Wishful Thinking and Thoughtful Wishing
A Fanfic by Desireé Lemmon
Setting: Albuquerque, New Mexico, January 2008
Disclaimer: Do I own HSM? Shocking, but no. It belongs to director and producers and all that jazz. I'm just a writer. :)
A/N: Thanks guys if you read and/or reviewed for Poster Child. It's revision should be up quickly following Wishful; I was just unhappy with its writing. Anyway, enjoy this! -love- Desireé
Chapter One, Anything You Can Love, I Can Love Better
The tale of giving birth to a child was excruciatingly painful, but the afterwards was supposed to be the best part. That was what her mother always told her. After all the pain, all the tears, everything would cease and a rush of happiness would flow through you. The child, in a fit of tears, would be the most beautiful thing to you. The first glance would be the first feeling of love.
How desperately she wanted to love this child. It was growing inside her, and while some people saw it as a bacteria or a virus, she thought of it as a blessing. No, it wasn't purposely done. The form of life was purely accidental, never once had she expected the pregnancy stick to turn blue. But she knew if she was destined to have a child at the age of eighteen, then so be it.
Others, however, did not see it as simple as this. Her family was embarrassed; no one at school spoke to her. Not even the baby's father. What a wimp, she thought when he first looked at her with disgust. Can't own up to something as beautiful as new life. Wimp. A few people asked questions and stuck their noses in places where they didn't belong. Cathy Rainer had flat out asked in home economics if she was going to go for adoption or not. "No," was the thoughtful response, "I don't think I'll go for adoption."
Her parents, though, decided the baby would be better off with new people, a couple who would love it. She protested, claiming she could love it just as they would. But this wasn't true, and she knew it at heart. There would be no rush of happiness and gush of love when the baby would be born—it would only be relief that the agony was over. And then would come to part of goodbye. She would carry this baby around for nine months, feeding it all day and all night, but there would be no introduction when it actually entered the world. Perhaps a glance, maybe even a minute to admire its innocence, but eventually, the nurse would take it elsewhere, seeing the whole thing as just another teenage mother's baby who would go to another couple unable to have children themselves. She didn't want to be just another teenage mother.
"But you are," her mother shot bitterly when this came up at dinner. She was three months along now, and only slightly showing. It was a wonder she had no morning sickness in the first trimester—she took this as a sign of hope. The birth would be easy, too, she decided, just like the pregnancy. "You are just another teenage mother, ending up with a child you don't deserve."
It was unfair, she thought, that people could be so judgmental. No one knew who the father was, and if they did, pandemonium would ensue at East High. She knew he wouldn't want word to get around, and she felt the same way. If East High had a magazine, this story would be all over it blaring the headline, "Scandal." And every student would pick up a copy, trying to assemble as much information as possible. People could thrive off others' misfortune.
Misfortune was a harsh word, especially to describe something as miraculous as a baby. She knew there were a million women who would swim across an ocean just to have one, and for a moment, she felt guilty and ungrateful. As much as she wanted to love this baby, she also hated it. Every time she ate for two, she felt disgusted with herself. Each time her feet hurt or her back ached, a small flare of anger blazed in her heart. This baby had turned her friends away, and she was left alone in a very, very big world.
There was one person who would call once in a while, and that was Kelsi, just to check up on her. The pregnancy never came up, though they easily worked around it with topics like the weather and that night's homework. But one afternoon, Kelsi stepped into unfamiliar territory. "Are you going to name it?" she asked, her voice soft and subtle.
This wasn't a shock, but instead a relief to the mother-to-be. No one addressed her situation unless they had to, and the only one obligated to do so was her mother or, occasionally, her father. The woman always rolled her eyes or commented sarcastically, and the man would just sigh and pat his daughter's shoulder. She wished Kelsi was there beside her, absorbing all the sadness and angst with her. "I don't know," she admitted, brushing away a tear. "I—I think it's going to be born a little after graduation, so I won't have to worry about school. Not like I'm going to get into a college anyway."
"Don't say that!" Kelsi said abruptly. She heard a little intake of breath from the person on the other end of the line. "Ella, don't say that. You're beautiful, you're talented, you've got more brains than anyone I've ever met, and you have a sense of self-awareness. I know you are the best person to handle a situation like this."
Anger welled up inside the pregnant teenager. "What is that supposed to mean?" she asked, her voice lined with suspicion. "I suppose if Sharpay was stuck with an unborn baby, she'd be a mess and everyone would rush to help her."
"No!" Kelsi said, her voice beginning to lose confidence. "No, Ella, I meant that you are so..." She wanted to say 'motherly' but that didn't sound right. She swallowed, trying to finish her sentence before her friend got any angrier. "You're so smart," she finally finished lamely.
There was a very small part of the soon to be teenaged mom that wanted to shout at Kelsi and tell her she couldn't do this alone, yet somehow she ended up without a soul around. She wanted to scream who the father was, and she wanted the gossip to spread. But she, like always, didn't. "Well, thank you," she said softly. "I have to go, some chores to finish. See you later." And with that, she hung up.
No one was there to see to it that she, a young woman with a baby on the way, would get through this. At that moment, she felt that if she dropped dead in the street gutter, no one would care. No one would rush to her side and ask if she was okay, or call an ambulance. People had left her to spoil like old take-out from last week, stuck in the back of the refrigerator. No one wanted the old food, and maybe, they thought, it would be better off rotting away in solitude. "How silly people can be," Gabriella said bitterly. "So silly."
It was the weekend, when any normal teenager would be out with friends. Instead, though, she was stuck, home alone on a Saturday night. Gabriella glanced at the phone again, wondering why she ended her phone call with Kelsi, the only friend she had now. The loneliness she had experienced many times before seemed to be so obvious at the moment. Her parents were both out of the house, at some family function on the other side of town. No one in the Montez Family Tree knew about Gabriella's baby yet. Theresa firmly meant to keep it this way. "We don't need more drama," she had said before she draped her coat around her arm and closed the front door behind her.
Nothing on the TV guide intrigued Gabriella enough to select the channel. Eventually, she turned the television off and wandered upstairs. Her balcony was cleared, seldom used in the wintertime. There was a slight warmth to it, though, as she stepped outside, seeing the tree branches of the grand oak in the backyard cascade down around her.
It was a fact that she was on her own. Maybe at one point, she could have saved herself and gotten everyone to forgive her. She knew Kelsi was being nice during every phone call, and she grew paranoid: maybe they whispered behind her back. Everything she had said earlier was all transferred to the rest of the group. At school, she would see everyone, hoping to get a word or two out. But they would all shake their heads, uninterested in what she had to say. The hurt was overwhelming, but Gabriella did her best to pretend she was fine. Pretend her life wasn't over.
"Slut," she hissed to Gabriella. They stood in the cafeteria of East High, on the day before school let out for winter vacation. "You're a slut, and you'll always be." Sharpay folded her arms triumphantly and turned to walk away, followed by her Sharpettes. From a distance, Taylor glared at her, Martha and Kelsi nervously watching on. Zeke Baylor and Jason Cross were muttering to each other, stealing glances from the pregnant teen every once in a while. Even Ryan, who she had once come to befriend, had deserted her. Sometimes they would lock eyes and he would look sad, almost rueful. Perhaps he felt sorry for cutting off all communication with her, perhaps he was embarrassed by his sister's foul mouth and nasty habit of gossip. But despite his contriteness, Ryan was just another student at East High: he feigned ignorance of Gabriella's presence, avoiding her looks of plea. She couldn't find herself to blame him: you had to choose your place in life. Surely no one could cross the line to come to her side. They remained safe on the side of 'Normality' and she kept to herself on the 'Outcast' side.