This weird story came to me as I was looking for a couple of photos of me and my cousins when we were younger. I don't really know the whole point of the story, even after re-reading it a few times, but it made sense in my head as I was writing it. If anyone can come up with a good point of the story, let me know.

And I know the last story I wrote hasn't been touched since before christmas. It hasn't been forgotten, I've just been working on finishing one of the stories I started last August. Once that's done, Therapy should be next on my list.

Enjoy

I'm really camera shy.

Strange thing for a guy like me, someone who likes to have people's attention focused entirely on him while I'm on stage.

It always seemed that whenever someone took a photo of me, they'd get me in an unflattering position. I'd have my mouth half open, or I would be looking off to one side, which would make me look totally wacko.

Sometimes, the pictures of me make my eyes look so bloodshot, and are usually taken when my hair is just that bit more messed up than usual.

Pictures when I'm on my own are total crap.

On the other hand, all the pictures I have with Troy and me, I look amazing in. It's not because standing next to Troy makes me look good on principal. I'm not sure why that is, it's something I'll never work out.

Course, Troy being hot isn't exactly what I am thinking about right now. I'm sitting on my bed, cross-legged, pictures covering not just my lap, but almost the entire length of the bed.

When I brought out the junk box tonight I was looking for this best picture I have of Troy, but for the life of me I can't find it in this box.

I remember it like it was yesterday, and yes I know how corny that sounds. It was taken the opening night of the Twinkle Town musical, well over seven years ago now. It was the first time we'd ever performed on stage together – it was his first time performing on stage – and it was the first time in my whole life that I was able to fulfil one of my wishes, and have Troy Bolton hug me.

Yes, it just a friendly hug, of two people who had just performed on stage and were on a high after such an outstanding performance. I mean, Gabriella and Sharpay got a photo taken in exactly the same pose, and that doesn't really mean anything, does it?

I need to see that photo again.

It was the first time Troy had died his hair, for his part as Nicky in the musical. His normal brown hair was pure black when he came in to the dressing room before the show. I remember just standing there, as both Gabriella and Sharpay fawned over the new look, me quietly taking in the hot new image of him.

So in this photo, when he hugs me, theres me with my bright blonde hair, and him with his deep dark hair, a pure contrast that looked amazing when the photo was developed.

But what was better, was the way his face was slightly scrunched up from the bright flash a half-second before the picture was taken, just enough to make it looked like he had a big smile on his face. I think that's why I love that picture so much, because it's the only one I have of him where it looks like he's smiling.

My sister, Sharpay, took that picture.

To be honest, I think she took most of the photos that I'm searching through right now.

She was only eleven minutes older than me, but you would think by her remarkable talent – the proof of which is covering my bed right this moment – that she was a lot older.

She had such inspiration to become a professional photographer, that when she decided that being on stage ultimately wasn't what she wanted to do, we all knew that she would have no problems starting her own photography business.

Did okay at first. After a year or so she ended up getting a job working for some big name people, would call me on the phone every Friday night to say that the people in New York didn't care exactly how old you were as long you had 'talent'.

But her boyfriend – or fiancé really at the time, although why she would agree to marry him I'll never understand – had a problem with drugs, and it was hard to keep him under control. When she tried leaving him, he hit her over the head with a glass vase.

I don't think he really meant to kill her.

After Shar died, who did I have left? Dad was always away on business trips, and Mom threw herself head first into her work with such ferociousness that for a long time it seemed like she forgot she had another kid, one who was trying to cope with the death of his twin sister. Dad left her after a while, and I never really saw him much after that.

So by the age of 20, I was alone.

But then I had Troy. He was the shoulder that let me cry on, would never tell me that things would get better or would fade away as I grew up – he knew I hated being told all that stuff at Shar's funeral. He would just sit there, being Troy-like.

I think that was around the time I fell in love with him.

I mean, yeah I'd fancied him at school and that, but I was just a kid back then, who really didn't know what love was.

But it was halfway through the second year at college. It was just him and me watching the wrestling on the telly, food and drinks scattered on the table, and crumbs everywhere.

He'd made some daft comment about being much better than The Rock, and proceeded to show me a half-assed attempt at The Rock's eyebrow. I said he was crazy, and he started wrestling with me, and we knocked the food off it's plates and spilt some juice, and he had me pinned to the floor but yep, you guessed it, I pressed my lips up against his.

Afterwards, when we were both trying to avoid looking at each other as we awkwardly put on our clothes, I did the one thing I knew best how to do.

I laughed it off as a male sexual tension-type thing.

Everything would have been alright, if I hadn't seen the look on his face, sort of a cross between god honest relief, and an 'I just slept with you and now you're breaking my heart' kind of look.

But no matter what I said that night, less than a week later Troy found himself back on my lips and back in my bed.

I don't think I ever felt more comfortable with my life than I did when I was laying pressed up against Troy's naked back.

But that's not the story of my life, oh how there is much more.

The story goes like this: I'm a fuck-up. A total one at that.

Just like school, just like my (non)relationship with my mother and my sorry attempt to deal with the death of my sister, I fucked up the thing that I had with Troy.

That second time, I blew him off as another mistake, a reckless error on my part, and as a result lost him to someone that he had a chance at a normal relationship with.

So why am I doing this? Why am I sitting in a pile of pictures of me and Troy that my dead sister took years ago and feeling sorry for myself?

Because about six hours ago, I got a visit from an old friend. She showed up on my doorstep, the first time I've seen or spoke to her in nearly three months.

Gabriella Montez, who had disappeared from Albuquerque not long after high school to attend a university in San Francisco, a place she got thanks to my dad, told me of the most awful news I never wanted to hear in my life.

Her and Troy were getting married.

I'd only seen Troy once since that night – the second time that I told him it was a mistake, and he walked out of the apartment minutes later, half dressed.

Now he has someone that can make him feel wanted, loved, someone who can appreciate him in a way that I couldn't.

Someone who isn't afraid to tell him they love him.

You know, it occurs to me now where that picture is.

I remember now. Troy came back a month or so after he walked out. He asked me if he could have it. He never said anything about why he wanted it, but I felt such bitterness towards him that he could take it away from me, I handed it to him without even blinking. I knew for sure it was gonna end up being framed and stuck up on a night stand somewhere in whose-ever place of someone he loves more than me.

Hearing him say that, just before he walked away that month before, it killed me.

Yeah, I loved him, but I couldn't say it back. I hated myself, I still do, and for days afterwards I was so tempted to ring him or text him and apologise. But it never happened, and when he came over and took that picture away from me, I knew I had to let him go.

Even with the box full of pictures I have of him, I'll never have one that shows the Troy I remember the most fondly.

The Troy that was mine and belonged to me and only me.

I'm a selfish bastard really.

I couldn't share him with anyone then and I won't give myself the pleasure of sharing him now. He belongs to her now and, well, I guess I'll always belong to someone that doesn't love me.