Twenty five chapters guys! I can't believe it. So, this chapter is choreography and the 'challenges', all leading up to the red carpet and video shoot which is in the following chapter. I'm glad that so many of you took the time to read my new season 5 fanfic 'glee', it took a lot of time to plan and make and it seems like it's all worth it. A new episode of that will be up probably between Friday and Sunday. Check out a new chapter for 'Stolen' which I'm super proud of if you're interested, and I'll try and update my other stories (like who you'll grow to be and crossroads) ASAP.
The girls Anyway, for now, enjoy this chapter! Dance studio part in particular was more fun than you'll ever know to write... it's sad really.
"Right, 5, 6, 7, 8!"
They'd been going at this for two hours straight. Their feet felt like they were bleeding from having to stumble around clumbsily in platform heels, their arms were on the verge of dropping off and Jack had been holding a pee for thirty minutes so he was dancing like a constipated seal. As you can guess, Zach wasn't happy.
"Guys!" He roared, stressed out. Everyone came to yet another halt and the music cut out. Brooke rolled her eyes. "It's not that hard, just ba- ba, turn and clap, spin, down, ba-na-na"
"Hehe, banana" Ace giggled childishly, trying hard not to make his laughter heard. Zach's eyes fell on him, and Ace went rigid, too scared to move.
If looks could kill...
"What was that Ace?" Zach asked, teeth gritted and eyes narrowed. Ace gulped in fear.
"Banana. 'Cause, you know, ba-na-na" Ace admitted matter-of-factly, his voice trailing off. Everyone began trying to stifle their laughter, turning it into a cough or hiding behind their fists. Zach stared at Ace. Ace stared back. And then, for the first time in two whole hours of misery, pain and desperation (in Jack's case, who's face was scrunched up) Zach Woodlee laughed. Hard. His hands curled up around his chest and he giggled like a giddy schoolgirl.
"Okay guys, take five." There was a collective sigh of relief and everyone began to disperse to the edges of the room to get food, water, or just die. Well, all except one, who looked up at Zach, hoping, praying-
"Yes Jack, you can go." Jack leaped into the air, punching it with such force that you wouldn't think he'd been slaving away at ba-na-na's for two hours. He hugged Zach and raced out of the room, his cries of 'YES!' still being heard.
"Never heard a guy be so excited about taking a piss in my life" He said to himself, before sitting down on the floor and taking a sip of his drink. It was a really messed up day.
When choreography (FINALLY) came to an end, everyone raced back to the apartment, ecstatic to put their plan they created last night into action. They were gonna do 5 challenges:
1) The Cinnamon Challenge
2) The accent challenge
3) The impression challenge
4) Tin can challenge
That morning, Emily, Chesney, Ace and Ollie asked to go to the supermarket to get what they needed (without telling Robert what they were doing obviously, that's just stupid) so they four contestants headed straight to Robert's car after rehearsal. When they got out into the parking lot, it was raining. The four looked at each other and then legged it to the black convertible parked closest to the campus. Ace gets into the drivers seat with Chesney next to him, Emily and Ollie stropping in the back.
"Why do I have to sit in the back?" Emily wails, banging on Ace's seat with her fists.
"'Cause, youngest sit in the back." Ace says, keeping his eyes on the road.
"But there's only a month's difference between us!" The girl replies, slouching in the back seat, arms now crossed over her chest. Ace glances in the mirror, sees this and smirks. He shrugs his shoulders and stops as they approach a red light.
"That's still a month Em, still a month." Chesney grins in the passenger seat next to him. Everyone falls silent.
"Well, if it's about oldest in the front, youngest in the back, then why am I here?" Ace's smirk is rubbed right off his face, as he tries to think of an answer.
"Uh... yo mum."
"Don't bring my mum into this!" Ollie shouts, making Emily laugh beside him as he points a threatening finger at the back of Jason's head.
"I'll do what I want, 'cause i'm in the drivers seat!" Ace responds smugly, turning round to stick his tongue out at Ollie childishly.
"Eyes on the road Westy, eyes on the road. I actually wanna live through this." Chesney intergects calmly, turning Aec's head to face the road in front of him. He nods a 'thanks' in her direction. They turn into the car park and Ace swings into a parking space and the car comes to a halt.
"Right guys, run in 3"
"2"
"1!"
"And don't get run over!" Chesney shouts behind them as they sprint as fast as they can into the supermarket, so fast that they skid through the doors and land flat on their faces in a heap of bodies. All in a days work.
When Chesney, Emily, Ace and Ollie finally clambered to their feet, they were suprised to see that the shop was packed with people, all cosied up in their anoraks, umbrellas lazily hanging out of handbags. Ace grabbed a trolley, anxious to have something else to pre-occupy his mind from the sea of faces, giving them looks of shame (or pity, whichever came first). The group quickly made it down the aisle, throwing items into the back, avoiding all eye contact as people stared at them with disgust.
"We're gonna have to get used to this," Chesney mentions, turning away from the gaze of a giggling group of teenage girls.
"What do you mean? We only fell over that one time!" Ace complained, and Ollie grins slightly, putting an arm on his shoulder, gesturing for him to 'shut up and drive the damn, disfunctional trolley'
"I mean, this is what comes from fame, even on a small scale like the glee project. Everything we do is filmed, and recorded, and shown on television. We're owned by the public now. Soon, we're gonna be looked at because of who we are, not what we do. For better... or for worse" Chesney explains, her mind somewhere on a different level to her three friends. They walk in silence.
"Well, that was a downer." Ace admits, and Emily slaps him on the arm. Ace shrugs and throws a can of spagetti hoops into the trolley. Ace turns round another corner and up the next aisle before stopping stock-still.
"Right, uh... I think we MIGHT, maybe definitely have enough." Almost completely in sync, the four contestants stare down at the trolley which is almost overflowing with varieties of crap. Tin cans, paper and pens, more tin cans and sweet packets (that no one else needs to know about) litter it, making it hard to look at for a long period of time.
"You think?" Emily jokes, hand placed on her forehead. Emily, Chesney, Ace and Ollie laugh before rolling the trolley towards the checkout, paying and packing, and slipping into the car without another backwards glance. Maybe, it doesn't matter what other people think and maybe, just maybe, that's what true fearlessness is.
Cindy and West lie sprawled out on the sofa, trying to throw crisps into each other's mouths.
"Lovin' the crisp-crumb tache West, suits you." Cindy teases, wiping round his mouth with her finger. West cockily smiles and, as she leans closer into his body, West pushes up slightly and kisses her lips. For a second, Cindy flinches, and panic rushes through West's mind. And, just as he's about to pull away and gush out apologies, she begins to kiss back, relaxing more and more, deepening the kiss. Suddenly, the front door starts to push open and Cindy jumps off West and stands tall, pretending to look busy. The boy wipes his face and fixes his hair. Ace drops his shopping bags on the table and pounces on West, ecstatic.
"Let's go kill ourselves" Ollie announces with a clap. Everyone claps, a lot more excited than anyone would have ever expected.
Penny stares down at her teaspoon of cinnamon shaking in her hand in horror.
This isn't good, not good at all. I mean, it's crazy to do this? What was I thinking? Why didn't I stand up to Pierce, get out while I had a chance?
Her mind babbles, making her feel her hand dropping. Something touches her arm.
"No." Cindy hisses, supporting Penny's shaking hand. Penny opens her mouth to say something, but Cindy shushes her. "Fearless okay hun? Be fearless. Prove Nikki wrong." Penny doesn't wait for everyone else. She shoves the spoonful of spice into her mouth and her throat feels on fire. Everyone's looking at her. She tries to cease her need to cough, but fails. An orange cloud erupts from her mouth and she glugs down a glass of water, struggling to breathe. Cindy puts a hand on Penny's back. Penny only straightens up to see Jack rolling on the floor, screaming 'It burnsssssssssssssssssssssssss!'. And the ginger haired girl smiles.
Emily hands everyone a square of paper and a pen. Pierce instructs everyone to write four accents on the sheet and place them into one of Ace's caps. Beside her, Emily notices Ace writing Scottish, bitch. In messy, almost unreadable writing. Next to the words, he starts drawing a scottish stickman in a kilt.
"No peeking!" Penny mocks, her eyes locked with Emily's. Emily smiles and shrugs, writing her last accent down and placing them in the hat. Chesney is the last to submit her choices. We turn our chairs into a circle and station two chairs in the middle. Jaia took her seat in one of the chairs, a smug grin on her face.
"Right, so how this works is that I'll show you all my card and you've gotta run into the middle, sit on the chair, and do the accent so I can guess it, okay?" She says 'cool' before anyone can reply and crosses her legs. Jaia grabs a card from near the bottom of the heap and places it on her head. She shows it to everyone and Ace jumps to his feet, enthused.
"Scottish" Jaia decides quickly, before the Scotsman can even sit down. Ace slouches his shoulders and sits back down.
English
West scrabbles to his feet, beating Penny to the chair.
"Oh hello there old chum, would you fancy some nice tea and crumpets at buckingham palace?" He impersonates horribly, leaving everyone in fits of giggles.
"English?" Jaia splutters through laughs and shrieks, and West bends down beside her.
"Good on ya old bean! Indeed, it was English." West confirms before taking his place back in between Cindy and Ace. Cindy wipes a tear from her eye.
"I... just... died." She heaves, trying so hard not to laugh again in case she never stops.
"Just to clarify, English people don't really talk like that. Sorry West." West sinks down into his seat, looking like a teenager having a strop. Jaia grabs another card and holds it to her head. Emily smiles, glad she watches so much British reality TV. She calmly sits on the chair facing Jaia, a smile plastered on her face.
"Oh my god, Drop me out! Shut up! SHUT UP!" She shouts, the room roaring with laughter.
"Um... I dunno! I know what you mean but... aaaaaah!" She screams in frustration. "Uh... E... E... Ugh, I give up. Tell me please!" Emily's smile widens.
"Essex" She responds plainly. Jaia's mouth drops.
"OH MY GOD!"
"DROP ME OUT!" Everyone else squawks in unison. Jaia scans the group.
"Bit weird..."
"Right, this is the third challenge: The Impression challenge. Ollie, Pierce and I,"
"The terrible threesome" Cindy mumbles under her breath to Ace and West, who choke back their laughter,
"Have put every glee project contender's name in the hat from the last few seasons. All you need to do is pick a name, go to the centre and start acting like that person, accent and everything. It includes all of us, so be warned that you may turn the same colour as a tomato. Let's do this!" Everyone watches as Pierce moves to the middle of the room and picks out a name from the hat. A grin spreads across his face.
"Walkin' down the street of Dublin see,
Where all 'dem girls are so beep pretty
Then a guy who smells like sh*t comes up to me and say
Oi! He come up to me and say oi!
Are you alright?"
All the contenders then start to sing/shout/mumble Damian's iconic rap which changed rap... forever.
Do, you, knarwhattamean, doyou kna- do you knarwhattamean, OHA!
Do, you, knarwhattamean, doyou kna- do you knarwhattamean, OHA!"
Pierce bows and casually sits back down as if nothing ever happened
"Well... pick someone then!" Penny says impatiently, feeling herself get more and more frustrated with Pierce's self-centredness by the minute.
"Jack" He dismisses quickly, swinging on his chair and swirling the gum in his mouth around his finger. Penny cringes.
"Face it everyone, I'm way hotter and far more talented than you'll ever be, so you might as well all go and give up now before I win, mmkay? And also? I have no idea what the hell you just said." Jack states bluntly in a British accent, having so much sass that everyone is reduced to tears.
"You were being Nami, from season 3" West grins, showing all his teeth.
Chesney pulls out a name from the hat and giggles.
"Banana"
"ACE!" The group chorus, and Ace laughs along. Chesney sits back down, still beaming and Emily gets up and races to the hat, pulling out a name and smiling wickedly.
"Hey everyone, you can just call me sexy. Oh my god!"
"Uh... Aylin? From season 2?" Jaia suggests and Emily bites her lip. Everyone begins to snigger.
"That was meant to be you!" Emily squeaks.
"...Bit awkward" Pierce says, punching Jaia's arm and getting a slap back as the reward.
The game continues for another hour or so, until Ollie, Pierce, Chesney and Ace are left organising the last challenge. They place all the tin cans in the middle of the floor, putting post-it notes on each lid and writing a number on them. When everyone is called back in, they take a moment to absorb how many tin cans are there, and how much that would have cost.
"Oh my god" Jaia cries, pointing in shock at the image.
"See! You say it all the time!" Emily responds, gesturing to the blonde. Jaia laughs as everyone starts to take their seats.
"The tin can Challenge!" Pierce exclaims in a 'presenter' style voice, jumping around the room; he told Ace it was to 'add mysterious...ness'.
"Thank you Dickshit." Pierce nods 'you're welcome' and settles next to Jack and Jaia on the floor. "Okay, the deal is that you need to pick out a number and eat a spoonful of whatever's in the can. No backing out. Kapeesh?" Everyone murmurs their okays.
"KAPEESH" Ace repeats, his voice louder and clearer.
"KAPEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS SSSSSSSHHHHHHHHHHHA!"
"Okay West, now you just sound stupid."
"Let's do it!"
She scooped a teaspoon of the substance, staring down at it in horror. The way chunks fell off the spoon made her feel sick.
You can do it. You ARE fearless.
Penny put the spoonful of cold porridge in whole. She winced at the lumpy texture and the feel of it as it slopped around in her mouth. Mustering up all her courage, she swallowed. A cheer erupts from her teammates, and she lies on her back, pushing the vile tin away from her with her foot. Ollie bent over and grabbed a piece of paper, glancing at each tin can to find the number 7. He grabbed the tin opener and forced it open, screwing up his face at the smell of the contents as soon as it hit him.
Sardines.
Ollie pinched the fish's tail and held it up to his face, looking down his nose at it and right into it's eye.
"Oh no! The giant's gonna eat me!" Jack squealed in a high pitched voice, flapping his arms around so he looked more like a retarded seagull than a fish.
"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO-"
Gulp.
"Bitch."