Between You & Me
Disclaimer: I do not own HSM.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Their first Thanksgiving with Gabriella happened years after she joined the Evans family. Prior to the year Gabriella turned thirteen, and therefore could make her own decisions regarding which parent she wished to spend the holiday with, she had flown out to Oregon and had a combined Thanksgiving-Christmas vacation with her father. At first, when the divorce was still fresh, she had anticipated it from the moment school started. Later, as she inched towards adolescence, she had come to resent what she missed in Albuquerque while she was away.
An Evans family Thanksgiving was always a huge affair. Family would fly in from all over the country. Grandma Evans would move in for the week instead of staying at her condo in the city. The house would ring with laughter and childish giggles. The days leading up to Thanksgiving would be spent preparing the house. Grandma Evans had a tradition and a belief that to be thankful for what one has, they have to fully experience it. It meant that despite having a spotless mansion with a team of housekeepers and cooks, the Evans family cleaned it from top to bottom themselves. The children would help with setting the table and creating centerpieces.
The adults would cook. It was a tradition started by Maria the first year she was in Albuquerque. Alone without Gabriella, Vance had invited her to dinner. She had shown up early to cook a traditional Mexican dessert with Sharpay and Ryan as a surprise. Instead, after seeing the amount of work that the hired cooks had, she volunteered to help. The next year, Vance's sisters Violet and Vivienne joined her. Along with cleaning the house, cooking the meal was another tradition.
Ryan knew Gabriella hated that she missed out. When she was younger, she would come bursting through the doors at the airport, arms laden with gifts and bags from her father and step-mother, stories spilling out of her with excitement. Within minutes, she'd be silent, eyes down-cast, as Sharpay chattered away about the week she'd been gone. Ryan knew it was simply in Sharpay's nature to compete. Gabriella didn't see the need to. Having missed out on the ice cream fight or the theatre trip with Grandma or seeing a new baby cousin couldn't be beat.
The year she turned thirteen, her parents gave her the choice to stay in Albuquerque or go to Portland for Thanksgiving. She chose to stay. Things were arranged with school so that she left school early in December and flew to Portland for the week before Christmas Eve instead. For Thanksgiving, they were all together.
There were a lot of things to remember about that year. All the times someone had to introduce people to her. The way she laughed as Aunt Vi taught her to make apple pie. Yet, what Ryan remembered was dinner. When they finally sat down to eat, and each member of the family bowed their heads and gave one reason to be thankful, all eyes settled on Gabriella. Every person tended to say the same thing. It was a tradition unto itself. No one wanted to repeat what someone else said, and so each year, the same thing was uttered. Gabriella was new. She didn't have a place.
Gabriella chose love.
She was thankful to have love. Not the love of a specific person; just the abstract, less tangible access to love.
The Evans mansion was quieter than any Thanksgiving ever remembered. Grandma Evans was present, quietly and elegantly folding table linens with Maria in the dining room while the cook and Aunt Violet discussed how many side dishes there should be given the drastic cut in numbers. Everyone else had made alternate plans so as to avoid putting even more pressure on the family.
It had been three weeks since the accident. Gabriella's shoulder and cuts had mended. Her bruises had faded. Ryan been released from the hospital and had spent his last week of freedom catching up on schoolwork that he needed to know before returning to classes after the holiday. Sharpay's heart didn't feel quite as broken. In both big and small ways, everyone had stepped towards healing.
Gabriella found it unsettling. After months of guarding her words and her emotions, her traitorous thoughts still warred to convince her that it could all fall apart. That Sharpay's quiet gestures that indicated fragments of forgiveness were just a front. Where she once had felt completely comfortable and in control of situations, Gabriella suddenly found herself jerky and awkward. She kept witty retorts to Chad's jokes inside. She was slow to answer Sharpay's invitations to go shopping with the girls, the voice in her head reminding her that Sharpay felt obligated to invite her; guilty that Taylor and Kelsi were still stony-faced and quiet. She analyzed every nuance of what was said around her. Where she had belonged before, she now felt like an outsider. Tolerated, included, but not quite in sync with the others.
Which was why she was hiding in the den while everyone else worked to prepare for Thanksgiving. It had taken three years of Thanksgivings in Albuquerque for her to feel like an Evans at dinner. Now she felt more alone than before. She didn't have a tradition with Grandma Evans to make the stuffing or peel the apples for the pie. Usually her mother and her would bake the traditional Mexican bread but at Thanksgiving that treat was reserved for Sharpay. She didn't know enough about golf to join Vance and Ryan in the basement. So she hid in the den with her feet curled up on the couch watching The Grinch.
Sharpay startled her with a knock on the door. She waited for Gabriella's silent assent before entering the room and taking a seat at the far end of the couch. She sat stiffly on the edge, her feet flat on the ground, hand folded in her lap. Gabriella raised an eyebrow but said nothing. Sharpay watched the movie until a commercial appeared on the screen and Gabriella muted the television.
"Do you want to make apple pie with me?" she asked, looking at Gabriella's knees instead of her face.
"What? No," Gabriella replied. "That's your thing with mom. You bake the pie and the bread and Ryan gets almonds in his beans."
"Yeah, but you don't have a thing with Mom," Sharpay stated, shifting awkwardly. "You usually help Aunt Viv with the table but since she's not here this year and Grandma did it, I thought you'd want to help us."
"That's sweet, Pay, but I don't want to mess with tradition. You and mom should do it like always." She watched Sharpay. "Something about this year should be the same."
"Why?" Sharpay asked. "Why do we need things to stay the same? Haven't we learned by now that sometimes things change and should change and the world won't fall apart?"
"Pay, I don't think now is the time to—," Gabriella hesitated but Sharpay was ahead of her with the words pouring out. Not angry words or harsh tones, but simply spilling her guts.
"No, now is a good time." She sucked in a breath. "Juilliard is coming to East in January."
"What?" Gabriella gasped. She smiled at her sister, truly happy for her, but Sharpay wasn't smiling.
"They sent Ms. Darbus a letter last week telling her who they were interested in. Obviously we haven't had auditions for the musical yet but it won't really matter. They want to see how we work outside of the final production and if they like any of us, they will recommend we do the official auditions for the school in March." Sharpay sucked in a breath, finally letting a smile crack her features. "So they are coming to see me and Ry and Kelsi and anyone else who has applied."
"That's great, Pay. Really. I'm happy for you." Gabriella still wasn't sure what Julliard had to do with her earlier comments about change and the world but she assumed her sister would get to that eventually.
"I know, thank you." Sharpay paused and bit her lip. "They could come to see you too. If you wanted. Maybe their offer of a guaranteed audition place is off the table but you could get back on if you did the musical."
"No, Pay." Gabriella was shaking her head. "I don't want Juilliard. I never did."
"But your letter from before—," Sharpay started. "We never really got to talk about it. I was so mad that you had kept it a secret and then there was Troy and I felt like there was all of this stuff going on—. We never talked about it. We talked about lots of other stuff, but not Juilliard. Or—."
"California," Gabriella finished with a whisper.
"Yeah." Sharpay squared her shoulders and Gabriella could see the thoughts racing through her head. "But I want to know about Juilliard."
Gabriella looked at her sister. Sharpay, who had been trying so hard since the hospital to make anything arguments between them just between them. Sharpay who made sure that Gabriella was invited to join the gang for hangouts; who was polite and civilized to Troy. Gabriella finally looked at her and realized she was trying. Things would never be the same, but they could be different. They could still be good. So she told her about Oregon and the dance classes and the workshop and her solo. She told her about the representative who wouldn't take no for an answer and the letter that had come shortly after that.
"That's why I never told you," Gabriella finished. "You still had no idea where you wanted to go and Juilliard was taking its sweet time getting back to you. I just figured there was no point adding drama when it wasn't even a blip on my list of possibilities."
"And I jumped all over you about it." Although she sounded apologetic, Sharpay didn't actually apologize. Gabriella didn't expect her to. As an isolated incident, the situation would have been different. Her anger had been tied to her relationship with Troy and because of that, she wouldn't apologize to Gabriella.
"And I threw California in your face," Gabriella replied evenly.
It was her way of moving past Juilliard and onto the real topic, as well as a reminder that it is still a problem. Things are not as easy as this conversation would trick them into thinking. This easy chat and sharing of feelings is important, necessary and healing, but still a facade to issues boiling beneath the surface. Not everything has been defused.
"Mom told Grandma that you're going. Are you so sure? It's still early. You haven't looked anywhere else," Sharpay said. Her voice was quiet, uneasy.
"I don't need to look somewhere else, Pay," Gabriella answered. "I went with Dad and Phil during the summer. Dad was all excited because he got to be a part of helping me choose like Mom had been doing last year. We saw Stanford and Berkeley and USC before we went to Cal State." Gabriella's gaze was somewhere off in the distance, seeing something Sharpay could only picture from college brochures and the internet. "I fell in love with the school and the people and the town. They have an amazing science program with possibilities for grant work or internships. They are offering me a scholarship. The housing options are amazing and the beach is only a short drive away. I can take second year classes if I want."
"And Troy's going." Sharpay stated the obvious in the otherwise carefully calculated decision.
"When we were sixteen, Troy and I had this dream," Gabriella started. For a moment Sharpay thought she was avoiding the topic but she let her sister continue. "We were in the treehouse one day and Troy's dad had been on him again about his grades and school. I had just come from a scholastic decathlon strategy meeting for the semi-finals and we were both so sick of school that we came up with a plan of what we would do after high school if we didn't go to university. If we could do anything after graduation, what would it be?"
"We were going to move to California and live on the beach. We would get jobs that let us bartend at night so we could surf during the day. We would save our money and learn to live away from home, and when we were ready, we'd go to school and study what we wanted and not what our parents or guidance councillors expected us to. Troy would have flings with supermodels and I would work on my breakout runway clothing collection. We put everything into it while we lay on the floor of the treehouse." Gabriella was still smiling when she returned to the present and looked at Sharpay. "When things got bad last year, after you and Troy got together and I was so angry and confused, I let the dream go. I told myself that we weren't children anymore and it was irresponsible to think that we could go spend a year hanging out on the beach and doing nothing."
"But you applied to Cal State anyway," Sharpay pointed out.
"I did. When Dad suggested visiting west coast schools, I agreed because of Stanford. Mom and Dad were Alumni and it has great programs. Mostly, I liked the idea of starting early. If I got into the early honours program, I would leave school in May. One less month of dealing with you and Troy and the mess that I had left behind. Stanford wasn't a childish choice or one that supported lazing around beaches and surfers. It was responsible." Gabriella shuddered with the memory. "But then we got there and I hated it. It felt so stiff and rigid and pretentious. The students were brilliant but so focused that the mere question of athletics and fun seemed to make some of them nauseous. I just didn't feel like it fit me. It felt forced."
"And then you saw Cal State."
"I applied in September when we started school. It wasn't official, but I sent them my grades and profile and asked what they could offer me. Afterwards, Chad told me Troy had done the same thing. It was the first time I thought maybe some things could be fixed. Maybe if we were both out west, we could learn to be friends again. The letter that you saw from Cal State was their unofficial preliminary offer. It's still not concrete, but it's the only school I'm interested in." Gabriella watched Sharpay as she tried to process everything.
"And Troy?" Sharpay asked finally.
"Troy will make his own decision. I'm sure we share a lot of the same factors, but in the end he knows we're not kids anymore. Our daydreams have been rearranged." The movie on the television was over, the credits silently rolling by the screen as Gabriella waited for Sharpay to say something.
"I never cared about where I went to school. It didn't seem to matter. Daddy could pay for wherever I decided to go and I didn't know what I wanted to do so I wasn't confined by program selection. I just didn't want to be alone. I met all of my friends through drama or you and Ryan. The idea of being alone was scary and unknown," Sharpay shrugged her shoulders. "But that day that I got the letter from Juilliard, I knew what everyone else has been talking about. I want it so much."
"I'm glad," Gabriella told her.
"I get it now, what you and Ryan and Troy have been trying to say to me about picking my own place. Ryan and I both want the same school, but for ourselves, not because of one another. That makes a difference." The rec room was quiet.
"I'm really happy for you, Pay. I hope you get it," Gabriella told her.
"Me too."
On the TV, the opening credits for a new movie were playing and the two sisters settled back to watch.
Ryan found Sharpay in the kitchen long after the supper dishes had been stripped from the table and the adults had retired to the formal living room with a bottle of wine and quiet talk. The kitchen was dark and Ryan would have walked by completely if not for the glint of Sharpay's bracelet. Her shoulder rested against the wall, her body angled to look out the glass-paned patio doors to the landscaped yard beyond. The outside porch lights were on, as well as the tiny lights that lined the paths through the garden beds.
"Hey, are there any of those coconut cookies left?" Ryan asked with a smile.
"On the table," Sharpay replied. She looked away from the patio for a moment to watch her brother grab two cookies, shoving one in his mouth so he could use his free hand to get a glass of milk.
"What are you doing?" he approached her place by the doors and looked over her shoulder.
"Troy's here. His truck is by the curb." Sharpay pointed absently past the patio to the illuminated cul-de-sac where the white truck rested in front of the neighbour's house.
"I don't see them out there." Ryan craned his head and used a finger to part the sheer curtains that blocked his view. "Are you spying on them?"
"What? No!" Sharpay hissed. "I was in here getting a drink and I noticed that the lights to the patio got brighter. Then I saw the truck pull up." She glared at Ryan for suggesting it.
"I didn't hear the door," Ryan noted, turning away from the view and getting another cookie.
"He climbed the balcony." Sharpay sounded distant and sad. Ryan shot her a sympathizing glance before focusing on his glass of milk. "I'm not spying. I just happened to see him do it, and then I started thinking".
"What were you thinking about?" Ryan asked, his head glancing towards the patio as the lights dimmed once again. Gabriella must have turned them off once Troy was on the grass. Sharpay parted the curtains and Ryan could hear the sound of an unturned motor being turned over.
"I just keep thinking that these next few months should be for making up lost time, lost memories. They should be for fixing the last few months and getting things right." Sharpay took a breath and then turned away from the patio and walked towards the hallway, Ryan following her. "Instead, I feel like everything that's coming will be a 'last'. It's not enough time to fix things and some things will never be fixed."
"That doesn't mean we shouldn't try," Ryan told her.
Sharpay didn't respond but headed up the stairs to her room. Inside, she changed into her sweatpants and a tank top, pulled her hair into a pony tail and placed her earrings in her jewellery box. Pulling the covers off her bed, she dug around in her backpack until she found her English novel. She was just about to shut the door and curl up to read when Gabriella called her name, bounding down the stairs from the third floor. She had her laptop in her hands.
"I just got an email from Ms. Darbus. We need to finalise the costume order list for the musical. Do you have time to do it now?" Gabriella raised her eyes from the screen to lock with Sharpay's. "If you're busy, or tired, we can do it tomorrow."
"No, it's fine," Sharpay replied, shaking her head. She tried to ignore the traces of cologne that lingered on the air and assaulted her memory. "I can do it now."
Gabriella entered her sister's room, reading things off the screen as Sharpay turned on a light and shut the door. Cocooned in the privacy, they tried to find a middle ground between the glitz and the reality, the cost and the stage.
