Disclaimer: I don't own High School Musical, any of the characters, or any of their songs. I'm not even entirely certain about this storyline...
Chapter One: Wind, Rain and Asphalt
Gabriella closed her eyes and smiled as she walked, feeling the breeze she had been longing for all day caress her bare arms and ruffle her hair. It hadn't been a nice day: hot, sticky and filled with tension that got to everyone. The teachers had snapped, and even her friends had been irritable. It didn't help that it was Friday, and everyone was impatient for the weekend to begin. Opening her eyes and looking at the sky as she strode homeward, she noticed that the slightly opalescent, diffused blue of earlier had given over to a steadily darkening grey colour, shading to a bruise-purple near the horizon. If she had to guess, she'd say that Albuquerque was in for a storm of epic proportions.
She smiled to herself, remembering how much she loved thunderstorms. Even as a little girl, growing up in California, she had never been scared of the noise and the flashes of light; she had been excited, a source of great amusement to her mother. They would sit together in mom's room, without the lights on, and laugh and hug and be silly every time there was a flash or a boom. They were, she realised with a small amount of surprise, some of the happiest times of her life.
That was a long time ago, though. From the age of about nine onwards, they had never stayed in one place more than a year, her mother's business requiring that she move regularly. Not this time, though. They had moved to Albuquerque at New Year, and her mother had promised that they would be here at least until graduation, the summer after next. And Gabriella had jumped at the chance to be a normal kid for a change.
Of course, everything is relative. A normal kid... who just happened to be one of the most intelligent in the country. She had been worried, as she had every time she started a new school, that when the information got out she would be treated like a pariah. East High, though, was rather different. It had taken her a long time to work out why, but the school's academic enthusiasts was also its most popular group. It was all based around the fact that the jocks were, for many various reasons, not admired as they were at every other school Gabriella had been to. She didn't understand why, but that, combined with a strange coalition between the two girls who were now her best friends had achieved what would be unthinkable everywhere else. Sharpay Evans, the star of the drama club and the girl widely acknowledged as the best-looking in the school, had become fast friends with Taylor McKessie, the head of various academic societies and a paragon of organisational skills.
Between them the somewhat unlikely pair handled everything anyone else threw at them, and it was because of this that Gabriella Montez, being both brilliant and, though she didn't know it, beautiful, had soared in popularity from the word go. It was a new experience for her, but certainly not one she minded. It was, in short, a nice school, where no one was bullied.
Well, that was what she thought, anyway.
The close conditions made everything just a bit too warm, making her long for a shower, but the breeze made it seem delicious, something to be anticipated with enthusiasm. Gabriella couldn't fight the temptation of singing softly as she walked home, already thinking through the maths assignment she had been set that morning. Barely thinking about it, she started to cross the road.
The next events were a little blurred in her mind, but she was hit hard in the side by something so big and moving so fast that it lifted her off the ground while latched onto her, before she and it both it the asphalt hard, sliding along it, the friction making her nerve-endings scream at her. She felt a strong rush of hot, dry air and a roar sounded in her ears. The weight rolled off her and she was left staring into the grey sky, just as a boom sounded a long way off and the first few splashes of rain hit her arms and legs.
She sat up quickly, ignoring for now the pain in her right arm and leg. She just saw a pick-up disappearing down the road, its windscreen wipers obviously just turned on. And lying next to her on the road was a boy, whom she recognised vaguely. Troy... something, she thought he was in her homeroom class. He was a jock, and so Gabriella had avoided him and his friends: Taylor had impressed upon her the fact that jocks thrived on attention: ignore them, and they were powerless. He opened his eyes, looked wide-eyed at Gabriella, and jumped to his feet, seeming not to notice that there was blood pouring from a cut on his cheek, or that his clothes were in bloody shreds. He nervously held out a hand to help her up, and then jerked it away once she was on her feet, looking away at the same time.
"Sorry," he muttered, almost inaudibly. "I didn't mean to hurt you, but I didn't think you'd noticed the truck, and you stepped out into the road, and..." he trailed off, finally looking at her and realising that she was just staring at him, open mouthed. "...sorry," he mumbled again. "Look, we need to get off the road. Can you walk?"
Gabriella tried to pull herself together, but the shock of what had just happened was making it hard to think. She felt two hands on her shoulders, propelling her gently towards the sidewalk. She still felt numb in a way, unable to comprehend what had nearly happened, and she stumbled and almost fell when her toes hit the curb. Instantly there was an arm around her shoulders, providing just enough lift for her to totter onwards, and one of her arms was pulled round a pair of broad if rather bony shoulders, increasing the support. "Is it far to your house?" She took a moment to understand the words, and when the meaning floated into her consciousness she nodded dumbly towards her own house, distinctive by the fairy lights strung around the front door.
As they approached the door opened and Gabriella saw her mum, looking first confused and then alarmed at the sight of her daughter, obviously hurt and being supported by a boy she'd never seen before. The boy hesitated, looking uncertain for a moment, before a slight sound from the girl next to him seemed to stiffen his resolve and he continued on to the front lawn.
"Er, Mrs. Montez?"
"Yes, yes, what happened?" Eva Montez pulled her daughter to her, relieving the young man of the burden and disregarding the rain and blood which between them were making a determined effort to soak her clothes. She held her mobile in the hand not supporting Gabriella and was already typing 911 into it.
"There was... well..." he began, before sighing and running his hand through his mop of light brown hair and then over his face, seemingly oblivious to the blood he was wiping across his features from what looked like quite a deep cut on his cheek. "It was my fault. Sorry." Eva noticed that he wouldn't meet her eyes. "I think she may need to go to the hospital. She wouldn't talk, and she was having trouble walking."
"And you? Don't you need to go too? You have..."
He backed up abruptly, his eyes a little wild. "No! Er... I'm fine. Just a few scratches. I need to go." And he dashed away, through the pouring rain, to a house on the other side of the street, just a few doors down. Eva noted the fact that he was limping slightly. She also noted the house and felt reassured. Of course, she had heard that the Masons, a couple of married doctors, were fostering now. If the boy was in their care, he would be fine. Turning to more immediate concerns, Eva bustled her daughter into the lounge, pushing her gently onto the couch and wrapping a throw around her, anxious to keep the teenager warm until the ambulance arrived. She kept talking to Gabriella, since she suspected a possible concussion.
Gabriella stared into nothing, her eyes boring a hole in the wall, answering her mother's questions automatically, while internally she kept thinking about those electric blue eyes, and what she had seen in them all too briefly: sadness, loneliness and, above all, pain.
***
Troy closed the door behind him quietly, paused for a few seconds, reading the silence in the house. He had learned from experience that the false silence was worse than the noise. He heard the rain pounding outside, lashing the windows, and the wind and thunder raking the neighbourhood, but he struggled to tune them out. Listened. No voices, but... the washing machine was chugging to itself in the basement, the heating was making its usual muted hiss, and... a pen? Yes, a pen scratching against paper. His breathing quickened. Where? He took a step forward and a deep breath, anxious to lower his heart rate so he could hear again. Scratching... above the kitchen. He sighed with a small amount of relief. He could handle that. Now moving fast but carefully he ghosted through the house, pausing briefly in the lounge and his room to grab a few things, and then into the bathroom. He locked the door behind him and exhaled again.
He ran a hot shower and got into it, yelping as the water seared against his skin and the various cuts and bruises on his torso... of course, they were always careful not to mark him on the arms or legs, since basketball players had to show a fair amount of skin. He didn't flinch from the scalding jets, though, welcoming the pain that jerked him out of the cold numbness that he had felt steeling over him. If he was awake enough to hurt, he was awake enough to do something about it. Making sure the angry, ugly and surprisingly deep scrapes along the outside of his left leg and left arm were clean and clear of too much blood he stepped out of the shower, dabbing himself dry with his towel, but using an old one he kept in his room and away from prying eyes over the injured areas: blood showing up on clean towels would not end well.
Next he took some toilet tissue, unscrewed the bottle of vodka he had grabbed from the liquor cabinet (he had been very thankful that they had forgotten to lock it) and proceeded to clean his cuts more thoroughly. It was a painful process, the alcohol stinging excruciatingly, but he knew it had to be done. He was sparing with the vodka: it wouldn't be good for it to be noticed that there was drink missing. Finally, he wrapped bandages around his leg and arm, judging that, while ugly and painful, he could explain away those as a bad knock during basketball practice. Finally he looked in the mirror... and groaned. He had barely noticed the cut on his cheek, but it was still bleeding and, when he investigated, he realised it was much deeper than the others. It wouldn't heal properly, he realised with mounting panic, without stitches, and there was no way he could get them while remaining undetected.
He took a deep breath, resigned to his fate, dressed in clean clothes that were deliberately long, and opened the bathroom door.
"I thought I heard you come in. Fighting again?"
Troy found himself unable to speak as he looked at the person who meant the most in the world to him. She looked him over, the contempt in her eyes painfully obvious, and her eyes slipped over the blood on his face to the bottle in his hand. "And drinking? God, you are such a loser."
Troy watched her walk away, then took a deep breath and went downstairs, returning the vodka to its rightful place. He looked at the clock: they would be back soon. He looked at the liquor cabinet, tempted for the first time in his life to do... something, he wasn't certain what. He turned away, went back to his room, and got started on his homework. Whatever was coming to him, he would face it as he always did.
Alone.