High School Musical || RJ AU

08. Cliché

Back at EJ's house, Coach Caswell walks out into the backyard to watch his son who is shooting some hoops. He misses again and again and again. In his anger, he catches a missed shot and hurls the ball against the side fence. Coach Caswell walks back inside the house, helpless.

Meanwhile, at Ricky's house, Ricky is strumming his guitar in deep thought.

The next day, Ricky and EJ cross paths on their way to their seats in the cafeteria. Neither teen says anything.

Nini notices Ricky motions for him to come and sit with her.

EJ tries to say something but before he can utter a word, the other boy walks off and sits at a different table.

Nini notices this.

Gina sees her best friend and calls out to him.

EJ sees Gina but doesn't join her, instead, he leaves the cafeteria.

Ricky steals a glance as he leaves.

Gina and Nini then make eye contact and get up to have a talk.

—

EJ is on the science club roof, sitting on a bench miserable with his lunch in his lap.

Gina, Max and Big Red join him, looking ashamed of themselves.

"Hey, um... we just had another team meeting," the girl informs him.

"Oh, wonderful!" he replies, sarcastically.

"We had a team meeting about how we haven't been acting like a team. I mean us, not you. Look about the singing thing..." her voice drifts off and EJ interrupts.

"Look, Gina, I don't even wanna talk about it."

His best friend sighs, "We just want you to know that we're gonna be there. Okay? Cheering for you."

"Huh?" EJ looks up at his teammates confused.

"Yeah, if singing is something you wanna do, we should be boosting you up, not tearing you down," Max pipes in.

Gina nods agreeing with him, "Yeah, win or lose, we're teammates. That's what we're about, even you turn out to be the worst singer in the world."

Big Red then finally speaks, "Which we don't know because we haven't actually heard you sing."

"And you're not going to hear me sing, guys because Ricky won't even talk to me and I don't know why," EJ says, sounding deflated.

Gina cringes, "We do."

Max reaches into his lunch and pulls out a zip lock bag with choc chip cookies, handing them to EJ. "I baked these fresh today. You'll probably want to try one before we tell you the rest."

—

Ricky was sitting in the music room, at the piano, working on a new song when Nini comes up to him.

"Ricky, we were jerks. No, we were worse than jerks because we were mean jerks. We thought EJ and the whole singing thing was killing our chances of having you join our club."

The boy scoffs, "I heard what he had to say. I'm on your team now. Done."

Nini frantically shakes her head, grabbing his hands to stop him from playing the piano, "No, not done. We knew that Gina could get EJ to say things to make you want to forget about the callbacks. We planned it, and we're embarrassed and sorry."

Ricky looks to the girl who is now sitting on the stool next to him, "No one forced EJ to say anything. And you know what? It's okay, we should be preparing our songs for this workshop now, so it's time to move on."