how you get the girl

chapter one
( takes place in 1x01 'the auditions' )

"well, you have to fight for what
you want. rule number one: love is
a battlefield."

- 13 GOING ON 30

Izzy Cortez liked to live her life by the book. And by the book, she meant the romcom, of course. She lived her life the way she'd seen life lived in the movies she'd grown up watching. In some ways, Meg Ryan and Billy Crystal had raised her just as much as her own parents had. And yet, endless rewatches of 'When Harry Met Sally' hadn't given her any hints on what to do when your boyfriend of two years sent you a voicemail over the summer telling you that he wanted to break up.

Rewatches of 'When Harry Met Sally' didn't help, and neither did endless reruns of '27 Dresses', 'How To Lose A Guy In Ten Days', or '13 Going on 30', all movies that had never failed Izzy before.

So, without her catalog of romcoms to refer to, Izzy decided that she would simply hunt EJ down on the first day of school (since he wasn't returning any of her calls) and demand an explanation. Hopefully, an explanation that included that some incredibly good impersonator had stolen his phone sometime in July and had sent a cruel voicemail pretending to be EJ.

So, despite not being a morning person, Izzy had dragged herself out of bed extra bright and early, ready to start the day with the most important meal. Which was how she found herself pouring out two bowls of Lucky Charms for her and her younger sister, Camilla.

"I was going to make you guys pancakes," Izzy turned to find her mother, Elena, standing at the entrance of the kitchen, wearing a ratty robe and a small frown.

"Cereal is faster," Izzy said with a shrug as she poured milk into both bowls.

"But it's the first day of school, a special occasion, and pancakes are special," Her mother said, frowning as she watched Camilla dig into her bowl of cereal.

"Izzy says that this breakfast is special since we're having Lucky Charms and Lucky Charms are magical," Camilla said, her mouth slightly full of cereal, and Izzy smiled at her sister fondly. Their mother sighed as she watched them both with their bowls of cereal before walking over to the cupboard and pulling out her own bowl.

"Alright, put me some too," Elena said and Izzy grinned before pouring the cereal into her mom's bowl, topping it off with some milk. The two went to join Camilla at the table before digging into their cereal.

"So, what's with the speedy breakfast this morning?" Elena asked as she watched Izzy shovel spoonfuls of Lucky Charms into her mouth, leaving little room to breathe as she emptied her bowl.

"I've gotta leave the house early today. I'm walking," Izzy said and understanding dawned on her mom's face.

"E.J. never got back to you on that ride to school?" Her mom asked and Izzy shook her head as she swallowed her mouthful of Lucky Charms. "It'll be okay, you two just need to talk,"

"What if he was serious? What if he actually wants to break up?" Izzy asked, her voice shaking slightly as she let her doubts overtake her. She had shut away her worries into a dark corner of her mind so that she could focus on the task at hand, but they had started to creep out.

"He wasn't serious, you guys love each other and you just need to talk it out," Elena said, reaching across the table and setting her hand on Izzy's. She gave it a comforting squeeze and Izzy nodded, plastering a sure smile on her face again, before returning to her Lucky Charms, trying her best to push the negative thoughts into the dark corner again.

.⋅ ✯ ⋅.

The entrance to East High was crowded with students pushing through the big front doors, running to meet their friends that they hadn't seen over the long summer months and showing off new tans, and yet Izzy stayed standing out in the front, staring up at the big sign. Her feet didn't want to seem to move, as if they knew that once she stepped inside the building everything, including the things she didn't want to believe, would become real.

"How long have you been standing here?" A voice asked and Izzy didn't have to turn to know that her best friend, Cara, was standing beside her. Being friends since kindergarten had given them the ability of knowing when the other was near. They called it their Bluetooth connection, a name that Cara had come up with when their periods had become synced.

"About a minute or so," Izzy said with a shrug, and she could feel Cara's disbelieving look on the side of her face.

"Okay, and how long has it really been?" Cara asked and Izzy finally tore her eyes from the big East High sign and turned to face her best friend.

"Three minutes and 27 seconds. 28...29...30-"

"Okay, let's go in now," Cara said, cutting off her counting, and reaching down for her hand. She tried to pull her friend forward, but Izzy stayed rooted to the spot. "Izzy?" Cara prompted, and the brunette seemed to snap out of it as she nodded and stepped forward, allowing Cara to pull her into the building after her.

Cara lead Izzy over to her locker and even stepped forward and unlocked it for her when she didn't make a move to do so herself. She then gave Izzy's hand one last squeeze before going off to her own locker at the end of the hallway. Izzy watched her friend go before turning to her locker.

She began to unload her notebooks into it, stacking them up in rainbow order, before straightening out the pictures that were stuck to the inside of the door. There were mainly photos of her and E.J., or her and Cara, and Izzy was smiling softly at one of her and E.J. hugging when she spotted him out of the corner of her eye. He was standing at his locker in his red letterman jacket, and just the sight of him made her heart skip a beat. She took a deep breath before shutting her locker door and making her way over to him.

"Hey," Izzy said softly, making him look up from his things, and her heart went into overdrive when they locked eyes. She didn't miss the way he scanned the hallway awkwardly before fully turning to face her.

"Hey Iz," E.J. said and her heart jumped at the nickname. She hadn't heard it in a month, not since that voicemail. It had seemed particularly cruel of him to start the voicemail with the familiar nickname.

"How are you? How was your summer?" Izzy asked, trying her best not to sound eager, and failing miserably.

"It was good. You?" E.J. asked and she nodded.

"Good. How was musical camp?" Izzy asked and when he laughed she could've sworn that her heart stopped.

"Theatre camp," He corrected, and she laughed too. Things already felt normal again. "But it was good. Eventful," He added and she nodded absently as she turned the word over in her head. Eventful? What could that mean?

"That's great," Izzy said and she hesitated before deciding to bite the bullet. "You know, it was the weirdest thing, I think I got this voicemail from you sometime in July or August or something and you were saying the craziest things, like that you were tired of our relationship and that you wanted to end it-" She was rambling and she knew it and was almost glad when E.J. cut her off.

Almost.

"Yeah, see, the reason I sent the voicemail was so we could avoid an awkward conversation like this," E.J. said with a nervous laugh and Izzy felt her heart drop. She'd always thought that was an odd description when she'd read it in books, but now she finally understood what it meant. There was no other way to describe the feeling, really.

"You meant what you said in the voicemail?" Izzy asked, her voice coming out in a whisper, and E.J. looked down at his shoes awkwardly.

"We're just on two different paths right now and we're different people now than we were two years ago and it just wasn't working-" E.J. started to say, but she cut him off.

"Hold on, you broke up with me through a twenty-seven-second voicemail? You ended a two-year relationship with a voicemail? What hell, E.J.!" Izzy said, her raised voice attracting a few stares, and E.J. winced. She had flipped the switch from sad to angry in a matter of seconds.

"Iz, I'm sorry, but I just...I had a lot of time to think at camp this summer and I met all these new people..." He let his sentence trail off and it took a second for his words to register. The word eventful finally made sense.

"You met someone else?" Izzy asked, her voice breaking slightly. She was back to heartbroken again. Her guess was confirmed when E.J. nodded awkwardly, not meeting her eyes.

"I'm really sorry, Izzy. It's-it's not you-" E.J. started, but she cut him off again. She'd watched enough movies to know the end of that sentence.

"Yeah, it's definitely you," Izzy said bitterly and there was silence between the two of them. "Screw you, E.J.," Izzy muttered before she turned and walked away, not wanting him to see the furious tears that she was blinking away.

If this were a movie he would've been running after her at this point. He would've been throwing himself to the ground and begging her for forgiveness. Hell, since he liked musicals so much, he would probably even serenade her. But he didn't do any of those things. He just watched her walk away.

.⋅ ✯ ⋅.

Izzy's first few classes had gone by and she couldn't exactly recall what had happened in them, she'd just stared ahead numbly, only aware of the stares from all sides. News traveled like wildfire at East High and it didn't take long for the entire student body to know that she had been dumped. The stares followed her from class to the cafeteria where she found Cara sitting at their usual table and had dropped down next to her. Her friend's concerned eyes were immediately trained on her, but Izzy didn't meet her gaze.

Instead, she dug into her backpack and produced a notebook and a pen. She flipped to a fresh page in the notebook and titled it "The Plan". She could feel Cara's gaze shift from concerned to confused, but she still didn't look up. Below the title, she wrote, "Goal: Get E.J. back.".

"What are you doing?" Cara finally asked, watching as Izzy drew several lines beneath the goal, emphasizing its importance.

"I'm making a plan so I can get him back," Izzy said calmly, and in her head, it all made sense. This was the plot point in the rom-com that always occurred, without a fail. The point where one of the main characters, usually the guy, had screwed everything up and the couple briefly spent some time apart. But it was always brief and the characters always ended up back together again. This was just E.J. and Izzy's brief time apart.

"Why do you even want him back, Iz? He broke up with you through a voicemail. He probably even cheated on you! He doesn't deserve you," Cara reminded her, and Izzy could tell that despite how close they were, there were some things that they just wouldn't understand about each other.

"Do you know what Taylor Swift did when Joe Jonas did that to her? She wrote Last Kiss, arguably one of her best-written songs to date," Cara continued and for the first time all day, Izzy suppressed the smile she felt coming on. Taylor Swift was to Cara what romcoms were to Izzy, she helped her rationalize things.

"I love him, Cara. And he loves me, he's just...I just need him back," Izzy said firmly and she could tell that to Cara, who had never been in love before, her words sounded pathetic. They even sounded pathetic to Izzy, but she knew that they were true. They had to be true.

They stared at each other in silence, Izzy pleading with her eyes for Cara to understand, to support her in this. She wasn't surprised when she eventually gave in, because that was what best friends did. They tried to reason with you, tried to protect you from getting hurt, but when that didn't work the only thing left to do was hold your hand through it and be waiting with chocolates and tissues on the other side.

"Alright, what's the plan?" Cara asked and Izzy turned back to her notebook, where the page was empty except for the title and the goal. She hadn't exactly thought that far ahead yet.

"I don't know..." Izzy said, letting her voice trail off as she looked around the cafeteria. She stopped when she caught sight of E.J. with his arm around a girl. Nini Salazar-Roberts. She was a junior, like Izzy, and had been in the same kindergarten class as Izzy and Cara, along with a handful of others who had been in Salt Lake their whole lives.

Izzy didn't know much about Nini other than the fact that she supposedly went to the same theatre camp as E.J. and had been in a relationship before summer. Izzy had even remembered seeing the Instagram post Nini had made, celebrating one year with her boyfriend, Ricky Bowen, with a song that Izzy hadn't recognized in the background. She wondered what Ricky thought of E.J. and Nini's new romance.

She didn't have to wonder for long. When she finally tore her eyes away from E.J. and Nini just as they were about to kiss, she caught sight of him sitting a few tables away from the happy couple. It was easy to tell how he felt about the situation, he was wearing the same expression that Izzy felt. And it was as she was watching him glare at his ex-girlfriend and her ex-boyfriend that a plan began to formulate in Izzy's mind.

"What? What is it?" Cara asked, unaware of the revelation that had just occurred, and the blonde watched in confusion as Izzy bent over her notebook again to write something down. When she sat up straight again there was a small, accomplished smile on her face and Cara looked down at the page to read what she had written.

Step 1: Convince Ricky to help.

.⋅ ✯ ⋅.

Although she liked to complete things in chronological order, Izzy realized that she would have to complete step two of her plan before completing step one because unfortunately there just wasn't enough time to talk to Ricky before the auditions for High School Musical. It didn't matter much, though, because being in the musical had little to do with Ricky's involvement in her plan, its main purpose was to provide her with time where she and E.J. could spend time together. This was very necessary as he had been avoiding her like the plague since he had dumped her that morning.

Izzy hadn't been expecting much for the auditions, it was the arts department of a public school in Utah after all, but it was quickly made painfully clear that she was out of her element the second she walked through the door. The dance warm-up alone was enough to have her reconsidering step two of her plan, especially when she saw the girl in front do a series of intimidating twirls and insanely high kicks.

Her paranoia died down a bit when the new drama teacher, Miss Jenn, made them all stand in line and she walked down it, suggesting a part for each person to read for. When she reached Izzy she asked her to read for the part of Kelsi. She hadn't watched the movie in a few years since she'd always considered it more of a musical than a romcom, but she recalled that all Kelsi really did was sit at the piano the whole time and get intimidated by Sharpay. That was definitely something that Izzy could pull off without much difficulty, especially if the scary high-kick girl was going to be playing Sharpay.

Since the role of Kelsi had the fewest people auditioning for it, Miss Jenn had them audition first, and Izzy was second up. She watched from the wings as the first girl took the stage and began to sing. She didn't notice when E.J snuck up on her.

"What are you doing here?" She heard him ask from behind her and she turned to face him. He had spotted her the second she'd walked into the theatre and she knew that it was only a matter of time before he came to find her. He had changed out of his letterman jacket and had changed into a basketball jersey that Izzy recognized from the movie.

For a second, she wished that he wouldn't get the part of Troy and look like an idiot for being so cocky. She knew that it was bitter and immature to wish for something like that, but it did make her feel a bit better.

"I'm auditioning for the role of Kelsi," Izzy said and she bit back her smile when the vein in his forehead popped out. He never liked it when she was sarcastic. That was too bad for him though, because she liked being sarcastic.

"You know what I mean. You said that you were never that into musicals," E.J. reminded her and she let out a little laugh that made the vein in his forehead pop out even more.

"That's funny because you said that you loved me, but then you stomped on my heart. I guess we're all liars then." Izzy said and he didn't seem to have a retort for that, which made her smile smugly.

"Izzy Cortez!" Carlos, who seemed to be Miss Jenn's right-hand man, called out.

"Wish me luck," Izzy whispered to E.J. and flashed him one last slightly evil smile before walking out of the wings.

"You're supposed to say break a leg in theatre," She heard him mutter after, and his increased annoyance only made her smile grow as she took her spot in center stage. However, her smile disappeared when she stared out at the sea of faces, their expressions concealed due to the dim lower stage and the bright lights shining on her face. She wiped her sweaty hands on her jeans, praying that they wouldn't make a stain.

"Alright, Kelsi doesn't technically have any shows in the musical, so you can audition with any song you'd like," Miss Jenn said, smiling warmly at Izzy, sensing that she was nervous. The drama teacher had sort of a manic feel to her, but her smile eased Izzy's nerves ever so slightly.

"Okay, um I guess I'll sing When There Was Me and You," Izzy said and she noticed E.J. shift uncomfortably out of the corner of her eye. If she remembered the movie correctly, this was the ballad that Gabriella sang when Troy had betrayed her and she was reminiscing on their relationship. How fitting.

"It's funny when you find yourself looking from the outside, I'm standing here but all I want is to be over there," Izzy sang, her nerves returning as her voice shook slightly. She didn't have the strongest voice under normal circumstances, but her nerves only made it worse. "Why did I let myself believe miracles could happen? 'Cause now I have to pretend that I don't really care," Izzy sang and her eyes found the blond boy's, who was playing the piano accompanying her, and he gave her an encouraging smile. She smiled back tentatively.

"I thought you were my fairytale, a dream when I'm not sleeping. A wish upon a star that's coming true...but everybody else could tell that I confused my feelings with the truth when there was me and you..." Izzy sang, her voice growing stronger as she sang out at the audience. She stopped when Miss Jenn held her hand up and was surprised when she began to clap enthusiastically.

"Well done, Izzy. So much emotion, I really enjoyed it," Miss Jenn said and her praise made Izzy beam. Even if she wasn't as talented as the high-kick girl or Nini or even E.J., she still appreciated Miss Jenn's compliment. It was nice of her to make Izzy feel special.

The rest of the auditions sped by and Izzy sat with the other kids on the floor behind Miss Jenn and Carlos's table. She tried her best to ignore E.J. and Nini staring at each other lovingly, but it was like a car wreck that she couldn't look away from. Just when she was starting to hate her life a little more than usual, her luck seemed to turn around when Ricky Bowen burst through the doors of the theatre, guitar case in hand, asking if he was too late.

Izzy watched in wonder as Miss Jenn assured him that he wasn't and he clambered up on stage with his guitar. And then he started singing. It took Izzy a second to place the song. It wasn't from the movie, as far as she could remember, but she knew that she'd heard it before. She just couldn't place her finger on where. It finally clicked when she overheard two girls whispering beside her.

"This is the song Nini wrote for him to tell him she loved him before they broke up," One of the girls whispered to the other, and Izzy realized that she had heard this song before. It was the song that Nini had posted to her Instagram profile for her and Ricky's one-year anniversary. The post that had been mysteriously taken down less than 24 hours later.

And there was Ricky, who was even less of a theatre kid then Izzy was, standing up there and singing the song that his ex-girlfrined had wrote professing her love for him, in front of said ex-girlfriend and her current boyfriend. Even though she knew that it was horrible of her, Izzy couldn't stop the small smile that began to cross her face because this meant that Ricky was going to be an even better partner in crime than she anticipated.

This meant that now there was a chance for her insane plan to work.

.⋅ ✯ ⋅.

authors note!

welcome to the first chapter of how you get the girl! i'm sorry if the beginning is a bit slow, but hopefully it'll pick up in the next few chapters as we delve deeper into the plot!

this book has been my baby for months now and i love it so much and am very nervous to send it out into the world, but also very excited!! this is my first time writing for the hsmtmts fandom, but i'm having a lot of fun!

also, side note, i will be opening each chapter with an iconic quote from a famous romcom or maybe a famous romantic scene from a tv show, cuz i think it's cute and that was also done in the book 'better than the movies', which i love!

so, thank you all so so much for reading, i really do hope you enjoyed the first chapter, and any feedback would be greatly appreciated! i split the first episode into two chapters, so hopefully chapter two will be up tomorrow!

- maya 💗