High School Musical: The Musical Prequel Novel Read online

  Text copyright © 2021 by Disney Enterprises, Inc.

  All rights reserved. Published by Disney • Hyperion, an imprint of Buena Vista Books, Inc. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher. For information address Disney • Hyperion, 77 West 66th Street, New York, New York 10023.

  Designed by Torborg Davern

  Cover design by Marci Senders

  Cover illustration by Cannaday Chapman

  ISBN 9781368062015 (ebook)

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020038080

  Visit www.DisneyBooks.com

  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter One: Carlos

  Chapter Two: Kourtney

  Chapter Three: Miss Jen’s Top Eleven Rules for Getting What She Wants (i.e., the School Minivan and the Trip to the HSM Convention)

  Chapter Four: Gina

  Chapter Five: Ricky

  Chapter Six: Nini

  Chapter Seven: Carlos

  Chapter Eight: Big Red

  Chapter Nine: Miss Jenn’s Top Seven Rules for Getting through Four Hours of Specialist Van-Driving Training, as Mandated by the Board of Education and Principal Gutierrez

  Chapter Ten: Seb

  Chapter Eleven: Nini

  Chapter Twelve: Ashlyn

  Chapter Thirteen: Six Things Miss Jen Realizes at the Motel, in Random Order

  Chapter Fourteen: Carlos

  Chapter Fifteen: Ricky

  Chapter Sixteen: Gina

  Chapter Seventeen: Kourtney

  Chapter Eighteen: [Mis]Communication Recap: Friday-Night Edition: Big Red

  Chapter Nineteen: [Mis]Communication Recap: Friday-Night Edition: Ashlyn

  Chapter Twenty: [Mis]Communication Recap: Friday-Night Edition: Miss Jenn

  Chapter Twenty-One: Miss Jenn’s Notes to Self re: Activities on Saturday a.m., Almost All Unplanned

  Chapter Twenty-Two: [Mis]Communication Recap: Saturday-Morning Edition: E.J.

  Chapter Twenty-Three: Ricky

  Chapter Twenty-Four: Freaking Out: Standing-in-Line Edition: Carlos

  Chapter Twenty-Five: Freaking Out: Standing-in-Line Edition: Kourtney

  Chapter Twenty-Six: Freaking Out: Standing-in-Line Edition: Miss Jenn

  Chapter Twenty-Seven: Freaking Out: Standing-in-Line Edition: Big Red

  Chapter Twenty-Eight: Freaking Out: Standing-in-Line Edition: Ricky

  Chapter Twenty-Nine: Freaking Out: Standing-in-Line Edition: Ashlyn

  Chapter Thirty: Nini

  Chapter Thirty-One: Freaking Out: Workshop Edition: Gina

  Chapter Thirty-Two: Freaking Out: Workshop Edition: Kourtney

  Chapter Thirty-Three: Freaking Out: Workshop Edition: Ricky

  Chapter Thirty-Four: Freaking Out: Workshop Edition: Carlos

  Chapter Thirty-Five: Kourtney

  Chapter Thirty-Six: Ashlyn

  Chapter Thirty-Seven: Big Red

  Chapter Thirty-Eight: Nini

  Chapter Thirty-Nine: #MissJennSadface

  Chapter Forty: Ricky

  Chapter Forty-One: Nini

  Chapter Forty-Two: Miss Jenn’s Top Five Regrets at #HSMCon

  Chapter Forty-Three: Carlos

  Chapter Forty-Four: Kourtney

  Chapter Forty-Five: Wrong about the Sing-Along: Ricky

  Chapter Forty-Six: Wrong about the Sing-Along: Big Red

  Chapter Forty-Seven: Miss Jenn’s List of How She Was Wrong about the Sing-Along

  Chapter Forty-Eight: Wrong about the Sing-Along: Carlos

  Chapter Forty-Nine: Nini

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  For all the Wildcats—past, present, and future!

  Let me bring you up to speed.

  High School Musical: The Musical—over. Huge success. HUGE. Kiss-and-cry backstage, then in the foyer with all our dumbstruck parents still waving their glitter signs and autographed programs, their hair crazy with Robotics Club confetti.

  Cast-party time. Plan A is go crazy at Ashlyn’s—part deux—but cast + crew + hangers-on = way too many people. Wouldn’t want anything smashed, broken, or spilled. So Miss Jenn suggests we do what East High musical casts have always done: go to Denny’s on West 500th and pretend it’s a diner on the corner of Hollywood and Vine.

  If we can make our school gym into a theater and a skateboarder into our star, then we can turn a Denny’s in Salt Lake City into Radio City Music Hall—especially when E.J.’s father is paying for all the milkshakes and onion rings.

  We’re all there (in this together, right?) screeching and singing and making Miss Jenn do her Is that the last apple? line again when my phone dings. It’s not my sweet Seb, because he’s holding court nearby—still in his Sharpay makeup—reprising his big number with the help of some built-in plastic seating and E.J.’s knee.

  It’s something much, much better. An HSM alert!

  Picked out the colors for your dressing room yet?

  One week till the HSM Convention in Jackson Hole!

  What. The. Wildcats.

  How did I miss this? I’ve been so consumed with our own show—choreography, drama, homecoming, Miss Jenn almost getting fired, the theater burning down, break-ups, make-ups, more drama, having to go on as a last-minute understudy and say things like bro—I haven’t been paying attention to my HSM alerts. I didn’t want to mess with the flow and now: Oh no!

  “Miss Jenn.” I grab her arm and she twirls so fast she takes out half the basketball team with her mermaid waves. “We have to do this.”

  She stares at my phone, her blue eyes wide.

  “Next weekend?” she says, and pulls out her own phone. It has a green cover to remind her of when she was the understudy for Glinda in Wicked—I think it was in Peoria. Miss Jenn is pretty speedy with Google searches: You’d never guess she grew up in the old flip-phone days when people still used paper maps and never took pictures of their food.

  “Panels,” she says, scrolling with one pink fingernail. “Vocal workshops. Choreography workshops. Cosplay. And…oh! Oh!”

  “What is it, Miss Jenn?” She looks like she’s about to faint. That, or hyperventilate.

  “Lucas Grabeel,” she whispers. “Lucas Grabeel is going to be there, in person. Not a dream, Carlos. Actually in person!”

  “Um, a dream?” I ask, and Miss Jenn whips her phone away.

  “I have to go.”

  “Now?” There are more curly fries coming. Nobody leaves a party when curly fries are on the way.

  “I mean, we have to go. To Jackson. Help me up.” Miss Jenn elbows Seb off his perch and waves her hands to get everyone’s attention. This doesn’t work.

  “Hey! Everyone! Quiet!” E.J. shouts in his best captain-of-everything voice, but that also doesn’t work. Some of the chorus-line tap-dancing doesn’t work, though it does bring the manager out to ask us to “Mind the floors, kids.” And Gina leaping so high in the air she practically brushes the ceiling with her fingertips—no, that doesn’t work either.

  Finally Kourtney clambers up next to Miss Jenn and starts singing “I Can’t Take My Eyes Off of You” at the top of her voice. Everyone’s whooping and clapping and then Kourtney stops mid-line.

  “Miss Jenn has something to say.”

  “Speech! Speech!”

  “Not a speech,” says Miss Jenn. I haven’t seen her face this pale since the day the principal wanted to fire her. “An opportunity. You kno
w how I always say to trust the process?”

  More clapping and whooping. We have to shush everyone all over again.

  “Well, sometimes you have to trust providence as well. You have to trust fate. You have to trust that the universe will provide.”

  “Has she got a Broadway callback or something?” Seb mutters in my ear.

  “You’re not leaving, Miss Jenn?” calls Nini. It’s the first time she’s taken her eyes off Ricky since we got here.

  “Not leaving, Nini. Going. We’re all going.”

  “To Disneyland?” asks Big Red, and everyone laughs.

  “To Jackson Hole,” Miss Jenn announces, and no one’s laughing or whooping now.

  “Skiing?” someone says, but no one looks too enthusiastic. They’re all thinking about the curly fries, which are—let’s face it—more exciting than Miss Jenn’s announcement. She’s selling it the wrong way.

  “You guys, wait!” I shout. “It’s a High School Musical convention—in Jackson Hole. Next weekend!”

  Now everyone’s talking. People are practically bouncing off the walls. I wish they’d put this amount of energy into their dance rehearsals.

  “It would be the most amazing thing ever,” Ashlyn says. “Meet-and-greets with some of the original cast and crew? Wow.”

  “But how would we get there?” Natalie asks. I hope she’s not planning to bring her emotional-support hamster. The last thing we need is for that thing to escape in another state.

  “Yeah,” says Ashlyn. “I mean, E.J. can drive because he’s old, but—”

  “I can drive the school van,” says Miss Jenn. “Mr. Mazzara gets it all the time for his robotics whatnots. I’ll send permission slips to all your parents. I mean, they have to say yes. After seeing you all on the stage tonight—”

  “Well, the gym,” says Natalie. “Strictly speaking.”

  “It’ll be a theater field trip,” Miss Jenn continues. “A celebration of our amazing show. Research and nourishment for our creative souls.”

  She starts wobbling on her high heels with excitement, and Ricky helps her down from the chair. He’s beaming so wide, his face almost splits in two.

  “We have to make it happen,” he tells her, and the dog tag around his neck glints in the fluorescent light. Since when does Ricky Bowen wear necklaces?

  “Do you think Principal Gutierrez will agree?” Nini asks. Her face is still shining from the night’s success. I mean, we did kill out there tonight. “Will we have to take time off school?”

  “We really can’t,” Natalie tells Miss Jenn. “We have tests, and after school we have to rehearse every day.”

  Natalie’s a killjoy, but she’s right. We’ve promised to do a charity show on Christmas Eve to raise money; we have to help rebuild the school’s burnt-out theater, after the fire that was (whisper) caused by Miss Jenn and Mr. Mazzara.

  “And it will take us so long to get there,” Natalie says.

  “Five hours,” E.J. reads from his phone. “That’s the driving time. It’s nothing. I’ve driven farther for archery lessons.”

  “Plus two hours when we get stuck in the snow,” says Ashlyn. “You know, after the blizzard rolls in.”

  “We’re driving a few hours north,” I tell her, “not taking the Donner Pass.”

  “So we leave right after school next Friday,” says Miss Jenn, eyes fixed on some distant spot, as though she’s about to begin a power ballad. “And if we limit ourselves to one rest stop, we’ll make it in time for some of the opening sessions that night.”

  “It ends on Saturday night,” Kourtney says, scrolling down the site that practically every one of us is reading right now. “That’s a shame. The final session is a group sing-along.”

  “We don’t need to sing it,” Ricky agrees, grinning at Nini. “We just lived it.”

  For someone who totally missed the boat on the phenomenon that is HSM—i.e., did not grow up watching it with his mom, singing it in the car, and reenacting dance moves on the down-low in our high school cafeteria—Ricky is all about it now. I used to think his feet were glued to his skateboard. Maybe it’s because being in the musical brought him and Nini back together, and he’s already thinking about the spring musical and his next chance to stare into her eyes under the spotlight. He better watch out: E.J. may be over his selfless kick by then. Seniors in their last semester can get grabby with roles. They come over all sentimental about leaving school and this being their Last Chance Ever. Ricky should be on his guard. I mean, hasn’t he seen HSM3?

  Miss Jenn mutters something about going back to work right away to e-mail all our parents and break into the admin office to book the van. I hope she’s joking about that last part. She’s out the door before we can stop her.

  “There’s even a songwriting workshop,” Ashlyn says to no one in particular, smiling at her phone. “I have to do that. I have to.”

  “I don’t see any stage-makeup workshops,” Kourtney says, and Nini mock-punches her.

  “You need to go to one of the singing workshops,” she tells Kourtney. “People need to hear your voice. You know what Miss Jenn told you—she said you were the best singer in Utah.”

  “Northern Utah.” Kourtney rolls her eyes. “And she didn’t say anything about southern Wyoming.”

  “Gina, you can come?” Nini says, and hugs her close. Things are way more chill between the girls these days. That’s the magic of musicals, people! “You don’t have to go back to DC right away, do you?”

  Gina does some weird thing with her head that makes her look like one of those fake head-bobbing dogs in the back of old people’s cars. She and Ashlyn exchange glances.

  “Maybe,” she says. “I hope so.”

  “Road trip!” shouts Big Red, and everyone starts leaping around and shouting again. At this rate they’ll have no voices for the convention next weekend, whether they want to join the sing-along or not.

  It’s only then that I notice something strange. Seb hasn’t said a word, and he’s not looking at his phone.

  “Can you go?” I ask him. Seb looks down at the floor.

  “I don’t know,” he says. “It’s a really busy time on the farm now. We have the last stock sale of the year on Saturday. It was a big deal for so many of my family members to come see the show tonight. I don’t know if they can spare me that day.”

  Just like that, my excitement disappears. Not even an HSM convention will be fun if Seb isn’t there to hang out with.

  “Hey,” he says, and takes my hand. “Maybe something’ll work out. Remember what Miss Jenn always says.”

  “‘Trust the process’?”

  “Nope.” He shakes his head and smiles up at me. “‘Is that the last apple?’”

  We both laugh, but what I think is this: How can all these Cinderellas go to the ball? We’ve got to make some magic happen, people. This isn’t a game. It’s High School Musical.

  Okay—it’s High School Musical: The Convention. We’re going to Wyoming, not a palace, and we need a van, not a pumpkin coach. A boy can dream, can’t he?

  Now that the show’s over, life can be normal again.

  Who am I kidding? Nothing is normal anymore. The night after the show, Nini asks me to have a sleepover, and of course I say yes. That girl’s house is my second home. Her moms are the best, and they always make me feel welcome. I love my own house, and my own parents, but my sweet spot is sitting in Nini’s swinging basket chair, all curled up, talking about everything and nothing for hours.

  Recently we’ve had way too much drama—and I’m not even talking about the show. That whole Nini-Ricky-E.J. love triangle got too much for my girl, and for a while she forgot who she really was: Nini Salazar-Roberts, a bundle of pure talent. Not Ricky’s girlfriend. Not E.J.’s girlfriend. A rising star.

  “So now that it’s all back on with you and Ricky B,” I say, stretching out one bare foot to examine my pedicure, “you have to promise me something.”

  Nini looks up from the ukulele, where
she’s picking out the tune of a new song.

  “What?” she asks.

  “Don’t lose sight of you. That’s all.”

  “You want me to look in the mirror more? Act like Sharpay?” Nini smiles at me and starts picking at the strings again.

  “Say what you like about Sharpay.” I tuck my foot back under the blanket. Outside the wind rattles the trees, and rain patters against the windows. The strings of lights above Nini’s bed sparkle like stars. “That girl kept her eye on the prize.”

  Nini frowns at the fret and adjusts her grip. “She doesn’t get the prize, though, does she? Ryan’s the one who gets the place at Juilliard.”

  “Don’t worry about Sharpay,” I tell her. I can’t believe we’re talking about Sharpay and Ryan as though they’re real people and not just characters in a movie. Three movies that we spent our childhoods watching over and over, but still. “She’ll be fine, whatever she does. Just like you and me!”

  Nini’s quiet, and I wonder if she’s thinking about her plans for next semester. I was the one who submitted an application on Nini’s behalf to YAC—the Youth Actors Conservatory in Denver. Sometimes Nini loses her nerve, and I have to have enough nerve for the both of us. At the show she freaked out when she spotted the YAC dean in the audience: a lady with a clipboard, looking real stern. The lady left before the curtain calls. Super annoying.

  “You know, that school in Denver might have been okay, but…”

  “But what?” Nini stops playing. She looks stricken, like she ate way too much pizza.

  I want to say something here about trusting the process, but I still don’t really know what Miss Jenn is talking about half the time.

  “Just that—you’ll have a thousand other opportunities in your life. You are so talented, and such a good performer, and—”

  “Kourt.”

  “No, really, you have to believe me. You’re an amazing actress and—”

  “Kourtney. I got in.”

  “What?” I almost fall out of the basket chair.

  “The dean, Kalyani Patel. She talked to me after the show last night.”

  “But I thought she left? You said she’d left.”