The One Left Behind

Summary: Ever since her best friend took his own life away, Gabriella had always blamed herself, after all hadn't he told her that he would die for her? And that's when she meets him; him the guy who she desperately wants to love, his half brother. TxG

Author's note : Thank you for everyone who reviewed/favorited/alerted the previous chapter. I've never gotten that much responses so early on and I'm absolutely ecstatic. You guys rock!

Chapter one : The meeting

March 20, 2009

"Bye Gabi, have fun in detention," Taylor said teasingly.

"You bet I will," Gabriella Montez replied in the same tone.

The brunette Latina walked away, backpack slung over one shoulder. When she got to the classroom where it was held, she realized there were fewer students than usual. At the back were the usual bad-asses of the school, the stoned druggies and the tattooed punks; basically the people she felt queasy about. And then her eyes fell on him which made her sigh in relief. She knew that face.

"Gabriella Montez," she said to the teacher in charge of it that day.

Mr. Cormack searched through the list of students' names that had detention and highlighted hers to indicate that she had shown up. After this, she made her way to the desk beside Eric Marshall's, a guy in her geography class who was currently hunched over a torn-up sketchbook. He was new this semester, was a loner by choice and from what she could tell, much preferred to listen than to talk. He never seemed to care about anything or anyone. After a while of doing nothing, Gabriella grew bored and when Mr. Cormack was reading a book, leaned over to Eric's side.

"What are you drawing?" she hissed eyes to the front, ready to dodge and act like nothing happened if the teacher would look their way.

His hazel eyes snapped in her direction, confusion stretched upon his pale but handsome face. She shifted her eyes toward his sketchpad to indicate what she wanted, without speaking. He simply turned it around to show her the drawing he was working on. It was a picture of a crowd of people, faces blank, all heading into one specific direction except one; who was desperately trying to head into the opposite direction, not quite managing to escape the flow. That person was emphasized by thick red circles around its oval face.

"Wow," she spluttered finally.

He only sort of nodded and brought it back on his own desk, going back to sketching quietly. Gabriella frowned at his dismissal but nonetheless turned back in her chair to look straight ahead.

"Ah, shoot!" yelled Mr. Cormack all of a sudden, making everyone jump in surprise. "I forgot I had plans. I'll just go get the principal so nobody MOVES," he barked menacingly before going out of the classroom.

As soon as the door was closed, the whole room exploded in noise. The druggies took out their cocaine; the punks took out their IPods and the bad-asses…

"Hey babe," Tyler Johnson hollered from the back, making his posse snicker meanly.

Gabriella did not turn around because even she knew better than to look into a senior's eyes much less him.

"Hey, I'm talking to you," he continued and she flinched when she felt something being thrown on her back. "I just wanna see your pretty face, baby."

She started to chew on her bottom lip, worryingly. And then, she was rudely swirled around by a rough hand. She started to shake in fright when the senior smirked down at her. She jerked away when his hand started to caress her cheek.

"Who the fuck do you think you are?" Tyler snarled, angrily. "Don't you know you can't fucking say no to a fucking senior like me?"

Gabriella stayed silent, too scared to do anything. By now everyone's eyes were on them.

"Who the hell do you think you are?" Eric's voice interrupted.

Both sets of eyes snapped in his direction and Gabriella was surprised to see her classmate standing up, eyes almost black in anger.

"What d'ya say, new kid?" Tyler said stepping in front of him, trying to intimidate him with his height.

"You heard me," he replied, not backing down. "What gives you the right to hassle her when she clearly doesn't want you?"

In that moment, Gabriella saw him under a new light. This boy, sophomore like her, was willing to stand up to a senior who was one foot taller and more built than him, for her.

"You two knock it off!" barked Principal Matsui coming into the classroom.

Everyone quickly hid their drugs and IPods and Tyler Johnson retreated back to his desk. The brunette looked at Eric, her saviour, in admiration. He was back to drawing in his sketchbook. However, he was forced to stop when a small folded note landed on his laps. He set his pencil down and opened it, curiously, only to be met by neat writing saying:

"Thank you for doing that. You're my hero.

Gabriella"

He turned around to face her and sent her a small smile.

March 6, 2010

Gabriella killed the engine but made no movement of getting out. She watched as a group of students went inside East High School's tall building, scurrying to get into their classes before the bell would ring. She gulped slightly asking herself why exactly she had decided to come back to school that day. For the past months, Taylor and Sharpay had been hassling her to come to school in order to "get on with her life" like they had said.

It was only when she was certain that everybody was safely inside did she convince herself to get out of her car. She slowly walked up the main doors of her high school and each step she took felt as if little by little her legs would give away. And then finally, she reached it.

"You can do it Gabriella. Just pull the handle, take one more step forward and you'll be inside," she mumbled to herself trying to get her courage up.

"Late?" a suave voice said behind her, making her jump in fright.

Gabriella turned around swiftly and her eyes widened. She felt her head start to spin alarmingly fast and her heart was beating so wildly in her chest it hurt. There, leaning against the brick wall, smoking a cigarette was her deceased best friend. She swallowed harshly feeling like she would pass out in any minutes now.

"Are you okay?" Eric asked worryingly, coming toward her.

As he got closer, she realised that 1. she was not dreaming and 2. that guy was not Eric. While her best friend had been pale with jet black hair and hazel eyes, that guy had blue eyes, chestnut floppy hair and was nicely tanned. She let out a sigh in relief at the observation.

"Um yeah," she answered him.

"You don't seem really convinced but I'll take it," non-Eric replied casually. "You're new?" he asked, although it sounded more like a statement than a question.

"No."

"Well then, I've never seen you before…?" he said in a tone mixed between matter-of-factly and confusion.

"Well, I have never seen you before either."

She really didn't feel like telling this guy about her life given the fact that she didn't even know him and that he looked exactly like the last guy she had ever been close to. Instead of getting offended by her sharp tone, he casted her an impressed glance and took a puff out of his cig.

"I just transferred this semester," he explained smoothly.

"And this is my first day back from vacation," Gabriella said in return.

"Well, then, welcome back," he said smiling coyly, taking one last inhale out of the white stick before dropping it on the ground. "To show you how glad I am of your return, I'll walk you to class," he continued, jokingly while opening the door for her.

"Who's the teacher?"

"Darbus," she answered without missing a beat.

"Lucky for you, I have her too."

He knocked on the wooden door three times and Gabriella's heart restarted to beat violently.

"Nervous?" he asked, softly even if he knew the answer.

"A little."

It shocked her to see how much this complete stranger seemed to know exactly how she was feeling. However they were interrupted when the door opened, revealing their eccentric looking drama teacher, Ms. Darbus. As soon as she saw Gabriella and the Eric look-a-like, she froze. The brunette could tell that her teacher had mistaken the boy beside her for her former best friend. Her pause only lasted for a split second because when she cleared up her mind, her eyes swelled up with tears and she brought the young girl into a big hug. Gabriella caught a glimpse of the classroom and buried her face into the woman's shoulder, in order to hide from her classmates' curious glance in their direction.

"I'm so terribly sorry about Mr. Marshall, Gabriella," Ms. Darbus stated sincerely, pulling away.

The brunette just smiled in response and when her teacher got out of the doorway to let her in, her eyes trailed to the one's belonging to the guy beside her and she was relieved to discover he had stayed by her side the whole time. He threw her an encouraging smile and she took a deep breath before going in.

"Oh my gosh! GABI!" shrieked Taylor, recognising her first.

In a half second flat both her and Sharpay tackled the brunette into a giant hug, squishing the life out of her.

"Ugh," Gabriella grunted. "Can't. Breathe."

However, they seemed to be glued to her because they still would not pull away from her body.

"You're killing her!" Chad interrupted disentangling their bodies from hers.

"Thank you C," the brunette said, breathing hard.

"My turn now," he continued wrapping his arms around her thing body.

After five seconds, Zeke joined and Jason also, making her feel as if she was a human burrito.

"Guys," Gabriella muffled.

In response, Sharpay and Taylor rejoined the group hug. Even if she had no personal space whatsoever, the brunette was glad to be welcomed like this by her friends. After a while they all pulled away, smiling hugely.

"My turn now!" exclaimed a familiar voice, mockingly.

She gasped when Eric crushed her into his chest but then remembered he was not Eric. Pulling away, she realised that everyone had, for a moment, mistaken him for her ex-best friend, like her.

"Whoah, it looks like you guys just saw a ghost," Eric look-a-like remarked, teasingly.

Nobody quite responded because, in a way, they did.

HSMHSMHSM

"Hey Gabriella, wait up!"

She turned around and cursed herself mentally for thinking, once again, that the boy who was calling after her was Eric. Through the day, she had discovered his name was Troy Bolton and not Marshall like she had thought.

"Did I do anything?" he inquired going straight to the point.

Standing in front of her, looking at her dejectedly, Gabriella had to look away because it pained her to see the reflection of what her best friend would've looked like if he was still alive.

"No, why?" she said, eyes fixed to her shoes.

"That's why," he mumbled. "You won't even look at me for more than five seconds and all day, I don't know, I feel like you've been avoiding me. And don't even try to deny it, 'cause you know it's true."

"It's just that um, has anybody told you about Eric?" Gabriella started.

"A little bit. I know that he committed suicide on Christmas day, but that's all."

"Well um, he was my best friend and we shared everything together. We would be attached at the hip last year and he knew everything about me. When he… passed away, I was the one who found him."

Just remembering that awful day, made her eyes filled up with tears. She appreciated the fact that he didn't seem to feel pity for her and just took it as it was.

"It's just that, you look so so much like him," Gabriella continued, miserably.

He stayed silent and when she looked at him, she realised he seemed to be in the middle of an inner battle.

"I may have not said the whole entire truth about why I moved here," Troy admitted after a while. "Fact is, I was to check on Eric. But as you can tell, I never had the chance to."

"Why did you want to spy on him?" she inquired, shocked,

"Because he's my half-brother."

I've just realised that the dotted lines I use to separate the paragraphs don't work on fanfiction for some strange reason. So, if you've been confused with my stories, I'm really sorry. For now on, I'll use: HSMHSMHSM when I want to separate paragraphs.

On another note, I've been having trouble lately at finding inspiration for any of my stories right now. I guess my HSM obsession is fading. Don't worry, I still have chapters already written ahead, so this isn't the last time you'll hear from me.

Reviews are always welcomed.