Chapter 4: Man Am I in Trouble
"Man, what happened to your finger?" Chad almost yelled.
Oh no! I'm trapped, and I have to tell them the truth! "Well, you see…um…it all started when I was seven…oh, gosh…fine! I broke it!
"What?" the whole gang screamed in union.
"The big game is Friday!" Jason was clearly annoyed.
"No! It's not what you think. I can play in the game," his friends looked doubtful," a part of…cheering from the sidelines?" And once again-It sounds like a question!
Gabriella stepped in, "Hello! Troy is in pain. Is anyone going to say that they're sorry that he broke his finger?"
Taylor and Kelsi agreed, but the guys were a bit slower. Basketball, after all was pretty much, well, everything. But, in the end, their good angels won the battle and they all said how sorry they were that Troy had broken his finger.
Zeke was the one to speak the thought on all the guys' minds, "Troy, we're sorry, but not sorry enough to get you off the hook of telling the school that we're going to loose the game."
"You are not going to loose the game, people!" Taylor hated how all the team revolved around Troy. "You are all on the varsity team. There were try-outs…"
"Evaluations," Chad loved being smarter than Taylor in sports.
"Does it look like I care, Chad? My point is, didn't all of you make it on the team? You did! You all have the same amount of talent! Troy isn't the only one on the team!"
I elect you to tell the school that once they've found out I broke my finger! Stupid door!
It was Friday night and Troy was going over to Gabriella's house. He was going to pick her up and bring her to the game. Just because he couldn't play didn't mean he was going to miss it.
Troy tapped on the door with his cast and after a couple of seconds Gabriella walked outside.
"You look great," Troy asked, putting his arm around her shoulder an ushering her to the car.
"How'd your dad take it?" Gabriella asked buckling her seat belt.
"Take what?" Troy said starting up the engine and backing out of the driveway.
"Your finger?" Gabriella said.
"Oh. That. Well, let's just say…bad. Horribly bad. Very horribly awfully bad."
They got to the school where they met Chad and Taylor at the front doors.
"You ready to win?" Troy said to Chad.
"Yeah, whatever," Chad said looking at his feet.
Troy mouthed, "What's wrong with him?" behind Chad's back to Taylor who waved here as to say, "I'll tell you later."
The game started and the Pirates got the tip off ball. Number 45 dashed down the court to score a basket in the first seconds of the game.
"Tay," Gabriella said after the long groan of the crowd because of the first basket of the game, "What's wrong with Chad?"
"He's well, in a, shall we say…bad mood," Taylor said.
"Why?" Troy asked not taking his eyes off the game.
"He thinks you did it on purpose," Taylor half mumbled.
"Did what on purpose?" Troy asked staring right into Taylor's eyes. She could never lie to him. Troy found her weakness.
"Broke your finger," She said quietly to her shoes, "He thinks that you did it for, I don't know…attention or something." Taylor quickly scanned the crowd for no one in particular so she wouldn't have to look at Troy.
Gabriella let out an exasperated sigh, "You're kidding, right? Attention? Troy needs more attention? I think that that's the last thing he needs right now. I mean, it's not like he doesn't get attention at home with his mother crying over every scratch he gets and his father working him in basketball all the time where as my dad…" she stopped, "He doesn't need attention."
"I know that, Gabbi, but Chad doesn't," Taylor cheered when the Wildcats stole the ball.
The entire game Troy never took his eyes off of Gabriella. What was she saying about her father? Her eyes were swelling with tears when she got up to go to the bathroom. He needed to figure out what was wrong. He cared about Gabriella too much to see her upset.
The Wildcats were once again killed in the game. As Troy drove Gabriella to her house in silence she sniffled and stared out the window.
"Gabbi, what's going on?" Troy said as he turned off the car in her driveway.
"What do you mean?" She said using the back of her hand to wipe her eyes.
"What's going on?" Troy said sternly, looking right into her tear filled eyes.
Gabriella quickly got out of the car and dashed for her front door. Troy quickly unbuckled his seatbelt and ran to her. He was much faster and reached her in a matter of seconds.
"Gabriella!" Troy said grabbing her upper arm.
"Let go of me!" She screamed through her sobs.
"What is going on with you?" Troy asked her gently.
Gabriella tried to pull away but Troy wouldn't let go. Finally she gave up hope and turned around burying her sobbing face into his chest. Troy put his arms around her shaking body.
"I'm sorry," Gabriella said between sobs, "It's just…things haven't been easy since my dad… passed away."
Troy pulled her into a tighter hug as she cried harder.
"He died in a car crash last year when we lived in Oregon. Some kid didn't see the stoplight changed and smashed right into my dad. …The poor kid was hurt really badly but he lived through it. I just wish… I wish things were back to normal…" She sobbed the hardest she had so far.
Troy's face, out of view of Gabriella's face, turned into a look of sheer terror as he realized what he had done.
Man, am I in trouble.
When Troy got home he went straight to his room and plopped on the bed. He was lost in his many thoughts when he got off his bed.
He got on all fours and looked under the bed. He pulled out a photo album labeled "Troy Bolton". It was given to Troy by the hospital. They wanted him to look back and see how lucky he was to be alive. To Troy it was looking back and see how unlucky he was to have been in the terrible accident.
He told his mother to throw it away and she did but Troy's curiosity got the better of him and he brought it up to his room and hid it under his bed.
He opened the worn cover to the first page. It was a picture of the wreck. Both cars were crumpled and bent. The wreckage flashed in front of his face. Every bit of the accident swarmed into his mind. Troy slammed the book shut and threw it angrily onto the ground.
How could I have been so stupid? He thought.
Soon he was overcome by his exhaustion and feel asleep fully clothed and on top of the covers.
"Good morning," Jack said as he put a plate of pancakes on the table in front of his son, "You're mother had to go to the office. It's just you and me today. So, how'd you sleep?"
"Fine," Troy answered. Truth was, he didn't sleep well. He had flashes of the accident in his dreams and he couldn't get back to sleep.
He rubbed his sleepy eyes and started on his pancakes. By the time he went outside he had eaten four helpings of pancakes. He hadn't had a decent meal in four days and he was starving.
Troy decided to go on a walk to get some exercise, or so he told his father. He walked out of his house, roughly shoving his hand into his pockets and kicking at the rocks on the ground.
He had to tell Gabriella. He couldn't just not tell her. Troy couldn't fit everything together. He had no evidence of it being Gabriella's father but all signs seemed to point to him. He remembered the Latino family before the crash and the silence when he asked his parents about the other man. They lived in Oregon; he was in Oregon. The boy was badly hurt; he was badly hurt (and Troy happened to be a boy). He didn't know how he was going to tell her.
Gabriella's tears, her words, had stung him like ice. He didn't know what to do. If he told her she would hate him forever. Understandably, Troy thought. But if he didn't he'd have a really guilty conscience. Troy could never live that way. He would have to come clean.
Troy was looking at the ground lost in his sad thoughts when he heard a loud car honk.
"Ah!" Troy screamed very loudly and jumped about a foot in the air. He put his hand over his heart that was thumping very quickly against his chest. Breathing heavily, he watched as the car window rolled down showing a laughing face.
"Bolton, you are too easy," said the face still laughing.
The face belonged to Michael Little. Troy had beaten him to be on the Varsity team the previous year.
"What'd you want, Michael?" Troy asked angrily.
"Oh, I was just coming to see your dad. Since you can't play I thought the team might need a little help. Not that you were any help in the beginning," Michael said with a laugh.
"Michael," Troy said, "Will you get over it? I beat you fair and square."
"You only beat me because your dad's the coach!" He screamed. To Troy's bad luck he spit, hitting Troy right in the eye, and drove away laughing his head off.
"Funny," Troy said irritably, wiping the spit of off his face, "Very cute."
With that, Troy walked home mumbling the whole way.
Sunday passed in a depressed haze and Monday was there. Troy walked to school and arrived there fifteen minutes early. He had no desire to see Gabriella. He just wanted to get to school in peace. More exactly he wanted to get to school in one piece but he would never tell anyone that he was afraid of Gabriella.
Troy sat on the front steps of the school with his head in his hands. He had come to the conclusion that he had to tell Gabriella, he just didn't know how. He took out a pen and started to fiddle with it. Fiddling always helped him calm down. He sighed heavily and felt a thump on his back.
"Hey, Troy, you okay?" Ryan asked, while sitting down right next to Troy.
"Define 'okay'," Troy said glumly.
"Bad week?" Ryan asked, as though Troy's expression couldn't have been a plainer give-away.
"You have no idea," Troy said putting his head back in his hand and slamming his forehead into his cast, "Ow."
"What happened?" Ryan was worried about his friend. He had been shaking on Friday when he had to tell the team what happened and was ghostly white. Not many things had changed. It was a miracle Troy didn't drop the pen he was holding, he was shaking so badly.
"You don't want to know," Troy said shaking his head, "I don't want to bring my luck onto you."
"I really do. Maybe you're luck will get me a good grade on my history test today," Ryan said with a smile.
"There's a history test today?"
"So... uh…what happened?"
So with a huge sigh Troy told Ryan all about his week starting with the moment he woke up until then. He didn't expect to bring himself to tell everything but Ryan looked so innocent sitting there. He was concentrating really hard on Troy (or that could've just been him phasing out…you never knew with Ryan.) and he tried not to laugh when Troy told him about his mother obsessiveness (a/n: we know obsessiveness is not a word!) over Troy and his injuries but he failed miserably as he burst out laughing.
"My god," Ryan said when Troy finished telling him his story.
"I know," Troy began but was cut off.
"You have black ski gloves?"
Troy rolled his yes as he watched buses pull into the school parking lot. He rushed inside and went straight to his locker. Maybe I can melt into them before the first class, Troy thought as he ran through the hall.
Throughout the entire first period Troy was dreading the end. It was one class closer to lunch, which was the first time he would see Gabriella that day. It was when he had to tell her.
Four classes later, Troy found himself biting his pencil watching the clock with hatred.
Why can't you just slow down? Are you too good to do what people ask you to do or something? But his thoughts were cut short when Troy bit down so hard on his pencil it spilt clear in half.
Ding. Ding.
Troy gathered his books and walked over to his locker. The second he got there he opened the locker door and it smashed him in the nose.
"Ow," Troy grumbled, rubbing his nose.
He heard a laugh behind him. He knew that laugh.
"You okay, Troy?" Gabriella asked him.
Troy closed his eyes and turned around.
"Yeah, I'm fine," He said.
"Did you think that the Science test was hard? I thought that question twelve was tricky but number three was simple I mean, who doesn't know that if you add three milligrams of liquid nitrogen to…"
"Gabriella, I think I killed your dad," Troy blurted out suddenly.
Gabriella did a double take.
"I think I'm the kid that hit your dad when you lived in Oregon," Troy said, his face burning.
"Troy, that's not funny. I know that I told you about…"
"No, I'm serious, Gabby. I was in Oregon on Spring Break last year. I hit a car and got in a horrible accident. I killed the man in the other car and I am really sorry, Gabby. Really sorry."
"This has got to be a joke," Gabriella said. "Tell me this is a cruel, sick joke."
"I have the scars," Troy said, shaking back his sleeves and lifting his bangs to show all of the scars on his body for the accident.
"No, Troy, no…" Gabriella said in terror.
"Gabriella," Troy began, taking a step towards her.
"Troy," Gabriella said, taking a step away form him. "Troy, I need to think about this."
" "This"?" Troy gulped. "What do you mean "This"?"
"I mean us, Troy," Gabriella said wiping tears from her eyes. "I have to think about us."
And she ran down the hall as quickly as she could to get away from the one person she thought the she could never hate. Troy.
