Disclaimer: I do not claim to own any part of the High School Musical franchise.
Warnings: Alternate universe; addresses issues of racism and may contain strong violence in later chapters.
Notes: If addressing racist themes bothers or offends you, please do not read this story. No one is making you. This story takes place in the 2007-2008 school year, despite the plot. Also, I have no idea if there are oak trees in New Mexico, but considering all the ridiculous liberties the HSM franchise has made, I figure I've got a bit of wiggle room.

Chapter One: West

He had been six years old the first time he heard that word. He had been waiting for his mother to pick him up on the front steps of West Albuquerque Elementary with his favorite Superman backpack, stuffed with exactly one pencil, a giant pink eraser, and three sheets of paper. The bullies had been older, most likely in middle school, and out looking for trouble. They were also white.

Using that word, they told him that his kind weren't allowed to like superheroes like Superman.

When his mother had finally arrived, his backpack had been ripped in two and tossed into the mud, his pencil and eraser lost in the dirt, his papers shriveled and ruined. Later, at home, while she nursed his black eye and swollen lip, he asked her what that word meant. She pursed her lips and told him to never say that word again, and he listened. Eventually, he figured out exactly what it meant, but by then it no longer mattered.

Chad Danforth already hated them.

As he grew older, he learned that there were places he was not allowed to go, places where they would call him that word and maybe even kill him. He was no coward, but venturing to the east side of Albuquerque seemed to be more trouble than it was worth. That didn't stop the other side from skipping on over to the west, their white skin pasty and pale as the moon as they harassed black neighborhoods for miles around.

The first shot was loud.

At first Chad wasn't sure he'd really heard it - he could see the blue glow of the television set peering beneath the door of his bedroom, and thought that maybe it had just been the TV, one of those cowboy movies his father liked to watch late at night when work had been particularly stressful. But when his mother appeared in the doorway of his room, frightened and harried, followed by two more loud noises, Chad knew he was wrong.

"Get down. Now."

For a moment he considered disobeying his mother, but his father gave him a stern look as he passed, gun in hand, and Chad rolled out of bed and onto the carpet, as ordered. His mother crouched beside him, holding him close, her arms not quite long enough to wrap around his large frame. Chad closed his eyes and huddled against his trembling mother, silently berating himself for not being the one to defend his family. He heard his father burst through the front door, the screen as it banged against the house, the eerie silence that followed and was always the hardest part of the entire ordeal. Chad hated the waiting. He never knew if his father would make it back inside or if he would find him on the front porch, face down in a pool of blood.

"They're gone."

Chad allowed himself to breathe as he looked up at his father and pried himself from his mother's clutches, scrambling to his feet. His father returned to the living room and Chad followed, instantly spotting the shattered window and the holes in the wall above the couch. The glass glittered on the floor like diamonds in the light of the table lamps. Chad's hands curled into fists. This wasn't fair.

His cell phone made them all jump. He answered it as his mother went to the kitchen to make a cup of tea, swearing softly under her breath.

"Hello?" His voice came out angrier than he had intended, but Taylor hardly seemed to notice, her voice rushing into his ear from the other end of the line.

"Chad! Are you all right? I heard the gun, and then– Oh God, Chad, are you all right?"

"I'm fine," Chad said through a clenched jaw. He stared out the window to the house across the street. Taylor peered out between the curtains of the front window, nervous but searching for a visual confirmation of Chad's safety. Her eyes locked with his a moment later, and he heard her sigh with relief.

"I was so worried! Are your parents all right? No one was hurt, were they?"

"No, we're all fine," Chad told her, calming some as he pinched his nose and squeezed his eyes shut; he could feel a headache coming on. "Just a little shaken up, but we're fine, Taylor, honest."

"Dad says he'll be over in the morning," Taylor added matter-of-factly. Chad felt reassured by her tone. He always was. "... You know why they did this, don't you?"

"Because they hate us," Chad snarled into the phone, glaring at the glass on the floor as he spoke."Because they think we're shit and they want to kill us and–"

"They think we're invading, Chad," Taylor interrupted, "or did you already forget?"

"I didn't forget," Chad protested. And he hadn't. He had just continued pretending it hadn't happened, because as wonderful as it was, he didn't really want it to happen. He didn't know why he'd been chosen, and he knew it was only going to end in disaster. "I wish you weren't going, Taylor."

"Chad, I'm not going to back out. We deserve this. What would they think if we changed our minds now?"

"Why does it matter what they think?"

"Because what they think is the reason things are the way they are. Look, Chad, you don't have to go–"

"I'm not going to let you do this alone. I don't trust them. And... I don't– I can't let you get hurt."

He could feel her smile as he watched it form on her lips through the curtains.

"Good night Chad. I'll see you in the morning. Stay safe."

"Love you, Taylor."


Chad's mother was setting out plates of eggs, bacon and toast on the kitchen table when Taylor's father arrived the following morning. It was still early – the street was bathed in a cool, pale grey as the sun struggled to rise over the trees. Chad rubbed his eyes and slid into an empty chair, shoveling scrambled eggs into his mouth without so much as a glance at anything else.

"Gonna save some for the rest of us?"

Chad grunted, too tired and too hungry to form coherent sentences, and Taylor slid into the seat beside him. She put a splash of salt and pepper on her eggs, followed by a swirl of ketchup. Chad had been three the first time he'd watched her eat scrambled eggs. He still thought it was gross. She poured them both orange juice and handed him one of her two pieces of toast – it was a long standing tradition that she would be too full to finish both pieces, and that Chad and Chad alone ate what was left. He took the early offering as a sign that Taylor was impatient for something.

His prophecy proved to be true; the moment she set down her fork, Taylor turned to face him, a frown twisting down the corners of her lips.

"Chad, we need to talk."

It was Chad's turn to frown. Taylor always wanted to talk, though it was usually about something he didn't really care about (girl stuff, mostly), and she never actually said she wanted to talk, but just started doing it instead. Whatever this was, it was obviously a serious matter, and Chad wasn't so sure this was a conversation he wanted to be having.

"Okay. Let's talk."

Taylor took his hand and lead him out the backdoor of the kitchen to the porch. They sat on the edge, legs dangling over the side, still holding hands. Chad's shoes brushed against the grass, nearly touching the ground. A rusted swing set stood percariously in one corner, and a small garden lined the wooden fence on the other side. A large Oak tree hung over the fence from the house behind theirs, its branches weighted with a brilliant gold and red plume.

Chad could feel the cold of the deck seeping through his jeans. He glanced side-long at Taylor, but her expression gave nothing away; he had learned that she could be the master of deception when she wanted to, and that happened to be most of the time, or at least whenever Chad tried to figure something out.

"It's beautiful, isn't it?"

Chad assumed she was talking about the tree, because the rest of the backyard was a far cry from being pretty, and he assumed that she would have called him handsome, at the very least. Beautiful wasn't nearly manly enough. Thankfully, he was saved from coming up with a decent reply.

"Chad, what do you think will happen on Tuesday?"

This was the conversation he had been dreading and doing his best to avoid for nearly a week. Either he'd run out of good luck, or Taylor had known what he was doing all along and had cut him some slack. It didn't matter, though; Taylor wanted to have this conversation, and they were going to have it.

"Do you really want an answer?" he said at last. She looked at him with another frown.

"Chad, I'm serious."

"So am I."

"Are you afraid?"

"No." Chad was terrified.

"I am," Taylor said, so quiet he almost didn't hear her. He tightened his grip on her hand. "I've heard so many stories..." She trailed off as she shook her head. "But this will be a good thing in the end, don't you think? We need this."

"If they even lay a finger on you, we aren't going back."

"We're all people, Chad. They have so much to learn from us and we have so much to learn from them." She tugged his hand as he scoffed. "I'm serious, Chad. We're all people, and if you keep up that attitude, nothing is going change."

"Tell them that," he muttered. Taylor only sighed. She released his hand and stood, giving his curls a pat before returning to the house. The door shut with a gentle click behind her, and Chad was left to stare at the oak tree. The leaves were several different colors, but they all came from the same tree, were made of essentially the same things, and fell on the same ground.

Maybe Taylor was right, after all.


It wasn't until Sunday afternoon that his mother took him shopping. Chad insisted that, at seventeen, he was more than old enough to do it on his own. His mother disagreed, stating that if she let him go gallivanting off on his own, he would buy his jeans too baggy, his shirts too long, and neglect to purchase actual supplies altogether. In an effort to make the trip more bearable, he had invited Taylor along, a mistake he should have foreseen when the idea first occurred to him. Not only did Taylor's presence make his mother's remarks even more embarrassing then usual, but he now had two women nagging and suggesting and ordering him about the department store.

He had outgrown Superman backpacks, though the poster on his wall suggested otherwise, and chose one that was deep red, sporting a million zippers both Taylor and his mother insisted he didn't need. After what felt like months, but was really only a few hours, the three stopped for ice cream on the walk home. The ice cream parlor was really a stand, situated in the park that divided East and West Albuquerque. A large oak tree stood in the center of the park. As they waited for their ice cream, Chad watched the leaves fall, red and gold, and land on the ground, east and west.

"I'm so proud of you two," Chad's mother said as they walked down the sidewalk, ice cream and waffle cones buried in their stomachs. She was in the middle, her arms linked with Taylor and Chad on either side. "You're both so brave." She wore a sad smile.

"Thank you, Mrs. Danforth," Taylor answered, white teeth flashing in the sun as she returned the smile with one of her own.

"I don't think I would have courage to go to that school," Mrs. Danforth continued. "But you two are going to change things. I can feel it." She pulled them closer, as if afraid that they would float away if she let go. "You two will change things and start to fix this world proper."


Chad only picked at his food Monday night, and did the dishes without having to be told. Later, he lay in bed, staring up at the vacant ceiling as his stomach twisted and churned inside him. He was nervous and scared, both for himself, Taylor, and Zeke, a boy he had grown up with but did not know well, and did not want to see hurt any more than Taylor.

While several other states had already put an end to segregation, the idea of equality had only just crept into New Mexico. Albuquerque, perhaps the most divided city in the state, had been chosen as the trailblazer for the demise of discrimination. Five students had been chosen from the all black West High to attend the all white East High in the upcoming school year. Chad, Taylor, and Zeke had been three of the five students – the remaining two had been withdrawn from the program at the request of their parents. When the idea had first been launched, there had been an uproar in both the white and black communities of Albuquerque. When the names of the students participating had been released, the city had seemed to dissolve into chaos.

Chad could only imagine what the first day of school would bring.

After tossing and turning, Chad managed to fall asleep late into the night. He sweated, despite the chill air, frowning as the same dream played in his head, over and over. It was the first day of school, and Chad found himself standing at the front of the building. He was searching for Taylor but couldn't find her, for the all the leaves had fallen from the trees and stuck to the crowd as if they were coated in glue. He called out to each person, shouting Taylor's name, but none of them were her, so he kept searching, growing frantic as time passed and he still could not find her. The students became more and more blurred the longer he searched, until he could no longer tell the difference between the blacks and the whites and there were only leaves, hundreds of thousands of leaves, red and gold, twisting together and falling toward the ground that had vanished from beneath his feet.