A/N: Hello again! This chapter delves into the background of Stephanie leading up to the events in the movie. I know I said it would include more about about her relationship with Johnny, but I decided to save most of the details for Johnny's POV next chapter. So, just a heads up!
Also, IMPORTANT QUESTION, ESPECIALLY FOR READERS ON MOBILE! Please let me know if my paragraphs are too chunky. Either message me or drop a review. I want to make sure I'm providing an accessible reading experience so please tell me if I'm falling short by being long-winded!
...x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.X.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x...
STEPHANIE ZINONE
.
For as long as she could remember, Stephanie Zinone wanted to be a T-Bird. Growing up, she spent most of her time running around with her three older brothers and being enchanted by all the cars at her father's service station. Whenever the coolest cars were in meant that those slick boys in leather jackets were in, and her brothers would tell her wild stories about them. "Those are the T-Birds," they would say, "a greaser gang. T-Birds do whatever they want whenever they want, pull the hottest broads, and protect each other like family." They would regale hijinks and rumbles and naughty jokes they were all too young to really understand, then Stephanie would go to her father and get him to tell her about their cars.
"I like those T-Bone fellas more than the other gang guys," her father said the first time she asked. "Troublemakers, all of 'em, but at least those ones respect their machines." He'd side-eyed her. "Don't you ever go fallin' for any schmuck that doesn't respect his machine, Steph. How a man treats his car says a lot about how he treats a woman." At all of five years old, Stephanie promised she would carry that advice with her the rest of her life.
Content with her male-dominated routine of waking up, having breakfast with her family, playing when young then later suffering through school, doing homework at the station and earning a nickel by helping out there, then having family dinner and chores back at home, it wasn't until the youngest Zinone started to go through some bodily changes that she realized there might be more to life. Like friends, especially girls, who could relate to her in ways her brothers couldn't and entertain conversations her father wouldn't. Or like boys, she considered, when she started noticing T-Birds in a new light. And other stuff yet to be determined—above all things, Stephanie realized that she'd become curious about what the world had to offer. Curious about femininity, about sexuality, curious still about everything chrome, and curious about what all laid beyond their mediocre cut of Los Angeles.
Though she'd always had trouble connecting with the other girls in school, Stephanie made an effort to be more socially involved in her first year of junior high. It helped that there was a new girl in town, Paulette Rebchuck, who had no history with Stephanie's indifference. Paulette was sweet as candy and just as sweet to look at, who charmed anyone and everyone she spoke to. It was easy to befriend her, but what really sold the doe-eyed blonde for Stephanie was the cut-out magazine pictures of pin-up girls draped over hotrods pasted to the back of her notebooks. She used their mutual attraction to car culture (and the boys who came with it) to bond for real.
Through Paulette, Stephanie finally got to know two other girls who apparently also shared such interests: best friends Sharon Cooper and Rhonda Ritter. Sharon had always come off as bossy and stuffy to Stephanie, but it turned out that the girl was not quite the goody-goody she thought. Dissimilarly, Rhonda was probably the girl Stephanie had gotten along with most before Paulette; they always snickered at the same things during class, and Stephanie appreciated her low-key personality. Once the four of them clicked, though, it was like they'd been close forever.
It was before one of their now-frequent sleepovers that year when they made their conscious, collective decision to one day become Pink Ladies. They were to spend the night in the Zinone household that time, one of the few times they did since her home was smaller and more crowded than Paulette's or Rhonda's, who each only had single little siblings (and though Sharon was an only-child and lived in a decent little house, her mother was very controlling and smothery, so they never congregated there if they could help it). As the group waited outside Jake's Service Station for Stephanie to finish helping her father restock a couple shelves inside, two T-Birds rolled up in souped-up Cadillacs. The girls oohed over the vehicles and slick-haired boys. The convertible parked at a gas pump and its driver slid his arm around the shoulders of the pink-clad girl in his passenger seat, then winked at the swooning middle-schoolers which made the older girl giggle. The other car's driver pulled into the open service bay.
Just as the guy rounded the corner to go in the station for assistance, Stephanie exited. "Yo, mini Zinone," he smiled at her, "your daddio in? Stacy needs a tune-up." He thumbed to his car.
"Now what'd you go doing to her this time, huh Rump?" Stephanie put a hand on her hip, sounding indignant that anything could be wrong with the beautiful car she was apparently familiar with. She did not notice her friends gaping at her.
This 'Rump' boy laughed at her and booped her on the nose, leaving a dark grease mark. "Nothin' indecent, I promise. I'm mostly a gentleman," he winked at her. She just rolled her eyes at him and wiped her face, completely nonplussed by his flirty reply. "Hey, Martin said you might need a ride home early today. Roger and Chicago can take ya." He bucked his chin at his fellow T-Bird and auxiliary.
"Yeah? Alright. Thanks, Roger. You all comin'?" She finally turned to her friends, whose jaw-dropped mouths were practically collecting dust at this point. The girl, Chicago, pouted at the sudden inclusion of three other people joining their limited car space, but Roger just waved them in without comment. The three onlookers climbed into the backseat while Stephanie slid onto the front bench with the greaser couple. It was Paulette who first caught sight of the black lettering on the back of Chicago's jacket, when the high schooler scooted down to let Stephanie in.
She pointed it out to Sharon and Rhonda, but neither knew what it was about. She waited until they pulled away from the station and the radio lulled into commercials to begin fishing: "So are you two friends with Stephanie's brother Martin, then?"
Everyone in the front seat laughed, confusing the young trio more. "Nah, not really," Roger said. "More like friends with Jake, so his kids are our kids." He stuck his tongue out playfully at Stephanie, and even Chicago smiled fondly at her.
"Yeah right," the young blonde scoffed. She didn't argue further, however, because she honestly couldn't. Ever since the T-Birds started going to Jake's years and years ago, every generation of the gang treated the Zinone's like family. It wasn't unusual for greasers or their girls to bring the four children candy, little toys that may or may not have been stolen, or even a full Tupperware feast from their mothers during the holidays.
"That's sweet," Rhonda smirked, half teasing. "Sounds like the service station is actually a hoppin' place, huh Steph?" Stephanie whipped a weak glare at her, sure that her friends were up to something but not quite certain what it was yet.
Chicago snorted, "For boys and their toys, maybe." Stephanie's glare to her was much stronger.
"How long have you two been together?" Sharon jumped in, both to stay on track and distract their tomboyish friend.
"Since summer after freshman year, when Roger got picked to be a T-Bird and me for the Pink Ladies," Chicago cooed, running her long pink nails through the back of her boyfriend's hair. She quickly smoothed it back down at his noise of complaint.
Paulette seized the moment. "What's the Pink Ladies?"
Chicago turned fully to look at her with a mixture of outrage and condescension. "Are you serious? Pink Ladies are T-Bone chicks and ultimate queens of cool. You're what, eighth graders? You better learn the ropes faster than that, hon, or you're gonna have a hell of a time at Rydell."
Put out, the girls asked no more questions. The radio commercials ended, and they all just listened to music the rest of the drive to Stephanie's. Once the friends unloaded into Stephanie's house, however, she rounded on them. "Okay chuckleheads, what was all that about?"
"How come you never told us about Pink Ladies?!" Rhonda shot back. "Or that those hunky T-Birds hung around your dad's? You've really been keepin' the goods to yourself, Steph."
"How was I supposed to know you didn't know?"
"Why waste any more time talking about not knowing about it?" Paulette suggested. "Now that we do, we can learn fast, just like Chicago said. Stephanie, tell us everything about the Pink Ladies."
They spent the entire sleepover discussing the girl gang. Stephanie told them everything she knew about them, the T-Birds, the scope of their turf and who their rivals were, and how teenage car clubs seemed to function. From what she'd gathered from her brothers and her time at the station, there were two types of coolness: preppies and greasers. The former was cool because they had privilege, namely in money, but also by reputation of being clean-cut American kids. Those kids had name-brand clothing, achievement trophies, and reputable colleges on the horizon; and, because of their wealth and status, never faced consequences even when they did get caught doing something unwholesome. Greasers, however, enjoyed no such luxuries. Low in class and culture, they had to make up cool points with automobiles, attitude, and outrageousness. The T-Birds in particular were known for being bold, and needed to be, as they were one of the youngest car clubs on the scene and didn't usually participate in any organized crime beyond petty theft, vandalism, and generally being rowdy. Their main rivals, the Flaming Dukes and the Scorpions, were both made up of greasers from their late teens to their late thirties, and more involved with drugs and destruction. Not that post-grad Birds fled the flock—"Once a T-Bird, always a T-Bird."—but members of this particular gang tended to move beyond L.A. in adulthood and only come back to home-base periodically to check up on the others.
The Pink Ladies were another factor that made Rydell greasers stand out. No other group in the territory had a dedicated sorority. There were certainly greaser girls and girl gangs in the city, but due to segregation and other racist tensions, few were seen around their white, Italian-dominant area. So, the Pink Ladies took up the mantle of being the most badass broads around. The pink jacketed gals were unbound by many limitations imposed on women of the time. They were foul-mouthed, fashion-forward, and free-spirited. They enjoyed all the interests and activities their male counterparts did, unburdened from the shame that society tried to instill in their sex. The only condition was that they were considered T-Bird property when it came to romance.
This caveat did not sway any of Stephanie's friends. They vowed that night to do everything they could to become Pink Ladies when they got to high school, to be the very coolest. Stephanie explained that they had a year to prove themselves then, because T-Birds and Pink Ladies were selected the summer after ninth grade. Sophomores vetted them throughout the year, the juniors made their recommendations to the seniors, then the seniors chose the new crop from that list. Other than the summertime induction, the rule was that twelfth-grade gang members were to never ever be bothered by underclassmen. After the freshmen were given their jackets and became sophomores, the now-juniors groomed them to peak coolness, and the cycle repeated.
Unlike the other girls, who had all finally fallen asleep after hours of planning for their future days as Pink Ladies, Stephanie felt a twinge of dissatisfaction with the decision. She couldn't put her finger on why. She was confident in their success—between her connections, Paulette's charm, Sharon's ambition, and Rhonda's effortless demeanor, they would've been plucked for the Pink Ladies without even trying. It's actually not until three summers later, when she breaks up with Johnny Nogerelli, that she figures out what wasn't sitting right all that time.
Because yes, the girls' plans all worked out perfectly and they became Pink Ladies in a year. They were truly the coolest ninth graders they could be: they mocked the hula-hoop craze, listened to rock-and-roll music, stuck eleven Chiclets in Secretary Hodel's coffee every week without her noticing, did that new Cha Cha dance only ironically, subtly emulated the style of upperclassmen Pink Ladies, and each had their first boyfriends. Paulette went through several under- and upperclassmen; Rhonda a few herself; Sharon started a flirtationship with fellow freshman Louis DiMucci; and Stephanie held hands with a ninth-grade boy named Bradley for a week and kissed him once, but then he started to call himself Goose so she determined he might be better friend material instead (or even like another annoying brother). Stephanie even went on a single date with eleventh-grade T-Bird Danny Zuko over Spring Break but he wouldn't stop complaining about his on-again-off-again ex, Betty Rizzo, so neither followed up for a second one.
The induction ceremony in June was held at the house of rising-senior Francesca "Frenchy" Facciano, and was really more of a large slumber party. Each new Pinky accepted her membership by smoking her first cigarette and sharing a bottle of wine, then they were gifted jackets. At the end of the night, or rather morning since they stayed up til sunrise, the Pink Lady presidency was crowned to Rizzo.
Sophomore year, things started to shift before Stephanie's steely blue eyes. There was a lot of drama going on with the senior T-Birds and Pink Ladies revolving around Danny, Rizzo, and foreign exchange student Sandy Olsen. Frenchy—the only greaser, guy or gal, who ignored the upperclassmen seclusion rule—kept her updated on everything, but by the second semester, Stephanie was getting frustrated with the banality of it all. She already had a lot going on that year, real things. Economic downturn had hurt the service station, so she and her next-eldest brother started working there officially after their dad had to let go of the only non-familial employee. And because of the subsequent lessened study time, her grades were far from perfection and she only skated by because of Sharon and Rhonda's help. She still exuded coolness despite these setbacks, but it made her care about dating even less, which only upped the antics of boy-crazy Paulette and crazy-boy Johnny Nogerelli, the excitable and theatric new T-Bird who'd set his sights on Steph.
Three distinct events led to Stephanie finally agreeing to go with Johnny. The first was Paulette's boldest attempt at kickstarting her into romance. Halfway through tenth grade, neither of the blondes had quite clicked with any particular T-Bird yet. Sharon and Louis were still dancing around each other, and as soon as Goose had come back to school in a leather jacket and nearly a foot taller, Rhonda called dibs quick as lightning and the pair were actually hitting it off great so far. So, one afternoon when the two girls were hanging out at Paulette's house alone, the others off with their boys, Paulette broke out her yearbook and went through every guy in the entire tome trying to suss out what got Steph's motor running beyond "handsome and into automobiles." After the hardheaded girl deemed every single one too immature, annoying, dumb, or uncool, Paulette threw her perfectly manicured hands in the air and declared, "Well, Steph, we're officially out of men! Either you gotta start aiming older or commit to women. I can work with either, but I don't think the gang will let you keep the jacket and an outsider."
The potential of liking girls threw a wrench in Stephanie's worldview. She'd heard of such a thing before but never realized the option was open to her, too. Was that what was sitting so crooked in her heart all this time? That she was looking in all the wrong people for that ineffable thing she was searching for? Paulette locked her bedroom door, and they turned the hang-out into a sleepover, discussing the possibility late into the night. Both girls found themselves thankful for each other, that neither balked nor spit at sapphism. As their discussion delved deeper, they even decided to test their curiosity. It couldn't hurt to have some experience under their belts before having official beaus, anyway, regardless of gender. Though, while their secret night together was certainly pleasurable, neither ended up feeling swayed toward women any more than before. Stephanie started to accept that she was resigned to the likes of Nogerelli, so perhaps she'd just have to make the best of what she's got.
The second event was Johnny getting a motorcycle. Upon returning to school from winter break, the usual rumble of cars was accompanied by a new sound. Stephanie was familiar with cycles since a few came into the service station sometimes, but their turf had been dedicated to hotrods for so long that it took her a moment to recognize the sound in context. Abandoning her friends by the school busses, she followed the roar to the other side of the parking lot. The girls called after her, trying to keep up through the crowd, but she was too focused to notice or care. When she finally reached sight of the sleek black machine, she was even too focused to realize who was riding it at first.
"Lookin' good, Zinone," the motorcyclist had called to her, pulling up his helmet to reveal a bright smirk, then further up to the sparkling brown eyes of Johnny Nogerelli. Clad in dark leather head to toe, thighs straddled over more leather and metal, the lines between ride and rider blurred in the blonde's blue eyes. Her piercing gaze followed his hand to his pant pocket, where he procured the typical Swiss Army-style greaser comb, to his slicked-up pompadour hairdo. His smug voice cut through her stalled thoughts. "See somethin' you like, Steph?"
By then, her girlfriends had caught up with her and were eyeing her and Johnny intensely. Stephanie blinked, getting a grip on herself. She peeked at her fellow sophomore Pink Ladies, hoping they weren't judging her moment of, well, sophomoric drooling. Sharon had one eyebrow arched high into her forehead, not quite in judgement but something close. Rhonda looked amused to hell; the tip of her tongue was sliding over her teeth as she assessed the situation, like it was physically delicious to her. Paulette didn't even seem to remember their purpose for being there, her wide round eyes dialed onto Johnny in an identical way to how Steph's just were. Over the other blonde's shoulder, Stephanie caught sight of the signature pink Studebaker and watchful stare of the upperclassmen Pinks.
She quickly looked back at Johnny and his shit-eating grin, then back down at the mean machine between his legs. Logically, she knew she should do some coolness damage control, so she said, "Is that a crotch-rocket or are you just happy to see me?" and meant to strut away with a calculated hair flip. But as if her brain was disconnected from the rest of her, she found herself walking toward him instead and mouth opening again. "Take me for a ride."
Johnny glanced at the school behind her and almost looked like he was going to turn her down, but the expression passed just as fast as it came. T-Birds were notorious rulebreakers and lady-charmers, after all, so he couldn't afford to pass up such a golden opportunity, especially with nearly a hundred pairs of eyes on them. He turned his bike back on and she slid onto the seat behind him, and they skived off the first two periods to ride around town. And from then on, Johnny always drove Stephanie to school on his bike.
The homerun hit that solidified "Zinorelli" (as Sharon loved to call them) was the graduation festival at the end of the schoolyear. Sandy Olsen swaggered on site looking hotter than hell in skin-tight black pants and a cigarette between her scarlet lips, giving every man with working eyes heart palpitations—especially the letterman-clad Danny Zuko who was still floating from his incredible win at Thunder Road. Rizzo revealed she wasn't pregnant and promptly stuck her tongue back down Kenickie's throat. Marty finally stuck hers down Sonny's throat and meant it. The seniors were all coupled up, happy, and had their sights set on the future ahead. A bitter green pit gurgled in the depths of Stephanie's stomach as she watched them while Johnny won her a stuffed monkey at one of the silly carnival games. Jealousy was not an emotion she was intimately familiar with, but it swelled more and more intensely as the day went on.
So, everyone just changed completely and suddenly are happy? After all they preach about reputations and rules, they get to break them and face zero consequences? Why do they get to do whatever the hell they want, and I don't? Why are they happy and supported either way, and I'm not? Her perfectly manicured brows furrowed under her blonde fringe. Next to her, Johnny whooped at winning another plushie. The two of them would be subtly campaigning for gang leadership over the next year, though they were both shoe-ins, so she'd agreed to come to the carnival with him just to be seen together. He shoved a purple elephant in her arms then dragged her to the next booth, adding a polka-dotted penguin to the growing zoo after dominating at that game as well.
No, not changed...evolved. Unmasked. Sandy unleashed the greaser hidden under all that prep, Danny got serious, Rizzo got vulnerable, Kenickie unhid his anxiety at Thunder Road and his care for Rizz. Showed other sides of themselves besides being cool. Stephanie stared at Johnny nail Coach Calhoun in the face with a cream pie, then down at her armful of stuffed animals. She thinks he's a little like that too: multifaceted, colors of his personality shaded like an oil slick. Cool but also goofy, an ass but also sweet; confident but in a way that just barely hinted at it being a front. Stephanie's face burned at the dual realization that 1) she liked that about him, and 2) she didn't think she was like that.
So, at the end of the night and in front of everyone, Stephanie planted one right on Johnny Nogerelli and informed him that they should go get a milkshake. Their friends "oooh"ed and wolf-whistled at the kiss, and Johnny looked positively over the moon as he agrees. She climbed onto the back of his motorcycle and let the wind carry away her lingering reservations. If nothing else yet, she felt affection for Johnny and his many shades. And maybe—hopefully—being with him would evolve another side of herself and finally satisfy her heart. Maybe Stephanie Zinone wasn't only cool, maybe she could also be loving. She was motivated to try igniting her life with this relationship.
But, after going together for a full year, at the class of 1960's graduation event and a day after accepting the Pink Lady presidency and Johnny the T-Birds', Stephanie realized she needed to end it with him.
It was the first time there'd ever been a theme to the school-wide party: "Once Upon A Time," inspired by Walt Disney's Sleeping Beauty movie that came out earlier in the year. Stephanie thought it was rather childish, but Johnny was on cloud nine. While he refused to admit he loved Sleeping Beauty—and had taken Steph to see it four times "because she seemed to like it so much"—he made quite a show of coming to the fair dressed like greaser royalty. A bolt of black velvet was pinned to the shoulders of his T-Bird jacket like a cape, and he wore a silver crown made from tin foil with his comb tucked between it and his pompadour. He'd tried to get her to gussy up too, even fashioning another (smaller, half-assed) foil crown for her, but she refused. In retaliation, he made her drive separately so that the aesthetic of his grand entrance would stay intact. Over the course of the fair, he strutted around like the King of Cool with her as his scepter: a beautiful accessory, powerful but only in his hands. He didn't try to win her any plushies.
Johnny had changed over the past year. The rainbow-oil shades of him started to fade to only black grease. Confidence turned into arrogance. He stopped asking her to go out for milkshakes and joyrides and beer runs, and started demanding. He would be sweet and gentle and attentive when they were alone, but then boasted to everyone about their exploits in graphic exaggerations. He told her he loved her, yet flirted with any hot skirt that walked by (which she could understand, she did it too—exclusivity wasn't typical in their culture—but it stung when he would do it right in front of her). Eventually, Steph had to admit that somewhere along the line, Johnny traded respecting her for cultivating his reputation. He even stopped carrying the extra helmet on his motorcycle for her. And Stephanie's father had taught her better than to accept shit like that.
In her opinion, shit like that made him not just a subpar boyfriend, but also a subpar T-Bird. It didn't help that he didn't seem to take being a greaser as seriously as being seen as one. He barely made an effort to maintain T-Bird turf, only engaging in rumbles when directed by one of the seniors. He dedicated more time to bowling than public nuisance. While he incited periodic mayhem at Rydell and mischief at their regular haunts like Frosty's (which only got the gang banned from their designated diner, a move that no one was happy with), city-wide disorder was left to the older T-Birds still around.
And since Johnny clearly couldn't be trusted to be cool rather than just look it, Stephanie had to pick up the slack. She doubled down on "thinking Pink" and provided for her gang. She stole and wooed and conned and negotiated and threatened her way into all sorts of goods and services for them. She convinced both Cadillac Jack's Burger Joint and the Bowl-A-Rama to be safe establishments for their activities, could pretty much pull beer and cigarettes and spray paints out of thin air, and constantly brought around little gifts for everyone: makeup for Paulette, magazines for Rhonda, a cigarette holder for Sharon, a pair of goggles for Goose, baseball cards for Louis, and actually useful advice about girls for held-back sophomore T-Bird Davey. All of this on top of her responsibilities at the service station and barely passing classes. Her own reputation soared. The only way she could possibly be cooler was if she was actually a T-Bird and given the respect men were.
Between the weight of her reputation and eventual frustration with being Johnny's chick, Stephanie also had to eventually admit that maybe she simply didn't have any other sides to herself. Maybe she was only cool. While she did care for Johnny, despite her growing resentment for his growing machismo, she didn't love him. She didn't even really like most of him anymore. So, if coolness was to be her only "thing" and she capped out the amount allowed her now that she was officially Pink Lady President, she needed—deserved—to have the coolest partner-in-crime too. And even when he wasn't acting like an ass, that just still wasn't Johnny.
...x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.X.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x...
A/N: Hope you enjoyed! It was really fun making up Stephanie's history and how the T-Birds/Pink Ladies operate. I especially wanted to try to build details and events that felt true to her character development, as well as iron out some of the technical/historical greaser gang logistics. I already know I'm going to forget some of the headcanon I established here, though, so help keep me congruent in the later chapters, y'all! LOL
Again, next chapter will focus on Johnny and his high school experience, particularly his relationship with Steph.
As always, if you have any constructive criticism then please drop a review! Thanks everyone!