DISCLAIMER: I do not own High School Musical, the songs, the lyrics, the characters etc. It I did, I would drop out of uni and instead be out rolling in my cash, and in the process of producing many M rated sequels starring a scantily clothed Zac Efron.
AUTHOR'S NOTE: This chapter is in the category of fillery and plot progressing. Sorry if you think it's boring.
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Chapter 25 – Pressure
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Troy was woken at 5:30 on Tuesday morning by the annoying sound of his ringing alarm. He reached over and slapped the snooze button, barely registering that it had gone off. Less than two minutes later, Jack Bolton was thumping on the door to his room.
"Rise and shine, it's butt kicking time!" Jack shouted.
Jack opened the door and wasn't the slightest bit surprised to see that Troy had chosen to ignore him, and had pulled his pillow over his head.
"Troy. We're going for a run. NOW!"
Troy turned his head, sleepily glaring at his father from underneath the pillow. "This is child abuse."
"No, it's training. You're out of shape, you need to get back into shape by this weekend or you will make a fool of yourself in front of your new team mates."
Despite Troy's incessant complaints, Jack yanked his son out of bed.
"You have two minutes to be in your workout gear and downstairs."
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Not only had Coach Bolton organised a very hard core training schedule comprising of morning and evening runs, as well as nightly free throws – but he had also enlisted the assistance of some of Troy's fellow Wildcats. Jack had personally called Chad and asked him to put the pressure on Troy to start playing two on two with the boys more often. Hence why Troy's free period plans to rehearse with Gabriella were destroyed when Chad dragged him to the gym.
"Captain, you're representing our team. It rests on your shoulders to show the rest of our great country that the Wildcats are top shit!"
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Since Troy had bailed on Gabriella during free period, lunch period became dialogue rehearsing time, the pair separating themselves from the rest of the group and going over lines.
"Arnold, we come from two separate worlds. I don't think this will ever work," Gabriella said flawlessly, not needing to refer to her script once.
Troy was blank. "Um… but… you… I…" he groaned and picked up the sheet from the table, scanning over. "But you can't just give up so easily, Minnie. If you gave up on everything in life just when it gets tough, how would you ever achieve anything?"
"I'm just being…"
"Gabriella!" Taylor shrieked, clearly in a panic, running into the cafeteria.
Some students looked up, but amongst the din most of them didn't even realise anything out of the ordinary was going on. Gabriella abandoned the line reading, standing up to face Taylor, who sounded completely distraught.
"Tay, are you okay? What happened?"
"The decathlon is tomorrow night!"
Gabriella was confused. "No it's on Friday… remember you were narky because I have our first big rehearsal and can't…"
"No no no it's been changed. It's tomorrow night!"
Gabriella's eyes widened. "What?!?"
"One of the judges has had some emergency or something but the fill in judge has some appointment or something or other and so it means that some other guy was called to fill in but as it turns out this guy can't come on Friday and there's a whole long story that Mr Davis just told me and anyway so it's now here tomorrow night at 6:30. TOMORROW NIGHT! To begin with, Kim isn't here today, apparently she has the flu."
"So we get Martha again," Gabriella said simply, trying to remain calm. There needed to be a voice of reason.
"Oh my God, we so CANNOT be ready by tomorrow! You wanted to go through a whole list of stuff with us! And now you've got all the extra rehearsals and…"
"Taylor!" Gabriella said, raising her voice. "It will be fine. We will meet tonight after my musical rehearsal like we planned. We'll just have to meet until later in the night, so it means the time when I'm at rehearsal will give everyone time to do their homework and stuff. What we need to do now is go and find Mr Davis and get permission to have tomorrow morning off from classes. And then… okay well at least it's here tomorrow night so I guess we'll have a bit of time after my rehearsal…"
"You can't go to rehearsal tomorrow," Taylor said, aghast.
Gabriella glanced at Troy. "Oh no, I have to go. I can't miss another one, no way."
"What if we came to the rehearsal and you kind of flitted back and forth?" Taylor suggested desperately.
"Tay, I know you haven't been to one of these rehearsals but I'm normally pretty busy… there isn't really a lot of flitting opportunity."
"Gabriella, I told you when you realised how big the musical was that you could bail on the team if you wanted. You said, no no, you can juggle the two. Well I am begging you right now – juggle the two. Please. Please. Please please please!"
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Since failing his algebra test, Troy had been fairly good about keeping up to date with math homework. Of course Miss Jackson had assigned over twenty homework questions that night; on top of the geography chapter he was supposed to read by the next day. He also had a reading for science class, but decided he would skip that one seeing as he sat next to Gabriella who always had perfectly organised notes he could read from. Meanwhile, he had the first draft of an English assignment due the next day, of which he'd barely read a word of the book the essay was based on.
At 2 o clock in the morning, Troy put down his English novel. He'd wanted to get some notes down but he was at the point of exhaustion where the words on the page were blurring together. He'd skimmed through, catching the gist of the plot. His theory was that the teacher wouldn't expect much for the first draft, just that something had been done. He planned to scribble some notes down during his first few periods the next day and everything would be sweet.
Not only had he been awake for the last 20 hours but it had been an action packed 20 hours, with over three hours of basketball, two hours of musical rehearsal – on top of his regular classes. He'd gotten home after rehearsals and been practically forced into going for an hour long run, followed by another hour of jump shot technique after dinner.
Troy collapsed into bed, making sure his alarm was set. Three and a half hours of sleep was better than nothing.
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At 3 in the morning Gabriella wearily closed her textbook. The decathlon team had met at Taylor's house until almost 10pm. Gabriella then went home and rushed through her science reading, printed out the final rough draft of her English assignment ready to hand in the next day, and ploughed through the calculus homework questions. She then spent the next three hours studying from a home economics textbook. Kim was the only person in their team who studied the subject, and Gabriella knew from her past experience that as the decathlon reached the more serious rounds – like city finals – that random subjects not a part of the standard curriculum would be incorporated into the competitions. So she took it upon herself to hope that something would sink into her brain.
"And here's hoping Miss Schultz doesn't call on me to answer any questions in history tomorrow," she said sleepily to herself.
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Gabriella succeeded in getting Mr Davis to organise for the team to have the first few periods off the following morning. The team had met in the morning before school to get passes from Mr Davis. Gabriella, Taylor and Martha, who were all in Miss Darbus's homeroom, headed to class to get their names marked off and provide their slips excusing them from class.
"There you are! I was looking for you this morning," Troy said, pleased to see Gabriella.
"We're not staying," Gabriella informed him. "We have the first few periods off."
"So you're not going to be in science?" Troy asked, sounding disappointed.
"Sorry."
"Did you do the reading?" he asked, smiling cutely.
Gabriella rolled her eyes and pulled her folder out of her bag and located the pages where she had taken her very articulate and organised notes, handing them to him. "Don't get it dirty."
"Will you be around at lunch?"
She shook her head. "No, our team will be meeting. So unless I run into you, I'll see you in drama this afternoon."
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Miss Darbus clasped her hands together in adoration as Troy and Gabriella finished up their 'What I've Been Looking For' number.
"That was lovely," Miss Darbus said simply. "Simply beautiful."
Troy and Gabriella glanced at each other, smiling broadly.
"Thanks," Troy said, feeling a little awkward. He wasn't used to such blatant praise from Miss Darbus.
"Now, I would next like to see our three sisters rehearse their trio," Miss Darbus announced.
Gabriella ran down the steps to the stage, running through the auditorium and into the foyer.
"Back again," Gabriella announced breathlessly as she joined her decathlon team mates.
They had grouped together a set of desks to the side of the foyer and were sitting around the newly formed larger table, books and stationery scattered across the place.
"Like I was saying, I think there is a strong movement AWAY from Shakespeare so far with the literature questions," Jenna commented. "You've all read everything on the AP English reading list right?"
They all nodded in affirmation.
"I think they'll focus on fiction," Taylor mused. "But if we've all read just about everything, it won't really matter what they focus on."
"It's too late to be thinking about that anyway," Gabriella pointed out. "If we haven't read it, we haven't read it. Nothing can be done about it."
"What had you started to say before about the buzzer round?" Jeremy asked Gabriella.
"Oh! Right. I was just going to say, that last year, I noticed that once you're competing against more than one team, you have the instinct you try to buzz in early because you want to get in first. Resist that urge unless you're sure about what the question will be," she advised. "A lot of the time they purposely word the questions so that if you buzz in early before they finish asking the question, you will answer something that wasn't even being asked."
"Gabriella!" Troy called, poking his head into the foyer. "Darbus wants us again."
Taylor groaned. "Tell the old bat to stick it," she said viciously.
"Taylor!" Gabriella exclaimed.
"I'm sorry but we need you here!"
Gabriella rolled her eyes. "I'll be back soon, I promise."
As she followed Troy down through the seating towards the stage, Gabriella couldn't help but whinge a little.
"I wish Taylor would calm down. I know this is important to her but she's making me feel like it's my job to prepare them. It's not my fault that Mr Davis has never looked after a decathlon team before. Just because I've been to city finals doesn't mean that I should be responsible for whether we win or lose!"
"It's just how Taylor copes with pressure I guess," Troy said, trying to provide a different perspective. "She stresses and over prepares. I'm sure she doesn't actually consider you responsible."
"Miss Montez, let us go through scene IV from directly before Sharpay and Ryan's duet," Miss Darbus proclaimed. "So I need Miss Holden on stage, Mr Bolton you are in the wing awaiting your cue."
The dialogue was rehearsed with little incident, other than Miss Darbus not being impressed with Troy's continual reference to his script. They went through the scene several times, and were given notes of points to work on for the next rehearsal.
"And now to move onto Ryan and Sharpay's duet, and Troy and Gabriella could you meet with Miss Simmons in the general dressing room."
Gabriella sighed. Any other day, she would have no problem from being busy in rehearsal, moving from rehearsing to song to dialogue to dance. Any other day. But on that day, Gabriella just really wanted to be told "okay, you have a half hour break." Of course it wouldn't actually be a BREAK. She rubbed her temples, feeling the onset of a headache.
Miss Simmons had just wanted to quickly go over some changes she'd made to some of the choreography she had designed for Bop to the Top, pursuant to some advice given to her by Ryan Evans. She admitted that the changes worked and that Troy and Gabriella both seemed to be more comfortable with the new movements than with the previous ones.
Troy and Gabriella emerged from the quick practice, observing the stage area from the wings, awaiting instruction. Sharpay was arguing with the choreographer about her and Ryan's big dance number. Something about the choreography being 'too simple' for her liking. Troy and Gabriella had learnt over the past two months that when Sharpay decided something required change, they should avoid the situation and duck for cover.
"I should go back to my team if they're still doing this one," Gabriella said with a sigh, rubbing her temples.
Troy grabbed Gabriella's hand, entwining his fingers with hers, and led her through the back corridors. Finally he found an empty room, the costume store room. Troy had a glimmer in his eye and a sly smile on his face. Troy held an arm around Gabriella's waist, pulling her towards him.
"I feel like I've hardly seen you this week," he said in a husky whisper, pressing his lips against hers sweetly.
"And yet we've been here every afternoon," Gabriella pointed out.
"I've spent lots of time with Minnie…" Troy kissed her lightly on the nose. "But not with Gabriella. I want Gabriella time." He kissed her again, this time softly on the lips. "With Sharpay going on like she is, everyone will be busy with her for a while. Meaning we won't be needed." He kissed her again, this time his lips lingering a moment longer. "And I think that you need some time to relax and not think about this decathlon. You're right when you tell Taylor that you need to be in a calm space when you're competing – believe me I know that." Another kiss.
"And how do you suggest I relax?" Gabriella asked slyly.
"With more of this," Troy said softly.
Troy's lips lingered longer still, encouraging their mouths to open slightly. The next kiss, his tongue entwined with Gabriella's briefly. The short kisses became a longer, passionate kiss.
"Gabriella?" Taylor's voice called just outside.
He groaned and suggested softly, "Perhaps we just pretend we're not here."
Gabriella sighed and pulled him toward the door. "I have to. You know that."
Troy pouted but he did know. He nodded.
"Taylor?" Gabriella called after her.
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Whether you attribute it to some sort of divine intervention; Gabriella's powers of persuasion; or just plain luck – somehow Gabriella convinced Miss Darbus to allow her to leave rehearsal a whole hour early at 5 on the dot. Therefore providing an hour and a half between the rehearsal and the commencement of the decathlon. Gabriella and her decathlon team mates escaped to their usual classroom, going over last minute strategy and generally keeping one another motivated and calm.
Just after 6, a knock came at the door.
"What?!" Taylor called irritably.
The door creaked open, and Troy and Chad popping their heads around from either direction.
"Come in, would be the polite term," Chad said.
"We're busy," Taylor said bluntly.
"Which we know very well," Troy responded. "And is why we're not staying."
"We just brought you a present," Chad said.
"Tada!" they said simultaneously, each revealing two pizza boxes they'd been holding out of eyesight behind the wall.
"You can't compete on an empty stomach," Troy said, setting the pizza boxes down on the table. The decathletes swarmed around.
"How did you guys do this? You would have only just left rehearsal," Martha queried.
"I messaged Chad an hour ago and asked him to bring them," Troy answered.
Gabriella kissed Troy softly on the lips. "Don't I have the most amazing boyfriend ever?"
"You guys rock!" Freddie declared, digging into the pizza.
"Gabriella, I take it all back. If Troy brings us pizza more often, then I'm fine with you texting on your cell during our meetings," Jeremy added.
"Well actually it was CHAD who brought the pizza," Chad said under his breath.
Taylor, rather impulsively, went over to Chad and kissed him softly on the cheek.
"Thank you," she said quietly.
Chad grinned broadly. "You're welcome."
"Anyway enjoy, we're going to leave you guys to keep… doing whatever it is you do," Troy said, gesturing to all of their belongings.
"Kick ass!" Chad encouraged them. "We'll be watching!"
"You'll be watching?" Gabriella queried.
"Us… and some others. Support your school and all," Troy said.
"You guys are going to be loud and embarrassing, aren't you?" Jenna asked, aghast.
"Please don't!" Taylor begged. "This isn't a basketball game! There is a very serious and formal protocol at these events."
"Got you," Troy said, keeping a straight face.
"Right. Understood. Serious and formal," Chad said sombrely.
The boys glanced at each other, exchanging wicked smiles. Serious and formal were seldom used words in the vocabularies of Chad Danforth and Troy Bolton.
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AUTHOR'S NOTE: Yeah so... a bit blah, but necessary for a bunch of boring mundane logistical issues to do with my little timeline of when things have to occur and... I won't bore you with more explanation. Up next chapter is the decathlon - and then the chapter after that I promise it will pick up and become a bit more interesting again!