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" Congratulations to Alex, the winner of this year&amp;#039;s Annual Fiction Writing Contest! Along with our partners at Scholastic and Figment.com, we&amp;#039;ve awarded Alex $5,000 to publish her story on seventeen.com and set her up on a phone call with Maggie Stiefvater, author of the Shiver trilogy and The Scorpio Races! After you read the winning story, head over to Ann&amp;#039;s blog to learn more about the author and the inspiration behind her story! Don&amp;#039;t forget to tell us what you think of Alex&amp;#039;s story in the comments section below! Glass Part I The house shines like a beacon. Porch lights illuminate the platinum hair, Prada shoes, and vivacious laughter. Loud music blurs into a peaceful beat. Plastic cups filled to the brim with cheap beer litter the floor, shining like rubies in the lamp&amp;#039;s glare. And her. She&amp;#039;s royalty. Lip gloss is her crown, her heels turn the wooden floors to gold. Blonde tresses curled to perfection, she stalks the house, teeth gleaming in a wide smile, checking that her hierarchy hasn&amp;#039;t collapsed. Through a glass barrier, one house away, a girl watches from her bedroom window. It&amp;#039;s Friday night and she&amp;#039;s locked away in her room, making a vain attempt to study for the SATs while her family watches Dateline downstairs. She sighs from her bed and presses her nose against the glass barrier. It&amp;#039;s so beautiful. She closes her eyes. Her hair grows and shimmers under the glare of the barrier&amp;#039;s transparent surface, her lips pucker, clothes from department stores turn to silk. False adrenaline surges through her veins, and she smiles. Just for tonight, the glass barrier vanishes, and she can pretend she&amp;#039;s royalty, those are her friends, she&amp;#039;s at the party, dancing to that loud, peaceful music. Just for tonight, until the weekend is over and she goes back to school, focusing on nothing but her GPA. Returning as a peasant and never gaining the courage to become that girl through the glass barrier. Just for tonight, she lives in a dream. Part II Fake. It&amp;#039;s all fake. The giggling girls, drunken idiots, loud music. None of it is real. These girls, struggling to form a sentence in their confused state, claiming to be her best friends, would drop her in a second if they really knew her. They aren&amp;#039;t here for her. They&amp;#039;re here for the free beer and foul music and sex. It makes her want to barf. She climbs the stairs to her room and opens the mini fridge parked by her bed, grabbing a couple of beers. They reek of urine\u2026 Which reminds her to have everyone gone by the time Mom and Dad get home. Not that they&amp;#039;ll notice. They&amp;#039;ll already be planning their next trip to Madrid. She stares out the window, through a glass barrier. The girl next door is working on SAT homework, glasses perched on her nose. She wonders what it&amp;#039;s like. To have a normal life. Good grades. Real friends. Parents who care about her. She presses a hand to the glass barrier, willing herself to break it and live in an alternate universe and leave all of it\u2013the fake friends, the party, her parents, her perfect alter ego\u2013in the dust, wipe away her lip gloss, and just be herself. She sighs and exits the room, loud music getting louder, glass barrier sucking her in until she&amp;#039;s gone. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.seventeen.com/celebrity/music/a18192/fiction-contest-winner-2011/>