Chapter Ten: Crash and Burn
"Change is the constant, the signal for rebirth, the egg of the phoenix." -Cristina Baldwin
"I really do love him," Gabriella told her mother a week later. It was about twelve o' clock at night, and she was lying on the guest bed, dressed in a new pair of pajamas Sharpay had bought her in a recent shopping trip, with her cell phone pressed against her cheek.
"I'm glad you love him, dear," Jacqueline said. "I can't wait to meet him." Her voice was slightly exasperated: Gabriella hadn't stopped telling her this same thing for the entire fifteen minutes they had been on the phone.
"Maybe I'll bring him with me when I come back," Gabriella said with a dreamy sigh. "But you saw him once already. Romeo and Juliet, twelfth grade. He was Mercutio, remember?"
"Vaguely," Jacqueline answered. She had a foggy image of the boy, now. Tall, blonde, kind, a great actor. She knew how much acting meant to her daughter. Far more than basketball, that was for sure. Perhaps this boy was right for Gabriella.
"Honey," she said at last. "You're cell phone bill will rack up as a small fortune if you keep this up. Maybe you should hang up."
"Okay, Mom," Gabriella slurred. "Love you. Bye." She pressed the Power button on her phone and, rolling over on one side, placed it gently on her nightstand. Everything was going great for once. Living with the Evans' and Troy was actually sort of fun. There were three different people to chose from. She could go shopping with Sharpay, let Troy try and teach her basketball (She was actually pretty decent, or so Troy said.), or she could sit around and talk to (and make out with) Ryan. The latter was her favorite option, by far.
Turning off the lamp, Gabriella pulled the covers up over her head and nestled down into the bed. The ceiling fan hummed above her, and crickets chirped outside of the windows. As Gabriella drifted off to sleep, her mind thought back to high school, to the twelfth grade…
Eighteen-year-old Gabriella listened with satisfaction as her heels clicked angrily on the white, tile floors of East High School. Her eyes narrowing, she whipped around the corner to her locker. After taking out the needed books, she slammed the door as loudly as she found possible.
"Gosh!" She let out a fast, hard breath and looked up at the ceiling. She hadn't a single memory of ever being so angry.
"Gabriella?" A small voice from behind her nearly caused her to drop her Calculus book onto her foot.
"Ryan?" She whirled around to see the blonde boy standing there, a sheepish, confused look on his pale face. "I didn't see you there…"
"It's okay," he said. "No one ever does." He smiled a little. "I'm invisible… So, do you mind telling me why you just slammed your locker door?"
Gabriella furrowed her brow. What was Ryan Evans doing trying to talk to her, anyways? While Gabriella had started trying to be friends with his sister, Sharpay, Ryan was a different story. However, he was Sharpay's twin brother, and he had seen me get angry. He deserved some sort of explanation.
"Me and Troy got in a little bit of a fight," Gabriella said slowly. "I just need to cool off a little." Pause. "He planned this big, nice Last Date of High School for the two of us, but now he had to cancel it because of his basketball friends. They want to go to a movie, or something stupid. It just made me angry."
"Don't feel bad about getting angry with him," said Ryan, shaking his head. "It's alright. He shouldn't have canceled your date."
Gabriella considered this for a moment before looking up at Ryan. "I guess you're right," she said with a smile.
"Just talk to him," Ryan suggested. "Tell him you're mad. He'll listen. He loves you, remember?"
Gabriella nodded and rearranged the books in her arms. "Yeah. I guess he does." On that note, she turned to walk away. "Thanks, Ryan."
"You're welcome," he whispered, his eyes wide with adoration as Gabriella trooped off down the hallway…
Gabriella was the last one into the kitchen the next morning. She had pulled a T-shirt over her tank top and had pulled her hair up into a messy bun.
"'Morning," Sharpay called cheerfully from the refrigerator, where she was looking in vain for the new tub of cream cheese she had purchased the day before.
"Troy, have you seen my cream cheese?" she called over to Troy, who was seated handsomely in a kitchen chair, dressed in red basketball shorts and his navy blue junior prom T-shirt.
"Nope." Troy glanced up from the Sports page of the newspaper and met Gabriella's eyes. "Hey," he said with a smile. "What's up?"
"I slept too good," Gabriella said, laughing a little bit. She joined Sharpay in front of the refrigerator.
"No such thing," Sharpay exclaimed, having finally found the cream cheese; she placed it on the counter, next to the bag of bagels. "Sleep's always a good thing. Don't the words 'beauty sleep' mean anything to you?"
Troy chuckled and took the last sip of his 1 milk. "Girls," he said softly.
"Hey!" Sharpay narrowed her eyes playfully. Gabriella, however, wasn't paying attention.
"Where's-" she began, but Sharpay interrupted.
"Lover Boy?" she offered. Gabriella noticed that Troy stiffened at Sharpay's words.
"Uh, yeah..." she answered. "Ryan."
"My brother left about half an hour ago," said Sharpay, moving over the kitchen table with her breakfast, now arranged on a plastic plate.
"Oh," Gabriella said with a nod. "Did he say…" She trailed off as Sharpay shook her head, slightly too quickly.
"He didn't tell me anything," said Sharpay. She took a bite of her bagel and looked down vaguely at the newspaper. "So I was thinking, maybe we could just relax today," she added suddenly. "Maybe swim, or something. Gabby? Does that sound good?"
"Sure," Gabriella replied. "Great."
After breakfast, Gabriella trooped back to her room and changed into a black two-piece she had bough on one her and Sharpay's recent outings. She washed her face, combed her hair into a side ponytail, and put on a barely noticeable amount of waterproof mascara. The thermometer in the back window of the guestroom read ninety-five degrees as Gabriella walked past it, searching for a pair of flip flops to match her bathing suit.
"Let the good times roll…"
Gabriella nearly leapt out of her skin when her cell phone, still on her nightstand, started ringing. She pounce on her bed and stretched to grab it before the caller hung up.
"Hello?" she asked, out of breath, as soon as she pressed the device to her ear.
Gabriella felt her heart swell at the voice of Taylor McKessie, her best friend from high school. "Taylor!" she squealed. "Hey! I can't believe we've gone so long without talking!"
"Neither can I," Taylor said with a sigh. "I feel like it's been years." It had, in truth, only been a month, but Gabriella felt the same way. She had been through so many crazy things these past couple of weeks that she had nearly forgotten anything else existed.
"So how are you?" Gabriella asked, falling back onto her bed. The air from the ceiling fan blew the ends of her ponytail into her face.
"Never better," Taylor answered, excitement brewing in her voice. "I have exciting news! Guess."
"Uh…" Gabriella hated guessing games. "Tell me."
"Chad and I are getting married!"
All thoughts and feelings escaped Gabriella's head. Married? She couldn't have said that. Perhaps she said ferried. Chad and Taylor were going somewhere by ferry. That was it.
"He proposed last night," Taylor continued, confirming Gabriella's fears. "Isn't it great?"
"Yeah," Gabriella squealed, trying to sound genuinely happy. And she was happy. Really. She was just stunned. Why hadn't she been keeping better track of her friends' lives? "I'm so happy for you! When'd the wedding?"
"We haven't decided exactly," Taylor rambled. "But we think it's going to be early next spring." Gabriella's mind wandered. Next spring… What would she be doing then? It seemed like a eternity away.
"So what have you been doing?" Taylor wanted to know. All at once, Gabriella found herself spilling the entire story: her surprise visit to her mom, meeting Sharpay by the side of the road, breaking up with Troy, almost getting crushed by a giant tree… The only thing she didn't mention was falling head over heels for a guy who used to wear weird hats to school. True, he was a Greek god on earth now, but Taylor didn't know that.
"Woah," Taylor said in awe. "Your living with the Evans' twins and your now-ex-boyfriend… That's heavy. I feel for you."
Gabriella laid back into her pillows again. Too bad she couldn't bring herself to tell Taylor about the heaviest part of all…
Gabriella walked down to the pool with marriage on her mind. Taylor's getting married, she couldn't help thinking over again. Her heart swelled even larger upon seeing Sharpay and Troy, decked out in swimwear, seated on the pool chairs. Sharpay's hair looked even blonder in the sunlight.
"I'll go get some lemonade," Sharpay, dressed in a yellow and pink bikini, said as soon as Gabriella traipsed down the stairs from the porch. She leapt up and skipped past Gabriella, who was wearing a look of dazed apathy along with her bathing suit.
"Hey," Troy called. His black trunks drew even more attention to his defined abdominal muscles.
"Hi," Gabriella answered. She sank into the pool chair next to him, wincing a little at the sun-heated material on her bare thighs.
"You okay?" Troy was squinting in the direct sun; Gabriella was thankful that she had remembered her fake Prada sunglasses.
"Have you talked to Chad in a while?" she asked suddenly.
"Nah," Troy replied, shaking his head. "Why?"
"Taylor called me while I was getting changed. They're engaged."
Troy's face lit up, and not just due to the sun. "Really? That's great!" He sat up in his chair. "When did he propose?"
"Last night," Gabriella went on. "I didn't wait to hear all the details, though."
"Cool," Troy exclaimed with a nod. "I'll call Chad later." The porch door slammed as Sharpay came back outside with a tray of glasses.
"Come and get 'em!" she called, setting the tray down on the porch table. Gabriella walked after Troy up the stairs, her bare feet scalded by the hot wood.
Taylor's getting married.
What about me?
Ryan didn't come home until almost dinner time. Even then, he barely said a word to anyone: he just kissed his sister on the cheek, kissed Gabriella on the lips, and, after a meaningful nod to Troy, ran off upstairs. No one said anything about it, so Gabriella didn't bother to ask. Apparently, there was some inner plot here that she didn't know about.
He did come down for dinner, which was a brilliant array of enchiladas, and churros for desert. Gabriella felt a pang of homesickness as she sat down beside Sharpay and picked up her fork. After a quick prayer from the cook, the foursome dug in. Well, three of them did. Gabriella more or less poked at her enchilada for a few minutes before taking a tiny bite and downing it with a sip of water. No one noticed; or if they did, they chose not to speak up.
That night, Gabriella excused herself from dishes and retreated into her room, where she dug her suitcase from the closet and, with a growing idea in her mind, began filling it with clothes, old and new. She was holding a shimmery tank top in her hands when she noticed a shaggy, brunette head of hair in her doorway.
"Troy?" She could hardly bring herself to speak. With a flurry of panicked movement, she tried to hide the scene of escape playing out on her bed.
"Sharpay wants to go out for ice cream," he said, "but I guess you're too busy packing. What should I tell her?" He sauntered over and sat down next to a pile of blue jeans. His expression was inquisitive yet troubled.
"I…" Gabriella stammered. "I'm just… I'd better be getting home to my mom and my step-dad, so I thought I'd leave in the morning…" She trailed off on the last few words. Troy's face had given way to a look of concern.
"I know someone who'll sure be upset," he said.
Gabriella shook her head and wrung her hands in her lap. "They've been great to me," she said, "but they've been living without me for, like, all their lives, practically, so I don't think it'll be much of a change if I just-"
"I was talking about Ryan," Troy interrupted.
Gabriella's face fell into a crestfallen slump. "Oh," she said, her voice stricken and tired. "Yeah. Ryan. That never would have worked, anyways. He'll get over it, I'm sure."
"Gabby…" Troy narrowed his eyes at Gabriella. "You don't want this. I can tell."
"I can't stay here, Troy," Gabriella protested. "I feel like I don't really belong anymore-"
"Fine," Troy said at last. He stood up, denoting surrender. "I get it. You think you have no future here. You think that it's an accident that you ended up here. You think that you shouldn't just rush into something. But hey! I'm not going to tell you you're wrong." He put one foot out of the room. "I am, however, going to tell you that you'd better say bye to Ryan before you leave."
Gabriella watched as he left. As soon as she was sure he had left earshot, she punched the mattress and tossed the tank top she had been holding clear across the room.
"She's leaving," Troy said quietly as soon as he stepped through the threshold to the kitchen. Sharpay nearly dropped her purse, which she had been rummaging through for some Dentyne gum. Ryan clenched his jaw and tried not to move another muscle.
"What?!" Sharpay hissed, her own jaw dropping.
"She's leaving in the morning," Troy repeated. "She thinks she doesn't belong here anymore."
"Well, she thought wrong!" Sharpay was on a roll. "I'm gonna march right back in there and tell her, either she stays, or she pays. Ryan, Troy, back me up."
"Shar," said Ryan, placing a hand on his sister's shoulder. "Troy already tried."
"She seemed pretty determined," Troy commented in agreement.
Sharpay shook her head and dropped her purse loudly onto the kitchen counter. "You can't let her go like that!" she said to her brother. "You love her! You love her and you're letting her go!"
"You sound like a country song," Ryan laughed. "Really. If she wants to leave, I'm not going to stop her."
Sharpay leaned against the counter and sighed. "But what about-"
"It's no big deal," Ryan cut in. "I'll save it for someone else."
"But you said she was The One!" Sharpay argued.
Troy smiled. "More than once, I might add."
Ryan shrugged. "I thought so. But I've been wrong-"
"A lot," Sharpay interrupted. "… Are you sure you're going to be alright?"
"Yeah," Ryan assured his sister. "I'll be okay."
He smiled a big, fake smile and walked out of the room. As he reached the den, his eyes lingered on the door to the guest room, and that was when he made a decision:
If Gabriella was leaving, then he'd just have to go after her.
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