Unfortunately, by the time he got to school he was a wreck. The elated mood he had been in was gone, as last nights drugs had worn off from the food, shower and walk, and he felt sick, grouchy and VERY tired. Little did he know his day was about to take quite an unpleasant turn.

As Troy entered the hallway of east high the look on his face must have been priceless. Stick to every locker, and every 10cm apart on every wall were flyers all with the same thing on them. They had a large version of the photo of Troy with two naked girls on hit, on with her hand on his crotch, and underneath were written the words: "Our wholesome basketball captain training hard for next weeks game?"

OH FUCK.

Troy walked the 5 feet to his locker amongst screams, wolf whistles and dirty looks. He was gonna kill Chad! He spotted Chad at his locker with the rest of the gang. He walked up to Chad. The first thing Chad saw when he shut his locker was Troy's angry face. It scared the hell out oh him.

"Shit man, whatcha do that for?" Chad said, dramatically clutching his heart.

"WHAT THE HELL POSSESSED YOU TO DO THIS?"

"DO WHAT?"

"THIS!" Troy screamed shoving the flyer that was stuck on his locker into Chad's hands. Chad looked at it dumbfounded.

"WHAT YOU THINK I DID THIS?"

"YEH, WELL I SEEM TO REMEMBER YOU BEING THE ONE TO WAKE ME UP THIS MORNING!"

"I DID NOT DO THIS! BESDIDES IM SURPRISED YOU COULD REMEMBER ANYTHING WITH THE STATE YOU WERE IN!" They had attracted quite and crowd by now.

"I WAS IN A FINE STATE, GOOD ENOUGH TO KNOW THAT YOU AND ZEKE WERE THE ONES IN MY ROOM THIS MORNING AND NOW THESE FLYERS ARE EVERYWHERE!"

"WE DIDN'T DO THEM! AND IT'S NOT OUR FAULT! YOU WERE THE ONE WITH THE TWO SLUTS IN YOUR BED ANYWAY!" Chad didn't like the fact there were flyers everywhere: it was slack. He would have words with Malcolm later, but he wasn't going to dob in his team-mate.

"THAT IS NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS! I CAN'T BELIEVE YOU DID THIS IT WAS SO LOW, LOWER THAN I THOUGHT EVEN YOU COULD EVER STOOP!" This that the bell went and Troy stormed back off to his locker.

Troy didn't go to first period.He spent the whole time going around the school with a garbage bag ripping the flyers off the walls and lockers. Some of the teachers screamed at him when he stormed into their classrooms to remove the flyers, but he simply ignored them and continued his business without muttering a word. The last classroom he went into was Gabi and Taylor's AP chemistry class. They had a substitute teacher who was a sleep, but of course, being a class of dedicated students, it was practically silent. He took a deep breath and stormed in. There were 12 flyers in the classroom and he marched around the walls of the room in a large circle, on hand ripping the flyers of the wall, the other carrying the bin, which was almost overflowing with paper by now. He purposely ignored the looks he was getting from Gabi and Taylor. Gabi probably wouldn't care, I mean, she had moved on, but then why did she call? No she was just being nice Troy don't get ideas into your head. But she was probably still angry at his man-slut behaviour. Taylor was another story. She was loud, and verbal and VERY judgemental. If he so much looked in the direction on her or Gabi, he knew he would get a mouthful. He exited the classroom quickly and decided to head to the locker rooms because it was the only place he hadn't cleared of flyers yet. He heard hurried footsteps behind him.

"Troy?" A soft voice spoke. Troy knew it was Gabi, but he didn't want to turn around, so he kept walking.

"Troy please?" She begged, her voice getting softer. He gave in and turned around.

"What is it Gabriella, what do you want?"

"Why won't you talk to me? You can't trust me anymore?" She was crying.

"Look Gabriella, you don't you love me anymore, you wana go find someone else? Fine. I have to live with that. But stop trying to make it hard for me to move on." He didn't mean to say all that stuff. But it was true. He didn't want to see the hurt on her face, if there was any. He wanted just to walk away, but he wasn't sure if he should.

"Look Troy, I told you I wanted to be your friend, and friends are there for each other. Even if you try to push me away I'm going to keep trying to get through to you because whether you admit it or not you need someone." Troy just gave her a confused look. "I found this..." She handed him the page of his lyrics that she had found. Troy tried to play dumb.

"What is that? That's not mine." He said defensively.

"Troy, it has your name on it, and I know your writing."

'Shit.' Troy thought.

"Fine, so what is it is.."

"Troy, I'm worried about you! This is a beautiful song but the fact that you wrote it scares the hell out of me. These words… I mean Troy…"

"Look Gabriella, it's nothing. Forget you ever saw them. I mean, you cant just turn your back on me and treat me like dirt one day, and then expect me to pour my heart out to you the next... So why don't you just go off with the rest of the gang who don't care about me because that's where you belong." Troy began to walk away.

"That's not true" Gabriella whispered, but he couldn't hear her. "I still love you Troy Bolton."

The rest of the day was horrible for Troy. By the time lunch came around Troy was losing it. He went up to his secret spot at lunch, but the science club was using it, and they could kind of pull rank over him when it came to that space. So he went down to the cafeteria. All the tables were full. As he walked in the room went silent, and then began to buzz loudly with gossip. Troy saw Gabi look at him, but she broke their eye contact and went and sat at an empty table right down the back of the cafeteria. Unfortunately, the table had a lovely direct view of the table that the gang were sitting. Troy sat there simply looking at his hands. It probably looked to the gang like he was deep in thought. But he wasn't really. He was too tired for that anyway. But mostly he didn't want to deal with his thoughts. With the horrible things his mind wouldn't stop yelling at him. It was like an endless broken record of darkness that reeled unforgivingly in his mind. So he just sat, and tried to ignore it, becoming absorbed in his exhaustion. After about 10 minutes, someone else came and sat at his table. He didn't look up; he didn't care whom it was. They sat there in silence for a few minutes when Troy decided to speak.

"Why are you sitting here?"

"I'm sorry," a soft female voice spoke that he didn't recognise, "do you mind? Everywhere else is full." Troy just shook his head.

"I'm Emma, I'm new." Troy just let out a sad chuckle. 'That would explain it' Troy thought, 'she doesn't know anything, so she doesn't know she shouldn't want to be seen with me.'

"What's it is?" Emma asked laughing a little. But Troy just shook his head, he didn't want to explain it; he kinda liked having a clean slate with someone.

"Nothing. I'm Troy."

Nothing was said for a few minutes, and then the bell went. The bell seemed to have no effect on Troy, but Emma knew it would take her a while to find her class so she got up to leave.

"Um listen Troy, you seem to have something on your mind so… I'm sorry if you wanted to be alone this lunch, but… um… I just wanted to thank you… um… you're the first person that has talked to me since I moved to Albuquerque… and well… it means more than you know… and I don't care what other people may say… you seem ok to me."

Troy looked up. She was quite small, about 5.5ft and had a very slender frame. Her hair was straight and black, and fell just past her shoulders. Her eyes were a clear, pale blue, and were at once both gentle and unforgiving. Her smile was beautiful and lit up her whole face. Her skin was fair and she had a few freckles across her nose, which was so cute. He looked her arms; every inch of them was riddled with scars of different sizes. All long lines, almost identical to those Troy had made with razors into his own arms. Some of them were words or shapes; a couple of them were a light purple colour as though they were new. Troy knew she was hurting, but she was beautiful. But beautiful in a way he could never have seen before. Beautiful because she was broken, because she was real. Her imperfections gave her the kind of generous beauty in which you could see her self-hatred rebounding off her into an aura of incomparable love and understanding. She couldn't hide herself from the world, as she could not hide her scars. Troy looked at her and he could clearly see how people would judge her, and knew by the honesty in her eyes that because of this, she would never judge him. She showed people the ugliness she felt inside her through self-harm, and somehow Troy knew, that if he showed her his heart, which he hated so much, she would never turn away, and never judge him, but simply accept and the love person he was, because through showing her this, he had accepted and loved her too. In her honesty, she asked others to do the same, not only this, but she showed them that this was ok. Troy stood there taking in her appearance. He instantly loved her. It wasn't that same way he loved Gabriella, but it was genuine. He felt tears come to his eyes, and as he breathed her in he accidently let a few words slip straight from his heart, as though they were always meant to be said:

"You're beautiful." It was a compliment, but simply a truth. He had only whispered them, he wasn't even sure if she heard. But she did, he knew as she gave him a weak, half-sad smile. A smile that so simply said 'thankyou, but I don't agree.'

Troy snapped from his trance and shook his head a little. "Sorry" he mumbled as he went red. Then he quickly tried to change the subject:

"Um… Which room is your homeroom?"

"Oh… um I don't know where it is cuz I left early yesterday, but um.. It's some teacher named Mrs. Darbus." Troy smiled.

"You're with me.. we better go, Darbus will throttle us if we're late."