Stage Love

Chapter 1

It all began with a drunken idea. A stupid, unrealistic, brilliant, drunken idea. The entire sophomore class of twenty-fifteen had gathered at J.J. Knowles' house to throw the last party of spring break. The couple weeks that they'd gotten off of school had been filled with adventure, laughter, carelessness, and everything else that should come with the life of a typical high school student. But that would all be ending on Monday, when they were all expected to be back in class at eight-thirty a.m. sharp.
So this was their last hurrah of spring break, and there was no better place to hold this than J.J.'s house. He was filthy rich ever since his parents inherited a grotesque amount of money from his late grandfather, meaning that there was plenty of room inside his house for everything from a dance floor to a pong table. Luckily, his parents were constantly jetting off here and there; they live life with the motto "If you've got it, flaunt it." and that they did.
Of course, they weren't stupid, I'm sure they knew exactly what J.J. did when they were away but they've decided to turn a blind eye. Anyway, the party was pretty big by Westbrooke's standards tonight. It was a particularly small town, barely meeting the ten thousand mark, and the high school only consisted of about four hundred students, one hundred in each grade. So when an entire grade shows up to a house party, the entire town knew within minutes. Violet Taylor and Gwen Jackson were just two of one hundred people inside J.J.'s house that night, and their evening had been just as fun and memorable as everybody else's had been. It was around midnight, and the crowd had shrunk by almost half. Everyone's attention was drawn to the back of the room as a loud cheer erupted from the beer pong table.
"I told you I'd kick your ass!" Violet boasted cheerfully towards the guy she had just beat. She couldn't think of the guy's name at the moment, though she'd know him since kindergarten. Her vision had gone a little misty quite some time ago, maybe around her fourth cooler, but she could feel her best friend, Gwen, suddenly hanging around her arm and she greeted her with a smile.
"Hey!" Violet said, drawing out the word, "You've been having fun?"
"Uh, hell yeah!" Gwen responded, she was in the same state as Violet.
"Hey so, a bunch of guys just went out back to smoke some darts but we did that a while ago so I have a great idea of what we can do while the room isn't quite as full!"
As drunk as she was, Violet couldn't help but chuckle at the was Gwen was speaking. She didn't drink often, and she definitely didn't smoke often, but every time she did, her sentences became smilies to those of an illiterate child. It was funny to see her this way, she was the top of every class at school and always focused on making good decisions. Well, apparently not tonight.
"What?" Violet asked with a laugh.
"J.J's got this bumpin' karaoke machine, we could hook it up and get something going!"
As much as she had been expecting her idea to be nothing more than a drunken joke, Violet actually quite liked the idea of getting some karaoke started, and suddenly, it seemed to her that the night wouldn't be complete without it. Somehow, the two of them managed to get the machine set up and before they knew it, people were crowding around the small clearing in the living room to hear peach other sing and maybe get a chance in the spotlight as well.
If she hadn't had as much poison in her system as she did, Violet never would have gotten up with that microphone and belted out that Pat Benatar classic like she did, but tonight anything goes. And she was only the first of many to take the stage that night and put on a little show for the crowd. But it wasn't until Violet sat herself down on the couch next to an old friend and listened to Gwen sing a beautiful song that the idea came to her.
"Holy shit." She said to no one in particular, "Gwen can sing."
After a few minutes, when the two girls caught up to each other in the kitchen, Violet was flooded with ideas on how to showcase her best friend's melodic voice.
"Girl, why didn't you ever say you could sing?"
Gwen gave her a modest look and tried to brush off the comment, but Violet was persistent.
"Hey, don't give me that, you're really good, I'm dead serious."
And then the idea hit her.
"Oh my god."
Gwen gasped, knowing exactly what Violet's statement meant. "You have an idea."
"Remember in middle school when we took drama classes after lunch?"
"Yeah?"
"Well our high school doesn't have an acting program."
"I know, we complain about that all the time."
"Well, if we want one so bad that we're going to have to create one ourselves. This karaoke thing might just be a funny party game, but a bunch of people at our school actually have really great voices, especially you."
"Vi, you sang too and I thought you sounded great!"
"Dude, we're not going to have a compliment war right now, I'm serious. Why don't we ask some teachers around the school if they'd be willing to help us direct some kind of production? It could be totally legit, we could do a musical, we could have auditions, so many people would be into that!"
Gwen was having a hard time understanding, she she paused and took in everything Violet had said until she realized what an amazing idea it was.
"You're totally right." she said, "People would be all over that. We have to follow through with this!"
"Wait, there's no way in hell I'm going to remember this tomorrow."
"Quick, put it in your phone!" Gwen suggested, and Violet quickly typed up her idea into her notes app as well as she could.
"Done." She said with an excited smile, "Now let's go have some more fun before this party ends!"