AN: Hi there. Before you ask, my name's not really Abby and this story isn't based off any real life events. It's just a story I've had going on in my head for a while. I write chapters and post them long after I've written them, because I want to make sure I have some cushioning room in case I don't write for a while. So I'm in the middle of like Chapter 6 right now. I already know how this story is going to go for quite a while. But hey, if I get bored or don't know what to write, I'm going to ask my reviewers what they think should happen. So review for me and let me know what you think :) Also, the title is tentative. I'm really bad at coming up with titles, so let me know what you think.

EDIT: I'm just changing the time of the festival to New Year's, because I hadn't exactly had a good timeline planned when I wrote this chapter. Now I do, so no more mistakes :)

Chapter 1

Abby sat down with her sonic screwdriver pen at the small table in the basement as her sister turned on some poppy music and began dancing. "Come on," Alex whined to her twin. "Don't be boring, we have to get our routine down for the show!"

The sisters were in a talent show their small town put on every year. This town was just outside of Chicago, and its name is so insignificant you'll probably never hear anyone in this story say it. If you asked Abby and Alex where they lived, they would tell you 'Chicago, Illinois.'

"I am working on my book," Abby said with superiority. "I don't suppose you would understand."

"I don't."

"Look, Alex, we both know the routine as well as we could. It's good to be a little rusty. It just makes us try harder in the show, we both know that!"

"No," Alex argued. "You know that. I think the more practice we get in, the better, and you can't tell me it hasn't worked in the past."

"Okay," Abby sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose. "Since we got here, to this city, four years ago, we've entered each year. Each year we've come in second. We've tried your way, we've tried mine. What are we going to do now?"

Alex seemed to consider this before saying dramatically, "We don't enter."

Abby found it ironic that at this moment, her mobile phone started playing the Doctor Who theme song. She laughed as she picked her phone off the table and said, "Well that was dramatic." She looked at the caller ID and then answered, "Hey Brant."

"Abby, you're a dancer, right?" he asked quickly.

"Not at all," she said sarcastically. "Why? Who needs a dancer?"

"My friends," he replied. "I'm bringing them home tonight. They want to meet you. Maybe use you."

"Use me?"

"Both of you. They need a choreographer, and I told them I knew two. Will you meet them?"

"Brant, we have our show tonight," Abby replied. "The town talent show? Alex and I are very busy practicing, and we're going to win! So if you don't mind, we'd like to wait to meet them until tomorrow. Good day, sir." And she hung up on her step-brother.

"What did he want?" Alex asked immediately.

"He knows people who need a choreographer. My guess is the musical he's in, and the people he's been spending all his time with from that musical. Of course, we don't know what that is."

"He wouldn't tell us. He refused, saying we've never heard of it," Alex remembered.

"Right. That's why I'm avoiding the question. If they want us so bad, they can tell us who they are."

"And you wonder why we call you a bitch," Alex said.

Abby glared her green eyes at her sister, flipped her completely purple hair, and walked to the radio Alex had set up in their dance area in the basement. Even though the basement held Brant's room, there was an area down there specifically for the girls to dance, because if they did their rougher dance movements on the second floor, it made too big a noise. Her identical twin followed her and when Abby turned on the music, they lost themselves in the choreography.

-A-

They were ready. Their dad and step-mum gathered the kids, Sara and Josh, the twins' half-siblings, and they went to the center of town, and the only park in the town. There was set up a stage with about fifteen groups of people behind it, getting ready for their acts. In a town like this, fifteen was actually a pretty big number of acts for a talent show. They always made sure to make them extra good. The girls were a regular act, year after year. They were always told to come back to ring in the new year.

Brant, being four years older than the girls, drove himself and came backstage when he was there, as the girls were just doing their stage make-up. "Break a leg, girls," he said.

"Didn't think you were coming, you never said," Abby noticed.

"No. That's Meg who's not coming. She's the one who never does. I wouldn't miss this. Not even for rehearsal, which is really where I should be right now."

"Oh, impressive. You gave up your friends for us. That's a first."

"Well, not exactly."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"You'll find out," he answered vaguely. He stepped back, waved, and turned around and left.

The girls were used to his strange behaviour. Brant was very close to his family, but since they grew up in Britain with their gran, he never got the chance to know him. They suspected their step-brother was just uncomfortable in the presence of new people, though he never seemed to have that problem with his friends.

"Abby!" Alex snapped when Brant was out of earshot. "You really should try to be nicer. He's right, Meg is the one who never shows up for these things. He's actually a nice, supporting older brother."

"Save it. I know you have some worship thing for him going on, but he's not my real brother so I don't," Abby replied. "Let's run through our routine one more time," she added before Alex could comment.

But before they could, they were called. "You guys are in the hole, be ready," the stage manager, Cindy, said, flashing them a 'break a leg' smile before running off to another group, which consisted of both the girls' exes.

"We need to beat them this year," Alex said determinedly. Though her break up wasn't bad, she still found it humiliating when he liked to gloat—followed by flirting with her in a desperate attempt to get her back. "I mean it!"

"Maybe our guest judge will take pity on you," Cindy said, overhearing their conversation on her way back to the stage.

"Who's the guest judge?" Abby asked interestedly.

"His name is Brian Holden," Cindy answered. "He's part of a musical theatre group called Team Starkid. Have you ever heard of it?"

"Nope," the girls answered.

"That's good. Most acts are trying to suck up to him. I mean, if YouTube sensations think they're good, they must be."

"And it's good that we're not trying to suck up?" Abby clarified, trying to get Cindy's attention back to their conversation.

"Yeah—" She cut off as she heard something in her headset. "You guys are on deck, hurry up to the stage!"

The twins ran backstage and got in their positions. Abby would be coming in stage left, the closest side to them, and Alex would be coming in on the other side, so she ran around really quickly during the performance before them. When she got into position, she met Abby's eye and gave her a thumbs up, which Abby quickly returned.

-A-

"And in third place," Allen, the host of the talent show every year, began, "the Gleeks!"

A group of four girls squealed and ran to the front. They had done a pantomime mash-up of songs from the Fox show Glee, which the girls didn't like at all, but apparently the judges did. They jumped excitedly and blew kisses to the judges' table, obviously to this Brian guy, who yes, the girls had to admit was cute, but they weren't going to be…well…them. They weren't that kind of fangirls. Well, usually.

"And now, our two contenders for first place," Allen announced. "Drew Smith's group, who has no name." Drew was Abby's ex-boyfriend, and the leader of his group. They had done a few songs that they said were from Starkid, not that the twins would know. "And the Jackson Twins!" Abby and Alex jumped up and came to the front of the stage. They both crossed their arms, right over left, and held hands as they waited for Allen to announce the winner. "And the first place winners are…" He paused for dramatic effect and the girls squeezed their hands. "The Jackson Twins!"

Abby and Alex squealed and jumped forward to claim their invisible trophy, an apparent tradition of the talent show. One of them would have to be holding the invisible trophy at all times for the rest of the festival that went on after the show. If they lost it, they'd lose their first place title.

Abby stole the trophy out of Alex's hands and held it up for Drew to see. "Ha! We finally beat you!" Drew flipped her off, and Abby held the trophy down and said superiorly, "You wish you could."

"Yeah, I do," he replied. Thankfully, the festivities had already started, and not many people were paying attention to this exchange. Unfortunately, for Abby anyway, one person who was, was her step-brother.

He pushed Abby behind him and said to Drew, "I suggest you leave." Surprisingly, Drew did so.

"Thanks," Abby said, passing the trophy to Alex. "But I don't need your help. Drew's just being Drew, I can handle him."

"Actually, I came up here to introduce you to my friends," Brant said. It was at that moment that both twins noticed the two guys standing there. One was the celebrity judge, Brian. One was, in Abby's opinion, cuter than Brian with dark hair and an adorable smile. "This is Brian," he said, pointing to the judge, "and this is Joey," he added, pointing to the one Abby was certain she was now in love with. "Guys, this is Abby and Alex," Brant told his friends, pointing out each of them as he said their names.

"Abby with purple hair, Alex with black hair," Joey clarified. Abby nodded. "I'm gonna forget that," Joey added, laughing.

"Anyway," Brian interrupted. "I voted for you guys to win. Until my vote, it was tied. And that was before I even knew you were Brant's sisters. He told us about you guys, and that you were really good dancers. We were wondering about something. See, we're doing a new musical. It's an original thing, but it's based off something else. We'd prefer not to say anything else at this time, in case you don't decide to do it, so we don't have people outside our project knowing about it. You understand, right?"

"Yeah, of course," Alex said.

"Right. So when we left U of M, where we did our first musicals, we also left our new choreographer behind, because she had to finish a year of school still. So we're looking for a new choreographer, and when Brant told us you both were dancers, we thought, why not? Starkid is mainly a group of family and friends anyway. We'd love to get people we know rather than have open call auditions and get a bunch of crazy fangirls, you know?"

"Yeah, we understand," Alex replied. "And we'd love to do it, if you really want us to. We've never actually choreographed a musical before," she added uncertainly. "And we're really not good at teaching. Well, Abby's not. She's really impatient."

"Hey!" Abby snapped playfully. "I can be patient!"

"You'll need to be," Brian said. "Joey here can't dance at all." He nudged his friend, who laughed shyly.

"Well we can totally teach you a bit," Abby offered. "We'll make it really simple so you can do it!"

"Cool! I'd say you guys are hired, but I still wanna run it by Matt and Nick, so maybe you guys could come by rehearsals tomorrow with Brant?" Brian asked.

"Sure, we could do that!" Alex said excitedly, and Abby nodded along in agreement.

"Awesome!" Brian said. "Would you two winners like to hang out with us at the festival?" he added, holding his arm out for Alex to take.

"Sure!" Alex said, thrusting the trophy into Abby's hands and taking Brian's arm.

Once they were away, Brant looked like he was about to say something, then thought better of it. "I'm just going to go find mom and dad. Catch you later. Joey, when you're ready for a ride home, let me know." And before either of them could say a word, Brant had left them alone.

"Um…" Joey began awkwardly. "So uh, we could hang out, yeah? I mean, not if you don't want to, but…if you did, we could just go enjoy the festival?"

"Yeah. But we have to go see the fireworks in…" She quickly pulled out her phone, seeing it said 10:30. "Half an hour. Okay?"

"Yeah, definitely. Fireworks are always fun."

"Yeah."

They settled into uneasy silence. Abby wasn't really sure why, but she found it really hard to talk to Joey. Joey didn't seem to know what to say, either, so they just ended up walking around for a half an hour, until Abby met up with Alex and handed off the trophy, just before the fireworks. Joey and Abby sat on the ground and watched the sky until Abby, who was exhausted, laid down on the ground. Joey followed suit, laying down next to her. His arm brushed against hers and she instinctively looked over at him. He smiled.

"Hi," he said.

"Hi," Abby replied.

"Sorry," he finally said after realizing he had hit her with his arm.

"It's fine," she assured him, then turned away so she could still watch the fireworks. However, she must have fallen asleep shortly after that, for next thing she knew, Brant was shaking her awake.

"Come on," he said. "It's time to go home. Mom and dad are looking for you."

She stood up a little too fast and stumbled, but managed to keep upright. "What time is it?" she asked.

"Almost midnight," Joey spoke up from behind Brant. "I didn't notice you'd fallen asleep at first, but then I said something and you didn't answer, so—" Joey kind of cut off awkwardly after that, as if he didn't really want to say what he said to her.

"Okay, let's go." Abby followed Brant to her parents and then he left with Joey, obviously giving him the ride home he had promised earlier. Alex caught Abby's eye, and Abby knew her well enough to know that she was thinking, We need to talk when we get home.