I think this will be my most emotional chapter yet before the big explosion next chapter. I was gonna end it on a different cliffhanger to tease you's into waiting a week until I get back from my holiday away next week, but the chapter got beyond my 2000 words limit I try to place on chapters I've decided to keep it for chapter 15, and given you this version instead. Like I said in the last chapter, this and the next one are chapters about change, and I hope that once the next one is posted in a week or so, you will understand why it has been done like this.
While I'm away, I'll be working on the continuation of this story beyond what was originally written, carrying on from something Ryan will say in the epilogue (probably gonna be posted in chapter 18 or 19). I'll also be thinking about a continuation for that, since I've had an idea that I think will go really good to complete the story as a trilogy.
I hope you'll give it a chance, especially with how this chapter seems to be an ending of certain things. But as I said before. This is just the beginning.
The final parts of this chapter are based on ideas and lines from Doctor Who's season two final "Doomsday" - the same episode Ryan and Troy watched the night of the kiss.
There was a thousand things going through my head when I proposed to Glynn to take me away somewhere, ranging from terrible sadness all the way up to guilt.
For that whole night, my face wore a mask. I never mentioned anything that had happened. I never broke down and cried.
I just kept a fake smile on my face for him.
But all I could think about was that, in an indirect way, I had killed Troy.
I had to get away from this place, just for a while. Let me get my head clear. So when I asked Glynn to take me away, he agreed.
He did try to put me off the idea at the start. I'd miss school, my family might be worried, spending our first night together in a strange place, am I sure I'm ready.
Yes, I wanted him. But all my mind was on Troy.
Yes, I felt really bad, and still do these many years later, for using Glynn as a means to get my mind off of the problems, but what better way to forget about your troubles when you're spending the night loving and being loved by one of the most perfect people in the world.
So Glynn booked a wonderful hotel room for us.
As he drove me back to mine to pick up some clothes and stuff, not only was my thoughts still tangled up over Troy, but how I was gonna explain my absence to both my parents, and my sister.
Luckily, none of them were there when we got to the house.
Only Sharpay had met Glynn before, on one of the two times he's actually been here. As she said to me after he'd left, 'he's a fox' and 'if he goes straight, I want him'.
I still laugh slightly hearing her saying that. Then my mind goes back to the image of Troy, blood oozing out of his cut wrists, lying dead on his bed, and my stomach churns again.
I've eventually managed to get a small back packed in the midst of the forbidden kissing Glynn's been giving me the last ten minutes or so. He says he felt very uncomfortable kissing me when he knows Sharpay could be outside the door listening, and now that no one is around, he is able to touch me without fear of being caught.
We're on our way down the stairs, Glynn carrying my bag and my arms wrapped around his waist, a letter to my parents in between both hands, when the front door opens.
God, I can't even come home for ten minutes with him without being interrupted.
"What's with the bag?" Shar asks before she's even halfway through the door.
"We're going away for the night." Glynn says before I can respond.
"Well I hope you've packed enough to last the whole night." She says after a brief pause.
He laughs and breaks away from me, saying he'll put my bag in the car. Once he's out of earshot, Sharpay comes up to me and whispers.
"Do mom and dad know you're staying out?"
I hand the letter to her, and she holds it between her right thumb and index finger, like it might burn her.
"They will once they read that."
"Ry, this isn't like you just to take off like this. What's happened?"
I wanted to tell her. I really did. I so didn't want her to find out from anyone else. But how could I say it? 'Oh, nothing much except the guy I loved killed himself cos of me and I can't think of anything that will get him out my head other than shagging my boyfriend.' I don't think so.
"It's just everything over the last few weeks. I can't cope with it any more Shar. And Glynn loves me and I want him to… you know… make love to me."
My mind was telling me now to shut up before I got in any deeper. But I wasn't paying attention to it. All I could focus on was the image of Troy. And the thoughts that kept running around my head that if I hadn't lied to him in the first place about seeing Glynn, none of this would have happened. And he wouldn't be dead.
Sharpay kept her gaze on me, squinting her eyes slightly.
"There's more than that, isn't there?" she whispered. "Has Troy tried to talk to you, is that why you're running away?"
"I'm not running away Shar." I said a bit too loudly, and I wondered briefly if Glynn had heard that from outside. I don't know what's wrong with me. I just can't stop lying.
"Yes you are. You spoke to Troy, didn't you? He's told you that he still loves you and he wants to see you. So you're leaving before he comes over. That's it, isn't it?"
Her words were cutting me up inside. I just snapped. I had to get it out.
"Troy hasn't spoken to me. And he won't ever again." I took a breath. "Troy's dead."
"To you, maybe… but…" She started before I cut her off. She didn't get it, did she?
"No Shar, he's really dead." And I lost most of the bravado that kept me going all that day. "He killed himself."
Sharpay shrunk to her knees. I followed her down, and tried to hug her in a not-hugging her kind of way. I couldn't lose it anymore.
"His dad told me after school." I choked out a tear. "He told me it was cos of me."
And I held her for what was probably only thirty seconds. It felt so longer.
Glynn appeared back at the door, and asked something like 'are you ready?' To be honest, I really couldn't focus much.
"Yeah." I replied, and he disappeared again back to the car.
I got up, practically peeling Sharpay off me, and headed to follow him.
"You can't go." She almost screamed, still stuck in that position on the floor.
As I looked back at her, she looked like a little kid again, the little sister I once knew when she would cry for hours because she broke a nail. God, how time can change a person. I really wouldn't have thought Shar to get so emotional like this again. But then, as I realised later, I really wasn't in the proper state of mind to think about things.
"I'm sorry Shar."
She moved slightly, almost trying to reach an arm out to me but never managing to start the movement.
"But Ryan…"
"I have to Shar."
And I could tell she really understood. I wasn't going away to spend the night making love with my boyfriend. I wasn't going away to hurt her.
I was going away to try and forget the pain she knew I was in.
"Do you want a drink or anything?"
Glynn was over at his bag, pulling out a bottle of wine, or gin, or some kind of thing I knew he brought along to try and make the night that much more perfect.
I just lay there under the covers, almost naked except for my boxers, staring at the ceiling.
I'd tried, god I really did try to be able to let him make love to me, but as we'd started kissing, and things started to get hot between us, I'd had to break it off. Every time he touched my lips, I felt Troy. Every time he ran a hand over my body, I felt Troy.
Every time I heard him breathe, I felt troy.
I really couldn't do this.
"I'm really sorry." I said again, for what seemed like the millionth time.
I felt Glynn sit back down on top of the covers. He'd had his t-shirt on again, and had a glass of whatever it was in the bottle in his hand.
"It's okay. I was nervous my first time too." He still didn't know the truth. "Wanna talk about what's bothering you?"
There was no way I could tell him. Not now.
"I'm so sorry." I repeated.
I told him I was scared, nervous, terrified, anything that was not the truth that came into my mind.
Eventually, he suggested that we go to sleep. Just sleep. And would see how I felt in the morning.
No pressure, no forcing me, I felt so bad for using him like this.
I knew I'd only been asleep for an hour when I felt the dream. I heard a voice, and it was calling my name.
In the dream, I was in the Tardis – the Doctor's time machine – with him nowhere in sight. I was alone. The voice was telling me 'home'. And I felt the ship move, travelling backwards or forwards in time from wherever I was, and I saw from the monitor that outside was my house.
The ship had brought me home.
I opened the doors, and it was sunny, I mean really sunny. My home was covered in an almost pure yellow glow, and everything around me was pulsing with an orangey-yellow colour.
I felt him before I saw him emerge from the yellow light. He was almost see-through, I swear I could see my house through his chest. The Doctor.
Or rather, my Doctor.
My Doctor Troy
"Where are you?" Stupid question.
"In another place. There's a tiny little gap in the world that's letting me cross through like this. And it take's a lot of power to do this I needed the Tardis to draw from it."
I stared at him. I was frozen in the spot.
"You look like a ghost." Another stupid thing to say. Cos even though in this dream, I knew he was dead.
"Hold on." He said, and he raised his arms up above his head, before I heard the noise of the time machine get louder and brighter.
After a few seconds, he faded into his normal-looking self. The image of my Doctor Troy. He moved closer to me, stopping a few steps away.
"Can I touch you?" At last, a decent question to ask, or at least I thought so as I started raising my hand to his arm.
"I'm just an image." And my hand fell back to my side. "No touch."
I didn't know how I knew it, but I knew I was running out of time. I think it was the lights growing even brighter that made me realise it.
"Can't you come through properly?"
"I'm not allowed to. The world's would be destroyed."
"So?" And he laughed. The Troy Bolton laugh that I'd only ever seen him use when he was over at mine that first night. The night he kissed me.
The lights are still getting brighter, and I'm terrified.
"How long have we got?"
He quickly looks behind him at the light from my house and then back to me.
"About two minutes."
And I collapse to the ground, and I'm reminded of how Sharpay was crouched earlier. When I left her. All alone. I suddenly felt even more terrible.
He crouches down beside me, close enough to almost lean against me.
"It's not enough time." I feel the tears already on my face as I look back to him. "What am I gonna do without you?"
"You've got the Tardis." He says raising his arm to point to it, and I follow the gaze to it. I see Glynn standing in the doorway. And for a second, I wonder if he may be referring to him instead. "The ship that will take you anywhere and take care of you."
And by then, he really was meaning Glynn.
"I don't want the Tardis. Not if I can't have you." I stop to wipe at the tears. "I love you so much."
His colour flickers slightly. It goes dark, then light, then dark and light again so quickly.
"Quite right to." And he laughs again, and I can't help but laugh too. "And if it's my last chance to say it…"
He moves his hand to my cheek, just hovering above actual contact. I swear I could feel the warmth.
"Don't leave me." I said, trying more than ever to sense the heat from him.
"Ryan Evans…" And the light gets so bright, I can't see him anymore. "I love…"
He never finished the words.
A second later, I shot upright in bed, shouting his name. Totally forgetting about the guy sleeping beside me. Or the guy beside me who was previously sleeping, and was now looking at me with a look on his face that expressed everything.
I'd just shouted out Troy's name in front of my boyfriend.