The Other Bowen || Nini Salazar-Roberts

nini and lily

Lily's pov

"Hi. Thank you all for coming to rehearsal in the morning." Miss Jenn thanked us. "I know it's a crazy day with the career fair and all, but given all your behavior last week, I believe we are lucky to be rehearsing at all. For future reference, singing and dancing, good. Breaking and entering, bad."

"Miss Jenn, we didn't break anything." Seb told her.

"Would you like me to be the first?" Miss Jenn asked.

"I'm good."

"Okay. I'm just going to say it. Zack Roy stole our Beast mask. Why are you not freaking out?" Carlos asked her.

"Because winners don't freak out, Carlos. They rise. When they go low, we sing high." Miss Jenn sang a loud high note.

I turned to Ricky. "Uh, have you seen Nini?"

Ricky held up his phone to show me Nini's new Instagram page. "Every time I open Instagram."

"Yeah, thanks." I pushed his phone down. "I mean, here in school."

Ricky shook his head 'no'.

"We didn't leave things off on a great note. We haven't talked at all over the weekend. But, I'm..." I paused. "Well, I'm not sure what's gonna happen when I see her today."

"I'm afraid I'm the bearer of some hard news." Mr Mazzara walked into the bomb shelter. "We just got a call from the disciplinary board of an organization I'm not sure really exists." He lifted up a note card. "Effective immediately, this production will shut down rehearsals for one week as punishment for trespassing by order of the... monkeys."

"It's pronounced Menkies." Miss Jenn told him.

"Oh. For the record, your competition has been punished as well. North High is benched for the week." Mr Mazzara said.

"Okay. Feels generous." Ashlyn spoke up.

"Miss Jenn what are we gonna do? We can't lose a whole week when we haven't even started blocking the second act yet." Carlos panicked.

"We are going to keep our heads down and our chins up." Miss Jenn told us.

"I don't... I don't think that's physically possible." Seb said as he tried to do it.

"It's an expression, Sebastian." Miss Jenn replied.

Nini's pov

I took my phone out of my pocket as it dinged with another notification from my new Instagram account that I made to show off some of my songs.

"Someone's getting popular." Kourtney teased.

I chuckled. "Oh, come on."

"I'm getting recommendations of your song from people who don't even know me. That's like famous adjacent." Kourtney told me.

"I'll admit, feels good to put myself out there." I smiled.

"I'm all about it. But, what does you know who think about your new brand?" Kourtney asked.

"Uh, we actually haven't talked much. So, maybe she didn't even notice." I shrugged.

Kourtney glanced behind me. "Oh, she noticed."

"Nini." Lily said as she walked up to me.

"Lily, hey." I replied.

"Oh, what was that, Carlos? You need me for a costume fitting even though you're not even here so this makes no sense. I got you. Duty calls." Kourtney smiled at us before running off.