"TROY! Are you coming? We're going to be late!" his mother called from downstairs.
Shit. He had completely forgotten about the barbecue. The Evans' were having an end of summer barbecue, and Troy's family had been invited months ago. The fight with Gabriella had driven everything else out of his mind.
"COMING!" he screamed, scrambling around to get dressed. He finished in five minutes. After all, who would be there that he had to impress? A bunch of people he didn't know, and Sharpay. And the idea that Sharpay would care what he was wearing, or that he was there at all, was laughable. Ever since Gabriella had entered the picture, things between them hadn't exactly been the best.
The Evans' family lived just up the street, so before he knew it, Troy was walking with his family up the path to the Evans' door. His father rang the bell, waiting on the front step with his mother. Troy hung back on the sidewalk, his hands in his pockets, staring moodily at the sidewalk.
"Welcome to the Evans' residence! Right this way, Mr. and Mrs. Bolton! The party's out back, I'll lead you through the house."
Ryan had answered the door, grinning cheerfully and bowing Troy's parents into the house. Troy followed unwillingly behind them, nodding at Ryan.
"Troy." he stated, bowing him into the house.
As Troy walked to the back of the house with his parents, he couldn't help but look curiously around the Evans' house. He had never been inside it before, and was not surprised to find it looking as well groomed and meticulously impressive as the family that resided in it. The place was spotless, and there was a number of portraits of the Evans' family members on the wall above the fireplace. Ryan was just pointing out these portraits to Troy's parents as they walked through the house, when Troy spotted something out of the ordinary.
There was a table in the corner of their sitting room, the surface of it covered with pictures in frames of the two blonde Evans' twins, and their parents. But what struck Troy as odd was that one frame looked as if it had been deliberately pushed down onto the table, covering the picture from view.
He looked around the room. Everything else was perfectly in it's place. It seemed strange that just this one picture frame would be overturned, with no one picking it up and putting it back in it's place.
Troy looked over at his family, they were now being shown Ryan and Sharpay's dance trophies over on the mantelpiece. They were too polite to tell Ryan they didn't care, so Troy figured he had at least a few minutes where he could escape unnoticed to the other side of the room.
Approaching the table, he noticed that there was a thin layer of dust surrounding the overturned picture frame, as if no one had touched it since the day it had been slammed down out of sight. With a sense of anticipation and something that could have been slight fear, he reached his fingers out and picked up the frame.
Shards of glass fell into his palm, but it was nothing compared to the empty weight that had fallen into his stomach. Because he had just recognized the picture in the broken glass of the frame. It was a picture he hadn't seen for years, but he recognized it in a second. After all, there standing next to a beaming Sharpay, was himself.
Troy stared blankly at the photo, speechless. The frame had obviously been slammed down so forcefully that it had shattered. But before he could even start to string his one word thoughts together, a voice broke through the incomprehensible buzzing in his head; a voice that brought him completely and sharply back down to Earth.
"Hello, Mr. and Mrs. Bolton!"
Spinning around, Troy shoved the picture frame out of sight into his back pocket.
"Sharpay!" he gasped.
Standing by the stairs was the blonde and beautiful Sharpay Evans, wearing bright yellow with her hair in pigtails for the occasion, waving at Troy's parents. At the sound of Troy's voice, she merely looked over at him. Her smile faltered and her hand fell limply to her side. "Oh. Hi, Troy." she said, unenthusiastically.
"How are you, Sharpay? Still doing musicals I see?" said Mrs. Bolton, pointing at the trophies Ryan had been showing her.
"Yeah," said Sharpay, coming into the room, "but only community theater, I'm afraid." She shot a furtive look at Troy, as it had been his and Gabriella's fault that she was no longer in the school productions.
Troy felt a twinge of guilt somewhere in his lower region, looking around at all the dance and musical related trophies and awards around the room. He had never really thought about how much the school musical must have meant to her. Feeling the picture rubbing up against him from inside his back pocket, he didn't have to guess why it had been slammed down so hard in the first place.
As Ryan and Sharpay finally led them out of the house, Troy bit his lip, staring at the back of Sharpay's bouncing hair. If he had known that it had meant so much to her, he wouldn't have done the stupid musical in the first place. Sure, it was fun being in it with Gabriella and all, but he wouldn't have cared that much if Ryan and Sharpay had gotten the leads instead. It was certainly nothing to slam picture frames down about.
They entered the backyard and Troy stood alone in the sunshine, watching her walk to the barbecue and start flipping burgers high into the air to entertain some of the little kids.
"Troy! How are you, dear?"
He tore his eyes away from the mass of Sharpay's golden hair and saw her mother waving him over.
"Hello, Mrs. Evans. I'm good, thank you." Troy answered politely, walking over to her and Sharpay by the barbecue.
"What have you been up to lately? How's your girlfriend, Gabriella?" Mrs. Evans' asked, smiling at him. Next to her, Sharpay had stopped flipping burgers, and was staring moodily at the grill, as if she wished she could have thrown Gabriella into the fiery coals.
"Ex-girlfriend, actually," Troy corrected her. "We broke up." At these words, Sharpay turned her head so fast, Troy wasn't sure how it hadn't just rolled right off her head. She looked over at him and their eyes met. She had an unreadable expression on her face, and she quickly looked back down at the grill.
"Oh, I'm sorry to hear that. Well, maybe now you and Sharpay can perform together in a school musical!"
Sharpay cleared her throat loudly.
"What? I'm sure she would love that, Troy. She cried for days when Gabriella beat her out for that part."
"Mother!" Sharpay gasped, wheeling around from the grill and glaring at her. Her face had turned a violent shade of scarlet.
"What? You wouldn't like to sing with Troy?"
"No, it's not th-"
"All I've been hearing for months is 'Oh Mom, everyone likes Gabriella more than me!' and 'Oh Mom, I'll never be in a school musical again!' Well, now's your chance! I'm sure Troy would love to sing with you in the next musical. Right, Troy?"
Troy stood there staring at the both of them, stunned.
"Well..well, yeah. Of course." he answered quickly, smiling at them. This somehow seemed to anger Sharpay even more. She tapped her foot impatiently and turned her gaze onto him.
"Oh, shutup Troy."
He opened his mouth in shock, unsure of what to say, but her mother spoke first.
"Young lady, you are being rude. Troy is a guest here. You can either be nice to him or go to your room."
Sharpay stood glaring at the both of them.
"Then I'll just go to my damn room then." she muttered, turning on her heel and storming back into the house.
Troy and Mrs. Evans watched her retreating back. "I'm sorry, Troy." she said, sighing.
"Oh, it's...it's fine."
Mrs. Evans smiled at him. "You know, Sharpay really does mean well. She just...needs to get her priorities in check. And school musicals are at the top of the list right now, I'm afraid."
Troy smiled sadly at her and moved away to the outer edge of the pool. He stared into the watery depths and tried to collect his thoughts.
So Sharpay was more than the Ice Princess everyone thought she was. She actually cared about her reputation and what people thought about her. And...she cried for days? Troy couldn't fathom that. All he had ever seen was Sharpay acting cold and nasty. Who knew she even had any other emotions inside of her?
And that wasn't all. What had it been that her mother had said about the school musicals? That they were her top priority? Troy shook his head to himself. Didn't she care about anything else?
He had to go talk to her. After all, if he and Gabriella really were broken up, then he doubted she would want to do any more musicals with him. It might not be so bad doing one with Sharpay. She was pretty talented and he was sure it would make her happy. The idea of Sharpay crying and possibly even being...depressed...well, Troy couldn't bear the thought.
Quickly sidestepping his parents at the door, Troy rushed back inside the Evans' empty house. He took the stairs two at a time and when he reached the second floor hall, it wasn't hard to figure out which room was Sharpay's. A bright pink door with a star in the center had to be it.
Troy approached it apprehensively. With all the courage he could muster, he stuck his fist out and knocked three, slow knocks.
No answer.
"Um, Sharpay? Are you in there?" he asked tentatively.
Silence.
"Sharpay?" he said again, starting to have second thoughts on this whole "talk to her" thing. Maybe he should just turn back and go to the barbecue. Those burgers did look pretty good after all.
He knocked again, and leaned his ear against the door to hear what was going on inside. He heard hurried footsteps and before he could take his ear and body weight off the door, it had sprung open, tipping him sideways onto a shocked looking Sharpay Evans.
"Ow! Troy, what are you-" she said confusedly as he knocked her to the ground.
"Ah, sorry." he said, blushing as he untangled himself from her on the bright pink carpet. "Your carpet is very clean, by the way." he said, grinning at her as she stood up and brushed herself off.
"Oh get up, Troy. What are you doing here anyway?" she asked, folding her arms.
Troy stood up and ran his fingers through his hair. All the nervousness he had when he first knocked on the door had come rushing back. "Well, I...I was just seeing if you were alright."
Sharpay stared at him in disbelief. "Me? Alright? Shouldn't you be the one all upset about your little break up with Gab-...", she appeared to breathe in deeply. "Gabriella.", she finished with a simpering smile.
"I'm not upset."
She rolled her eyes at the ceiling.
"Sure you're not."
Troy shrugged his shoulders.
"I'm really not." he said, honestly.
Sharpay raised her eyebrows at him. "Okay, whatever you say." she said, walking across the room and laying down and stretching out on her (of course) bright pink, bed.
Troy felt the impulse to lay down next to her, but didn't want to push his luck. He instead turned around to look more at her room. The walls were also a violent bright pink, and there were more dance trophies, along with Broadway posters and pictures of her and Ryan performing.
"Why do you have my picture frame in your back pocket?" he heard her say from the bed. He spun around, his heart skipping a beat. He had completely forgotten about taking it.
"I was going to put it back, I swear." he said quickly, pulling it out and looking at it again. "I just wondered why...why it was down like that." he finished, looking up into her eyes across the room.
Sharpay sat up on the bed and stared at him.
"Why do you think, Troy Bolton?" she said, smirking in a sad sort of way.
He didn't answer at first. He looked down at the picture in his hand and felt the shattered glass cutting into his palm. It was nothing compared to the suffocating feeling he had in his chest, being all alone with this other side of Sharpay Evans.
"You know, if I had known that it had meant this much to you, I would never have done the musical."
She studied him from the bed, her eyes narrowed.
"And why would you do that? You don't even like me, Troy. No one does.", she said softly, looking up at him with sparkly, watery brown eyes.
He stood there in her bedroom, looking at her sitting up on the bed, so sad and alone, and something in his heart changed. He couldn't explain it, and wasn't sure exactly how it had happened, but something inside him, a feeling he couldn't describe, was growing with every second he stood there looking at her.
"It's not that we don't like you, it's that we don't know you." he said, his head starting to spin from the waves of feeling crashing inside of him.
Sharpay made a noise that somewhat resembled an angry bird.
"You've had three years to get to know me, Troy.", she said, folding her arms.
"And yet, this is probably the only real conversation we've ever had."
At these words, Sharpay unfolded her arms and finally looked away from Troy's searching gaze.
"I know."
Looking back on the situation later, Troy would never be able to understand the overwhelming feeling that finally took him at that moment. He suddenly strode across the room, flung himself down next to her on the bed and slammed his lips onto hers. He tried to put all of the feeling inside of him into the kiss, as if he could pass onto her his remorse and regret of ignoring her for all that time, and heal her pain.
Moments later, she pulled away and stared deep into his blue eyes. He could see wet tears shining on her face, and glistening on her eyelashes. Reaching up, he wiped them away.
"Sharpay, I'd like to get to know you better."
A/N: So what did you think?! My first HSM fanfic. If I get a lot of reviews and people liked it, maybe I'll make a sequel or make it a two shot or something. I don't know if I could top this one, it took a lot out of me! Even if it wasn't that great..lol. Well, leave me a review telling me what you thought!!