My first performance in front of an audience was coming up soon.     I tried as hard as I could to remain calm, but my heart was racing. I stared down at my sweat-covered, shaking hands.     I looked up again at the audience, realizing that these were real people. They were not just my mum and dad, who would say, "Good job!" even if I messed up the entire piece.     What if I had the wrong music? What if I played the wrong notes?     As it turned out, I was never able to answer these questions because the spotlight   was waiting for me. I grasped my hands tightly together, drying off the sweat.     Slowly I walked to the mud-brown piano in the center of the room. It contained 88 demanding keys, which were waiting impatiently to be played. I swallowed the golf-ball-sized lump   in my throat and sat down. Slowly, I opened the music. Next, I rested my still shaking hands on the ivory   keys.     As my fingers played across the keys, I was becoming more unsure of my preparation for this moment. But the memory of my years of training came flooding back. I knew that I had practiced this piece so many times that I could play it backwards if requested.     Although at one point I accidentally played two keys instead of the intended one, I continued to move my fingers automatically  .     My eyes burned holes into (were fixed on) the pages in front of me.     There was no way that I was going to lose my concentration. To keep this to myself, I leaned forward and focused carefully on the music.     When I came to the end of the page, a warning went off inside my head: DON'T MAKE A MISTAKE WHEN YOU TURN THE PAGE!     Needless to say, I obeyed myself with all my heart and mind. And, proud of my "page-turning" feat  , I finished the rest of the piece without making a single mistake.     After the final note died away, a celebration went into action inside my head. I had finished. I had mastered the impossible. The author was nervous before the performance because   _  .
her mother and father weren't present the strong spotlight was shining onto the stage she hadn't mastered the entire piece she had never performed in public before