Chapter 25

Disclaimer" I do not own High School Musical or any of its characters. The lines in bold are direct quotes from the movie.

Troy woke before the rest of the household next morning but not early enough to go running. He got up and started to make breakfast. He made scrambled eggs because he remembered Debra saying that was Jakie's favourite, and bacon because it was something he never got at home.

Debra came down as he was almost finished. "Thanks Troy" she said sleepily. "I'll finish this. Can you go and get Jacob?"

Troy grinned "Sure" he said jogging up the stairs. He went in as Jakie began to stir and scooped him up, efficiently changed his nappy and carried him downstairs talking to him.

"Outsi Twoy" Jacob said as they got near the back door.

"It's time for breakfast Jakie. Do you want some eggs?" Troy replied.

"Edds" Jakie chirped as he happily let Troy strap him into the highchair.

"He seems to have new words every time I see him" Troy commented to his aunt.

"Yes he's a very clever boy aren't you darling" Debra said kissing his forehead as she started to feed him.

Jacob started fussing "No you can't feed yourself this morning Jacob. I don't have time to clean up you and the kitchen before work. You're going to Sophie's today" Debra said.

"Sossie" Jacob repeated happily.

"Yes you're going to Sophie's after you eat your eggs" Debra said taking advantage of his distraction to finish feeding him his breakfast and clean him up.

Steve came down and inhaled his breakfast. Are you ready to go Troy?" he asked.

"Yeah why didn't you take me home last night?" Troy asked.

"I couldn't wake you up. You and Jacob were both out for the count and unlike Jacob, you're too heavy to carry these days" Steve said laughing.

"Oh sorry" Troy said sheepishly.

"Can you drop Jacob at Sophie's on your way?" Debra asked.

"Yeah sure. Let's go little man" Steve said scooping up the child. Debra handed Troy Jacobs bag and he collected his throwing both in the front seat choosing to sit in the back with Jakie.

Steve and Jakie dropped Troy off and he rushed to get ready for school. He called in at Gabriella's but she'd already left for school. Troy looked taken aback but managed to answer Ms Montez politely. "It's okay. It's my fault for running late. I better get a move on. Have a good day Ms Montez" he said before running the rest of the way to school.

-o0o-

Troy ran into Gabriella at lunch and tried to speak to her. Gabriella shook her head and walked away without saying anything. Taylor waved to her to come and sit with them but she sat alone and just stared at her lunch without eating. Chad called to Troy but he shook his head and left the cafeteria looking depressed. Troy walked out of the cafeteria without speaking to his friends either.

Chad looked at Taylor feeling guilty.

"They're both so sad, what have we done?" Taylor asked.

"Troy's really shut himself off. I thought this would get him back on track to concentrate on the championships but it's made things worse" Chad said.

"We have to fix this" Taylor said.

"Yeah" Chad agreed heading back to the team. He collected Jason and Zeke and they walked towards the gym to talk.

Taylor finished eating and met up with the decathlon team. "Before we start practicing there's something I want to talk to you all about" she began hesitantly.

"Gabriella?" Martha asked.

"Yeah. I'm beginning to think we shouldn't have done that yesterday. I didn't know it would upset her like that"

"If she really cared for Bolton, then it was better she finds out what he's like now than later" Scott said making the others feel a little better.

"Not necessarily. She knew him better than we did. She knew about the cheerleaders and it didn't worry her. She said he'd told her all about it" Taylor said.

"The cheerleaders haven't been hassling her either" Bec said questioningly. "They glare at her from a distance, but they never came near her. Anyone else would be dealing with some serious harassment."

"Yeah? That's really strange" Martha agreed. "I wonder why?"

"You said Gabriella seemed to already know Troy. He could have warned the cheerleaders off" Daniel suggested.

"Gabriella hasn't really made any friends other than Troy she joined the decathlon team but she doesn't talk to any of us outside of training" Taylor admitted. "Ive tried to be her friend but she's not really interested."

"Why would she trust us. She's too smart not to know we had something to do with it yesterday. We couldn't have had the conversation on the laptop like that, if we hadn't set it up" Martha said. "I'm almost surprised she even joined the team."

"We're getting off topic. I wanted to ask how we could try to fix things for Gabriella" Taylor said.

"All we can do is try to explain how we set it up and that Troy was under pressure from his team when he said those things and Chad planned to manipulate him into it" Martha suggested. "I don't know if it will be enough to get her to forgive Troy but hopefully she'll forgive us."

"You mean Taylor. We had nothing to do with it" Scott said.

Daniel shook his head. "We stood there and watched it happen and we didn't try to stop Taylor. She has no reason to believe we weren't involved" he said.

"I think we need to talk to Troy" Chad said.

"I don't think he wants to talk to us" Jason replied.

"He hasn't wanted to spend time with us since we accosted him in the locker room yesterday. Do you think this is about the singing?" Zeke asked.

Chad thought back "He might have thought we were taking his father's side" he said. "But I think he's more upset about the girl than anything else. He was kinda okay until they met up at her locker after lunch."

"We have to tell him" Zeke said. "He can't fix things with her if he doesn't know what he did"

"Troy's gonna be so pissed at us" Jason said.

"Word" Chad agreed. "But we should tell him anyway."

-o0o-

"Troy! Hey" Chad said as he Zeke and Jason went up to the rooftop to find their captain. They'd known Troy retreated there when he needed space and had decided until now to let him have his private space knowing that living with his father as coach he never got away from the pressures of basketball at home like they all did. But Troy wasn't hanging out with them at all since the stunt they pulled to get Gabriella to pull out of the call-backs so they had little choice but to follow him up there to talk to him.

"Hey, um... We just had another team meeting" Chad said

"Oh... wonderful" Troy said sarcastically wondering what they were going to hit him with this time.

"We had a team meeting about how we haven't been acting like a team. I mean us, not you" Chad said admitted.

"About the singing thing... Chad began.

"I don't even wanna talk about it" Troy retorted interrupting him.

"We just want you to know that we're gonna be there. Cheering for you" Chad said encouragingly.

"Huh?" Troy asked wondering what had caused this sudden turn around, not that it mattered anymore anyway he reminded himself sadly.

"If singing is what you wanna do, we should boost you up, not tear you down" Zeke said earnestly.

"Yeah, Win or lose, we're teammates. That's what we're about, Even if you turn out to be the worst singer in the world" Chad said teasing to try and lighten the situation.

"Which we don't know, because we haven't heard you sing" Jason said cheekily causing the others to try and hide their laughter.

"And you're not gonna hear me sing, guys. Because Gabriella won't even talk to me... and I don't know why" Troy said holding back tears.

Chad was horrified he'd hurt his best friend so badly. How could he have not realised how much Gabriella meant to Troy before he'd callously destroyed their relationship. Troy had told him about meeting her and had asked them all to protect her from the gossip and rumours at East high and Chad had forgotten about it as he tried to mould Troy into what he thought the basketball captain should be. He had to tell him about it to give Troy the opportunity to try to put things right even if Troy hated him for it.

We do" Chad admitted sheepishly.

I baked these fresh today. You'll probably want to try one before we tell you the rest" Zeke said hesitantly. Troy just stared at the bag of cookies then threw them back into Zeke's face. It was their fault? What had they done? Troy felt his anger rise.

"You're idiots you know. You've destroyed your chances to win the championships. I can't think, I can't play I can't sink a shot to save myself" Troy said bitterly running his hands through his hair aggitatedly. "You've destroyed everything and you think cookies can help make things right." He turned away to hide the tears now running down his face. "Just Go" he said thickly.

"You need to know what we did so you can fix it with Gabriella" Chad said.

"Some things can't be fixed Chad" Troy said sadly.

"Yesterday in the locker room, we had a web cam set up. We planned it all with McKessie, Gabriella saw you say you'd give up the auditions" Chad explained.

"I was lying to get you off my backs" Troy said laughing bitterly. "So she heard me say she meant nothing to me. No wonder she won't talk to me."

-o0o-

"Gabriella, we were jerks. No, we were worse than jerks because we were mean jerks. We thought Troy and the whole singing thing was killing our chances of having you on the scholastic decathlon team" Taylor explained.

"I heard what he had to say. I'm on your team now. Done" Gabriella replied sullenly trying to continue working the equation on the board.

"No, not done. We knew that Chad could get Troy to say things to make you want to forget about the call-backs. We planned it, and we're embarrassed and sorry" Taylor tried to explain.

"No one forced Troy to say anything. And you know what? It's OK. We should be preparing for the decathlon now, so it's time to move on" Gabriella said firmly, determined to protect herself from being hurt again. After thinking about it all night she realised Troy might have been lying to his teammates trying to manipulate them to leave him alone the same way he manipulated his homework and grades to get his father to accept him taking time off to study and to babysit. Still hurt she decided that it didn't matter if he'd meant what he said or why he said it he had told his friends that she meant nothing to him and it broke something inside her to hear it. Even if he was lying and from what she'd seen he'd been hurt by the loss of their friendship too, she couldn't trust him not to let her down again next time his team mates objected to her.

"No, it's not OK. The decathlon is whatever, but how you feel about us, and even more, Troy - that's what really matters" Taylor said.

Gabriella shook her head. It was too late for them to be sorry. 'Perhaps they should have thought of that before they ruined the best friendship I've ever had' she thought angrily, she couldn't trust any of them either. She turned away and went back to work.

Taylor sighed "We tried" she whispered to the others as they left Gabriella alone in the science room again. Gabriella had become a conscientious member of the decathlon team but in spite of all of them making an effort she had never been more than politely reserved with them. She made no attempt to socialise with any of them preferring to spend her time alone buried in her studies. She was clearly unhappy and lonely and they didn't know what else they could do about it.

-o0o-

Troy and Gabriella both spent another miserable afternoon. Both of them may as well have gone home after the confrontations with their friends for all the attention they paid their classes.

Gabriella skipped her decathlon meeting after school preferring to head straight home. She walked not wanting to have to make idle conversation on the bus.

Troy couldn't skip practice without bringing the wrath of his father down on his head but it was very clear something was seriously wrong. He was listless and apathetic and could barely bring himself to look at his teammates knowing how they'd betrayed him. Jack watched concerned as Troy failed to intercept the ball during the game and fumbled it when it was passed to him. Obviously something was upsetting his son.

Jack called practice off early and set the team to running knowing that Troy appreciated the quiet time to think things through. He approached Chad while Troy was occupied. "What's going on?" he asked.

"We stuffed up coach" Chad said sighing. "We thought Troy auditioning for the musical distracted him from preparing for the championships, so we manipulated things to get Gabriella to pull out of the call-backs. Problem is we upset her so much she won't even talk to Troy" he explained.

"You need to fix this Chad" Jack ordered.

"We tried. We told Troy what we did and McKessie confessed to Montez at lunch. Now Troy's mad at us too" Chad admitted sheepishly. "I don't know what else we can do."

Jack swore loudly. "Okay guys hit the showers" he called.

Jack was waiting when Troy came out of the showers and gestured him to come with him. Troy followed him silently to the car and climbed in the passenger seat.

"What's going on?" Jack asked.

Troy didn't answer.

"Troy the championship is three days away. What can I do to help you get back on track?" Jack said concerned.

"I need to try to talk to Gabriella. She won't talk to me at school so I was planning to go over there after dinner. At least that way her mom will answer the door and I can give her a message if she won't talk to me" Troy said.

"Okay you can have the evening off to talk to Gabriella, but after that you need to start trying to put it behind you and concentrate on the game" Jack said firmly.

"I'll try" Troy promised sighing.

-o0o-

Hi, uh... Just came to say I'm sorry" Troy rehearsed as he walked towards Gabriella's house.

"Hi, Miss Montez" Troy said as she answered the door that night.

"Oh, Troy!" Maria said surprised to see him standing on her doorstep.

She turned to see Gabriella on the stairs hidden by the door.

Gabriella shook her head and mouthed "No."

"Um... Gabriella is kind of busy with homework, so now's not a good time" Maria made excuses for her daughter sadly. Gabriella had explained what had happened and Maria was annoyed and disappointed with Troy for hurting Gabriella like that. On the other hand Gabriella had been so happy when she was friends with Troy, Happier than she'd ever seen her daughter and she was miserable and more lonely than ever now without him. And it was obvious from the bags under his eyes and his tight expression that Troy was hurting just as much as Gabriella was.

"I made a mistake, Ms Montez, and I would really like to let Gabriella know that. Could you tell her I came by to see her?" Troy said sadly. Maria was impressed he admitted what he did was wrong, and even more impressed that he remained calm and polite even after she refused to let him in to see Gabriella.

"I will... Troy" Maria promised. "Good night."

"Good night, Thank you" Troy said politely walking away as Maria closed the door. Troy pulled out his phone intending to call but then remembering the balcony outside Gabriella's room and wondered if he could get up there.

A/N: Thank you to Pumpkinking5, old voldys gone moldy, Ceciliaa93, ENPD, stordec23 and Taylstj for your support.