TROUBLE MAGNET - Completed

Chapter 9 - Lip Sync

Chapter 9 - Lip Sync

The summer before I started high school, back when I only knew Landon from hockey, I got a summer job working in the local ice cream parlour. I loved working there. There were four other girls my age that also worked there: Kate, Nicole, Sarah, and Angeli. We became inseparable that summer. If I had to use one word to describe each of us I'd say: I was the athlete, Kate was the dancer, Nicole was the actress, Sarah was the peacekeeper and Angeli was the smart one.

It was Kate and Nicole that talked the rest of us into entering our high school Lip Sync contest. The first year we entered we were very worried because we'd heard there had never been a grade nine entry before. Kate wasn't worried though; she had it all planned out. We did a very sexy dance to "These Boots Are Made for Walking," an updated version by Olivia Holt. We wore miniskirts, sparkly tops and knee high boots and we became the first grade nines to not only enter, but also win our high school Lip Sync.

We followed that up the following year with The Blues Brothers - "I'm a Soul Man." We dressed up like men in men's black dress pants, white dress shirts, black ties and black suit jackets and topped it all off with white gloves and black sunglasses. We wore our hair up in tight buns. We shortened the song and faded it into a shorter version of the song by Shania Twain - "Man I Feel like a Woman." As one song faded into the other, we took off our dress pants and had little black miniskirts on underneath with black high heels. We then let our hair down from the tight buns and shook it out, all long and wild as we danced. Once again we beat out the seniors and in doing so made a reputation for ourselves. The student's couldn't wait to see what we'd do next. We had become the group to beat.

However, the summer before grade eleven, we got the news that Nicole was moving away. When it came time to plan our next Lip Sync number we realized we had big shoes to fill. Nicole had been the actress in our group and though she was not quite the dancer Kate was, she was definitely the next best and without her, it seemed like we were missing something. The pressure was on. After all, we had a title to defend.

Kate came up with a song, but with only the four of us, it just didn't quite seem good enough to win, no matter how hard we worked on it. Kate finally decided to approach some of the more popular guys in our grade to see if they would join our group. There were four guys who hung out together, who called themselves 'The Team' because apparently they all played ball hockey on the same team in the summer. Kate knew that at least two of them were good dancers from having danced with them at school dances.

There was Landon who was the best athlete and a pretty good dancer. There was Matt who was the best dancer and a pretty good athlete. There was Yanik who was the funny, skinny, tall one, who was an okay dancer and then there was Rob who was the easygoing, smart one of their group. He also just happened to be into bodybuilding and it didn't really matter if he could dance or not because he was eye-candy! The guys, after a lot of begging and flirting on Kate's part, eventually agreed to join us. We did the song "Hit the Road Jack" by Ray Charles. The boys had their own parts and the girls had our own parts.

It took quite a few nights of practicing, but no one seemed to mind because we were all having so much fun hanging out together. At different times throughout the song we would break into partners and dance: I was paired up with Landon, Kate with Matt, Sarah with Yanik and Angeli with Rob. The partner dancing was the part we ended up enjoying the most. No big surprise there.

At first we were all over the place, but by the time we were ready to perform, we had gotten pretty good at the partner dancing. The guys wore black pants and black shoes and we wore black skirts and black dancing shoes. Then each partner wore matching coloured tops, - Landon and I wore red tops, Kate and Matt wore blue, Sarah and Yanik wore yellow and Angeli and Rob wore Green. Together we maintained our winning streak and took top honours.