Thank you to everyone who read the last chapter. Also, thank you for the kudos. I'm glad all of you are still reading this.

You're getting two chapters this week. I meant to upload this yesterday, but I got so busy working on the Thanksgiving arc chapters that I forgot to. I find it ironic that I'm working on the Thanksgiving chapters that probably will not be posted until Easter.

Chapter 21: Number One Fan

October 31, 2008

Kim walked into the frenzy of fall musical preparation, which was the EHS auditorium with Alex. She didn't remember it being this crazy when she was a student here. This year they were doing Taming of the Drama Queen. Obviously an adaptation of Taming of the Shrew. With only seven days to the first performance, Sharpay was in pure diva mode. Unfortunately, neither Chad nor Ms. Darbus was around to keep Sharpay from scaring the freshmen. She was currently yelling at a boy who couldn't be more than a sophomore.

"Donny, you did a great job last year as stage manager despite the last-minute substitution. However, what you did last time does not matter. We have seven days until the curtain goes up. The sets are not together, half the cast does not know their lines, and you brought me the wrong cappuccino. Just fix it." Sharpay said as she threw her cappuccino back into Donny's hands.

"I am glad you could help out, Kim, even though you're going to miss the opening night because of your family thing. I see you brought the littlest star." Sharpay ran over to hug them as soon as she noticed they were there.

"I didn't have a choice. The sitter canceled again." Kim is pretty sure she just lost nanny number four. "I see the drama bitch is back."

"Not really. Chad has Jason watching me. If I use excessive diva behavior, he's going to make me sleep in my own room tonight." For some reason, the phrase "old married couple" popped into Kim's mind at that comment.

"That wasn't excessive?"

"As long as I didn't dump the cappuccino on top of Donny, it was not excessive. Besides, the production is a complete mess. Ms. Darbus is at another doctor's appointment, which means I'm in charge of the entire rehearsal. Because two of the lead characters are on the basketball team, they cannot do after school rehearsals with the rest of the cast. This means tomorrow is going to be the only day we're going to be able to do a full cast rehearsal."

"I can see that could be a problem."

"Also, some of our female cast members cannot be in a room together long enough to rehearse more than two scenes without a fight breaking out. At least I could pretend to like Gabby, who is happily gone from our lives for good."

Kim was almost positive that Sharpay was happier about Troy's break up with Gabby than she was. There was definitely hatred there.

"You know for somebody who's completely in love with someone else, you are a little too happy about this breakup? There were gift baskets." Even Taylor got one. Sharpay doesn't even know that Gabriella was responsible for the almost-sex tape. Of course, Sharpay also sent out gift baskets to celebrate Kelsi being gone from their lives. Which incidentally was also caused by the sex tape fallout.

"If you knew Gabriella, you would be celebrating too. Also, I did the same thing for Kelsi."

"You sent the virginal version to her sister. Ryan said you even sent one to Gabriella's mom." Which Kim felt may have overstepped the limits of good taste.

"Because I like Jackie, and she's on mine and Ryan's side in this. Also, Maria deserves something for letting Ryan hide out there during the fallout. I didn't include the card that everyone else got and added extra wine." Kim just gave Sharpay an "are you kidding me" look.

"However, that is unimportant. I need to figure out how to keep this play from going to hell. My entire grade for this program is riding on this performance. If it goes badly, I am going to fail this class.

"You're not going to fail," Kim said, trying to be a supportive best friend.

"I always wanted to be in charge of the production. Now I get my wish. I get all the headaches, and I don't even get to be in the play." Sharpay said with a pout as she sat back in her chair with Jason beside her.

"You always do this to yourself. I blame Darby," Kim sighed.

"I doubt the production is going that badly. Kat and Bianca look pretty good out there." Kim said, assuming that the girl was overreacting again because things seemed fine.

"First of all, that's not Kat and Bianca; that is Lucy and Heather. Because we have more girls than boys in the drama program, as usual, we reversed the gender on a couple of the characters." Sharpay told her friend.

"Kerri is playing Lucy, the transfer student who falls in love with star basketball player William. Unfortunately, William's mother will not let him date anybody until his older sister has a boyfriend. This makes almost every cheerleader at EHS very sad, including head cheerleader Heather, played by Tiara." Sharpay said, pointing at the diva in question.

"Unfortunately, William's sister Catalina, played by Jackie, has scared off the entire male population of EHS due to her aggressive nature. Lucy and her new friend Tyler, played by me, get William's teammate Pedro, played by Jimmy, to date Catalina. Of course, this is on the condition that he becomes basketball captain next year." Jason answered while reviewing his copy of the script.

"Unfortunately, due to Tiara's possible but unproven role in the Welcome Back Dance incident, the two girls can't stand each other. Fortunately, there not supposed to. However, add Jackie to the mix, and it is like throwing a match in a propane tank. They both want to kill Tiara, which I would be all for if it didn't ruin the production." Sharpay sighed.

"Every time I try to justify recasting the role of Heather, Tiara goes into Ms. Perfect mode in front of Ms. Darbus. In the interest of keeping everyone alive, Jackie is working with Jimmy right now. "Sharpay continued in explanation.

"I thought you said he had basketball practice?" Kim asked, confused.

"He does, along with Nicholas Cross, who is playing William. I came to a compromise with Coach Bolton. Now that his son is a theater major, he is a bit more understanding. He is letting Jackie go over lines in the gymnasium as long as Jimmie keeps playing. Apparently, it is some sort of focus exercise. Don't ask. It was something that Chad came up with. It works, so I will not ask questions."

"I think Tiara just went back to the old version." Jason interrupted the other two.

"Jason, can you please go up there and go over the new lines with her?" Sharpay sighed again in frustration.

"Sure," Jason said just before taking the latest version of the script to the stage.

"Why don't you have Kerri work with Nicholas in the gym?"

"They usually work together after basketball practice. Kerri doesn't like going into the gym anymore because of what happened."

"How is she handling being back?" Kim asked.

"She is doing a lot better than I did. I didn't have a support network like she does. You were dealing with Alex drama in New York. Darby was off being Darby, Ryan didn't know, daddy was in Asia, and Chad was an enemy at the time. Kerri has many people helping her through this."

"Which is good." Kim smiled.

"Unfortunately, she has a lot of people making this worse for her. The cheerleaders aren't speaking to her, so she quit the squad and joined the drama club. Kerri is doing an outstanding job as Lucy." It takes all of Kim's acting skills not to cringe at that name even though it's referring to someone else.

"Unfortunately, members of the basketball team that are still loyal to Ricky call her various curse words when Jimmy or Mr. Bolton are not around. They're too stupid to realize that Nick is not on their side."

"I'm not even surprised."

"On the bright side, at least nobody is wearing a T-shirt depicting her most embarrassing moment." Just then, a junior serving a Ms. Darbus styled detention came by wearing one of the infamous "fantasy girl" T-shirts. Of course, this was a reference to Chad and Sharpay's almost sex tape.

The almost sex tape scandal didn't quite go away after it was pulled from YouTube. Sharpay and Chad were still getting nasty comments from some of the more infantile students on campus. (And Ryan was still camped out at Maria Montez's apartment.) If it wasn't for Mr. Evans personally explaining what happened to the basketball coach, Chad probably wouldn't be playing tonight.

She would personally fly up to Stanford to kick Gabriella's ass for posting that to the internet if Troy would let her. Gabriella had no idea the damage she did by posting that clip. Even though Troy dumped the FMG in high drama fashion because of her treacherous behavior, Troy didn't want anything bad to happen to her. Like Sharpay ripping her hair out by the roots when she finds out who made her the laughing stock of Albuquerque. Troy won't even get a restraining order despite the fact that even Maria thinks that he should.

Troy says it's because he doesn't want Sharpay to get arrested, but Kim doesn't believe him, and neither does Yolanda. Although Yolanda forced Kim to concede that not making Ryan choose between Maria and his sister was an acceptable excuse to keep quiet. Kim and Yolanda are text message friends now after sending her pictures of the breakup. She keeps Kim abreast on the Gabriella situation, such as the fact that their RA had to kick Gabby out when Troy was thankfully still at basketball practice yesterday.

For Troy's sake, Kim is not allowed to tell anyone with the last name Evans what happened. Kim is also not allowed anywhere near the Stanford campus. This is why Troy and Kim are meeting up at his first away game next week for him to see Alex. Unfortunately, that means missing Sharpay's play. But Alex seeing Troy for the first time is worth it.

"Principal Matsui is such a hypocrite. He let students wear dirty T-shirts like that, and then he's freaking out over the very mild sexual content in the play. Trust me, the sexual content is very mild, considering that a 12-year-old helped adapt the play. Apparently, we cannot have any kissing scenes or bad words like Dag." Sharpay rolled her eyes.

"For some reason, our Principal believes everybody at this school lives in a Disneyesque reality where nobody curses, gets laid, or hates each other."

"Does he know Pretty Woman is a Disney movie?" Kim joked.

"Probably not. He's already made us rewrite the play three times to tone down the "questionable material." I think the Princess Diary films had more "questionable material." At least there were some kissing scenes in those films. They imply that the queen was sleeping with her bodyguard. In the sequel, one of the princes had a boyfriend. We couldn't even have two of the girls holding hands," Sharpay explain frustratedly.

"He probably doesn't get the joke with the T-shirts. Why did he approve this play in the first place if he keeps making you rewrite it?" Kim asked.

"Actually, he rejected the play two years ago. We had all the songs together already, and then he said no for some reason. We ended up making an adaptation of Cinderella instead. Of course, in our version, the stepmother couldn't be overly abusive. The fairy godmother couldn't use magic, and Cinderella couldn't kiss the prince," Kim couldn't help but laugh at that.

"The last part was fine because I had to play Cinderella opposite my brother. Why couldn't we do that production after Troy Bolton made it cool to act?"

"You know that might have been why all those incest rumors were started," Chad remarked as he walked into the room, holding Sharpay's double shot soy latte with extra foam.

"You were the one that started them," Sharpay said as she took the cup from him.

If she wasn't surrounded by high school students, Kim would make a snide comment about Chad wanting to be in a poly relationship with both twins. Kim is trying not to corrupt minors. It was bad enough her child knew at least six curse words in Mandarin. It wasn't her fault that one was really close to her mother's last name.

"Trust me, I know better now," Chad said as he leaned in to kiss his girlfriend.

"You better, "Sharpay said as she slightly pulled back.

"No kiss?" Chad said with a small pout.

"I'm the adult in charge, and I have to set a good example. Therefore, the PDA policy applies to us. Aren't you supposed to be at practice?" Sharpay said as she squeezed his hand.

"If you remember correctly, today is the first game of the year. There's no practice on game days. You will be there tonight?" Chad asked, hopefully.

"Of course, I will. Troy sent me flashcards, so I have some idea of what's going on." Sharpay answered her boyfriend as Kim started to laugh at her. Of course, Troy would do that. He's feeling extra guilty about the Gabby thing and not telling her about Alex just yet.

"I thought I would come down to keep you from scaring the children and to prevent you from pouring your coffee on Donnie again," Chad said as he took Jason's former seat.

"It was one time during production last year. Don't look at me like that, Kim. It was an iced cappuccino. Is it my fault I get tense during production?"

"Maybe I can do something about all that tension," Chad said as he began rubbing her shoulders. This was probably just as against the PDA policy as their usual make out session. As Chad concentrated on turning Sharpay into a puddle, several jealous girls working on the set made comments like, "I wish he was my boyfriend." This was put to a stop when Jason and Tiara started arguing on stage.

"You little troll; I don't care if you wrote the play. I am the star of this play. I will say the lines any way I please." Tiara yelled at Jason from the stage.

"How can she think she's the star? In the original play, Hortensio was a secondary character at best, even though he had the largest ego." Chad whispered to his girlfriend.

"Why do you think we cast her in this part? As much as I enjoy your hands, I have to go take care of that." Sharpay said, pushing his hands away reluctantly." Excuse me, I need to show the British one who is queen bitch. Why can't she pulled the diva act when Ms. Darbus is here?" Sharpay lamented.

"Now, I'm never going to find out how you manage to get permission to do a play that the principal hates," Kim said in annoyance.

"Chad was the one who came up with the idea to get the play approved," Sharpay said as she walked away to break up the fight on stage.

"He doesn't hate the play; he's just been overly sensitive due to recent events," Chad said with a sigh.

"I don't remember him being this bad."

"Rumor has it he went off the deep end when a couple of students were caught fornicating on the roof two years ago. Although I don't think that was just a rumor, was it?" Chad asked, noticing her blushing.

"Not really. It was Ms. Darbus that caught us on the roof, and that's all I am saying."

"Seriously, how did I not catch you guys?" Kim chose not to answer that question.

"After that incident, he tried to remove all questionable material from the school. He even tried to remove Hamlet and the Scarlet Letter from the AP curriculum. That didn't work at all. Now due to the incident at the welcome back dance two months ago, the censorship has increased tenfold." Chad explained.

"So instead of having classes about sexual assault prevention, he is removing kissing scenes from the school play. Does he have any idea how ridiculous that is?" Kim said with a scornful laugh.

"Pretty much. It's easier for the principal to keep his head in the sand. The Vice Principal is furious and wants to quit."

"I'm aware. That still doesn't explain how this play was approved?"

"As you're aware, because of the grant being used for this year's fall production, the play must be a Shakespearean adaptation. I just suggested to Sharpay to provide the principle with options from the Shakespearean canon with the most questionable content. As predicted, he cut those right away and let her keep the one she actually wanted." Chad smirked.

"What were the other choices?" Kim asked.

"His other choices were Twelfth Night that involves crossed dressing. Followed by Julius Caesar with murder and treason. Along with Hamlet, which featured suicide, murder, adultery, and treason. Finally, there was Romeo and Juliet with five make-out scenes, queer coded characters, a sex scene with nudity, a couple of murders, and a double suicide."

As Sharpay started using not appropriate for school language, they turned their attention back to Sharpay. She was probably 30 seconds from pulling out Tiara's hair.

"I think you need to go up there before your girlfriend kills somebody," Kim whispered to Chad.

"Shar is fine. She's already using her breathing techniques."

"Tiara, if you want to be a professional actor, you need to grow up. Go get yourself a cappuccino and comeback in 30."

"There's a certain amount of irony in those words coming from Sharpay," Chad whispered to Kim as they kept watching.

"Don't even think about hanging around my boyfriend. He doesn't do jail bait." Sharpay said when she noticed Tiara was making her way to Chad.

"Aren't you both 17?" Kim asked Chad quietly.

"Only chronologically. Psychologically, I'm a college sophomore, and Tiara is a high school junior."

"Jason, do you mind standing in for Nicholas so we can go over some of the scenes with Lucy and William."

When Sharpay made it back to her seat, she grabbed Chad's hand and started muttering only seven more days repeatedly under her breath.

XXXXX

He left the school as soon as he got Sharpay calm enough not to kill innocent teenagers. Not that he really wanted to go. For the first time in his life, he wasn't looking forward to the start of a new basketball season. Out of all his teammates, he can only stand to spend time with three of them. Zach was the only one he genuinely liked, and thankfully, things were cool again after a few awkward days post-sex tape.

Pretty much everybody else was a complete asshole. The team usually made nasty comments about Chad being the school's second choice because they couldn't get Troy. Worse, they would argue he was only there because he was screwing one of the trustees' daughter. The better Chad played in practice, the worse they were. Today in his locker, he found a screenshot of Sharpay topless taped inside. Chad calmly tore the picture down and threw it in the trashcan.

He would kill Gabriella if Troy let him for posting the video. He didn't believe Chad's mom knew enough lawyers to get him off. Unfortunately, the break up would probably be her only punishment.

"So, Danforth, did you and your little girlfriend make any more videos?" Derek called out. He was one of the seniors on the team that Chad could not stand. Derek had NBA dreams but not the skills. He'll be lucky if he makes it to the G league or in Europe. Unfortunately, he did not use his college education for anything other than a means to keep playing. Chad should probably keep his mouth shut. However, he just didn't feel like it today.

"Why do you ask? Is your current significant other just not doing it for you? They have great medication for that now. Although I can understand why you would want to watch. Trust me, Sharpay is so much more than that Girl you were bragging about her blowjob skills. Then again, maybe it was Jordan who was talking about her vacuum-like qualities when you were with the coached the other day." Which actually did happen.

"It's hard to keep up with who is doing who when you keep going around with the same trash, instead of being with a person who actually respects themselves and you. Then again, it could just be a cover. It's not the first time I've seen the hyper heterosexual act used to compensate." Because he used it himself, but that's neither here nor there. Before Derek can retaliate, Chad walked away mentally, thanking his mom for making him take an academic scholarship instead of the basketball scholarship. He could leave at any time, and more and more he wanted to.

XXXX

As Sharpay signed her third T-shirt for the night while her friends picked up their basketball snacks, Sharpay thought about that old adage 'be careful what you wish for.' Fame was overrated. Even wearing sunglasses, a baseball cap, and one of Chad's U of A sweatshirts, people still recognized her as the "What's Your Fantasy" girl.

All she wanted to do was watch her boyfriend's first game in a red hawk's uniform. Instead, she was subjected to dirty jokes, autograph seekers, and the radio version of that song being played every time she entered the room. She was close to dying her hair blond again, but Chad preferred her natural hair color. However, she was pretty sure nothing would actually work.

"Didn't your dad tell you to lay low? I don't think signing autographs counts as lying low." Nikki asked her as they made their way with Marc and Kim to their seat.

"There is nothing more surreal than getting sex tape advice from your father," Kim said to the other two.

"You can only hide so long before it starts to drive you crazy. I tried hiding last time, and it didn't work. This time I'm going to embrace it." She said, referring to Richard raping her two years earlier. "Besides, I did nothing wrong on that tape because it happened with someone I love very much. I'll never be ashamed of what we have."

"Except you made that when you were really drunk. Also, Chad was technically dating someone else, and you still denied that you actually had feelings for him. Let's not forget he's not legal yet in some states." Marc pointed out as they walked into the main auditorium. Sometimes she hated Marc for pointing out the obvious.

"If you're not embarrassed, then why are you wearing sunglasses and a sweatshirt? I didn't think Sharpay Evans owned a sweatshirt." Kim remarked.

"It's comfortable. Besides, I still don't own a sweatshirt. This is Chad's." Sharpay could easily see both Marc and Nikki rolling their eyes at her as they finally found their seats.

"I can't believe you talked me into suspending my first child-free Friday night since you created that video at a basketball game," Kim grumbled.

"I don't know why you are complaining. This is payback for all the Wild Cat games you drag me to sophomore year. Obviously, you had a crush on one of the players. After the game, you can go party-crashing with the devious duel and Amanda before you have to pick up the littlest pumpkin tomorrow morning."

"We're only here to see Amanda's routine," Nikki said to the others.

"We also came to see if Amanda could go the entire game without trying to kill Penelope. " Marc added.

"What about Chad?" Sharpay asked with a pout.

"Like we can compete with his number one fan," Marc said as the game began to start.

"Where is Alex?" Nikki asked as she started eating her popcorn.

"I'm letting my stepmom Vanessa take him out for the annual festival of cavities and sugar rush. Vanessa feels like she is missing something because she never had the opportunity to raise a child. I try to let her do things with Alex as much as possible, so she doesn't make me the big sister to a child that's younger than my own." Kim explained.

"I can understand that. I have a half-sister that's younger than Alex." Nikki said to the others.

"The joys of divorce," Kim said softly.

"In my case, it was the joy of widowhood and remarriage. My mom died when I was 12. Sarah was my father's best friend since college, and after mom died, they just fell into a new type of relationship." The four stayed quiet after that.

As the others concentrated on their junk food, she watched her boyfriend. She knew he wouldn't be getting a lot of playing time because he was the new person. She watched him sitting on the bench for most of the first half, just waiting peacefully. Chad never waits patiently. She remembered sophomore year where he jumped up and down on the bench just waiting to get into the game. He just didn't seem like that same boy who used to carry a basketball with him everywhere in high school.

With 2 minutes left in the first half with the team down by 15 points, the coach finally let Chad in. The moment he stepped onto the court, she could feel the air change. He was absolutely beautiful out there. Every movement was as graceful as anything she performed on the stage. The problem was, he wasn't happy. She could see it from the stands. By the time the half came, U of A was only trailing by two points.

"I can't believe Chad is an actual basketball player. I mean, Amanda is a brainy cheerleader, so a brainy basketball player couldn't be that far off." Nikki remarked.

"However, it's just hard to believe that the guy who can understand how to solve differential equations in minutes is that good." Sharpay wanted to laugh that the irony of the situation. Their high school friends could not believe the super jock was a genius. Their college friends couldn't believe the brainy one was an excellent basketball player.

"Chad plays basketball like he does calculus. It's natural to him. He doesn't have to study or, in this case, really practice. All you have to do is show him how to do something once, and he gets it. He can do this with solving complex problems, learning a basketball play, or learning choreography. This meant that Chad could play well and still only give 50%. This is what he's doing right now." Sharpay explained.

"What do you mean he's only giving 50%? He's one of the better players out there on either team outside of Zach." Nikki said in shock. "Which BTW looks like a clone of your boyfriend. The only difference is the cornrolls."

"I agree with Sharpay. I saw him play when he was a sophomore. Chad is playing at a skill level slightly less than what he was using then. I'm sure he's improved since sophomore year." Kim told everyone.

"Dramatically, especially when he became co-captain senior year."

"He looks miserable down there," Kim whispered to Sharpay. She could not help but agree. Sharpay couldn't let him stay like this. In the meantime, she would cheer him on like crazy. She is his number one fan, after all.

To be continued…

I was originally going to let this chapter stay mostly intact, but it got way too long. I now do not allow chapters to go over 8000 words. Obviously, that's a rule I instituted after this story. Or maybe it's a rule I created because of the story. I made so many mistakes as a baby writer.

Because this chapter is mostly build-up for the next one, I arranged to do two chapters this week. The next chapter will be posted either Saturday or Sunday.