Joy's POV
Oh, hi again! Looks like you've circled back around. I'll bet you enjoyed the other emotions' perspectives, right? Well, I saved the best years of our life - high school - for last. Seriously, you are gonna love hearing about this! Ready? Here we go...
Okay, ninth grade. That was a pretty fun; we got involved in so many activities, made so many friends, developed our friendship with Danielle, you know, the usual. My personal favorite was Drama Club. We got to see a Shakespeare play, performed an Oscar Wilde play. We were a duchess! We had such nice teachers, awesome classes, the books we read were a lot of fun! Sure, Billy Budd was a snooze, but the rest were fun.
That was also the year Writer Island really took off. Mostly because Fanfiction became part of Sarah's life. She joined the site, wrote a semi-popular Frozen fic, and got glowing reviews! We'd also been working on this one particular story idea since eighth grade, but it really bloomed around that time. Mostly since the characters became Sarah's imaginary friends. I remember the first time they showed up in HQ. It was a Wednesday, right after school. I had just plugged in a new ideadream, and was helping Sarah with a fresh new draft for her story, which revolved around four kids with powers over the four classical elements; you know, water, air, earth, and fire.
"Here comes the Train of Thought," announced Logic. "Right on schedule."
Sadness offered to go and get whatever it was that the Train was bringing. (Just to be clear, I'm going off of what she and the characters tell me now.) Was she ever surprised to find four kids, around Sarah's age, back there!
The first one to speak to her was a girl, blond hair, blue eyes. "Is this Headquarters?" she inquired. "We were told to make a stop here."
"Yeah, you're at the right place," Sadness explained. "I'm Sadness."
"I'm Maddie. The lanky boy is Caleb, the girl with the hoodie is Colleen, and the short redhead is Alex."
Caleb added, "We came here from Imagination Land. Wanted to see what was going on here, y'know?"
"Well, you wanted to," Colleen muttered.
"I think I'd better introduce you to the other emotions," Sadness suggested. Then she called us over. Fear fainted on the spot, and Anger and Alex almost got into a fistfight, but other than that, we all hit it off really well! We're all friends now. We often visit each other, hang out. Sometimes the Elemasters (that's what they're called) even fill in for us emotions.
Even better? We got to perform in a production of Seussical, which is Sarah's all-time favorite musical. We emotions have always enjoyed it ourselves. Sometimes we perform as the characters: I like Jojo and the Cat, Sadness usually takes Horton, Fear is a Gertrude fan, Disgust can't resist Mayzie, Anger rocks as the Sour Kangaroo, and Logic prefers the Mayor. Anywho - get it? Who? - the community choir we were in was invited to be the Whos in a local dance school's production of Seussical. I remember the moments before the first performance began. Everyone was in position behind the curtain, ready to rock out in the musical's opening number, "Oh, the Thinks You Can Think". We'd had the dance routine memorized for weeks. Sarah was positioned next to a good pal of hers from the choir, Hazel. Everyone was supposed to be quiet, but nobody cared.
"Ooooh, I am so ready for this!" I squealed, my feet pattering below me as I held onto the console.
Next to me, Fear muttered, "I'm not. I mean, this is our musical debut. Who knows what could go wrong?" We'd thought it would be fun to dress up as our favorite Seussical characters for the occasion, so I was in a dapper tux-and-skirt and had the Hat on my head, and Fear wore a simple blue dress with a single feather tied to the back.
"Mom isn't gonna see us..." Sadness moaned. She had on a blue button-down, matching pants, and a newsboy cap.
On my other side, Logic shook her head. "If we just remember the dance moves, nothing will go wrong. And I have the program ready to run." Her gloved hand held up one of those punch-paper thingies you see from old-timey computer labs.
The overture sounded. Logic plugged the paper in so we could do a "test run", doing the dance moves to the instrumental music.
"You guys ready?" I asked aloud.
Everyone was too busy looking at the console to notice my words. I love it when that happens. The performance went spectacularly, and later, Sarah got to be the Cat when we reprised those songs at the choir's spring concert! How cool is that?!
Then there was the trip to Disneyland! Fear has begged me not to share many details, but I'll just say I loved the opp to get closer to Danielle.
Tenth grade was even better than ninth. Most of the islands you see here now? Formed that year. We made almost straight A's (okay, B in math, but still pretty good, right?). One of my favorite parts of that year is the expansion of Drama Island. See, a new drama teacher came to our school that year, and gave Drama Club a complete overhaul. We started the year with student-written plays. Based them off of some fairy tales, some well-known, other not so much. We got to help write one based on "Snow White and Rose Red", which, for the record, does not involve seven dwarves. Our starring role was a bird (okay, the bird) in an adaptation of Cinderella, complete with cutting off of foot parts.
The next semester brought with it singing lessons for Sarah and the first-ever school musical. We did The Pirates of Penzance. Sarah really wanted to be Edith in that play, but were we ever surprised to find out that she'd gotten the role of the Sergeant! (Disgust's reaction: "Well, tarnatara." You wouldn't believe how often she kept saying that...)
Since the police only appeared in the second act, we didn't have to go to as many rehearsals. It was still a lot of fun to be at the head of the four-man police force. There was this one glorious note we nailed. The first performance, we kept laughing inappropriately, but otherwise did great.
After that was our part in Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. Amazing. All I can say. Sure, we were stuck in the immature ensemble, but we had a blast. The pros were so nice to us.
Then there was the choir's tour to San Francisco! We'd seen Inside Out by this time, so of course we had an emotional experience - ha! Especially considering it was our last gig with the choir. Sadness couldn't stop crying. Neither could I, to be honest, but those were happy tears.
Eleventh grade has been going amazingly! I think the highlight of the year was either getting into the honor choir, being on the Shakespeare Team with our crush, or starting a band. I'll go into details later, but we scheduled a movie night for tonight. Moana! Gotta love that one. I guess I'll be seeing you around. Chair! That's our way of saying see ya. Tee hee!
