The Brighter Side

After the hardest and longest year of my life, here I was in a new town, a new state, a new school. No one knew I had a son, no one knew who I was before this. I could totally reinvent myself. After I gave birth to my son, my mom and I stayed up all night talking about what we should do from here, if I should go back to school for my senior year, or if my mom should take the new promotion her company had offered her as the CEO of their new branch in New York. After spending the whole summer going back and forth we both decided that New York would be the break we both needed.

"Welcome to East High Miss. Evans" Mr. Matsui, East High's principal, said as he shook my hand. Today was my first day and to say I was nervous would be an understatement, I was up until two in the morning going over my outfit for today. I had decided on a white flowly mid-thigh skirt and a long sleeved v-neck blue shirt, with a loose belt around my waist and blue heels. I wanted to look as cute as possible, this was the clean start I was looking for, and I wanted to make the most of it.

I walked into my first class early, as I headed to a seat in the second row, students started arriving. I noticed two boys walk in with basketball warm-ups on; one had extremely curly hair and was bouncing a basketball, while the other had shaggy brown hair and was talking on his cell phone. The curly haired guy took a seat on the left of me while the shaggy one took a seat in from of him.

"Dude, you better hang up before Darbus flips her lid." Curly said putting his basketball under his desk.

"Hey, I got to go . . . I'll talk to you later." Shaggy said just as the teacher walked in. She was the most outrageous teacher I have ever seen, she had this flowery shirt on with a scarf around her neck, about four necklaces on and too many bracelets to count.

"I hope you guys all had an excellent summer, this will be the start of the most important year of your life. Troy Bolton I would advice you to put that away unless you want me to compensate it." Mrs. Darbus said without even looking up.

Troy quickly put his phone into his packet as he turned around to his friend giving him a weird look.

"Man, that was weird; she didn't force you into detention."

"Well Chad, this just means she's finally giving into my charm." Troy said laughing.

"Yeah, that's it man." Chad said shaking his head.

I felt someone tap my arm and turned around to see a girl with curly brown hair that was up in a ponytail, with a big smile on her face.

"Hi, I'm Martha, you're new aren't you?"

"Yeah, my mom's company transferred her here from Colorado. I'm Shar by the way." I said smiling, happy that I seemed to already have a friend.

"That's so cool that you're from Colorado. Do you know how to ski? I've always wanted to learn."

"Yeah but it took me forever too learn, it's diffidently not as easy as it looks." I said just as the bell rung, I grabbed my bag and started walking out with Martha at my side. We started walking towards my locker, while I told Martha about my first time trying to ski, which caused Martha to almost die laughing, when we got to my locker I put in my combination and started looking for my English book.

"Who's this? He's adorable." I looked over to see Martha looking at the picture of my two month old son. It was a close-up picture of me holding him and it showed how much we looked alike . . . well except for his blue eyes.

"That's my son . . . Owen." I said hoping she wouldn't freak out, she was my first friend here and I would hate to lose her.

"Aww. . . He is the cutest thing ever!" Martha said smiling. As we started walking towards our English class Martha linked our arms together. "You are so going to have to invite me over so I can meet him, he's so adorable!"

"I agree and it will diffidently have to be soon too!" I agreed just as we walked into class, we grabbed two seats in the back of the room and started watching people enter the room, while Martha gave me the low down on some of them.

"That's Ashley; she's one of my oldest and dearest friends. You two are going to get along great." Martha said about a girl with long blonde curly hair with a white short sleeved shirt with a jean skirt. Martha waved Ashley over and Ashley took the seat on my right and we quickly introduced ourselves and Ashley started telling me about the students with Martha.

"Gabriella Montez, Ice Queen of East High, her daddy owns Lava Springs Country Club so they are rolling in it." Ashley told me when a short girl with long curly brown hair dressed in what looked like designer cloths walked in.

"She thinks she can rule this school just because of her daddies' bank account. She is the biggest bitch you will ever meet." Martha added. Just then the two guys from homeroom, Troy and Chad, walked in. "Oh that's Troy Bolton and Chad Danforth, the two hottest guys in this whole school. They are co-captains of the basketball team, and also run track."

"I've been trying to get with Chad Danforth since last year, but I've been too nervous to even talk to him. I swear this year that's all going to chance, before the year is over I will be Chad's girlfriends." Ashley said staring at Chad as they took the seats in front of us. "But anyway, did you do any sports at your school?"

"I was very involved in sports." I said laughing. "I did volleyball, softball, basketball, and cross-country."

"You should totally join the teams; tryouts aren't for a couple of weeks. I'm on the volleyball team and I absolutely love it. I've never played softball but I heard the teams pretty good, the varsity pitcher just graduated, so I know their looking for a new one. The basketball and cross-country teams, I know nothing about." Ashley said writing in her notebook to remind herself to find out when tryouts were.

"I'll have to think about Softball, I was the pitcher at my old school." I said writing SOFTBALL on the back of my hand, to remind me to talk to my mom about it later.

"Hey Troy, how was your summer? I missed you." I looked up to see Gabriella leaning on the desk running her hand down Troy's arm.

"Gabriella you know what I did, I worked at the country club, I saw you everyday." Troy said moving her hand.

"Well duh, I know that, but what did you do after, you had to leave early." Gabriella said grabbing Troy's hand.

"Chad and I went to basketball camp in Maine." Troy said taking his hand back. The teacher came into the room which forced Gabriella to go back to her seat. Troy ran his hand through his hair and turned to Chad. "Man, she gets worse every year."

Chad laughed patting Troy on the back. "I'm just glad it's you not me."

After the teacher went over the class rules and told us what this class was going to be about, Chad turned around and looked at me. "So I heard you tell Martha during homeroom that you're from Colorado. Man that must be so different from here."

I felt Ashley hit me in the leg; I turned my head towards her and saw her smiling as big as possible towards Chad. "Yeah, it's a lot warmer, that's for sure." I said laughing.

"I'm Chad and this is Troy." Chad said grabbing Troy's shoulder as he turned around.

"I'm Shar." Actually my real name was Sharpay, but I hate that name with a passion, so I've always went by Shar.

"Did I hear that you might do softball?" Troy asked me.

"Yeah, I used to play in Colorado." I said glancing at Ashley to see her talking to Chad. She'll probably flip later.

"My sister's on that team, she's the catcher. What position did you play?" Troy asked leaning forward in his chair.

"I was the pitcher. Ashley told me the team just lost theirs."

"Yeah, and the JV pitcher sucks, but don't tell anyone I said that. I will deny it." Troy said causing us both to laugh. "But I should introduce you to my sister, I'm sure she would love to practice with you before tryouts." Troy offered.

"Thanks I would like that." I said smiling.