Chapter One: Familiar Faces in Rural Places
"It does not matter how slowly you go so long as you don't stop."
-Confucius
Twenty-two-year-old Gabriella Montez gripped the steering wheel and blinked back the urge to close her eyes. It was at least eleven o' clock by now. The girl scanned the dashboard with her flashing, black eyes. Eleven forty-six, blinked the clean, blue numbers set into the digital clock. She had been driving longer than she had imagined.
The wheels of Gabriella's Saab rattled and rolled through the potholes on the road. The tragic lack of asphalt made her stomach want to turn. There was no doubt in Gabriella's mind that her new, black tires would be in need of replacing before this trip was over.
It was the middle of June, and Gabriella was driving home from college to visit her mother in Albuquerque. It had been a whole six months since the two had seen each other, and Gabriella had been planning this surprise visit since April. What she hadn't been counting on, however, was I-40 being closed due to an accident involving a private plane and a truck carrying a mobile home as an oversized load. Having seen the fire from the exit a ways back, Gabriella had easily guessed that interstate traffic would be backed up all night.
For the first hour or so after Gabriella had exited the interstate and opted to continue on the back-roads of central New Mexico, she had been surrounded by other travelers attempting to make further headway before stopping to rest. Now, it appeared to be just Gabriella, her Saab, and a bunch of gravel.
"Can't they just pave the dang road?" Gabriella said out loud, partially to keep herself awake, and partially because she was just wondering. Dust was flying up on either side of the silver car, tinting the windows a grey/brown hue. It seemed like ages ago when Gabriella had been cruising down I-40, her radio blasting. Now, she was too far out for any radio station to even recognize her car's antennae.
Each time Gabriella blinked, her eyes seemed to stay shut for longer and longer periods of time. The urge to slump over the steering wheel and fall asleep with her face pressed against the speedometer was becoming stronger and stronger. Maybe if she just pulled the car over by the side of the road she wouldn't hit anything when she fell asleep. There sure as heck wasn't any other car around to hit…
POP.
Gabriella's eyes flew open at the noise. She felt the car sort of rock and then shudder, as if it was having a seizure. Slamming on the brake, Gabriella watched as the scenery flew past on either side of her. The vehicle didn't stop, but it slowed down significantly. Gabriella tried to pull her Saab off the road and into the grass, but the blown tire made it nearly impossible to steer in the right direction. The girl screamed as her car careened into the smothering, neck-high grass beside the road and, at last, stopped.
At first, the only noise was Gabriella's breath as she sat there, eyes twisted shut, heart pounding. But as she calmed down and began to relax her constricted muscles, she began to notice another noise.
"Let the good times roll", belted Gabriella's purse. Immediately, her hand dove into it in search of the cell phone in question.
Perfect timing, Gabriella mused sarcastically as she whipped out her phone. "Troy," read the Caller ID. Even better, Gabriella thought. She had been with her boyfriend, Troy Bolton, since junior year in high school. Then, the two had been inseparable; every afternoon, it seemed, was spent together, at one house or the other. Regrettably, Troy and Gabriella had been growing apart since they had gone their separate ways for college. They hadn't spoken in what seemed like months. People asked Gabriella why she was still with him. Honestly, it was because they never talked long enough to actually come to the mutual decision to break up.
"Hello?" Gabriella said into the phone. She put on her signature Sweet Voice™, used only for parents of friends and, of course, boyfriends.
"Gabi!" Troy responded. Gabriella mentally kicked herself at how thrilled Troy sounded to talk to her. It was just one of the many things keeping them together.
"Troy," Gabriella said. "How are you?"
"Fine," he answered. "I'm great. And what about you?"
For a split second, Gabriella thought about lying and saying something along the lines of, I'm great. I'm at home with my mom for the summer. That response would have bypassed any sort of unwanted concern on Troy's part. However, something in Gabriella's brain was giving her a strange and sort of wicked thought: if Troy was worried about her, then he could come get her and take her home, to her mom's house. Perhaps, if Gabriella was lucky, he would even take care of getting a new tire for her. This whim-of-the-moment though was what caused Gabriella to blurt out, "Actually, I blew a tire on a road in the middle of nowhere. I don't have enough money to buy another one, and I don't have a ride or anything, since I don't know anyone out here." Gabriella held her breath and waited for her boyfriend's response.
"I'll come get you!" Troy wasted no time in saying. "Just tell me where your car is and I'll come find you!" He sounded rather excited about all of this. Gabriella tried her hardest to forget about the hundred-dollar bill stuffed down at the bottom of her wallet, for emergencies, and the sign for an approaching bed and breakfast she had passed a few minutes ago, boasting that it would happily welcome any visitors.
With a sinking, culpable feeling in her stomach, Gabriella rattled off the name of the last town she had passed, and the number of the exit she had used to come across the road she was on. Or rather, next to. She told Troy what her car looked like (a silver Saab with a yellow smiley-face on the antennae), and with a cheerful, "I'll be there tomorrow morning," from Troy, the two hung up.
Gabriella grabbed her purse from the passenger seat and opened the door to her car. The tall, spidery grass brushed up against her legs, giving her the sensation she had just walked unexpectedly into a sea of locusts. A rumble from the midnight sky forecasted what was rapidly appearing as Gabriella's enemy: rain. Already Gabriella was aware of fat, sloppy droplets landing on her forehead and on the tops of her tan Puma tennis shoes.
With one last, disinclined glance at her beloved Saab, Gabriella started up the road. The wind was beginning to blow angrily, mussing her hair. Her attempts to undo the rat's nest were futile; after a few minutes, Gabriella gave up the fight and allowed her black tresses to be blown wherever the wind wished them to go.
After about ten minutes of walking against the wind and the towering grass, Gabriella came within eyesight of what appeared to be a large, wooden sign. "Aunt Ruby's Bed and Breakfast," it read in large letters slapped on in red paint. A primitive drawing of an exaggerated, red jewel further demonstrated the title.
"Thank God," Gabriella whispered out loud, tilting her head up towards the swirling, black sky. She immediately regretted this action, as a raindrop landed in her eye, smudging her mascara.
The front walk up to the bed and breakfast seemed to last a lifetime. It was a journey to call its own; a complete exodus of sorts. By the time Gabriella reached the front stoop, she was ready to drop fast asleep on the splintered wood underneath her aching feet. She hardly had the energy to ring the doorbell.
A plump, angry woman in a harsh, man-ish nightshirt appeared at the door. Her graying hair was tousled, and her eyes were squinty and half-closed.
"Are you Ruby?" Gabriella asked hesitantly, and the woman nodded, stepping onto the threshold. Gabriella noticed that her feet were calloused and yellow.
"My car broke down," Gabriella explained as quickly as possible, "and I don't have a place to stay or the number of an auto shop to buy a new tire or-"
"No vacancy," Ruby growled.
"What?" Gabriella was dumbstruck.
"No vacancy," repeated Ruby. "Read the sign." Gabriella stepped back and searched in vain for a sign in the vicinity of the door. "At the sign by the road," the woman sighed. Then, with a huff and a muttered curse, she slammed the door in Gabriella's face, leaving the girl stranded on the rickety porch.
"Barbaric idiot," Gabriella, never one for swearing, hissed at the closed door. Whirling around on one sore heel, she began the march back up to the street. She was almost to the entrance when her foot came down on a muddy piece of paper. "No Vacancy", it read in thin, black Sharpie. Gabriella came extremely close to using some choice curses at that moment in time.
Feeling lost and disoriented, Gabriella started back up the road in the opposite direction from her car. Perhaps if she wandered far enough, she would come across a kindly stranger who would offer her a comfortable sofa on which to spend the night…
Then, the rain started.
Within seconds, Gabriella's entire figure was soaked through to the bone marrow, it seemed. Her T-shirt clung to her like a second, bright green skin, and her jeans gained approximately fifteen pounds from all the withheld water weight. Her Pumas went from a pleasant tan color to what can only be described as Puke. The ground beneath her feet became nothing more than a lasagna of eroding dirt and churning, brown water.
"Fiyero, hurry up and pee! It's raining!"
At first, Gabriella was sure the voice was a figment of her imagination; a pure invention due to early hypothermia.
"C'mon, you stupid dog! Fiyero!" The second time the voice came, Gabriella started to frantically look around for its source. It seemed to be coming from the other side of the road, directly across from where Gabriella had been standing, helplessly soaking up the rainwater. Squinting, she could indeed make out the shape of a mailbox, and beside it, the figure of a girl about Gabriella's own age. The girl was holding a leash, which was attached to the collar of a dog about the size of a microwave oven.
Someone lives on this road! thought Gabriella. I mean, someone who isn't a fat barbarian. Forgetting her manners and her fears of muddying her sneakers, Gabriella broke into a desperate sprint, crossing the nearly invisible street in two seconds flat.
"Excuse me!" she called, and the girl turned around, her features still fogged by the downpour. "My car broke down and I'm stranded and I don't know anyone here to get help from…" The dog emitted a warning growl, but Gabriella ignored it. She had trailed off due to the fact that as she got closer, and the barrier of rain got thinner, she could make out the girl's face at last.
The blonde hair might have been pulled back in a scrunchie, but it was still bouncy and perfectly curled. And though the habitual four-inch stilettos were nowhere in sight, Gabriella still recognized the princess-like posture, the dainty-ness of the shoulders, and the slight jutting out of the hips. Gabriella would have recognized them of she was blind and stuck under a boulder.
It was Sharpay Evans, in the flesh.
"Are you okay?" Sharpay asked, referring to the fact that Gabriella's jaw was hanging wide open. She waved her hand in front of Gabriella's face, and black eyes met Sharpay's chocolate ones. A slight pang of recognition jarred Sharpay's mind. The dog began growling again.
"Sharpay?" said the dark-haired girl. A grin grew on Sharpay's face.
"Gabriella!" she squealed loudly and suddenly. The dog's growls became angered barks. "Omigosh! This is so cool!" Gabriella's heart swelled at the familiar language. It was like returning to America after years of nothing but Japanese.
"I can't believe you're here!" Sharpay went on, her face beaming.
"Me neither," Gabriella said. She was just as ecstatic as her old friend, but had different, more subdued ways of showing it.
Sharpay threw her arms around Gabriella. "So your car broke down? Where?" Gabriella pointed down the road.
"About ten minutes that way," she said. "I blew a tire and got stuck in a small ditch off the side of the road."
Sharpay nodded sympathetically. "There's a pothole there," she explained. "About half the people who drive around here in the dark hit it and screw up their cars. My brother did the same thing you did just a few months ago." Gabriella tensed at the mention of Ryan. She hadn't thought about him in ages, practically since graduation.
"Let's get you inside," Sharpay said. "You're already soaked." Though the hospitality was drastically out of character judging by the Sharpay Gabriella knew in high school, the action was welcomed. Gabriella had one concern first, though.
"What about my car?" she asked. "Someone could steal it overnight, or something…"
"In a town this small?" Sharpay laughed. "Don't worry about it." She took Gabriella's arm and began to lead her up the driveway. As they walked, the dog kept up futile attempts to wander off course and sniff the wet grass surrounding the driveway.
"Fiyero, you stupid dog," Sharpay scolded. "This is the last time I take you for a walk." She turned to Gabriella. "He's Ryan's dog," she explained. "That's why he's so stupid. It must have rubbed off on him."
Gabriella looked up from the dog and gasped at what she saw before her. Rising up from the wet darkness was one of the most beautiful homes Gabriella had ever seen. Elegant and grand, it must have covered a huge expanse of land. It was almost like a palace of yellow siding.
Gabriella didn't have to express her awe with words; her face must have shown it all. "It was my parents'," said Sharpay. "They came here on vacations for my whole childhood." She paused. "Now that they're gone, it's ours. Mine and Ryan's." Gabriella's silent reverence expanded when Sharpay led her through the front door and into the foyer.
"I can't believe you live here," Gabriella said, but soon took back her words, as she remembered how rich Sharpay and Ryan had been in high school. "Actually," she added, "I can."
Half an hour later, just a few minutes after midnight, Gabriella was settled into Sharpay's first story guestroom, and also wearing Sharpay's pajamas, as all of Gabriella's clothes were sitting idly in her car. The pajama pants were too short and too big in the legs, and the shirt was laughably roomy, but it was alright. At least they're warm, Gabriella thought, snuggling herself against the pillows. Above her, a ceiling fan turned slowly. She could still hear Fiyero's nail's clicking across the hardwood floors. Rolling over, she could still feel the hot tea in her stomach.
What a day, she thought. I drove for two hours, nearly crashed my car, got drenched in the rain, and now I'm sleeping in Sharpay Evans' guestroom. Just wait until Troy finds out…
Gabriella felt a pang in her heart. She had forgotten all about Troy. Then again, she was used to doing that. But how would he find her? He would be beside himself with worry…
With this calming and happy thought, Gabriella pulled the sheets (expensive yet soft) up to her chin and closed her eyes. In moments, she was asleep.