𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐩𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐟𝐢𝐯𝐞
━━ 𝒇𝒆𝒂𝒕𝒖𝒓𝒆𝒅 𝒃𝒂𝒄𝒌𝒈𝒓𝒐𝒖𝒏𝒅
"So, what was that about?" Juliette asked Gina as they both walked to their lockers, Ashlyn joining them on their way there. "Did you talk to him?"
"Of course not! He was beyond rude yesterday."
"Maybe he just wants to apologise," Ashlyn suggested, earning a roll from Gina's eyes.
"People like him do not apologise. Maybe he thinks a follow will fix everything."
"Well, you know what they say... never meet your idols," Juliette contributed, opening her locker. A small slip of paper fell from it and she did not even have to open it to know what it was. Ever since they had watched Secret Admirer, Ricky had made it a habit to leave small notes for her to find, sometimes with song lyrics and sometimes with cheesy messages that she claimed to hate but actually loved. This one said "do you like raisins? How do you feel about a date?".
She could not help it but let out a soft laugh, which attracted Gina's and Ashlyn's attention. Showing them the note, she heard Ashlyn sigh.
"I miss Biggie." Her own phone, however, interrupted her.
"Haven't you been texting Maddox like non-stop?" Gina asked her, although she already knew the answer. Ever since they had come back from camp, Ashlyn and Maddox had messaged each other every single day, even though Ashlyn claimed it was purely platonic and they both had their respective significant others.
Ashlyn avoided the question as she replied yet another text and took out her books for class. Sadly, Gina was still a year younger than they were and she had to walk all the way to the other side of the school, but Ashlyn and Juliette had first period together, alongside Carlos, Kourtney and Ricky. It was one of those rare times in which they all shared a class (Seb should have also been there but he had been M.I.A. for some weeks now, according to Carlos).
Class would have been deadly boring if they had not received an e-mail (which they definitely shouldn't have read in the middle of chemistry class) telling them that they would have a private dance rehearsal later that day and would, therefore, be excused from class all afternoon. The only concern they had was that Miss Jenn's auditions were taking place that afternoon as well and they did not want to let anyone down.
"Ready to claim the Troy and Gabriella spots?" Ricky whispered at her while their teacher's back was turned.
"I wouldn't get too excited, Ricky. Anyone could get the role," she whispered back and quickly returned her eyes to her notebook before their teacher could yell at them. A note from Ricky landed on top of the page she was writing in, telling her to believe in herself just as he believed in her. With a shy smile, she continued paying attention.
Class went by relatively fast, even though Chem was definitely not Juliette's best subject. Before she knew it, however, they were all walking to the rehearsal room already, although they stood in front of it, unsure how to proceed.
"You guys, we're actually rehearsing for High School Musical 4," Gina screeched, making all of them cheer in excitement.
"Hollywood? More like Holly-will," Ricky tried to joke, making everyone turn around to look at him.
"Babe, don't say that ever again."
"Wait, 'babe'?" Kourtney asked, looking at Juliette. Her blood froze for a second once she realised what she had just said, but she tried to brush it off the best she could.
"Old habits die hard, I guess," Juliette tried to excuse herself, looking at all her friends.
"So is everything right between you two?" Ashlyn asked. "After... the documentary and camp and everything?"
"Oh yeah, we're... buddies."
"Hm, best pals," Juliette continued Ricky's idea, although not too convinced.
The group did not say another word, partly because they didn't know what to say and partly because their choreographer had opened the door and told them they were already late so they better hurry inside. Ricky and Juliette remained in the hallway.
"Buddies?" she asked, looking at her boyfriend.
"Babe?" he repeated, mocking her.
"Idiot," Juliette whispered, passing by him, which made Ricky laugh as he opened the door for her. Once they were inside, they rushed to the stage where everybody else was already.
"So, you're excused from class this afternoon. I'm Krystal, the choreographer for the movie and I've got two hours to teach you this dance combination."
Ricky politely raised his hand but did not wait to be called upon, "we thought this was just an hour 'cause we really need this theatre."
"Yeah, that's what..." Juliette continued before she was interrupted by Krystal.
"First rule of being an extra. No questions or talking unless it's an emergency." But Miss Jenn's audition was an emergency. "We shoot this in a couple of weeks. Confidentially, this is the big high school reunion song, headlined by Mo, Lucas and Corbin."
"I love how everyone keeps calling Monique 'Mo'." Ashlyn broke the silence that had befallen them. "I'm sorry, I talked."
"Krystal, I'd like to use an emergency question. If we theoretically had an audition here for our school musical in an hour..."
"Then theoretically the director will laugh that you think a school musical is more important than her film."
"But..."
Ricky and Juliette connected eyes for a split second, waiting for somebody else to support them, but nobody else said a word, at least not in their favour.
"We're honoured to be here, Krystal," Gina cut them off, prompting a smile from Krystal.
I don't know about this Hollywood stuff. I mean it's cool but what about Miss Jenn and our last musical together?
Juliette Duchamp, senior
Krystal put herself in front of them, her back turned towards them and began the dance combination that they had two hours to learn while the Wildcats looked at her with all the attention in the world. After she repeated it twice, she turned to look at them again, about to assure them that it would be okay if they hadn't been able to catch it all, but Gina began her own count. Once she finished, the whole group repeated the dance combination perfectly, as if they had had more than a week to practise it. A perk of Miss Jenn throwing them into unexpected situations was that they were able to pick up lyrics and dances quite fast.
"Okay, where did you guys come from?" Krystal asked, visibly pleased at their performance.
"Miss Jenn's drama class," Juliette stated.
Before they had time to repeat the dance once more, the director, Quinn Robbins, burst into the room. Juliette thought she recognised the director's surname but she couldn't quite place from where.
"Some of you may know me from my Sundance runner-up movie about the global recession of 2007 entitled Where has all the money gone?" Ashlyn clapped but Juliette was quite sure none of them knew the film. "To the Featured Background boy who just spoke, I don't know what a Miss Jenn is but I do know what a Miss Darbus is because I spent last night in Salt Lake City corporate housing drinking thirteen-dollar water bottles and watching the High School Musical trilogy."
"Had you not seen them before?" Emmy asked.
"I wanted to be fresh when pitching the High School Musical 4 movie so, no, I hadn't technically seen the original films," Quinn explained.
"So she hadn't seen them?" Carlos repeated the question, clearly confused.
"Quinn," Krystal spoke, "these kids are unbelievably fast. I'm gonna be done teaching them the combination in, like, five minutes."
"Okay, great," Quinn replied, not even sparing them a second look. "Uh, well, let's just see if we can get Mack and Dani on set early. Where are the PAs? Do we have enough PAs?"
Mack then jogged up to the stage, claiming that he was actually there. Juliette's eyes travelled to Gina's and both of them rolled them at the same time, clearly annoyed at the boy's presence. After what Gina had told them, after how Mack had behaved towards her the previous day, they were far from excited to see him, especially the younger girl.
"You weren't called for another two hours."
"Yeah, but whenever I'm first on the call sheet, I always like to hang out on set, just in case somebody needs me," Mack explained. "A pretty famous actor taught me that. It was Neil Patrick Harris."
"Should we give a fuck?" Juliette whispered towards Ricky, who had taken a step to get closer to her.
"Language, young lady," he mocked her, making Juliette chuckle. Her father repeated that sentence at least thirty times a day.
"Mack, feel free to hang out on the side," Krystal told him. "I'm gonna finish teaching the featured background this choreography and then we'll add you and Dani."
"FYI, it might be a minute," Kourtney voiced with her phone on hand. "Dani just posted that her corporate apartment doesn't have steam showers. Horrific, I know. So she asked her followers to help pick out which hotel to stay at."
"Dani's lucky she's being housed. When I shot Where has all the money gone?, I spent eighteen days on a friend's couch in Bushwick. The couch got bed bugs. It caused a breakout on set," Quinn said, as if they were supposed to know.
"Miss Quinn," Emmy's high-pitched voice was heard in the auditorium, "did your movie win any Oscars?"
The room fell silent for a minute. Juliette had not seen the movie or even heard about it, which she was sure meant it hadn't won any Oscars and which she was sure did not please its director that much. She didn't think there could be anything worse than the silence that invaded the room at the moment but the sentence that broke it proved her wrong.
"I'm sorry, my dear, but you've been let go from the project."
Juliette's mouth opened in shock as she saw Emmy about to cry. Ricky reminded her that the school musical was always there for her, but it didn't cheer her up that much.
After that, Krystal went back to teaching them the combination, which they rehearsed until it was as perfect as she wanted it to be. In Juliette's eyes, the first and the last time they did it were awfully similar but, after what had gone down with Emmy, she didn't dare open her mouth. Once they were done and were given a respite, all of them moved over to the wings while Krystal tried to teach Mack the choreography.
Juliette stood near the curtain, watching Krystal yell at Mack for crushing her hand, but her thoughts were interrupted by a body colliding with hers.
"I bet this would get you fired from the film, featured background boy" she whispered to Ricky, who had now moved to stand by her side. "I can't believe they did that to poor Emmy."
"Hollywood is unfair and devastating, it's the only explanation. But we still have Miss Jenn's HSM and I'm positive we're playing Troyella this year."
"Yeah well, that would be if we even get to audition. It doesn't seem Krystal will let us out anytime soon," she lowered her tone to make extra-sure that the woman would not hear her. "Anyway, have you got anything to eat? I'm famished."
"I think I..." Ricky began, but his attention soon moved to something rustling behind them, which prompted Juliette to turn around as well. In the midst of a sea of props and backgrounds stood Miss Jenn, her face unmistakable even with a brown wig and glasses.
"Hey, fellow teen extras. It's me, Miss Jenn."
"Miss Jenn, are you okay?" Kourtney asked, whispering.
"Quinn stole the auditorium from us, as you can see, so I wanted to spread the word that we're doing auditions in the rehearsal room now. So, come quick."
·"For sure," Juliette was quick to agree, as was Ricky, "but the rehearsal's running a little longer than we thought it would. Like, all afternoon."
"Don't worry," Ricky explained to a very worried Miss Jenn, "I think I can sneak everyone out one at a time without the director even knowing."
"Well, we need all the bodies we can get. We're barely filling out the cast as it is," Miss Jenn continued. "Apparently most of the school signed up to be extras in the movie."
"About that..."
Miss Jenn gasped and turned to look at Kourtney, "don't tell me you're second-guessing the musical."
"I might be too busy. I'm applying to all the Ivys, my laptop might explode." Kourtney was applying to all the Ivys? That statement alone got Juliette worried that she wouldn't be nearly good enough to get into any of her first-choices, and none of them were even Ivys. "It's a lot, y'all."
"Come on, Kourt, it's senior year."
"Our last high school musical."
Miss Jenn exited the room after her very dramatic statement that Hollywood was cruel and devastating and Ricky left the girls there so that he could warn everyone about the plan he was concocting. In the meantime, Ashlyn sauntered up to Juliette with a mischievous smile on her face.
"So... you and Ricky."
Juliette nearly choked on the water she was drinking.
"Okay did you tell anyone?" Juliette could not lie to Ashlyn, the girl was far too nice for Juliette to do that, so it was straight to plan B: beg her to stay quiet. "How did you know?"
"I didn't, but I do now. You and me. FaceTime. Tonight. I want all the details."
"Okay, everybody's good with my plan–"
"Excuse me," Krystal's voice caught all of their attention, "featured background number 7? Can you stand in for Dani for a moment?"
All of them turned to look at Gina who was, in fact, featured background number 7. After some seconds of initial shock, she stated that she would be honoured to and jogged to stand next to Mack. Meanwhile, they started carrying out Ricky's plan:
Carlos was out first, followed by Ashlyn, Kourtney and some dancers. Ricky was next, sporting his Troy Bolton shirt (he called it manifesting) and then it was Juliette's turn to realise that maybe she should run around the school more often because she nearly choked.
"Juliette, you can do this," Miss Jenn sent her a kind smile and a thumbs up from her chair as Juliette began singing the opening song for High School Musical 3: Now or Never. She gave it her all, not worried about being cast at all. She knew that Miss Jenn would see the best in her, as she saw it in everyone, so she instead focused on enjoying every last note of the song, even with some interventions from the teacher. Lastly were Emmy and Gina, who ran the biggest risk of being caught, mainly because she now was Mack's dance partner until Dani got there.
"How did it go?" Ricky asked her as soon as Juliette got back to the auditorium. It took the girl a moment to steady her breath and it took all her might not to lay down on the floor.
"I'm feeling quite good about it. You?"
"I think we might have Troyella in our pockets," he replied, side-hugging the girl and leaving a soft kiss on her head, previously checking that no one was watching.
Once they had all auditioned and were all back in the auditorium, they began practising the dance number again. Apparently, Mack had finally learnt all the steps and was now ready to join them.
Krystal clapped for them. "Yes! Featured Background kids, great job today. You are released. Mack and Gina, stand by."
"Ricky, right?" Dani asked as Ricky and Juliette walked to where she was to get out of that godforsaken auditorium. "Who's that girl dancing with my boyfriend?"
"Her?" he chuckled. "That is Featured Background number 7."
Dani chuckled as well, "well, she's looking very foreground to me."
"Well, if you had–"
Before she could finish her sentence, however, Juliette was literally dragged out of there by Ricky, who said Ashlyn was calling for them. The truth was that Ricky knew Juliette was about to insult Dani for even thinking badly about Gina and he wanted to avoid her being kicked out just as Emmy had been.
"Not worth it," he told her.
"Totally worth it," she counter-attacked, but Ricky was not bulging. He did not release her until they were out of the auditorium, moment in which Ricky took a note out of the pocket of his shirt and handed it to Juliette, without a single word. By the time Juliette had finished reading it, Ricky was nowhere to be seen.
Secret staircase. 5.