Hi, people, it's me Fredface. I've been compelled to write another story. Big surprise, right? Well, yeah. I've decided to…
SCRIPT MY OWN TELEVISION SHOW! WHOO!
Except I'm going to write it in quotation instead of colon format. That's just easier for me.
It's going to be called "Sweet Light of Cali".
Kinda corny, but I'll explain.
See, I want it to be about this band my sister and her friends want to make. It's officially called Paranormality.
Anyway, the show is about them. That's all.
By the way, I'm going to be writing chapters by the episode. So this first chapter is the first episode.
So I want to know how you guys like it. Now let's go!
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"Hello, peoples!" Britannica called from in the hallway, lugging quite a few bags on her arms. "What's up, girls?"
"Well, you know, besides everything that goes on between us, nothing," Alice replied in a dark voice, clutching a pillow to her chest and sitting on the couch with her eyes narrowed. "Nothing at all."
"Shut up, Alice," Rosemary demanded from on the computer chair. "She's being defensive," she snidely informed Britannica.
"No, she's being stupid and rude," Alice protested, throwing her pillow at Rosemary and narrowly missing.
"Wow, it's been thirty seconds here and I'm already bummed out," Britannica mused. "I think I'm going to leave now while you two figure out whatever is you're fighting about. Besides, there were some cute boots at the store and they were calling my name. So, uh…see ya."
"No!" Alice cried, jumping from the couch and latching on to Britannica's leg. "You can't leave, Brit! You have to stay here and solve our problem for us! That's your job in life!"
"Alice, if you keep doing that, I might lose my balance and drop something on you," Britannica warned her.
Alice immediately assumed a "puppy dog faced" expression. Britannica bit her lip.
"You know I do have better things to do than reconcile whatever's going on between you two," she said uncertainly. Alice continued making the face.
"Please, Alice, stop," Britannica pleaded. "That makes me uncomfortable."
"Hi, girls," someone suddenly called from behind the two. Britannica and Alice both jumped about two feet in the air.
"Oh gosh," Alice breathed. "What is it, Lilly?"
Lilly skipped towards the middle of the living room with a box in her arms. "I was wondering if you have anything going on right now," she explained.
"Alice is making me solve some fight between her and Rosemary," Britannica told her.
"Oh, so I see you have nothing going on," Lilly giggled. "So I was thinking you might all want to go out for ice cream. I got some money from that one guy."
"But Lilly," Britannica protested, "I'm diabetic."
"I know," Lilly agreed, skipping away. "Gazelle, get out of the shower!" she shouted from the bottom of the stairwell. "We're going out for ice cream!"
"I don't want ice cream!" Gazelle called from upstairs.
"'Kay, I'll meet you all in the car," Lilly said sweetly before dashing out the door.
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My hair is blowing in the wind as I walk down the street
I know that I should take I hint from everyone that I meet
So turn your head to the sky
And we'll find out how to fly
And I know just what to do
'Cause there's no place I'd rather be, than here with you
I'm gonna strut my stuff today
Don't know if I'll do what you say
But I'm gonna look into the light
Over the rainbow
Some days I'm up, some days I'm down
But that's just life so go to town
But I swear, I'll meet you there tonight
At the end of the slideshow
But I swear I'll meet you there tonight
At the end of the slideshow
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"Hey, guys, open the door!" Lilly called from outside. "We have ice cream!"
"Coming," Ashie, who was standing at the door, replied. She opened the door and reached her hand to take two cones.
"How did you answer that fast?" Gazelle asked confusedly.
"I was right here," Ashie answered, walking down the hall.
"Then why'd you say 'coming'?" Lilly asked.
"…I don't know…" Ashie said, looking at the floor.
"Uh, don't sweat it, Ashie," Gazelle assured her hastily.
The three of them walked down the hall and into the empty living room. Gazelle sighed before opening her mouth and screaming, "Ice cream! Get it! Now!"
Britannica, Alice, and Rosemary arrived instantaneously. "You didn't get ice cream for me, did you?" Britannica demanded. "You know I'm diabetic!"
"You are?" Gazelle asked. "I didn't know."
"Lilly did," Britannica explained, folding her arms.
"I may not have been listening," Lilly said sheepishly. "You know I forget to sometimes."
"Yeah, right, whatever," Britannica groaned, snatching cones and cups from the three who had originally held them and placing them on the table. "Let's eat."
As the girls ate, Alice and Rosemary glared at each other. Alice dropped her fist with her spoon in it into her ice cream again and again, splashing the dessert all over the table.
"Alice," Lilly called across the table, "if you keep doing that, your cup or spoon might slip and someone could get hurt."
"Well, we wouldn't want that to happen," Alice muttered.
"This is really good," Gazelle murmured through at least five mouthfuls of ice cream.
"Have you had ice cream lately?" Rosemary asked.
"Not really," Gazelle answered. "I didn't think I liked it too much, but this is great! Britannica, you're not going to finish yours, right?"
"No…" Britannica confirmed confusedly.
"Thank you," Gazelle said, taking the cone and starting on it. Britannica stared at her.
"Gazelle, you know if you eat too much sugar and fat, you can really get heart problems and all that stuff."
"And I would really be okay with that," Gazelle replied through more ice cream.
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"You're standing in front of my set," Rosemary complained to Alice.
"You're standing in front of my case," Alice retorted.
"So move," Rosemary ordered.
"You move first."
"I don't feel like it."
"Okay, what's going on?" Lilly asked hopelessly, dashing towards Alice and Rosemary. "Are we having problems again?"
"No," Alice lied, storming upstairs. Lilly turned to Rosemary.
"Maybe," Rosemary answered, rolling her eyes.
"Why do you two hate each other so much?" Lilly asked.
"I don't know," Rosemary mumbled, following Alice upstairs. Lilly sighed and ran to join her.
Britannica met her at the top, staring after the other two and shaking her head. "Oh, Lilly," she said sadly. "This is bad."
"I know is it," Lilly agreed. "They fight all the time, it's sick."
Britannica stared at her for a second. "Oh, I wasn't talking about them," she said confusedly. "I meant Gazelle."
"What about Gazelle?" Lilly asked, chuckling.
"I can't get her to stop eating ice cream. It's sick. She just gobbles it up." Suddenly lowering her voice, Britannica continued. "I bought enough ice cream for us to have for two months, and she eaten half of it."
"Brit, I don't think this is a key issue here," Lilly told her. "Alice and Rosemary could actually hurt each other."
"And Gazelle could actually explode," Britannica replied. "I mean, come on."
Lilly stared at her and sighed, walking away.
"What? I'm really worried about-"
Britannica was interrupted by a soft melody resounding from behind her ear. "Uh, I think your hair is singing," Lilly laughed.
"I keep my phone here," Britannica explained. "I don't want to have to search through my handbag."
"Handbag?" Lilly repeated. "Why don't you just say purse?"
"Purse sounds like a cure for stomach cancer," Britannica replied as she pressed the 'talk' button on her cell phone.
"I am so sad to be able to say I know you," Lilly sighed, rubbing her forehead.
"Hello?" Britannica said. "Oh, Oliver, hi. Huh? That's-that's today?"
"What's he saying? What's today?" Lilly asked. Britannica held up a finger to quiet her.
"What?" she continued. "I thought we were supposed to come in tomorrow. But-but Oliver-but you said we had this day off-I know we have rehearsing tomorrow too-but Ol-Oliver-Oliver! You…he hung up on me."
"Who was that?" Alice asked, taking a bite of an apple as she walked into the room from the kitchen.
"Oliver," Britannica answered.
"Dupree?" Rosemary guessed, following Alice.
"No, Oliver Twist," Britannica replied sarcastically.
"What'd he want?" Gazelle asked, licking her empty ice cream bowl clean.
"He said we have to work on harmonies today at three," Britannica replied.
The other collectively groaned. "But he told us this morning we wouldn't be needed until tomorrow!" Ashie whined.
"We were supposed to get this day off!" Alice pouted.
"I know, girls," Britannica sympathized. "You know, as much as I like Oliver for being our producer-manager and our songwriter guy, he is kind of manipulative and demanding. I guess if we drive to the record company, we can get Oliver to switch the dates."
"But the record building is all the way in Anaheim!" Rosemary protested.
"Stop your whining," Alice told her disgustedly.
"Hey, if it doesn't work, the worst that can happen is we're early for harmonies," Lilly pointed out.
"And I'd like to sleep in our bedrooms at the record building," Gazelle commented, placing her bowl in the sink. "Anything to get out of here for at least a night."
"Hey, this is one of the most prestigious mansions in Hollywood," Britannica snapped. "We paid good money for this."
"Yep," Gazelle agreed, stretching, "but sometimes I wish we hadn't."
"Just get in the van," Britannica ordered.
"Touchy," Gazelle muttered as she walked outside with the rest of the gang. "So can we go for ice cream on the way to the Anaheim?"
"No," the others replied at the same time, annoyed.
And… go to commercial!
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And…we're back.
"Seventy bottles of pop on the wall, seventy bottles of pop," Lilly sang.
"Take one down, pass it around," Alice continued.
"Sixty-nine bottles of pop on the wall!" Everyone not in the front seats chimed (which was to say, everyone besides Britannica, who was grinding her teeth, and Ashie, who was asleep).
"Sixty-nine bottles of pop on the wall, sixty-nine bottles of-"
"Just shut up!" Britannica shouted. Everyone else jumped. "Thank you," Britannica said, much more calmly.
"But Brit, we had sixty-nine bottles left to go!" Lilly complained. "You could have at least let us get to fifty."
"Yes, but then I would have gone insane," Britannica snarled. "Besides, we're almost to English Records."
"English?" Rosemary repeated. "I didn't know it was called that. Isn't it a bit nationalist?"
"No," Britannica replied briefly. "It's named after its founder, Danielle English."
"Whose last name is English?" Rosemary chortled.
"Our boss's grandmother's last name is English," Britannica answered.
"Who's our boss right now, then?" Rosemary asked.
"You don't know a lot of things, don't you?" Alice asked, glaring at Rosemary.
"Jessica Knight is our boss right now, don't you remember?" Gazelle reminded her.
"Not ringing a bell…" Rosemary murmured "Why isn't it ringing a bell?"
"Because you're stupid and rude," Alice replied.
"Hey, I may be rude, but I'm not stupid!" Rosemary protested.
"Yeah, you are," Alice disagreed.
"No, I'm not," Rosemary said angrily.
"No, you're not." Alice smiled.
"Yes, I am," Rosemary snapped before gaping at Alice.
"See? You're stupid!" Alice laughed.
"Well, here we are," Britannica sighed, pulling the van up to a large glass building. The top half was painted navy blue and the bottom half crimson. A large bright yellow zigzag line separated the halves. Printed in large white block letters on the top was "DREAM TODAY", and on the bottom was printed "LIVE TOMORROW". A flashy neon sign in front of the building in blue violet, pale orange, and forest green read, "English Records-Visitors Welcome if Accompanied by Employee or Talent."
"Every time I come here, I'm reminded of how weird Jessica's tastes are," Lilly commented.
"Hey, it is cute…you know, the whole, "dream today" thing?" Alice blinked a few times as she looked up at the building. The gang walked inside.
"Oh, Britannica!" cried a voice from down the ornate hall. A rather tall, rather slender young man walked up to them. "It's great to see you!"
"Hey, Oliver," Britannica answered tiredly. "Now where do you want us-"
"I'd actually like you to come with me to Mrs. Knight's office," Oliver interrupted her. "I have news from her that you need to hear."
So the group walked up to the second floor and into the main office. It wasn't too short a walk because the stairs were just down the next hall and the office was right across from the top of the stairwell.
The main office was decorated extremely oddly. A disco ball hung from the ceiling, and it was decorated to look like a spider's web. The west wall was painted to look like it was on fire, the east wall to look like outer space, and the otherwise blank north and south walls were covered with patches of plaid and tye-dye cloth respectively. At least thirty pictures of different animals hung on the walls, which Jessica Knight had told them many times were pictures of all of her pets. Finally, the floor was a bright pink carpet with red tulips. Jessica's cluttered brown wooden desk was the only thing in the room that actually looked normal. Eight white rocking chairs faced it. Right now, Jessica herself, who was blonde with blue eyes and currently wore a blue sparkly shirt and matching skirt, was sitting on top of her desk with her Toki Diago standing next to her.
"Good afternoon," Toki greeted them briefly. She was Japanese, but she was very fluent in English.
"Hi, girls!" she beamed in a loud, high-pitched voice. "I'm so glad to see you! Sit down, all of you!"
The gang did so, though Oliver opted to stand. "Now, it's very nice seeing you today, but I'm afraid I must be serious for a moment."
"Jessica, serious?" Alice chuckled under her breath. "I'd like to see this."
"Now, as you all may remember, I had several teeny-tiny cameras placed in your house when you became a band and moved in. These not only allowed us to make sure no one broke in and took anything or hurt any of you, but also let me make sure you all obeyed English Records rules.
"And if you remember, one of these rules, specifically stated that there is to be no abuse between members. And it has recently come to my attention that between Alice and Rosemary there has been a lot of verbal abuse in the last few months. And I can't accept that," Jessica finished sadly.
"But Mrs. Knight, it's just arguing!" Britannica was, as usual, the first to speak. "They aren't hurting each other or anything."
"I know," Jessica agreed. "Which is why my punishment will not be too severe. I want to be able to teach the two of you a lesson without really lashing out."
She fell silent for a few moments. "So?" Alice prompted her.
"What are you going to do?" Rosemary asked.
Jessica snapped back to attention. "Oh yes. I know you aren't going to love this, but…Alice, Rosemary, you are henceforth suspended from all musical activities concerning English Records until you can learn to get along."
Hopping off her desk and going around it to sit in the seat behind it, she said cheerfully, "That'll be all. Oliver, send them home, won't you?"
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"This is all your fault!" Alice shouted.
"My fault?" repeated Rosemary. "You're the one who's always annoying me and being a sensitive-"
"Could you two be quiet for five seconds?" Lilly demanded. "It doesn't matter whose fault it is that you're suspended! The fact is, you two can never stop fighting and Jessica is mad about it! You should both be ashamed!"
The gang was now driving home. They had sat in silence for the first twenty-five minutes before Alice had burst out.
"And without you two, Pink Rose Kitten is going to beat us out for number one on the charts," Gazelle whined.
"Who are they?" Rosemary asked confusedly.
"Do you live under a rock?" Alice squinted at Rosemary and raised her hands in a questioning gesture.
"I'm a priest!" Rosemary laughed mockingly, copying Alice's motion. Alice slapped her.
She glared in disbelief at Alice. "You. Did. Not," she seethed.
"Did too," Alice replied.
"You're acting like a couple of two-year-olds!" Lilly shouted, clutching both girls' shoulders. "Really, what is wrong with-why are we slowing down?"
She wasn't wrong; the van was quickly losing speed. "Britannica jammed her foot on the gas pedal, but nothing happened. Quite soon they had completely stopped.
"What's going on?" Alice cried, her fingers twitching and fear in her eyes. "Did we run into quicksand or something? Are we gonna sink?"
"No, we are not going to sink," Britannica answered. "But we have plenty of gas left so…I'll check under the hood."
She attempted to open her and found it stuck. "Okay, that's weird," she muttered. "Ashie, try to open your door please."
Ashie did so, but found that her own door wouldn't open either. The rest of the gang tried their doors and found that not a single one of them would budge. "This isn't fun," Ashie commented.
Everyone stared at her.
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After about fifteen minutes of trying to open the doors or get the car to start moving, the gang effectively gave up. "Well, this is nice," Britannica sighed. "How do we get out? It's not like we have any way to smash the windows or anything."
"We're gonna melt in here!" Alice screamed, digging her fingernails into her scalp. "Brit, why did you have to leave the windows up in one-hundred degree weather?"
"Because studies show that having the air conditioner on drags the car down less and uses less gas that leaving the windows down," Britannica replied.
"Well, the air conditioner won't help us too much right now, will it!"
"Hey, don't yell at her, she's doing her best," Rosemary said, calmly but bitterly.
Alice took a few deep breaths in response. "Sorry, I just lost my cool for a second," she murmured.
Britannica rolled her eyes and took her cell phone off her ear. Quickly dialing a number, she listened for the other line. "Hello, Mrs. Knight. Yes, it's me. No, I didn't steal her phone, it's me! Yeah, we're in a bad position here. Our car is stuck and it won't move. No, Mrs. Knight, I would never have thought of that. Of course I was being sarcastic. The doors won't open. No, it's-well, we're pretty far out there with no fan or air conditioner. Of course we'll survive, but some of us-well, Mrs. Knight, it's just that-really? A jackhammer? No, I don't have any better ideas. Really? No? Oh. How long? I'm sorry, Mrs. Knight, but I don't think a liston is a real measurement of time. Ten-Yes? A blue-stop repeating you? Oh. How fast will they be going? Okay. Thank you, Mrs. Knight."
"That was a really long conversation to say something really short," Lilly told her.
"Apparently, she's sent someone with a jackhammer to break down the doors for us and they'll be here soon," Britannica explained.
"How soon?" Gazelle asked.
"Ten minutes," Britannica answered irritably.
"See? This is why we should have stopped for ice cream on the way to the record building!" Gazelle remarked.
"She's not wrong," Lilly agreed, shrugging.
"Oh, this is sad," Britannica almost, sobbed resting her head on the steering wheel. "We are six famous singers stuck on the side of the road at one-hundred degrees who can't get out of their car…and why isn't anyone even stopping to help?"
"The windows are tinted," Ashie replied. "No one knows we're in here."
"Why did we tint the windows again?" Britannica demanded to no one in particular, lifting her head back up and dropping her chin in her hands.
"Because it looked cool," Rosemary replied nervously.
"Which reminds me…you two," Britannica continued, pointing at Alice and Rosemary, "make up. Now."
"But-" Alice and Rosemary began at the same time.
"I don't want to hear it!" Britannica interrupted them. "Now make up!"
The two girls faced each other. "I, uh…I'm sorry?" Alice said quietly.
"Me too…" Rosemary replied. "And, um…" She held out her hand. Alice shook it.
"Are you apologizing or are you closing a deal? Hug already!" Britannica commanded.
The girls did so, failing to execute the hug correctly the first two times. But after they did, Britannica smiled. "See? Being here in a van in one-hundred degree weather with no way out helped you be friends and-"
"You guys are Paranormality, right?" a man suddenly called from behind them. They all looked in the direction of the voice to see a construction worker with a jackhammer in his hands. Without waiting for an answer, he turned it on and crushed the door next to Alice.
"Out of my way!" Rosemary shouted, pushing past Alice to get outside. Alice shoved her back. The two of them soon got themselves into a shoving fight.
"Well, that was nice while it lasted," Britannica muttered.
And commercial again.
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"Well, I see the getting along went well," Jessica said from behind Britannica, startling her.
The entire gang had gotten out of the van by now, and the workers were now fixing the transmission and checking for engine problems. The girls were sitting or standing in different places on the highway, and the workers had to set up a large barrier so other people on the highway would drive elsewhere and allow them to do their work.
"Oh, Mrs. Knight, I didn't know you were here," Britannica told her. "Trust me, they made up, it's just…old habits die hard, I guess."
"You're absolutely sure they made up?" Jessica asked suspiciously.
"They hugged," Britannica informed her.
Jessica stared long and hard at her. "Well, I can't prove you wrong, so…I guess they're welcome back to the band."
"Really? That's it?" Britannica asked, sounding surprised. "Don't you want to ask them?"
"Ah, not really," Jessica replied. "You're the only one of my bands that I actually like, and I'd hate to lose you girls."
"You really like us?"
"'Course I do!" she answered. "…But you're paying for the van."
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And that's it, guys! How did you like it? Tell me what you thought of everyone and everything, please.