DISCLAIMER: I do not own High School Musical or any related characters.

A/N: I decided it was high time I started a new story and for all those waiting for Saving Me, I promise I'll update soon.

Crash World

CHAPTER 1

Gabriella Montez groaned as her alarm clock went off. Rolling over she hit the snooze button and sat up, rubbing her eyes, she gazed around her room and sighed as her eyes landed on a picture. A family picture, there she was with her mother and her father. They were all smiling and they looked so happy, her father looked relaxed and her mother looked content. They looked exactly like a normal family and not the broken, shattered one that they were now. Here I go; Gabriella thought and threw back the covers. Gabriella couldn't understand how her entire family could have been shattered by the arrival of someone they had never known existed. It just didn't make any sense to her. How could one little boy shatter three seemingly strong lives? How could one little boy completely destroy a marriage of seventeen years? Yet he had and Gabriella didn't hate him for it, because it was impossible to hate a sibling. It was impossible to hate a six month old baby, even if he was a product of her own mother's infidelity. Gabriella quietly made her way to her half brother's room and opened the door; she walked over to his cot and found that he was awake. James stared up at his older sister and gurgled happily. Gabriella laughed softly and picked him up. She balanced him on her hip and made her way to the change table.

"Let's see what we have here shall we?" she asked him softly and than jumped when she heard her mother's voice.

"I see I don't have to do anything this morning?" Andrea Montez asked her eldest child teasingly.

"It would probably be a help if you got his bottle ready, Dad's taking me to school today" Gabriella replied picking up her little brother and balancing him on her hip again.

"I nearly forgot you've got your new school to go to" Andrea commented and Gabriella shrugged not really wanting to discuss it.

"Yeah a new one, I still don't understand why we had to move" Gabriella said and her mother's entire demeanor changed at her daughter's words. For a moment Andrea had seemed like the person she was before James had been born; now as Gabriella looked at her mother she could see how much her words had hurt her.

"You know why we had to move Gabriella" she said in a dead voice and Gabriella suddenly felt bad.

"I'm sorry mom, I just didn't want to move" Gabriella said softly and than was forced to laugh when James scrunched up his face and giggled. Andrea shot her a sad smile and Gabriella bit her lip.

"It's okay, really, I suppose I deserved something like that from you" her mother said and Gabriella nearly groaned as she realized what was coming, the explanation, the whole I-was-just-lonely thing and the begging for forgiveness, something Gabriella found that she couldn't do.

"Uh, mom, I've got to go and get ready for school. So can you take James and tell Dad I'll be ready soon?" Gabriella asked before her mother could start.

"Sure" Andrea said, Gabriella kissed James' forehead and handed him to her mother before making her escape to her room.

Gabriella couldn't believe that her mother actually expected her to forgive her after what she had done to her father. In truth Gabriella had admitted to herself that she had known about her mother and the affair before her mother had had James. But that didn't hurt her, what hurt her was watching as her father shunned her mother, what hurt her was her father asking her endless questions that Gabriella couldn't answer as much as she wanted to, what hurt her was her father ignoring her little brother completely, what hurt her was the fact that she was the only thing keeping her family together, what hurt her was her mother leaving raising her own child to Gabriella. They were all thorns in her side and they had all been caused by the one person that Gabriella had thought would never do anything like that. The one thing that hurt Gabriella above all else was the fact that her mother had always said how important family was, how you should stick together no matter what happened, how you should always be loyal to your family. Gabriella couldn't understand how a person that said those things could turn around and do the complete opposite of what they said. What sort of person was that? Did they actually mean what they said? Or were they just saying that to get them out of trouble?

"Gabi, we have to leave in ten minutes" her father knocked on her open door and Gabriella turned to look at him.

She gave him a soft smile and nodded her head.

"Okay dad, give me five minutes and I'll be down" she told her father gently and he nodded and pulled the door shut.

Gabriella sighed as she went in search of a clean pair of jeans; she wasn't exactly looking forward to starting a new school but at the same time at least she didn't have to face the whispers and looks, not to mention the man that was her younger brothers father. Out of all the people in Chicago, Gabriella didn't understand why her mother had to pick her English teacher of all people to have an affair with. Why choose someone that saw a family member everyday? He was the reason that Gabriella had felt that she had known, after the affair had begun her mother had asked him to treat Gabriella well and that's when she had noticed how his treatment of her had changed. She hadn't really understood it at first until she had rung her house and heard his voice while she had been talking to her mother, when she had asked about it her mother had told her that his car had broken down and he was waiting for a taxi. It was than that it clicked with Gabriella that something odd might have been going on, but she'd never bothered to pursue it further. She had been frightened of what she would have discovered; besides she wouldn't have been able to handle telling her father. Gabriella blinked back tears that threatened to spill over as she found a clean pair of jeans. Quickly she pulled them on and found a white singlet top and pulled that on, before pulling a blue half-cardigan over it.

"Gabi! I'm ready to leave!" her father's voice floated up the stairs as Gabriella finished pulling a brush through her brown curls; she grabbed a hair band and her school bag.

"Coming!" she called and glanced around her room again, before heading downstairs.

She paused at the kitchen and gave James a kiss and her mother a cold goodbye before running out the door and sliding into the passenger seat of her father's car.

"Are you ready for school?" Samuel asked his daughter.

"I'm as ready as I'll ever be" she replied looking at him.

Gabriella didn't recoil at the look in her father's eye, or the dead voice, she knew that he was shattered. She knew that he was clinging onto her because she was the only thing in his life that he could get any joy out of. Gabriella knew that he didn't know what to do anymore, Gabriella could see the pieces on the ground. She was his world now and Gabriella didn't know if she liked that fact or not. Gabriella looked away from her father and out the window as she thought about what world she was living in at the moment. She was living in a world that was broken; she was living in world that made no sense, she was on the wrong side of a parallel universe. Gabriella sighed as she realized what she was living in. She was living in a crash world.

A/N: That's kind of an introduction to this story, I hope you liked and if you didn't, constructive criticism is always, always, appreciated.