livewire
--
"tell me, tell me
what makes you think that you are invincible
i can see it in your eyes that you're so sure
please don't tell me that i am the only one that's
vulnerable,"
She was so fucking sick and tired of vulnerability.
She was good enough for Broadway, but that wasn't what she wanted. She was determined to make it.
She was going to break free from the routine habits of weedy Albuquerque, New Mexico, and shoot off into some amazing horizon in a dinky, red convertible. Red, with white racing stripes.
"I'm going to do it," she told him with livewire eyes. Pride had been her confidant for seventeen years, and she wasn't one to let him forget it.
He rolled his eyes and said, "you're not, you're just being overdramatic."
She snarled a reminder, "it's my job to be overdramatic," and slammed the front door in his face with a manicured snap of her wrist.
--
He didn't come back that night, or the next, and he never stopped to pick up the phone for a month straight (not that she'd tried to call).
It was clear that he wasn't lost, and it was clearer that he was gone… really gone.
She threw her favorite pair of stiletto heels out the window on the first day of the second month because, even without a brain, he had accomplished what she had intended to do all along. Her Fridays were often spent alone, fingers in the crooks of her piano and creases in the crooks of her mouth.
On an overcast Friday, she bought a can each of red and white paint, and left them sitting in the garage.
The next Friday, she had returned to the piano, piecing together a fragile disposition of disaster.
--
He had been gone for three months and Troy and Gabriella often spent their free time speculating where he'd run off to.
They didn't realize that she was gone, too, a pretty mess of sleepless nights and blonde hair. They figured it was a classic case of senioritis because she wasn't the type to fall apart.
It was another Friday morning, sometime in mid-February, when someone rather unimportant imposed a rather important question. "Shouldn't you be in theatre?"
Hair flip, scowl, uninterested glance at her nails. "What is this, an interrogation?"
But shouldn't she be in theatre? Shouldn't she be suspended in some glory spotlight, entertaining an audience that despised her? What else had she dedicated her entire life to?
Helpless, she turned on her heel and made her exit, stage right.
--
He had been gone for five-and-a-half months when the phone rang.
She let the answering machine take it and opted for the comfort of apple juice and a white leather couch.
"Hey, it's me… I'm good, I'm alive." Pause. "I'm in New York and it's like hell frozen over. I'd send you a plane ticket—" Laughter. "But I'm afraid you'd kill me before anything else…" Softer. "You'd love it here." Quiet.
She remembered to inhale.
"So… call me as soon as you get this. And, I'll talk to you later?"
She picked up the receiver and gently pressed it against her ear. The line was dead, but the silence spoke louder than words.
"Hey," he whispered, sounding like he'd been holding his breath and had just let it out. "Where are you?"
"Home." It wasn't the answer he was looking for, but the only answer he would be satisfied with was the one she couldn't give him.
"I'm… home. And you're—"
"—in New York, yeah."
"Basketball?" She quipped and he laughed again. "That would defeat the purpose. I'm at a law firm."
She swallowed back an insult, "you're only eighteen."
His voice sounded strained, "and you'll be eighteen in May. Why—"
"I just can't."
The phone was back in its cradle, and it was the end of their conversation until the next Friday.
--
The following Monday was the first time she'd stepped into the theatre since he left.
This was her comfort zone, this was her stage, this was where a spotlight would always have her name on it.
She picked her way through familiar props and cleaning supplies, spinning herself into red velvet curtains and vanity mirrors as she went. She stole a boa they once used in an embarrassingly silly production of Arabian Nights and Dorothy's ruby shoes for the upcoming Oz; they'd just have to find another pair for Gabriella. Knowing Mrs. Darbus' ridiculous sense of logic, the entire musical would be uprooted, just because Gabriella's shoes were missing.
She could have laughed at the absurdity of it all—well, she did.
She sobered quickly, and it took twenty minutes straight, but the gold star on her dressing room door eventually ended up tucked under her arm.
She left with the dregs of her long-lived career without a glance backward. It was an impressive last act, and no audience to witness it.
Monday was the last time she ever stepped out of the theatre.
--
It was May 4th when they picked up their conversation again.
"Sharpay! Thank god, I'm sorry—"
"I'm coming." She cut him off, one eye on the road, another on the radio, as she did the same to a Jeep going 90.
"Bastard," she swore breezily as she settled on a station.
"You what?"
"It's not a convertible, and there aren't any racing stripes," she settled for an apologetic tone instead of an apology. "But come pick me up," she read him an address, and added as an afterthought, "I don't even have a New Mexico license plate."
He was stunned that she had driven across the country, but he laughed it off. She was barely aware of what she was getting herself into, but she trusted herself.
He was supposed to play for the NBA and she was supposed to be part of some phenomenon, like Wicked.
But he was tired of hoops and she was tired of pretending, so a friend hooked him up with a job as a (not very good) law intern and she scored a job as a (not very good) creative writing teacher.
It had taken Troy and Gabriella a week. It had taken Chad and Sharpay half a year.
But they were finally breaking free.
Disclaimer: I wish I owned High School Musical. And "Vulnerable" is by Secondhand Serenade.
A/N: I wrote it in three hours. Obviously, there are shippings, but definitely not the point. Considering it's my very first fic (one-shot or not), I'm crazy nervous about the reactions I'll get. But I wrote it for Nikki (knick-knack-15), and if she reads it, I really don't care if anyone else does, ahaha. HAPPY BIRTHDAY! (:
(And partly dedicated to the lovely ready anf, because she's amazing. Spot a blatantly obvious reference to Passionate Seduction, anyone?)