Hey everyone. Sorry for the wait on this chapter. I was having computer troubles.
"Good afternoon, pumpkin," Sharpay's mother, Darby Evans, greeted her daughter as soon as she walked through the front door.
Sharpay cringed at her mother's cheeriness. Her happy voice was a complete contrast to how Sharpay felt, after enduring what had to be the worst first day of school in the history of ever. "Hi mom," she said, trying to sound enthusiastic.
"Hello to you, too, Boi," Sharpay cooed to the small terrier Darby was carrying in her arms. She carefully took the small dog out of her mother's arms and scooping him into her own. "Did you miss me today?" she asked him.
Boi growled softly in response. Throughout Sharpay's lonely, isolated days of summer, Boi had often been her only companion. Ryan and her parents had been there for her in the beginning, but they all had their own stuff going on. They didn't have time to sit around and watch her sulk all day.
"I'm making your favorite for dinner, dear," Darby said, in a sing-song voice. "Spinach ravioli."
"Great," she said, setting Boi down on the floor. "Scoop me some into a bowl and I'll take it upstairs."
"Actually, Sharpay," her mother continued. "I was hoping we could sit in the dining room and eat. Together."
"Oh," Sharpay said, sounding less than enthused. She wasn't in the mood to sit in the dining room. All she wanted to do was go upstairs and crawl into bed. "Gee, I'd love to, mom. But it's been a really crappy day and–"
"Honey, I know," Darby said, as if she actually did know, which she didn't. As far she knew, Sharpay and Gabriella had just drifted apart; Sharpay couldn't imagine she would think if she knew the real story. Actually, she could imagine, which is why she no intentions of telling her. "But with your brother gone and your father working late tonight, I thought it would be nice for us to spend some time together, just us girls."
Sharpay glanced at the mirror on the wall closest to her, taking in her flushed face, flat hair, and slight redness around her eyes, the result of breaking down in tears after seeing Will Stryker in the parking lot. She looked as hopeless as she felt. "You don't understand," she said as she looked back over in her mother's direction. "I'm really tired, I need to go lie down–"
"Oh, Sharpay," Darby said, pulling her daughter into her arms for a hug. Sharpay felt a lump rise in her throat, reacting to her mother's soft, understanding tone and warm embrace. Her sympathy was so welcome after this long, awful day. "How about this. You can go upstairs, take a shower, and put on your pajamas. Then after we eat dinner, you can go to bed."
"All right," Sharpay agreed, quietly. Although the deal was not much different from the original proposition, it at least sounded better. Besides, saying no now would just make her unreasonable.
"Good girl," Darby said, patting Sharpay's arm softly, before releasing her from the embrace and heading into the kitchen.
...
"So I'm guessing from your 'I'm having the worst day ever' text that things didn't go well with Gabriella," Ryan was saying.
"You're a terrific guesser, Ry," Sharpay said dryly, switching her phone from one ear to the other, as she stretched out across her bed. Her mother had let her go to bed as soon as she finished her ravioli, like she promised. She had just collapsed onto bed, ready to fall into a deep sleep when her brother called.
"Maybe this is for the best," Ryan continued. "Well, not maybe. I know this is for the best. Gabriella Montez is terrible person. I don't know why you were ever friends with her in the first place. I say, screw her."
Sharpay rolled her eyes, waiting for Ryan's Gabriella-bashing rant to end. She knew that he didn't like her–heck, most people didn't like her–and it wasn't as if he didn't have good reason not to, but Sharpay had only stopped being friends with her a short while ago. She wasn't ready to start ripping on her yet.
"Ryan, I know you don't like her but–"
"But what?"
"Nothing." Sharpay sighed in defeat. She didn't want to fight with him. She already had a long list of people at school who hated her, she was in no position to have her brother hate her too. "Enough about me. How was your day?"
...
It was the summer before sixth grade. Sharpay was at the neighborhood pool, standing in line at the snack bar, when she felt someone step up behind her. She turned her head, and there was a girl she didn't recognize standing there. She had olive skin and curly dark hair, and was wearing a bright blue bikini, along with black sunglasses and a bored, impatient expression. She was about the same age as Sharpay, which is why Sharpay was so thrown off by the fact she'd never seen her before. All the kids around the neighborhood knew each other, it was like this girl had just fallen out the sky.
"What?" she said to Sharpay, who apparently had been staring. "What are you looking at?"
Sharpay flinched at the tone of her voice. She wasn't accustomed to people raising their voices at her. "Nothing," she said, and turned back around.
When she looked up and saw that she was next in line, she quickly ordered two iced teas and handed the guy working at the snack bar her money. While he poured her drinks, Sharpay could still feel the girl behind her, her presence like a weight. After she grabbed her drinks, she walked away, careful not to look back at the girl again as she made her made her way back to where her best friend Taylor was waiting.
"My mom just called," Taylor said, as Sharpay handed her one of the drinks. "She said she'll come pick us up around closing time. I told her that if we get bored before that we'll just walk home."
"Okay," Sharpay said, taking a sip of her iced tea. It was only after she sat down in her chair that she finally allowed herself to look at the girl in the blue bikini again. She had left the snack bar and was standing at the far side of the pool, surveying the layout of bench chairs, looking for somewhere to sit.
Sharpay glanced back over at Taylor, who was laid back on her chair, flipping through a Tiger Beat magazine.
Taylor had been her best friend since they were six years old. When Taylor's family moved here, their moms met a pilates class. As soon as they realized their kids were the same age, they put them together, and they'd stayed that way ever since.
"Can you hand me my sunglasses, Shar?" Taylor asked, squinting in the sunlight. "I put them in your bag."
Sharpay nodded, reaching down to get her hot pink shoulder bag of the pavement next to her chair. She took out Taylor's glasses, which were sitting right on top, and handed them over. Taylor smiled up appreciatively at her, as she popped them on. Sharpay took her own shades, from where they were comfortably sitting on top of her head, and pulled them down over her eyes. Following Taylor's lead, she pulled a magazine out of her bag and laid back. She wasn't going to let some stranger ruin her day.
The next day at the pool, the girl was back, this time in a silver bikini. When Sharpay and Taylor got there, she was already set up in one of the chairs by the deep end. Sharpay tried to ignore this as she and Taylor got settled in their spot. When she'd told her mom about the girl and her little run-in with her, she told Sharpay to try to reach out to her and be nice because she was new in town and probably didn't know how to make friends. Sharpay didn't see how that was her problem though. Especially after the girl had been so rude to her.
"I'm gonna go get a lemonade," Sharpay said, as she stood up from her chair. "You want anything?"
Taylor shook her head. "I'm good."
As she walked over to the snack bar, she noticed the new girl was up and heading towards the snack bar too. Great.
Sharpay got to there first, and asked the guy at the counter for lemonade, setting the money on the counter. When he handed her the lemonade, Sharpay had ever intention of just zooming off, back over Taylor. But then she remembered, how she promised her mom she'd be polite.
As soon as the girl was done at the snack bar, Sharpay walked up to her. She knew what she had to do. Here goes nothing, she thought.
"Hi," she said. The girl just looked at her, her expression was vacant. "I'm Sharpay. You just moved here, right?"
She didn't say anything for what seemed for a really long while. Sharpay saw out of the corner of her eye, that her brother and some other boys from their class had just arrived at the pool. Ryan was about to walk over to her but stopped when he saw she was talking to some girl he'd never seen before.
"I," Sharpay continued, even more uncomfortable now that Ryan was standing there, watching. "I think we're in the same grade."
The girl raised an eyebrow at her. "So?" she said, in the same sharp, snide tone she had the first time she'd spoken to her.
"So, I just thought," Sharpay said, "that since, you know, we're the same age, and we'll probably be in school together, you might want to hang out. Or something."
Another long pause. "So, you're saying," she started, as if clarifying. "You want me to hang out. With you."
She made it sound so ridiculous, Sharpay immediately began backtracking. "Well, no. I mean, not if you don't want to. I was just–"
"No," the girl cut her off. Then she threw her head back and laughed. "No way."
Sharpay's face flushed. If she had been alone, that would've been it. She would've just turned around and walked back over to her spot with Taylor, pretending this whole charade had never happened. But she wasn't alone.
"Hold on," Ryan suddenly said, his voice loud. "What did you just say?"
The girl turned. When she saw Ryan, her eyes widened. "What?" she said, and Sharpay couldn't help but notice how different her voice sounded, compared to how it was when she talked to her.
"I said," Ryan repeated, his own voice sharp. "what did you just say to her?"
Uh-oh, Sharpay thought. Ryan always made her nervous when he switched into big brother mode.
"Nothing," the girl replied, "I just–"
"That's my sister," Ryan said, pointed at Sharpay, "and you were just a total ass to her."
By this point, Sharpay was already both cringing and blushing. Ryan, however, was waggling an index finger in the girls face, which meant he was just getting started.
"I wasn't," the girl said, taking off her sunglasses. "I only–"
"You were, and you know it," Ryan said, cutting her off. "So you can stop denying it. Come on, Sharpay."
Sharpay was frozen to her spot, just looking at the girl's face. Her expression was stricken, she suddenly looked twelve, just staring at them as Ryan grabbed Sharpay's wrist, tugging her back to where his friends was sitting.
"Unbelievable," he kept saying, and as Sharpay looked across the pool she could see Taylor watching her, confused, as Ryan pulled her down on his chair with him when he sat down. Troy, who was laying across the chair beside them, sat up when he saw the twins approaching.
"What happened?" he asked, and as Ryan started to tell him, Sharpay glanced back at the snack bar, but the girl was nowhere in sight. All her stuff was still on the chair she'd been sitting at-at towel, her shoes, a tote bag, a magazine. Sharpay kept waiting for her to come back and get her stuff, but she never did.
Her things stayed there all afternoon: all the way up until the lifeguard blew his final whistle, announcing closing time. At this point, Sharpay had already gone back over to sit with Taylor. Ryan had left a while earlier because he had piano lessons.
As Sharpay and Taylor packed up their stuff and walked around the edge of the pool, Sharpay glanced at the girl's forgotten stuff. She knew this girl wasn't her problem. She'd been mean to her for no reason, twice, and therefore was not deserving of her pity or her help. But as they passed the chair, Taylor stopped. "We can't just leave this," she said, bending over to gather up the belongings and stuff them into the bag. "I know where she lives. Her and her mom moved into the Daughtrys' old house. It's on our way home."
Sharpay could've argued the point, but any argument she made would've just made her sound like a bitch. "Yeah, okay," she said finally. Not that Taylor had been waiting for her approval, she already the girl's bag swung of her shoulder.
When they got to Mr. and Mrs. Daughtry's old house, Sharpay was relieved to see that all the windows were dark and that weren't any cars in the driveway. They could just leave the girl's stuff on the porch and be done with it. As Taylor bent down to set the bag against the front door, it opened, and there she was. And when she saw Sharpay, her face flushed.
"Hi," Taylor said, after an awkward silence. "We brought your stuff."
The girl just looked at her like she didn't understand what she was saying. Sharpay leaned over and picked up the bag, handing it to her. The girl looked at the bag, then up at Sharpay. "Oh," she said, reaching for it. "Thanks."
"Honey?" A voice from inside the house called out. "Is someone there?"
"It's fine, mom," she said over her shoulder. Then she came out to the porch, shutting the door behind her. She quickly moved past Sharpay and Taylor, but not before Sharpay noticed her eyes were red and swollen-she'd been crying.
"Look," Sharpay said, suddenly feeling really guilty. "About my brother. He was just–"
"It's fine," the girl said, cutting her off. "I'm fine." As she said it, her voice cracked, just slightly, and then she turned her back to them.
Sharpay just stood there, not knowing what to do. She looked to Taylor for guidance, and saw she was digging into her pocket to pull out a pack of tissue. She drew one out, and reached around the girl, handing it to her. A second later, the girl took it, and softly pressed to her face.
"I'm Taylor," Taylor said. "This is Sharpay."
After a few moments, she turned around, no longer crying, to face them. "I'm Gabriella."
In case, you didn't figure it out. The italicized part was a flashback. ;]