A girl, LIZZY STALK, 17, sits on the floor and leisurely tears up letters. The contents of the letters is unknown to the audience, but whatever the contents are she seems to want to rid the world of them in great haste because with the completion of each torn up letter she neatly discards it in on the floor in front of her, resembles a small ticker-tape massacre. By the fourth, and last letter, she calmly rises and exits. Upon re-entering a voice, JANET STALK, 14, her younger sister is heard, offstage.

Janet: Lizzy?

LIZZY re-enters with a trashbin, lighter fluid, and a box of matches, followed by JANET, who is chasing after her. LIZZY calmly sets down the trashbin, lighter fluid, and matches and starts placing (not throwing) the letters in the bin.

Janet: What are those? What are those Lizzy? (waving her hands in front of LIZZY’S face) LIZZY!

LIZZY ignores her questions and continues to carefully place the remnants in the bin. JANET, who is fed up by this point, reaches down and picks up a letter LIZZY missed and is fully intact.

Janet: New York University? Lizzy, do you realize what this is? (reaching in the bin and picking up a pile of ripped up letters) What these are?
Lizzy: Yup, the ruins of my hopes and dreams. Oh, I forgot one.

Calmly starts to rip that letter up too before JANET snatches it.

Janet: What are you doing? Have you lost your mind? Lizzy these are college acceptance letters! You can’t just throw them away without looking at them!
Lizzy: Considering they are my letters, I can do with them as I please.
Janet: So you’re just going to tear them up and throw them away without even looking at them?
Lizzy: Of course not. (pours lighter fluid in the bin) I’m going to burn them too. ( reaches for the matches displaying them, and then grabs for the letter JANET is holding). Now if you would just give me that.
Janet: Oh no you’re not!
Lizzy: Janet, give me the letter.
Janet: Not without reading it.
Lizzy: I already know what it says.
Janet: NYU is your dream.
Lizzy: Yeah so was Julliard and Colombia and Yale. Isn’t it funny that even though their all different their rejection is all packaged the same?
Janet: You haven’t even opened it.
Lizzy: I don’t have to. A thin white nondescript envelope means the same thing no matter the school. Dear Miss Stalk, we thank you for your application, and although your work, scores, and GPA are exemplary we’re afraid we cannot accept you into our program at this current time.
Janet: You don’t know that.
Lizzy: You don’t either. You’re only a freshman, you don’t even have to worry about these things for another couple of years.
Janet: That may be, but I apparently have more sense than you to know that you can’t believe everything a movie or a TV shows says about the appearance of college acceptance letters. (waves letter in front of her face like a pendulum).
Lizzy: What if they are right though, and I never get out of here?
Janet: You won’t know until you open it. Tell you what, if it is a rejection letter, you are more than free to burn it, but not a moment before.

LIZZY hesitantly grabs the dangling letter and stares at it in her hands, and JANET pulls a fast one and grabs the matches.

Janet: Insurance.
Lizzy: My first college acceptance letter.
Janet: (peering in the bin, counting) By the looks of it’s technically your fifth.
Lizzy: (glaring at JANET and then back at the letter) My first college acceptance letter…that I’m going to open.
Janet: You ready for this?
Lizzy: As ready as I’m going to be.
Janet: 3…2…1…

BLACKOUT; the sound of a letter being ripped open is heard.