Disclaimer: I do not own High School Musical or any of its characters.
A/N: AHHH! Sorry for the wait! There are less than 3 weeks until finals and I'm pretty much freaking out. School is crazy right now, so I'm trying to get as much time in as I can to write this. Thank you for being patient. It really means a lot to me! I hope all you Americans out there enjoyed your Memorial Day weekend – I know I did! Enjoy…
Last Time…
She wasn't quite sure what her friends thought they were going to do, but she hoped that they would figure something out because she felt like she was all out of options. She knew she couldn't call the police because she also knew that right after that she and siblings would be separated and she was certain that she couldn't let that happen. Ever.
She had faith though her friends would figure out something while maybe she'd try to work something out herself. She felt relieved that she knew she had a way to communicate with her friends, but she was also terrified because she knew that if somehow her father found out she was dead.
The phone call had been helpful in boosting her spirit. For a while she'd truthfully forgotten she was in North Carolina, while her friends were back in New Mexico. Now that they were gone she felt alone. Hearing their voices had brought back a myriad of memories from her time in New Mexico. She'd remembered what cooking was like when laughter filled the air and as she continued to cook, she tried to remember that feeling. The feeling of happiness.
Chapter Twenty Five – E-mailing
It had been one month since the phone call and since then Gabriella hadn't heard her friends' voices once. They did however chat through e-mail. Gabriella spent her lunch period in the library, replying to the e-mails. The e-mails were Gabriella's only way of staying connected with her friends, they were what go her through her day.
She needed something to get her through her day, because truthfully she was exhausted. Getting more than 5 hours of sleep had become a luxury for Gabriella that hadn't occurred in weeks.
The exhaustion was not only affecting her mentally, but it was starting to affect her physically. Since her body had become weaker, she had become less tolerant to her father's beatings. Ugly bruises covered her upper arms and abdomen. On her face she had a few scars as well as dark circles under her eyes. Gabriella was thinning out also due to lack of rest and the intensity of her work load. There just didn't seem to be enough time in the day anymore.
Gabriella was currently sitting on her bed doing her homework. She tried to work quickly, but the daunting thought of the day's tasks that still needed to be completed loomed over her, impairing her ability to work efficiently. She took a deep breath and tried to focus on her work. However, schoolwork came second in the Montez house,
"GABRIELLA!" her father hollered. Gabriella scrambled to get herself on her feet. She frantically made her way downstairs to the kitchen, where her father stood in front of a nearly empty refrigerator.
"How does this look like to you?" he demanded pointing into the refrigerator.
"Um…empty?" Gabriella offered softly.
"Exactly!" her father answered sharply, causing Gabriella to flinch slightly. "My next question would be, why is it empty?"
Gabriella paused, she knew the answer to this question, it was really very simple. Her father had been too lazy to go shopping. Going shopping was one of the few responsibilities Gabriella was not held accountable for, due to the fact that it involved leaving the house. However, Gabriella knew better than to answer with that answer. That answer would get her beaten.
"I'm sorry, I can go food shopping right now if you want," she replied quietly.
Tomas contemplated his daughter's response before he formulated his decision,
"You have exactly one hour to do the shopping from the time you leave this house and Lucas and Lily are staying right here. Understood?""
Gabriella nodded quickly, afraid to say anything in fear that her father would strike her. Her father roughly shoved money into Gabriella hand before he pushed past her. Not wanting to waste any time, Gabriella quickly wrote down some items she knew they needed. She grabbed her jacket and her bag before she slipped out the front door.
The grocery store wasn't too far from the Montez's house and luckily Gabriella didn't have too much to get, so she wouldn't have too much to carry home from the store. It was also a lovely day outside, so really Gabriella didn't mind walking to the store.
Gabriella clutched her bag as she made her way down the sidewalk. She hummed quietly to herself as the cool breeze blew her hair in multiple directions. Before she knew it she was walking into the small town center of Belmont and she could see the supermarket just at the end of the street.
As her mind started to map out her path in the store she lost focus and bumped into a couple.
"I'm so sorry! I wasn't paying attention to where I was going!" she apologized, embarrassed. Looking up at the couple, Gabriella immediately recognized the man walking with the woman; it was Alex, Troy's brother. She froze, praying that by some miracle he wouldn't know who she was – that would make things a lot easier.
However as soon as Gabriella made eye contact with him she knew he recognized her.
"Gabriella?" Alex asked, clearly confused.
"Hi Alex," she responded.
Alex grinned, "Well I certainly didn't expect to see you here. What are you doing here?" he asked.
"My dad moved us here. I've been here for about a month," Gabriella replied.
"That sucks," he frowned, "How are you getting on here?"
"Eh," Gabriella shrugged her shoulders, "I'm doing ok. What are you doing in Belmont?"
"I'm here with my girlfriend Cassie, who you haven't met," he stepped aside slightly and motioned to a fair-skinned, curly red haired, young woman, "Gabriella, this is Cassie. Cassie this is Gabriella, my brother's…" Alex paused, for the first time considering that Gabriella might not still be his brother's girlfriend. "Uh…friend."
Cassie smiled warmly as she shook Gabriella's frail hand,
"It's nice to meet you."
"You as well," Gabriella smiled, "And just so you know Alex, I'm still Troy's girlfriend."
"Well thank God for that. He was pretty much a slob before he met you. You managed to knock some sense into him."
Cassie rolled her eyes, "Oh stop, it's not like you're any better."
Gabriella chuckled softly. "So what brings you guys to Belmont?" she asked curiously.
"We're meeting Casssie's parents for dinner." Alex answered.
"There is this amazing restaurant called Amethyst here. It's my favorite restaurant, so every time I come home from college we go there," Cassie explained.
"That sounds wonderful. I should let you guys go enjoy your evening though," Gabriella said.
Alex nodded," It was good to see you again Gabriella."
"You too" she answered, "And it was nice to meet you Cassie."
"You as well. Hopefully we'll see each other sometime in the future" Cassie smiled.
"I hope so."
Alex had taken Cassie's hand as they said their final goodbyes. Gabriella walked in the opposite direction of Cassie and Alex but she couldn't help but glance over her shoulder back at the couple strolling down the sidewalk.
She smiled softly. The brief encounter hadn't been that bad, it could have been a lot worse. Gabriella had actually enjoyed it in a way. Although she felt a pang in heart, seeing a familiar face was a nice break. She had also done something she hadn't done in ages. She had laughed. It had only been a chuckle, but it was the closest Gabriella had gotten to feeling happy in the past month.
She sighed and continued to walk to the street to the grocery store. After shopping for 40 minutes Gabriella managed to make it back to her house before her hour was up.
She slipped through the front door and gratefully placed the heavy shopping bags in the kitchen. She pulled the frozen pizza from one of the bags and preset the oven to 400 degrees. While she waited for the oven to heat up, Gabriella unpacked the groceries. Soon the oven beeped and she placed the pizza in. Setting the timer Gabriella left the kitchen to go upstairs so she could get some more of her homework in before the pizza cooked.
As she walked past Lily's room she heard whimpering. Concerned, Gabriella knocked lightly on the door,
"Lily? Lily are you alright?" she asked softly.
"Gabi?" Lily's broken voice came from through the door.
Gabriella immediately opened the door only to see Lily and Lucas huddled on Lily's bed crying, bleeding and bruised. She gasped upon seeing her brother and sister – this was the worst she'd seen them.
Darting over to the bed Gabriella started examining her siblings. Both Lucas and Lily had red hand prints, which would surely bruise, all up their arms mostly likely because their father had grabbed them.
Both her sibling's faces were stained with tears as they looked up at Gabriella with scared eyes. Sitting between them she wrapped her arms around them. Just as soon as she touched Lily's back, Lily winced painfully. Gabriella immediately let go of her brother and sister to look at Lily's back. Carefully she lifted the back of her sister's shirt up, wincing silently as she saw the red markings on her back, parts of which were bleeding. Slowly Gabriella let the shirt back down and got up off the bed. Lucas however grabbed her arm before she could even turn around.
"Don't leave us Gabi," he begged frightfully.
"I'm just going to get the first aid kit. I'll be right back. I promise," Gabriella assured him. Lucas nodded and released his grip on Gabriella's arm.
Within minutes Gabriella was back in Lily's room with her first aid kit in one hand and two ice packs in the other.
"Here, use these where it hurts," she said gently, handing each of her siblings an ice pack.
Gabriella took some time to care for the wounds on Lily's back as well as some she found on Lucas' legs.
As the twin's calmed Gabriella finally decided it was time to figure out what had happened.
"What happened?" she asked softly.
Lily sniffled and took a deep breath, "My teacher called home. She's worried that I'm not getting enough sleep, which is probably true because I don't really sleep well anymore because of you know..But Dad told her that I have a clinical sleep problem and that he'll even show her the doctor's note tomorrow. Then, after he hung up he came storming upstairs and started yelling and then…" Lily trailed off frightfully.
"And then I heard Lily scream and a loud crash. So, I came running in here and Lily was on the floor near the bed and then he grabbed me and you know…" Lucas recounted quietly, "Then he just left, mumbling about having to forge a note now."
Gabriella pulled her brother and sister close, careful not to touch their injuries, "Shhhh. It's all over now. It's going to be ok," she soothed.
"It was just so scary," Lily mumbled, "He was so angry. He said it was our faults. That we were trying to get him in trouble." She hiccupped, "and he, he said that if anyone ever called concerned again, he would…he would…kill us," a sob escaped Lily's lips and Gabriella could feel Lucas crying as well.
Gabriella whispered comforting words to her brother and sister, assuring that it would all be alright; that she would make sure that nothing happened to them.
She held them close until she heard the oven beep downstairs. She helped to dry Lucas and Lily's tears, trying to make it look as if they hadn't been crying, before she actually went downstairs with the twins by her side.
--
The next day, Gabriella sat in front of a school computer in the library. She had her e-mail open, with a box to compose a new e-mail open as well.
She hadn't slept a wink last night – she'd been awake thinking about what had happened with the twins. Their terrified faces were constantly streaming in her mind. As well as the chilling threat her father had made, "he would…kill us." The most terrifying part of his threat was that Gabriella knew her father was actually capable of following it through.
She couldn't let that happen.
She had to figure out a way to make sure no one ever got suspicious or reported them. They would just have to live with their father forever. They would just have to get used to it again. It wasn't worth the risk. The chance at getting freedom also came with some pretty terrifying risks.
If someone reported her father, the police would show up and an investigation would commence. Lucas, Lily and Gabriella would probably be taken to some sort of shelter while their father was tried in court. There was always the possibility that he wouldn't be charged and they would have to go back and live the man who was out to kill them. Even if he was charged, there was no guarantee on how long he'd be locked away or if he'd even be locked away. On top of all that, even if everything worked out perfectly regarding convicting her father, Gabriella still might be separated from her brother and sister, and she couldn't even think about that. The way Gabriella looked at it they were most definitely better off if she could prevent anyone from figuring it out.
She looked back up at the computer screen; she knew what she had to do. She had to cut off ties with the gang. She had to separate her feelings from her logic. It was far too dangerous to keep this up. If her father found out, she was sure that the threat from the night she'd been taken away was still in place. That was two threats on her life by the same person. She would have to tell them to stop trying to find away to get her away from her father, so that there wouldn't be a chance of getting reported from that aspect.
Taking a deep breath, she began to type,
Dear Everyone,
I don't even know where to begin with this, but I need to start somewhere. We can't do this anymore. It's too risky and I'm too afraid that something worse than any of us can imagine will happen to either myself or Lucas or Lily. I know you're thinking that he'll never find out, but I'm not prepared to take that risk anymore, not when my brother and sister's lives are at stake. He figured out we were in Albuquerque, it would be easy to figure out this. So, please don't try to fix this. I'll be alright, I promise. Who knows maybe one day we'll see each other again? For now though, move on. Live your lives and I'll live mine.
Goodbye,
Gabriella
xoxoxo
Gabriella couldn't bear to read it over to check for errors. Doing so, would only deepen the pain she felt. She quickly pressed send and waited for the message to pop up that the e-mail had been sent.
Upon seeing the words on her computer screen, she pushed back her chair and walked straight to her only safe haven: the girl's bathroom. Having fought back tears the entire way to the bathroom, when she finally arrived the tears immediately streamed from her eyes.
She couldn't breathe, she felt like she had lost a part of herself. In some ways she really had. She had let go of some of the people who were most important to her. It hurt so much more this time than it had when she'd been taken from Albuquerque because this time she felt like she was losing them forever. She also knew that this would hurt them probably just as badly as it hurt her. That, in turn, killed her inside because the last thing she wanted to do was hurt her friends.
Gazing back up at her broken eyes she prayed that she had made the right decision. She was confident however that he had done just that. That she was, in fact, protecting her family.
A/N: How about that for a tad bit of a twist? How will Troy and the rest of the gang react? You'll see soon ;)
Also, I know this is only from Gabriella's point of view, but if I had extended it to be from the gang's point of view as well, you might never have seen this chapter. So I hope you don't mind too much!
Thanks for reading! Please review!