Title: High Above A Land of Green
Disclaimer:Do I really need to tell you that I don't own this? I mean obviously. :D
She transfers at the end of their sophomore year, all brown eyes and curves, but instead of being shy like a wilting flower she's bright and bubbly and just the tiniest bit naughty. He watches her that first day she there her smile shining across the lunchroom as she looks for somewhere to sit. The groups still divided and the tables with a barrier of knowneachotherforever around them. She sits without pause at a table full of outcast girls, there shoulders hunched and bent but by the time the bell rings and they look alive and tall and more than one of them he notices for the first time are actually quite pretty. But it's her eyes he catches, her smile he repeats and it's her he sees when he closes his eyes for days afterward.
He knows it's silly because he's got an amazing girlfriend, one he wanted and fought for, but when her hands are warm in his and her face is tilted toward him, he feels spread out and thin and not real at all. Like somewhere that expected basketball champion morphed into Troy and Gabriella forever, how it's not what being her was about at all and yet here they are floating around each other and staying, not because of what they want but because of what everyone else thinks. How it is as it always was. He holds her hand and tilts his head and kisses her. And it's nothing more than following the rules.
He doesn't talk to her that first week she's there. He sees her everywhere, flitting in and out of his vision, a sweep of hair and a bustle of movement but he can't quite catch up to her at all. Then it happens, she's sitting on the stage her legs hanging off, the room bare and empty. Her voice calling out about a land above the green and the blue and clouds, where anything is possible. He falls for her without knowing.
But first he becomes her friend. He claps when she's finished and she mock bows at him and as soon as she says her name, he grins.
"So, Tracy. What brought you to East High?"
"My Ma and Dad." And when she smiles her whole face shines. "Why how did you get here?"
He can feel the ache as his face stretches further into a grin. "Stork of course."
And when she laughs she leans toward him and he wants to know her forever.
It's the beginning but it happens somewhere in the very middle of it all.
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He falls apart in April, a wrong turn and his knee is gone and all his dreams are staring down at him as he lays on that floor looking up and done. He sees his Dad's face first, blurring in between the lights and the thunder and the turning of his stomach. He wants to grab at his leg but can't turn without feeling like he's just falling asleep. It's Gabriella voice he hears first, her hushed baby and her hands on his arm as the paramedics come.
It's never the same after that, never as easy or cool or simple. High school ends then, with everything in reds and whites and somewhere in it all he can see Tracy's face pushed close and worry in her eyes and her teeth at her lip and her hands around his Mom's. She's the last face he sees before the pain takes over and the blankness makes it all go away.
May brings flowers, in vases and wreaths and a hundred little pots. He picks each silly petal off. He hates this room all white and lonely and he hates the colors in the flowers, he can't seem to be happy or less angry. He snaps at Gabby when she kisses his cheek and makes his Dad wince when he talks about surgery and getting better and this not being the end.
"So does she or doesn't she?"
He glares and rips harder at the flower. "What's that even mean?"
Tracy picks up a flower and twirls the stem in her hand. "She loves you." She plucks off one little yellow petal. "She loves you not." She plucks another one and looks at him with her eyes dimmed. "Seems like a sad way to tell, huh?"
"I don't need to know if she loves me." But he looks at the all the yellow around him and wonders what it all means.
"You hurt her feelings."
"She's suffocating me." He plucks another one. She loves me. She loves me not.
"Maybe you should tell her you need room then." She loves me.
"I can't, she needs me." She loves me not.
She shrugs. "She does." It hits him. She loves me, he thinks as he pulls the last petal away.
Gabby is standing at the door and Tracy leans down and hugs him. "Everything gets better eventually."
He tries to stop the glare.
"I mean, eventually it'll get better than this." She runs her lips over his cheek. And for a moment he is happy and as she leaves her eyes on him as she slips backwards out of the door. He sees those yellow wishes in her hair.
She loves him not.
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She becomes the thing he wants most. That piece of his life that keeps him afloat and he doesn't think she even knows how he feels. How if it wasn't for her he thinks he would have gone mad. Would have given up, swallowed up by those red and white lights and the sterile room and the way that he's better but never as good.
He kisses her without meaning too. But she's laughing and her hand is in his as they wander around a campus they've gone to see. The day is warm and the sun burns in his eyes. And there she is in yellow like wishes and hopes and things he'd long given up on.(she loves him) He kiss her to steal a bit of it away. To capture and hold and never give it back. She hums against his lips and he can feel her boundless energy in his lips and under his fingers and when they pull away there is a hint of smile and a brokeness in her eyes.
"You're still dating someone else." She loosens her hand and he grabs tighter.
"I don't love her." I love you, he thinks but the words don't come.
"Still." She moves her hands away and stares into the blue sky and sighs. "You're with someone else."
"Yeah."
He kisses her again anyway. And she crumbles a bit in his hands. The rest of the day they cling and kiss and he tells her that it's her. He tells her the truth.
And when he pulls into her driveway, she leans close and tells him that it's all right. That she knows, that she always knew. She touches her hand to his chest and kisses his cheek.
"Friends forever, right?"
"Always."
But it feels like a lie.
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He can't stay away, even when he knows it's wrong. He can't break up with Gabby, not when he's already failed at everything else. But he can't stop wanting Tracy either. Can't stop the way his heart beats in his chest and she's all he can see in black and white dreams.
"I'm sorry."
She nods and turns but doesn't cry. "I know." She licks her lips and stares ahead, at the sky and the stars, at the clouds forming and dropping. The world keeps going by. "It is what it is."
He puts his hand on her shoulder. And let's his fingers graze her face. "It's all almost over anyway. This is the end."
"The very last of everything." She laughs and it echoes into the sky.
"Soon it'll be prom and graduation and then we'll be as far away as we can."
"Are you going to leave her then?"
He sees the yellow petal in his eye. She loves him not.
"Maybe."
"Are you going to be unhappy forever?"
Yes. "Maybe." He grins but it's dust and ground and lives half lived.
"That's pathetic."
He nods and stares at the sky with her. The stars shining out images of men of action and myth and half made truth.
A day later he's standing with Gabby at the park, the ducks waddling and water that shines.
"I'm sorry."
She doesn't look away from the water. "What do you have to be sorry about?"
"I want to break up." The words come out and it's over and easy and done.
She turns quickly, her hair whipping and he's surprised to see her shock. "WHY?"
"I'm not happy."
She slaps him. There's no sound or breath just the soft touch of a hand that's already stopped before it was to late.
She leaves without saying a word and he looks out into the water and feeds the ducks.
"So you finally maned up." Chad is standing to the side.
"I guess."
"She wasn't really your style anyway." He grabs the bread from his hands and throws it down in a zig zag. "Does this mean you and Tracy are finally goi-"
He shakes his head. "I didn't break up with Gabby for her. I broke up with Gabby because I really wasn't happy. I want to be better than this. I want more than-" He doesn't finish instead he dumps the last of the bread out and smacks Chad's arm. "Tag. You're it." He runs away. And for a little while it's all like it was years and eons ago.
And after a pick-up game and running just to run he goes home to see fresh flowers on the table. The petals of the carnations are dropping across the table. He picks one up and smashes it in his fingers.
She loves him.
But he's afraid that maybe that's not enough.
She loves him not.
Maybe that's all there is.
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It ends with Graduation. The gowns of red and the school in white and nothing but possibilities in their way. He sits rolls in front of her and tries to stop himself from glancing back.
When it's over and the ground is littered with red caps he finds her near the twisted tree in the courtyard.
"So this is it?"
"Yeah. I guess so." She twists her hands in her gown.
"I have something for you." He takes her hand and pulls her close. "Here." From behind him he gives her a yellow rose.
"Thank you it's beautiful."
"Do it."
She looks up at him and shakes her head with a grin. "Okay."
She says the words twenty-eight times. "He loves me."
"He does." He kisses her.
Because they have everything in front of them and nothing at all to stand in their way.