"Why have I never noticed Troy Bolton before?

"I mean, I know I'm in his math class and I know he's East High's Golden Boy, worshipped by all nail-bed obsessed cheerleaders, but I've never really noticed him, you know?"

Taylor hauled a textbook from the top shelf of her locker into her arms for her first period class that day and then turned to her friend, shrugging. "I don't know. Maybe it's because you are always so quick to dismiss jocks as arrogant idiots who don't deserve everyone's attention." She paused. "And what do you mean by 'notice him'? He's definitely not invisible or some made-up being."

Gabriella leaned against the locker adjacent to Taylor's and folded her arms. "Hey, you're the one who told me, on my first day of school, that they were nothing more than neanderthals," she said. "And by notice, I mean ... acknowledge how ... nice he is. Yesterday at practise he apologized when he accidentally hit me with a ball. He also saw one of the new team members struggling with his free throws and even stayed behind late to help him with them. That's not typical arrogant idiot behaviour."

Taylor nodded slowly."Okay, so he's a little more compassionate then we may have realized. Kudos to him."

Realizing Taylor wanted to change topics, Gabriella blurted out, "He's not too bad at basketball either. I-I don't know the sport, but I still think he was good."

She still needed to do a little more research on the blue-eyed boy who caused her to blush and made her heart accelerate.

"Of course one would assume that since he is captain. He wasn't elected simply for of his looks."

"Yeah, he does look nice, doesn't he?" Gabriella sighed in the smallest of voices.

Taylor narrowed her eyes at the slight hint of wistfulness in her friend's tone.

Suspiciously, Taylor continued, "He does work out as much as he can, I've heard. But he's a little too ... pretty-boy for my tastes." She had purposely lied to see how Gabriella would react to it.

"Really?"

"You don't think so? Well, to each their own, I guess. I'd prefer someone like Chad or Jason or Zeke." Noticing Gabriella wasn't completely there and was probably in mid daydream, Taylor listed the only players she knew the names of.

"But haven't you ever looked into those cobalt eyes?"

Taylor slammed her locker door shut. "Gabriella, are we really discussing guys? What happened to you overnight?"

Then she watched as her friend stammered incoherently. "Aw, it's your first crush," Taylor giggled.

Gabriella lowered her voice. "Taylor, I've had crushes before, but I've just never liked telling people because at my old school, one boy found out once, took one look at me and said, 'Ew, she's a freaky nerd.' I was mortified."

"Oh, hun," Taylor said comfortingly, "that boy was a jerk, you do know that, right?"

"Yes, but my feelings were hurt nonetheless. I can just imagine being humiliated like that again."

"I can promise you I won't tell a soul. We could even have a code name for him! Oh my gosh, that used to be so fun in middle school. I used to like this foreign exchange student from Germany. Martha and I called him - "

"Taylor!" Gabriella hissed. "No way, you have to try and help me get over this crush!"

"But I just thought about it and you guys would be so cute together! I can hear the bells."

"I can not like him. I haven't spoken one word to the guy and already I can't get him out of my head. This isn't normal!"

"You're adorable, Gabriella. I could list ten girls off the top of my head who obsess over him 24/7." Taylor thought for a moment. "Why don't you try talking to him to get over your crush? It's not a bad idea, his conversational skills could totally be revolting."

Gabriella laughed.

"But why don't you have a little faith in yourself? If he's as nice as you've observed, you two could actually work out. When's the next practice? Tomorrow during free period?"

"Whatever, I just feel silly thinking about this stuff. Forget this conversation ever happened." She linked an arm with Taylor's. Come on, let's get to home room before we're late."


Entering her math class, Gabriella methodically sat down in her seat at the front, the one she had chosen at the beginning of the year.

There were only seconds left before the bell when Troy strolled in accompanied by Chad, Zeke and Jason, who she recognized from yesterday. They noisily made their way to the very back of the room, Jason muttering something like, "Shit, I think I forgot to do my homework," under his breath.

God, why could she not stop staring at Troy? It was the hair, the smile, the cheekbones and he had pretty good skin for a guy. She was infatuated.

Gabriella forced herself to turn around and propped her elbows on the desk. The commotion that she could still hear suddenly made her very lonely because she hadn't befriended anyone in this class yet.

The teacher, Mrs. Brooks, wearing a blue long-sleeved shirt and purple scarf, waddled into the class pregnant belly first. She greeted the class, and began explaining a small and simple assignment that would be completed within the period.

She thought it would be an easy way for students to raise their marks since most of them were doing poorly. Gabriella, who was already doing very well, thought her mark would plummet if she messed up for whatever reason.

Amidst her worrying, Gabriella had been attentive enough to catch one more thing: it would be in partners.

Immediately, she thought of Troy. How perfect things worked out sometimes. But then she remembered that he had walked in with a whole posse and they could all easily pair up.

As Mrs. Brooks continued speaking, the whole class was now pairing up through eye contact, nods, waves and in Chad's case, a less than discrete "Yo, Zeke, you're working with me."

Gabriella sat motionless. She hung her head and knew she'd be with someone else the class had left behind.

"All right, class," the teacher instructed, "since you're all paired up, go sit with your partners and I'll hand out the assignments sheets. Now you are working in pairs, but each of you has to hand in your own individual sheet for marking."

The brunette turned around and to her surprise, she found that she was the only person alone. The class must have had an odd number of students.

She soon caught sight of a minor argument situated at the back of the classroom. Chad and Jason were fighting over Zeke, who currently had the highest math grade out of all four of them, while Troy was watching to see who he would end up with.

"I'm the one who needs all the help I can get here," Jason exclaimed.

"You were his partner last time and he did all the work for you," Chad shot back.

Troy merely rolled his eyes and said, "Guys, we have a limited amount of time so just settle this so we can start." He was very calm collected even though Gabriella knew he wasn't fairing too well in the course either, and she admired how cool he was. His teammates' marks must have been pretty low for him to understand how much they need Zeke.

Their immature squabbling was interrupted by the teacher calling Jason over to her desk. Apparently, he was exempt from this assignment because he needed to go take his retest today.

Chad snatched Zeke up in a heartbeat.

Troy politely asked the teacher is he could be in a group of three with them, but she refused because, "Why look over there, Gabriella doesn't have a partner. Go work with her, Troy."

She watched as he trotted over to take a seat beside her, disgruntled. He slapped his paper down and sighed before scribbling his name down.

Didn't he realize what a gorgeous name he had?

And he smelled so much better outside the gym walls.

Yet Troy wasn't even looking at her, he was staring blankly at the clock hanging on the wall above the door, his pencil unmoving.

So Gabriella commenced her work, filling in empty spaces with numbers effortlessly.

She sensed movement out of the corner of her eye and twisted her neck to see Troy trying to copy her answers unsuccessfully. Where she had penciled in a 2, he had wrote 7.

He caught her staring and asked, "This is a group project, isn't it?"

After she rotated her paper in his direction, he furiously copied down everything she had written as they both remained silent.

"Troy?" she said, feeling timid.

"Uh, yeah?" he replied monotonously, his voice not nearly as animated as she'd always heard it.

"D-Do you have any ideas or ... "

He scoffed. "I have no clue what this is even about."

Frowning, Gabriella explained, "Well, you have these four numbers here, and all of them have to be used in your equations. We're trying to get each equation to equal all the numbers from 1 to 100. It's pretty basic. We did this for fun in middle school."

He seemed perturbed. "Do we really have to do this?"

"It counts toward our grade."

"Okay, so, like, the sum of all these numbers is 21."

"Yeah, I, uh, got that already."

"How are we supposed to get the other ones?"

"You can use any operating symbols, like multiplication or absolute value, or you can make any number an exponent."

Troy attempted to figure out the number 14. "Does that work then?"

Gabriella scanned it and grimaced when she told him he was wrong. "You should always keep the order of operations in mind, remember?"

"Right," he said, gritting his teeth.

She immediately felt bad and handed him her eraser when she noted he was working with a broken pencil without one. She knew exactly how frustrating it could be to be out of your comfort zone.

He spoke up again. "Are you new or something?"

"I've been at this school for a month already," Gabriella informed him hesitantly. "But I was helping out at your practice the other day."

"Oh, you were?"

"Yes, I help your coach with the equipment and some other things."

"And you're always going to be there?"

"Only for a month."

He was content to end the conversation there and sank lower in his seat to take his cell phone out of his pocket and text someone, completely ignoring her.

Gabriella let out a disappointed sigh and went back to her work.


AN: Thanks for all those kind reviews! They inspired me so much that I wanted to update as soon as I could. I know this is going pretty slow, but just bare with me for now.