Aren't you guys lucky! Do I get brownie points for squeezing out another chapter or what? High fives all round!
It was another week before Troy actually started school again.
I was standing in front of my front door, preparing myself for the day, trying to conquer any negative thoughts I had and replace them with positive. Something that had become harder to do in the past few weeks. The doorbell rang and books went flying, not because it startled me but because I was excited.
I swung open the door. "You!"
"I'm back!" he grinned. "Was that my fault?" he pointed to the spread of books on the floor.
"It's always your fault," And I flung myself at him, wrapping my arms around his shoulders. He returned the sentiment.
"I was wondering if I could walk you to school," he chuckled.
I stopped hugging him but I couldn't stop the grin. "You're such a charmer,"
"Guilty," he said as he picked up my books for me.
"Come on," I said "We have to get there quick to help with making the decorations for the fete," I grabbed the arm that wasn't carrying my books and dragged him out of the house. "Bye Mom!" I called behind me. I saw Troy flinch and I immediately felt stupid for bringing up the 'M' word.
"It's ok," he said "People have moms, right? I've got to get used to it,"
I squeezed his hand and gave him a sad smile. We carried on walking but Troy wasn't as talkative as usual, I didn't feel much like conversation either, I just wanted him to turn to me and tell me about the stupid thing Chad did at practice or what he had just learnt on the guitar or flirt a little with me. I missed the flirting.
I didn't call it flirting back then, I called it banter, but now I realised that it was obvious, unashamed flirting.
"Do you want to come to the fete? Because you don't have to if you don't want to," I asked.
"I want to," he assured me and grinned. "Is Zeke baking?"
"Non-stop," I laughed.
After we had made a few paper chains for the fete, we had the first two lessons together. We spent them the way we usually did. Messing around at the back with Chad. Troy had apologised to his friend about the way he had kept him in the dark and told him that he was his best friend and he'll never do it again. This cheered Chad up immensely and he took great pleasure in telling me that he was Troy's favourite whenever Troy had his back turned. I just replied an ominous 'For now,' and he was left to wonder what I was going to do to usurp him from the position of 'Troy's favourite'. I honestly had no idea.
We arrived at the drama room for lunch, it was a haze of colours and activity, laughter and music. All of the group were there, joking and throwing globs of paint at each other. Everyone was a complete mess and extremely happy about it.
"Guys! What are you doing?" I squeaked as Troy and I entered the room. They all stopped, Kelsi wiped paint off of her glasses to see who had entered the room. Sharpay was looking annoyed in the corner with pink paint all down her dress but Ryan looked like he had really broken out of his shell and had green paint all over his face and neck. Then in unison they all pointed at something
"He started it!" They all said.
From behind a turned over table Chad emerged, he was covered in paint from head to toe, his hair was a mixture of green and yellow and the rest of him was red and purple. The only clean bit of him was his teeth which were beaming at us from behind yellow lips.
"You have lessons this afternoon!" I said disbelievingly. Troy was no help at all, he had started laughing and hadn't stopped since he had set eyes on Chad.
Everyone looked guiltily at each other but soon got caught up in Troy's laughter and started laughing too. I couldn't help it, I started laughing too. I looked behind me to look at Troy giggling at his best friend, tears in his eyes. Good tears. Thank God.
Obviously someone (Chad) took my turned head as an invitation. Something wet hit the back of my head and started to trickle down my back.
I screamed and swivelled around to see Chad bent double with laughter. "You're going to pay Danforth!!" I picked up one of the squeezy bottles of poster paints, grabbed his collar and began to squeeze green paint down his back.
"ARGH!" he yelled. Zeke jumped to his rescue.
Then the whole fight commenced again. Troy gallantly said he'd be my bodyguard and took shots for me left, right and centre. Obviously people (Sharpay) thought this was a tad unfair that I got a bodyguard and nobody else did and decided to join forces and get us. Soon even Troy's courageous efforts couldn't stop the onslaught of paint and by that time (because we were running out of paint) liquid soap, which kind of helped get rid of the paint anyway.
We screamed surrender but they were having none of it. It was only until Mrs Darbus entered the room that we thought it wise to stop and look very ashamed of ourselves.
"WHAT IS GOING ON HERE?" she screamed.
We all pointed at Chad "He started it,"
"I don't care who started it! This is a chapel of the arts, a sanctuary to those who want to search their souls and learn about the fine techniques of drama and acting. It is NOT somewhere that deserves this kind of treatment!!" her face had gone a lovely puce colour by this point. "You shall clean this up at once! Then follow me to the Principals office!!"
Luckily, they had extensively covered the floor with newspaper but there were still few odd splats of paint on the walls, on the uncovered bits of floor and surprisingly there was a rather odd shaped splat on the ceiling that no one could remember throwing.
"It looks a bit like Mrs Darbus," Jason said.
"No, that's definitely Elmo," Taylor argued.
"Only 'cause its red!" Sharpay said.
"No! You can see! Look! Eyes, mouth, arms," Taylor pointed to the relevant body parts.
"Ooooohhh!" we said in realisation.
"What are we looking at?" Ryan asked.
"GET BACK TO WORK!" Mrs Darbus shouted from her desk.
"Yes, Mrs Darbus!" Zeke piped.
We all scurried back to work and hoped that no one would see the strange blob on the ceiling for a long time.
