself in my room. The world was gray and muffled. One night, I found a bottle of my mother's old painkillers. I swallowed the whole bottle.

I woke up in a hospital, my stomach pumped, my mother crying at my bedside.

"Oh, Jocelyn," she sobbed. "Why would you do this? I love you so much."

Looking at her then, I saw the truth. This was what she wanted. Not my success. My destruction. A daughter who was either dead or declared so mentally incompetent that she would have control over my life. And my inheritance.

My grandmother, who despised Debra, had left me a trust fund. A multi-million dollar trust fund I could access on my 21st birthday, or upon achieving "significant professional success." But there was a clause. If I died, or was legally deemed unfit to manage my own affairs, the entire fund would default to my legal guardian. Debra.

It all clicked into place. The sabotaged shoes. The poisoned smoothie. The framed theft. The carefully orchestrated campaign to drive me to the edge.

As I lay in that hospital bed, something inside me shifted. The part of me that wanted to be a ballerina died. The part of me that wanted to please my mother died.

I was reborn.

I knocked the IV out of my arm, got dressed, and walked out of the hospital. I didn't go home. I went to a community center in the worst part of town, a place I'd seen flyers for. They had a hip-hop class.

I walked in, stood in the back, and for the first time in my life, I just danced. No technique, no rules, no judges. Just raw, angry, powerful movement.

The instructor saw me. He told me I had something. He told me about a crew that battled online, that lived in a place called a "creator house."

I had a new purpose. I wasn't going to be a victim anymore. I was going to get my life back. And I was going to expose my mother for the monster she was.