Disclaimer: I do not own TDI or Grease
BTW this is more based on the movie then the Broadway play of Grease cuz I've never actually seen the Broadway musical. Also, now might be a good time to refer back to the cast list in the beginning of chapter 2.
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Izzy's POV
I stood next to the bench outside of the girl's dressing room, with my script in one hand, and several pins in the other. Leshawna knelt next to me, pinning the waist of my poodle skirt which was about five sizes bigger than it should have been.
"Ouch," I muttered when she accidentally pricked me.
"I wouldn't be sticking you if you didn't move around so much." She scolded.
"Sorry, Leshawna. I'm just really nervous. Tonight's opening night and all, and I don't think I know my lines very well. I mean, what if I screw up a line or something? Then no one else will be able to figure out where we are in the script and the play will end with Duncan giving the audience a lesson on how to escape from prison, or something. Then, years from now, people will be talking about how Izzy Lightle ruined the whole school play! I'll never be able to get into college, or get a job, or buy auto insurance, and I'll end up as a hobo! I don't want to be a hobo, Leshawna!"
Leshawna stood up and grabbed my shoulders, shaking me roughly once, "Calm down, girl! You'll do fine if you don't bleed to death before it starts."
I glanced down and saw that I was bleeding through my poodle skirt a bit. I guess I'd been pricked a few more times during my near mental-breakdown. I stayed completely still while Leshawna finished fixing my costume. "Thanks," I said when she finished.
"You're welcome."
I stopped dead in my tracks. "Oh, no! This is not good; not good at all!" I shouted, "Bridgette's gonna kill me!"
Leshawna laughed, "Says the chick who plays with wolves."
"And fire," I corrected, "I'm a bit of an arsonist too, but that's not the point! Okay, you know the scene where Frenchy pierces Sandy's ears? Well, since Bridgette actually doesn't have her ears pierced, I have to use a retractable needle that will look like it's going through her ear but actually isn't."
"I've never heard of a retractable needle," Leshawna argued.
I agreed, "Me neither! But Mr. McClain found one for me and I lost it." I stormed into the girl's dressing room and started turning the place upside down looking for that stupid prop. It was no where to be found. Leshawna suggested that I just use a regular needle and do the best I could with it. It seemed like that was my only option.
Fifteen minutes before show time, the cast met up to do some last minute adjustments to the blocking. Everything was going fine until we got to one of Rizzo's lines.
"Where's Katie?" 19 pairs of eyes flickered to Sadie.
"She's sick," Sadie explained, "Katie called me just a few minutes ago. She can't do the show tonight."
Mr. McClain looked worried, "Who's going to play her part? Someone has to."
"I'll do it," Gwen said, "I've seen Katie do it enough that I know her lines pretty well."
"You know what you're getting into, right Gwen? What the part entails?" Bridgette asked. Gwen obviously didn't get it.
"It'll be just you and me, Gwen," Cody said, and Gwen instantly understood. In the play, Rizzo and Kenikie got … very close.
The group waited for an answer from her. She looked like she was answering the final question on Jeopardy, "Um… Okay. I'll do it. It's just a play after all," She glared at Cody and added meaningfully, "It doesn't mean anything,"
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Duncan's POV
The orchestra started to play the beginning music, signaling that we only had five more minutes till the curtains opened. I took a deep breath and straightened my tacky leather jacket. These costumes looked like they were made in the 1950's – and smelled like they hadn't been washed since the 1700's. I felt a hand on my shoulder and quickly spun around. It was Courtney.
"Hey, Princess, I-" she put her hand over my mouth.
"Shhh. There's something I have to say. It's my turn to talk and your turn to listen." I was slightly taken aback by her bluntness but Courtney continued anyway without waiting for my reaction, "All right, here it goes…" she put her hands on my shoulders, stood on her toes and planted a kiss on my lips. But then, all too soon, Courtney pulled away. "You know what? You're not so bad, Duncan O'Malley."
Courtney started to leave. I knew it would ruin the moment, but I just had to ask, "Does this mean you'll go out with me?"
"Yeah. I guess it does."
I was about to reply when I realized that I should have been on stage right then. I darted out on stage… just as the song was ending. Oops. This set the tone for how the rest of the night would go.
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Izzy's POV (again)
After Duncan missed his cue (and the whole song) things went downhill. Right before she was supposed to go on, Heather adamantly refused to be seen in public wearing her tree costume. So Chris simply forced Geoff to drag one of the plastic fichus trees from the front office and put it on stage where Heather was. Something which – as pointed out by Gwen – should have been done a long time ago.
Then we got to the scene at Frenchy's house after the school's bonfire. Rizzo (Gwen) got out the bottle of fake beer. She took a swig of it and started coughing. Hey, I thought her character was supposed to like beer!
Gwen wiped her mouth and coughed again, "Aw, man," she whispered, "That's real alcohol."
My eyes widened, "Really?" I grabbed the bottle, "Let me try." Oh yeah, it's real.
"Oh, oh, I wanna try!" Lindsay (Jan) and Sadie (Marty) also drank some. I offered the glass bottle to Bridgette (Sandy). She looked at the waiting audience then back at me.
"You guys know this is illegal, right?" Bridgette took a sip, "Yuck! Who would drink this stuff?" Gwen put it under the prop bed and we continued with the scene. It turned out that, the cigarettes Chris had us using were also real. I guess it was over his budget to actually have us be following the law.
Then it came time for the part where I would pierce Sandy's ears. I don't know why, but I felt like I was forgetting about something important. I jabbed the needle into her earlobe, expecting to feel the needle retract; but it didn't.
Oh, that's what I was forgetting. I lost the retractable needle in the beginning of this chapter. Bridgette screamed in pain, several audience members gasped asking each other if this was supposed to happen. Starting to panic, I reached over and ripped the needle out of her ear which only made matters worse. Several drops of her blood fell to the ground. Gwen, Lindsay, Sadie and I just stared at Bridgette.
"What do we do now?" Sadie whispered to me. Bridgette stopped crying after a minute. She seemed to be okay and started to shakily say her line. Gwen replied with her next line. Bridgette put her hand to her ear, it came back bloody.
"It's your line," I said when she hadn't responded to Gwen's line. She stared at the blood for a second and – get this - fainted right there on stage!
"We'll have to cut the scene short," I whispered to the others, "Skip to the part where Gwen makes out with Cody." I don't think Gwen appreciated my statement but she didn't argue. She motioned up to Trent, in the sound booth, to cut the lights.
While the lights were dimmed, the other Pink Ladies and I spread the word about the scene change, while Geoff dragged his unconscious girlfriend off the stage. He came back on a second later to clean up the blood. Unfortunately, this took too long. Trent, who couldn't see what was happening on the stage while the lights were down, thought that we it was okay to turn the lights back on. So suddenly, the audience was staring at Geoff, stained rag in hand, right in the middle of the stage.
Geoff stared at the audience. They obviously expected him to do something. "Uh, hi." He waived to the crowd. Some of the crowd members actually waived back. Okay, this is taking too long. I came out on stage next to Geoff, pointed out into the audience and, in my best impression of a crazed fan girl, yelled, "OH MY GOSH, ITS JOE JONAS!!!! HE IS SO HOT!!!!" Every female in the crowd under the age of twenty started jumping around excitedly shouting, "Where is he?! I love you Joe!"
This sudden panic enabled Geoff and me to make our inconspicuous exit. Not bad, huh? And it only took a half an hour and some bouncers to get them quiet enough to continue!
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Gwen's POV
Cody helped me drag on the cardboard car for our (Ugh!) make- out scene. The things I do for this stupid play! We stepped in. "Keep your hands to yourself and don't you dare continue for one millisecond longer than is absolutely necessary."
He sighed dejectedly, "Don't worry. I know what I'm doing." Maybe I was just flattering myself, but I thought he'd be a bit more excited about getting to do this scene with me. Whatever. He leaned in very close. I waited for our lips to meet, but to my surprise, it never happened. Wait a minute, he's stage kissing me. It looks real to the audience, but it's not.
I was pretty impressed with Cody. After the scene, we hauled to 'car' off stage right. "Cody," I said, "About what you did… thanks."
"No problem," He muttered, but he didn't mean it.
"I know it doesn't make up for it but…" I kissed him on the cheek. "You're going to find a great girl someday, Cody. I'm just not her. But whoever she is will be lucky to get a guy like you."
The next few scenes went by with only a few mishaps. While the audience had been quieting down after Izzy's little performance, Bridgette had woken up and insisted that she was well enough to go on.
Finally, the play ended! True, we still had four more shows to go, but at least we could brush-up a bit so that tonight's performance wasn't repeated. The cast went on stage for the bows. The audience clapped politely.
Harold (Putzie) was last on stage. On his way up, he tripped and accidentally ran into Duncan.
"Hey, watch it, dude!" Duncan yelled. Tensions had been running high all night for everyone. Duncan shoved Harold back into Sadie, Lindsay and I.
"Geez, Duncan," I yelled, "Stop being such a jerk!"
"Well you tell Harold to stop… breathing!" He shouted back, unable to come up with a better comeback. Pretty soon, the whole cast was having an all-out battle on stage, shoving each other, yelling insults. Even Geoff and Leshawna from backstage decided that they had nothing better to do, and joined in. Someone must have alerted the principal because 15 minutes later the whole cast ended up outside his office, waiting to be interrogated separately. Lots of fun. Not.
There were only 3 chairs so most of us were sitting on the ground, whispering to the people around them.
"Gwen," Trent whispered to me. I looked over at him and realized, not for the first time, how his eyes sparkled in the light. "Do you remember, on the first rehearsal, we started something, but never got to finish?"
"Yeah, I think I do remember that," and we continued where we'd left off in chapter 2 (A/N: For those of you who don't remember, Gwen and Trent nearly kissed in chapter 2 but were interrupted by Chris). All the girls in the cast 'Awww'ed, and Lindsay whispered "They are such a cute couple!"
I heard footsteps right next to me, but I didn't think much of them until an adult voice exclaimed, "Excuse me? What kind of vulgarity is going on here?" Trent and I reluctantly pulled away, "Uh, sorry, Vice Principal Rogers."
"Well, I should hope so!" She turned to the rest of the group, "Suffice to say, after what happened tonight, opening night will also be closing night for Grease. All scheduled performances are permanently canceled!" The cast cheered. Vice Principal Rogers seemed appalled as if she thought we were supposed to be upset that she'd just saved us from further humiliation. She huffed and stormed back into her office.
"Okay, so maybe Grease was a total flop," Owen said, "But look on the bright side, next year they're doing West Side Story!"
*************
I
solve my problems and I see the light
We gotta plug and think, we
gotta feed it right
There ain't no danger we can go to far
We
start believing now that we can be who we are
Grease
is the word
Grease is the word, is the word that you heard
It's
got groove it's got meaning
Grease is the time, is the place is
the motion
Grease is the way we are feeling
We
take the pressure and we throw away Grease is the
word
Conventionality belongs to
yesterday
There is a chance that we can make it so far
We start
believing now that we can be who we are
Grease is the word, is the word that you heard
It's got
groove it's got meaning
Grease is the time, is the place is the
motion
Grease is the way we are feeling
Grease
is the word
Is the word
Is the word
Is the word
Is the
word
Is the word
Is the word
Is the word
Is the word
THE END
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And this concludes "Grease is the Word." Thanks to all you reviewers, because I probably wouldn't have finished this if it wasn't for you guys. Happy holidays!!!
Love,
earth warrior