"NO I REFUSE." Serenity shook her head for the umpteenth time as she walked into the cafeteria with her two friends in tow.
"Come on, Serenity." Mckenna sighed. "We quite literally have no choice, but to do it."
"Nope."
The three girls had spent the whole morning discussing on how they were going to handle their little "predicament". Mckenna and Astrid had agreed on what they thought they should do, but Serenity needed a little bit more convincing.
"Do you really think that it is worth it to get in trouble over missing a stupid assembly?" Astrid asked the girl as they sat down at a table for lunch.
"It's better than having to audition for the musical." Serenity said. "It's literally called High School Musical: The Musical. A bit much if you ask me."
"Who cares about the name?" Astrid scoffed. "Ren, it's either detention for the first week of school that'll sit on your permanent record—"
"The whole permanent record thing is so not real."
"—Or just do a five minute audition after school for a musical."
"It's not gonna kill you." Mckenna told her.
"Guys we have no time to commit to a musical." Serenity mentioned. "We practice after school every day, take multiple vocal and dance classes a week. We don't have room in our schedules to be apart of these things. Why do you think you had to quit jazz band, Kenna? Or the kickline team, Astrid? Our other commitments always get in the way."
"Well, if that's the case, how do you plan on attending detention all week if we have all of our other commitments?" Mckenna challenged.
"How do you think your mom will react when she finds out you missed rehearsal because you got detention over skipping an assembly?" Astrid added.
Serenity opened her mouth to respond before closing it as she realized she didn't have an answer.
"Exactly."
"Face it, this is the better option, the only option." Mckenna stated before Astrid started gasping next to her. "What is wrong with you?"
"Nini and music dude!" Astrid whisper yelled to her friends who gave her confused looks. "The guy she broke up with Ricky for!"
"Yes we remember, why is it relevant?" Serenity furrowed her eyebrows.
"Because she's currently canoodling with said music dude right now!" Astrid nodded her head in the direction making the two girls look as well and inevitably gasping just as their friend had done before.
"She's dating EJ Caswell?!" Mckenna gawked.
"Go her, that man is so cute." Serenity commented.
"How does she do it? First, Ricky Bowen and now EJ Caswell? She's gifted." Astrid sighed as her two friends laughed.
As they laughed, Serenity had noticed a very irritated Ricky Bowen storm out of the cafeteria with a frown very much apparent on his face.
SERENITY had decided. She took a deep breath and knocked on the door of Miss Jenn's office. Once she got the okay, the girl opened the door and entered.
"Why hello there." Miss Jenn looked up from her computer and smiled at the girl. "Serenity, right?"
"Yes."
"Well please, sit." Miss Jenn motioned for the chair in front of her, which Serenity gladly took. "So, to what do I owe the pleasure?"
"My friends agreed to audition for your musical." Serenity told her.
"How wonderful—"
"I on the other hand, did not."
"Oh. How unfortunate." Miss Jenn frowned.
"I don't do musicals, unless they're on Broadway, that's just how I was raised to be and I don't want to change that under a pressured circumstance. I want to want to be in it." Serenity said.
Miss Jenn nodded, "I guess I can understand that."
"Now I don't want to get into trouble over not joining this show, so I've come up with an alternative." Serenity said making the older woman straighten up in her chair.
"Which would be?"
"I can help with vocals and performance." Serenity offered. "I've seen enough shows and performances, and been to enough of those rehearsals to know what they should and should not look like."
"I've also been to enough of our own school musicals to know that they should not look like they usually do." Serenity added. "So, I will help, if you agree not to tell Principal Gutierrez that my friends and I skipped his yearly assembly."
"This morning you seemed so against joining this." Miss Jenn pointed out. "What changed?"
"Well, Principal Gutierrez takes his assemblies seriously and I'm not trying to spend a week in detention over it." Serenity shrugged. "So... Do we have a deal?"
Miss Jenn thought about it for a second. After catching the girls skipping earlier that morning, she had talked to her assistant and head student choreographer, Carlos, to get some intel on Serenity.
To which she found out that she was the daughter of the famous Lea Warner, and Astrid and Mckenna were her best friends who were also the daughters of famous women themselves.
She knew that Serenity knew a lot about the musical world and could really help make this show something great, but what threw her off was the lack of commitment.
She needed someone who was willing to spend their time making this musical amazing, and Serenity didn't seem to be willing. Sure, she was kind of being forced to participate since Miss Jenn had threatened to tattle on her and her friends if they didn't join, but the three were just too talented to not have them in the show.
"We have a deal, but only if you promise to commit." Miss Jenn voiced.
"What?"
"I don't want you to not put any effort into this just because I was going to tell on you. I want you to give me your all on this. I need your full commitment." Miss Jenn insisted. "Deal?"
Serenity sighed, "Deal."
"Great! I'll see you Friday after school for the auditions in the auditorium." Miss Jenn smiled brightly at Serenity who gave a smile back before getting out of the chair and heading towards the door. "Oh! And Serenity."
"Yes?"
"Tell your friends I said good luck."
IT was audition day and Serenity was actually shocked. A lot more kids than she had thought were auditioning, had decided to audition.
Serenity's job for the auditions, were to write down where she saw everyone's strengths and weaknesses in the way the sang and performed. Then once she had those things noted, she would come up with ways they can improve throughout the process of the shoe and what areas needed to be focused on.
The thing was, they were all very talented, well almost all of them. One kid at decided to beatbox instead of sing the suggested song for his audition and Serenity really didn't know what to do with that.
One person that had really shocked her though, was the new girl, Gina Porter. She was a sophomore and had just transferred to East High, but she was so very talented.
They were onto Nini's audition when all of a sudden the doors to the auditorium had loudly swung open and a boy came sprinting in.
"Am I too late?!" The boy, Serenity soon recognized to be Ricky Bowen, yelled.
"We're all set on Troy's, we're low on Chad's. You can read after the Gabriella's." Miss Jenn told him.
"I, uh, I only studied the Troy scenes in the movie." Ricky revealed.
"Troy would've arrived on time." Carlos commented.
"Wasn't Troy late to like every single one of his performances though? In all three movies?" Serenity furrowed her eyebrows.
"It's an expression." Carlos huffed.
"What kind of expression is that?" Serenity questioned.
"Okay Nini, let's try this again." Miss Jenn switched the subject back to Nini.
Before Nini could even begin, EJ had yelled out some words he must've deemed encouraging, Serenity found them unnecessary.
Miss Jenn had been distracted by his sudden outburst and spilled her coffee all over soundboard, that had been controlling the lights and music, causing the power to go out.
"Nobody panic!" Miss Jenn announced, even though you could very easily tell she was panicking. "Nini, let's wait for the lights to come back on. I don't want this to throw you."
"I'm not thrown." Nini shrugged before starting to sing the song acappella.
In an attempt to help, Ricky had gotten up and used the flashlight to shine on her. In an attempt to compete, EJ had done the same thing.
"Ew, the testosterone in here is suffocating me." Astrid fake gagged.
Once Nini had finished singing the lights had miraculously turned back on.
"You, late boy. Let's do the Chad sides." Miss Jenn called Ricky over.
Just by the way he walked across the stage Serenity could feel how unprepared he was.
"I don't get it, Troy." Ricky recited in the most awkward way imaginable. "What kind of spell has this IQ temptress-girl cast that suddenly makes you want to be in a musical?"
"Oh boy." Serenity shook her head and started writing notes down immediately.
"I don't know." Ricky started again making Serenity stop writing and look up at him. "Maybe it's the way Gabriella always had your back. And maybe you can't stop beating yourself up for totally blowing it with her."
"Was this in the movie?" Miss Jenn turned to Carlos and Serenity, who were both sitting on either sides of her, and they just shrugged.
"And look, Troy. Even if you never said the L-word to Gabriella, 'cause that's not even a word your parents say to each other anymore..."
It was eerily quiet as Ricky continued to "improvise" the rest of the audition. Including when he finished.
"Okay kiddo, time to sing." Miss Jenn finally spoke up after getting over her initial shock.
"Oh no, actually if you don't mind, I kinda prepared my own song?"
Miss Jenn looked at Serenity who once again shrugged, mostly because she wanted to see where this was going.
"Sure."
He went to grab his guitar and then started to sing a song that sounded fairly familiar to Serenity, she just couldn't seem to know where she'd heard it.
"I think I kinda, you know, I think I kinda you know. I like the way that we flow, I like the way that we go, and I love, I think I kinda you know." Ricky sang which caused Astrid to gasp and hit the bottom of Serenity's leg.
Serenity looked down at her friend who had been sitting on the floor, "Yes?"
"That's Nini's love song!" Astrid mouthed to her making Serenity's eyes widen.
Over the summer, Nini had posted a video of herself singing a love song for Ricky in honor of their one year anniversary on instagram.
Seeing as the two were now no longer together, Serenity was more than confused as to why he would choose to sing a song his ex girlfriend wrote.
"I can't help dreaming of you, guess I'm saying I don't not love you." Ricky mumbled the last few words to the point that you could barely hear him.
Everyone was dismissed after that so that Miss Jenn could get ready to post the cast list. Serenity was allowed to stay back to help pick, but she chose to go congratulate her friends instead.
"You guys are totally talented." Serenity wrapped her arms around the two girls.
"You hear us sing every day." Mckenna pointed out.
"Yeah, that was nothing out of the ordinary." Astrid agreed.
Serenity dropped her arms and scoffed. "Okay fine, remind me to never compliment you two again."
Astrid rolled her eyes, "Thank you for the compliments Serenity."
"You're welcome." Serenity smiled. "Was that so hard?"
"Honestly? Yes."
"Wait so, what just happened in there with Ricky?" Mckenna asked. "Since when is he into musicals?"
"It's the Legally Blonde tactic, do the thing they love to slowly make them fall back in love with you. It's very simple and very effective... if we were in the movie." Astrid explained.
"Simple? That doesn't sound simple." Serenity furrowed her eyebrows. "What if the girl was like a brain surgeon or something?"
"Homie gotta learn brain surgery I guess." Mckenna shrugged before she saw Carlos and a heard of people following behind him go running past.
"And that must be the cast list." Serenity said as the three followed the crowd.
They tried to squeeze themselves through the huddle, once they got through they couldn't believe what they had seen.
CHAD DANFORTH... E.J. CASWELL
(Troy Understudy)
TAYLOR MCKESSIE... GINA PORTER (Gabriella Understudy)
MS. DARBUS... ASHLYN CASWELL
SHARPAY EVANS... SEB MATTHEW-SMITH
RYAN EVANS... ASTRID REEVES
KELSI NIELSEN... MCKENNA MCGRIEVES
GABRIELLA MONTEZ... NINI SALAZAR- ROBERTS
TROY BOLTON... RICKY BOWEN
Well isn't this totally not awkward at all.
CHRISTI COMMENTS!
let the fun begin‼️‼️and i promise it gets better y'all
i also realize that i didn't mention this before but astrid is bisexual 😌
bye loves <3