Girl Talk #8: Stealing the Show

By L.E. Blair. Published 1990.

Bradley Junior High is putting on Grease, and Sabrina is going to try out for Sandy. Of course, so is Stacy the Great. Stacy points out that she looks more like Sandy, and that Sabrina can’t sing. Sabrina figures she can learn, it doesn’t seem to concern her much. Sabrina can’t convince her friends to audition, but they might help out behind the scenes. She gets super excited when she finds out her current crush, Cameron, is auditioning for Danny.

After school, Sabrina and her friends beat out Stacy in renting Grease, and go to her house to watch it. Sabrina’s mom goes out and buys Sabrina the soundtrack, so she can practice her singing. Her brothers think she sounds terrible, but she doesn’t care. She even gets her parents to teach her some dances, like the hand jive. She also finds a poodle skirt, saddle shoes, and a long blond wig in the attic.

At auditions, they do a cold reading first. Sabrina gets out of sorts because she doesn’t get to read for Sandy, but Frenchy instead. Stacy reads for Sandy, but she does so with no emotion. They move on to singing, and Stacy is great at that. Sabrina puts on her costume before she goes up. And she sings pretty badly. She hopes her mad acting skills get her the part.

Then she decides she can do one more thing. She can dye her hair blond. But she only succeeds in turning it bright orange. She calls her friends, and they rush to her aide. Randy, who apparently knows all about dying hair, stops and gets new hair dye. She does it for Sabrina, and they luck out, it looks exactly like her real hair color. How convenient.

The next day, Sabrina thinks a more sophisticated look will help, and wants try it out on a trip to the mall. She puts on a bra, and stuffs it with blue tissues. She tops it with a white turtleneck. Of course, it rains on the way, and she gets soaked. By the time she gets to her friends, the bright blue tissues are showing through her shirt. They tell her to go to the bathroom and fix it. When she reaches the bathroom, she hears Stacy inside, and opens the nearest door to hide. It’s a janitor’s closet, and she gets locked in. She pounds on the door, and Cameron opens it. Sabrina is totes embarrassed.

On Monday, the cast list is put up. Sabrina gets Frenchy, Stacy gets Sandy, and Cameron gets Danny. Her twin Sam and his friends get cast as T-Birds. Sabrina is pretty bummed, but after her friends talk to her, telling her how great she’ll be, and that you need to be really talented to play that part, she starts to get excited.

Rehearsals begin, and Sabrina finds herself really enjoying them. It’s just a challenge to pretend to be Stacy’s best friend. After two weeks, they’re expected to be off-book at the next rehearsal. Sam has all of his friends and Cameron over to work on their lines, and Sabrina and her friends work on them with them. They have a really good time, but they work hard, too. And Cameron sits beside Sabrina during their pizza break.

The whole group does really well at the next rehearsal. But Stacy the Great is not so great. She tries to say it’s because she has the biggest part, but Cameron’s is just as big. She gets in trouble, and then starts screaming at the director, and stomps out. Diva, much?

The girl playing Marty has to quit because she has to get her tonsils out, so Sabrina volunteers Katie to take her place. She knows all the lines from helping Sabrina. Luckily, Katie doesn’t mind.

The two of them go through Sabrina’s mom’s old clothes to look for their costumes. They find some, but not everything they need. They decide to ask for Randy’s help, and find out what she and Allison are wearing to the Sock Hop that will be held after the show’s opening night. Randy finds a vintage clothing store, and they find everything they need there.

When Sabrina gets home, her mom tells her she and Sabrina’s dad are going to be chaperones for the Sock Hop. Sabrina freaks out unnecessarily over this.

Opening night goes really well. Stacy even remembers all her lines. But at curtain call, Sabrina gets a standing ovation, and more applause than Stacy. Stacy, of course, gets really pissed.

At the Sock Hop, Sabrina’s parents don’t embarrass her at all, and her friends actually think they’re really cool for dressing up.

But the best part is, Cameron dances with Sabrina the whole night, tells her she has pretty hair, and kisses her on the cheek. Sabrina sees Stacy looking really annoyed, but she doesn’t care. Sabrina ended up stealing the show and the leading man.

o   I think I would have gotten in trouble if I had dyed my hair without permission when I was twelve.

o   They have homeroom right before lunch. That seems weird to me. I always had it at the beginning of the day.

o   I don’t get why Sabrina thought dying her hair and everything would help. She does that Friday night and Saturday, and the cast list went up Monday morning. There was no time for that to affect the director’s decision.

Girl Talk #1: Welcome to Junior High

Published April 1991

This is actually a really accurate depiction of how the
girls are described and what they're wearing.
I appreciate that.

Shockingly enough, we begin on the first day of junior high, meaning seventh grade. Our narrator is Sabrina Wells, who we learn has curly auburn hair, is 4’10 ¾”, blushes easily, has four brothers, including a twin, Sam, is always late, wants to work on her self-improvement, and wants to be a great actress. This is apparently important, she says this phrase at least 3 times in the first chapter alone.

Late as usual, Sabrina has to go to the office for her schedule and stuff. There she meets The Human Pencil, whom I guess is the secretary. I have such a vivid memory of her from reading this when I was little. She is “really tall and skinny and her skin is kind of yellow. Her hair is pulled up tightly on top of her head in a bun and it looks like an eraser.” I don’t know why that stuck with me so clearly.

Sabrina gets to her locker, and sees her locker partner has already been there. This is a totally foreign concept to me. Did anyone else have locker partners? Weird.

She goes to her first class, math. But whoops, wrong room. It’s actually an eighth grade class. She goes to leave, trips, and falls into the lap of a hot guy who looks like Tom Cruise. Remember when Tom was a hottie and not some brainwashed psycho?

She finds her correct class, and ends up sitting next the gorgeous but shy Allison Cloud. “She’s a Native American. That’s what American Indians are called.” Thank you for enlightening us.

Sabrina meets her locker partner, the preppy sounding Katie Campbell. They know each other, but they’re not good friends. They’re at their locker looking at a magazine (Sabrina is really into horoscopes) when Alec, the Tom Cruise look-a-like, comes down the hall. But he’s heading for Stacy the Great, the popular principal’s daughter. Sorry Sabrina. She and Katie head for band, where Sabrina plays clarinet and Katie is a flag girl.

After band, Sabrina runs into a tough looking girl. She’s wearing a black leather jacket, and has untied shoe laces! Sabrina wonders if she’s from New York City. It turns out she’s in the same homeroom and English class as Sabrina, Katie, and Allison. Her name is Rowena Zak, but prefers to be called Randy. She is from New York, and she’s “a real character.”

The four girls are put on the homecoming dance decorating committee, with Sabrina in charge.

At lunch, Sabrina, Katie, and Allison are sitting at a table together, when Stacey the Great tells them to move. Sabrina puts up a small fight, but then they start to move. That’s when Randy comes up and bumps into Stacey, dumping her tray on her clothes. A suit and heels, btw. Stacey storms off, and Randy sits down with the other girls. She doesn’t say much.

Stacey comes across Sabrina’s Self-Improvement notebook and starts reading it out to everyone, including Alec. Randy comes to the rescue again.

At the end of the week, Katie and Allison go over to Sabrina’s house to work on the decorating committee, as well as talk about Sabrina’s crush on Alec. Randy is busy. They go up to Sabrina’s room, which is the entire attic. I was always SO jealous of that. They don’t get much done though, because they play basketball with Sam and his friends, including cute Nick. Sabrina thinks Katie and Sam like each other.

Katie and Sabrina meet again for the committee, but Sam is there, and offers his idea for a Welcome to the Jungle theme. Katie likes it, Sabrina hates it. After a meeting with their teacher, they decide to go with the same theme the high school is using, Lost in Space.

Saturday, Katie and Sabrina begin Operation Alec. Katie plans on talking to his friend Todd, who she knows. She tells him Katie likes Alec, and he tells Alec. The ball is now in his court. But later Sabrina overhears Stacey talking about going to the dance with Alec.

After hearing that, Sabrina is close to tears. She picks up supplies to decorate for the dance, and bumps into Randy. She almost cries. But Randy is really nice to her, and her friend Spike comes along. He’s in the band that’s playing the dance, and he looks like Johnny Depp. That’s better than Tom Cruise. Randy has some great ideas for the dance involving lights and a smoke machine.

It’s the day of the Homecoming Parade, which Sabrina is about to march in. Nick comes over to talk, and Sabrina drops her wet reed, which Nick picks up and gives back to her. Read into that what you will. She’s grossed out by it. He asks her to the dance, but she doesn’t have time to answer, as they have to line up. She doesn’t really want to go with him, though. She likes him as a friend. But at the end of the parade he asks her again, and she says yes anyway.

The next day the girls are setting up the lights for the dance. Sabrina learns that Randy’s dad directs commercials and music videos. She also learns that Sam and Katie are going to the dance together. Spike comes in, and he and Sabrina dance together to test out the lights. Then Nick comes in, and starts acting weird.

Phone call chapter. Nick calls Sabrina and dumps her. Sabrina calls Katie, who figures out Nick is jealous. Katie calls Alison, who calls Randy, who calls Sabrina. She convinces Sabrina to go to the dance anyway, and to come over to her house before.

Randy dresses Sabrina up in one of her New York outfits. But Sabrina gets bummed out watching all the couples at the dance, and starts to leave. Then a spotlight is put on her, and Spike dedicates a song to her, and Nick asks her to dance to it. They make up, and decide they’re friends.

Sabrina goes over to her friends, and learns it was Randy’s idea for the song, and Allison was watching her try sneak out. But they wouldn’t let her miss her big moment.  They end with Randy putting her arm around Sabrina and saying, ”Welcome to junior high, kiddo.”