A/N: Eh, last chapter wasn't so clear on the feelings of the characters, I think—more elaboration here. Review? -love- Desireé
Chapter Eighteen, Dream
Ransom notes keep falling out your mouth
Mid-sweet talk, newspaper word cut outs
Speak no feeling no I don't believe you
You don't care a bit, you don't care a bit
-'Hide and Seek', Imogen Heap
In the irony of things, Gabriella had fallen asleep in Troy's arms. After a solid hour of silent embrace—unhurried and willful in a very busy world—he shifted slightly under her body, and realized she had drifted off. The normal, ex-boyfriend-who-was-now-married-to-someone-else in him thought she would be okay catnapping on the couch, but then the old Troy, the one who loved her with all his heart because she had given him what no other girl could (this would be happiness), stood up and carried her into her bedroom, laid her down and slipped her under the covers. She stirred, eyes fluttering open for a moment and then closed. "Sweet dreams," he whispered, picking up a line he had used as a parent.
"You're still as strong as I remember," she murmured, a smile gracing her lips. He could see a mischievous glimmer beneath her eyelids.
"Go to sleep," he told her in an undertone, and kissed her forehead gently. Gabriella sighed and rolled over, taking shape to the pillow tucked between her shoulder and chin. Troy faced the door and quietly left, wishing he could check in on his children. But there was no music playing behind the walls, no light slipping through the crack between the door and the floor, no hint of a whisper passing between siblings.
"I'm sorry," he said to the air, hoping maybe, in an alternate universe, Arielle and Harris heard.
TYWY
By the sunrise, the snow had packed another foot into the town and city plows were lazily making their way through every street, obviously unaware that there were three people who needed to get back to New York within twenty-four hours. "Morning," Harris grumbled as he came into the kitchen, one eye closed and hair sticking up. Gabriella sat at the table, drinking coffee and scanning yesterday's paper. She didn't look up from the article about worldwide pollution she had read at least a hundred times in the last forty-one minutes; instead, she loudly sipped her cappuccino and sighed. Harris gave her a sideways glance. "Something bothering you?"
"I woke up at four o'clock this morning," she said, still not meeting his gaze. Her eyes were focused on a picture of the local spelling bee winner, a girl with dark pigtails and a gap in her teeth. In some ways, and not just appearance, she reminded Gabriella of herself. "And I wasn't tired; actually, I was really, really happy, and you know why? Because for thirteen years, I have been trying to picture who you had become and what you were like. And now that you're here, I cannot even begin to explain how—terrific you are. More wonderful than I could ever guess."
This surprised Harris, but he hid his incredulity with a half-smile as he turned back to his mother. "Funny you say that, because all my life I've been trying not to imagine you, to act as if Cassandra really was a good stand-in mom. And when Arielle told me she wanted to find you, I figured I'd just be along for the ride. But now that I'm here, it's like I realized how much I really wanted someone other than Dad." He grew quiet, and then sat down next to Gabriella. "Was I a good child?"
She laughed and nursed her coffee mug against her chest, remembering how she held him to her body as a baby. "You were exceptional. You never cried, you always ate your food without making a mess, and we could take you out with us to dinner and you'd fall asleep in my lap. Probably the best kid at the local nursery school."
Another question came, a little more delicate this time. "Did you, um, know that Dad slept with Cassandra, when you guys got back together that April?"
Gabriella bit her lower lip and dipped her head, passing it off as a nod. "Yes, I did. I didn't really consider it cheating, because I had left with you and I hadn't insinuated ever wanting to get back together, just that I'd call—and that was only because you were his son, too," she added, hesitant before her next comment, "And while I was in Albuquerque, I kind of sort of made out with this guy from high school, to see if Troy was replaceable." She paused and shook her head. "He wasn't."
"Did he know that you made out with another guy?" Harris asked, wide-eyed and on the edge of his seat, like he was watching a suspenseful movie.
A pinkness rose on her cheeks and Gabriella pursed her lips. "No, he doesn't. Zeke assured me he wouldn't mention anything, and that it was more like a friends-with-benefits thing, which I was completely content with." Everyone, Harris learned at that moment, had demons with which they must deal. It was how you handled them that defined who you were.
TYWY
When Arielle was a little girl, her father went out of his way to please her. Some days, when they were finished eating their TV dinners in the loft's living room, she'd ask to get ice cream—ten blocks away. They have the good waffle cones, she'd say. And he'd respond, Okay, Ari, go get your jacket.
Other days, she would be lying in her bed at seven-thirty, well aware that school would start in half an hour. But she'd look at her father pleadingly and pledge illness, while Harris stood a few feet behind Troy and made faces that clearly showed he saw through his sister's whey-faced act. Of course, so did Troy, but again—he went out of his way to make Arielle happy.
There was one time, though, where he had been the one to suggest something to do. It was the eve of her ninth birthday, and winter had gotten a head start, raining from midway November to early December. What do you want to do? he had asked, a little confused as to why she had not wanted a party. Harris had never been a social butterfly, but his sister was outgoing and boldly spoken, marking a difference. Nothing, she had said blandly. That can't be true, you must want to do something, he replied. Then, his face lit up, or at least as much as it could. Someone whose emotion had been torn into pieces a long time ago could only seem so enthusiastic years later. Let's go for a walk!
We'll get soaked, Daddy, she said. He smiled and picked her up in his arms, carrying her out and relishing in the way she, for once, did not object when he babied her.
Now, four years later, Arielle lay on the bed she had chosen in the room where she and Harris slept, with her iPod off. Not even music could save her now, not the sweet sound of New Age, the intuitive lyrics of alternative, or the power-to-the-people rock pop that she was beginning to hate. Inside, she was nearly dead, feeling like a wilted flower that had just been trampled by a careless toddler's tricycle wheel. Squish, squish, stomp, stomp.
Also, she was quite famished.
It was about eight o'clock in the AM, which meant that she had not eaten for a whole twenty-two hours and fourteen minutes. And no matter how inviting Gabriella's mashed potatoes smelled, no matter how nice it was to hear her knock and then hear the gentle bump of the plate against the floor, no matter how much her brother tried to tell her she was missing out—none of this belonged to her. Above everything else, it killed her to think that she'd had a mother all along, just one that was deficient in all ways but one (her body).
Starvation hurt, more than she could recall. Troy always made sure they were fed a proper portion of good, whether it was an unhealthy #2 at the local drive-thru, or a hearty meal the chef fixed for them. And now, Arielle was clutching the right side of her stomach, groaning at the feeling of a hunger pain. She wanted nothing more than to raid the kitchen at that moment, but that would be an unjust surrendering, defeat, failure; this rebellion was what would establish her.
She thought back to a time where she remembered asking about 'her mother'. What did she look like? she asked bravely upon her father's bouncing knee. She couldn't have been more than seven. She was beautiful, he insisted drearily. Do I look like her? she lobbied like the lawyer he knew she would become. Yes, you do, he had said. It wasn't until now that Arielle realized he had been telling the truth.
Cassandra Noel was conventionally beautiful, with customary long peroxide blond hair, the standard seemingly-endless legs, the prevalent contacts-green eyes that had specks of copper—her true color—hidden somewhere in there. Anyone would want supermodel genes in their bloodline; to hear somewhat appreciative yells of your attractiveness from across the street, to read your excellent four-paragraph biopic in a column page of the fashion Time magazine. But Arielle could feel the longing inside her, wishing she were just the daughter of a small town shop owner.
Sitting up, she examined her hands. And though she was pale, an ivory color that stuck out against both Cassandra's and Troy's dusky skins, Arielle saw dirt cover her palms, her knuckles, her wrists; it colored every crease she found; she saw it crawl beneath her fingertips, burning its status with an imaginary seal, as though to show she had been digging a grave for herself all this time.
TYWY
Three text messages from Cassandra; four voicemails from the loft's phone numbers; countless missed calls from Greta, his agent. Troy knew there was some upheaval of exasperation north of Sampson; he had a responsibility to be back in New York, yet he made no effort to get up from where he sat on the couch and—as one of the Cassandra messages had suggested—call in a chopper for transportation. Instead, he found himself staring at a picture of him and Gabriella at Lava Springs.
They were wearing casual shorts and t-shirts; her hair was up in a messy bun and she looked heavenly; his relaxed smile said I've-got-the-hottest-girl-around-while-you've-just-got-a-camera, and arm was draped around her shoulder like a shawl. It was a paradise.
"I've looked at that photo maybe four thousand times," a voice spoke. Gabriella came to sit down beside him, placing in his hand a mug of coffee. Caffeine, she had come to believe, was one of the most comforting ingredients in the world. "You can see my thumbprints, the little whorls of condensation still kissing the paper. It reminds me of better times."
He nodded with a benign smile; the portrayal of himself in the picture—young, fresh-faced, adored—made him squirm all these years later, under the glare of old age. Thirty-four. Supposedly, the more ancient you got the more value you had; but that applied to the digging sites on the other side of the world. When you were a human, you started to lose self-worth around the time you saw it in your children, and not in the mirror.
"What happened, that day you left?" he asked finally, turning to her.
"Which one?" she countered, her eyes flickering guiltily his way as she took a long, benefiting sip from her coffee cup.
A few days following Harris' second birthday, the phone rang and Gabriella casually answered it to a crying girl, incoherent and desperate. "My n-name…" she began shakily, trying to catch her breath, "is Cassandra Noel. D-does Troy Bolton l-live here?"
"Yes," Gabriella said strangely, furrowing her eyebrows as she sat Harris on the counter. The baby clapped two blocks together, and his mother wrapped her fingers around his hands in an effort to make him be quiet. An angelic child, he didn't protest. "Can I help you with something?"
"Actually, I think I'd like to meet him in person," the girl blubbered. "Who is this?"
There was a pause, like the moment where you sense the vase roll off the counter—that split second where it is falling and you think, oh shit. Gabriella swallowed. "I'm his girlfriend," she replied evenly, her defensive side kicking in like an old habit hard to break. "Ms. Noel, would you mind me asking what business it is that you have with Troy?"
"I'm pregnant with his child." The imaginary vase shattered, splintering into a million pieces while Gabriella looked fearfully over the sea of broken glass, wondering how the hell she could get past this without cutting her feet.
TYWY
Arielle Delaney Bolton was born December 1st, 2011, at a fire station in Long Island. Except, she had not been given a name; she had not been fondled by her mother (or her father, for that matter); the most tenderness she had received in her first few minutes of life was a trained midwife named Lira who happened to be visiting her brother at work. There's a good girl, she had said when Arielle's crying reduced to beautiful breathing, her tiny chest rising and falling as she was wrapped in a blanket. What are you going to name her?
This question had been directed to Cassandra, whom Lira could see was not any older than her own senior-in-school daughter at home. I don't know, the girl said tiredly, signing some papers while she glanced at the baby. When the infant was placed in her arms, she seemed uncomfortable. Lira suggested she should take a moment to bond with the child, but Cassandra didn't seem pleased by the idea. She had left four hours later in a black town car, running a hasty goodbye over the slight imprint she had left in the minds of some simply nice people who wondered how that child would grow up.
On the way to the loft where Troy Bolton lived, Cassandra sat in the backseat, falling asleep. She dreamt of this man loving her, instead of the girl named Gabriella. She dreamt of being loved, adored, desired by this man who had whispered dirty things to her in a bed in a foreign place she couldn't even begin to describe if given the question. She dreamt of not being pregnant—and now a mother—at the age of seventeen. She dreamt of a better home for the baby beside her, who would never have the same family experience as anyone else. She dreamt this was not her fault.
When Troy Bolton answered the door, she was shocked at his not-so-handsome face. He had five o'clock shadow, half-mast eyes, and a groan underlying in his gaze. Somewhere in the background, a news anchorman was reporting a bombing in Europe, a car crash east of Manhattan, an epidemic in Sri Lanka. Cassandra noticed, as she limped inside, that no one was announcing a young, on-the-rise supermodel delivering a baby. No one was making her humiliation public. No one was disclosing the way she had been titled 'home wrecker' by a girl who Cassandra hated only because of what she had.
"You all right?" Troy asked, fatigued. He took the carrier in which the baby girl lay, looking at her with careful consideration at first. Not waiting for an answer to the first question, he asked another: "What's her name?"
"I don't really care," Cassandra said, crawling onto the couch and closing her eyes. "Call her what you want, it's not like I've…" But she had drifted off to sleep, and he did not wake her, knowing next week she'd be in Brazil for a photo shoot, or in Paris for a fashion show.
Down the hall, Harris was sleeping in his new bed, which Troy had bought only a few days before. He had skipped the promise a long time ago; now he wanted to make sure every commitment he made was kept. "Meet your new half-sister, buddy," he whispered to the boy, whose eyes opened in a flurry of Bolton genes, surrounded by a montage of Montez lineage.
"Mama," Harris said lazily, sitting up. His attention was turned to the new infant though, forgetting about Gabriella, who had left under the false impression that her son was better off with a man who had work and a home and surrounding friends. "Ba-a-a-a-y…"
"Bee," Troy finished softly. He looked at the girl again, and thought back to the naming process he had gone through with Gabriella for Harris. When she had read the girl's names, Arielle, Anna, Alicia, Allison, Amy. Oh, look, April, like your sister. He would name her Arielle, and Delaney—just because that was what Gabriella had thought was pretty upon the D section of the baby book.
And so Cassandra Noel spent two days recovering on the couch, while Troy Bolton tried thinking of ways in which his life was not totally fucked, and Arielle Delaney spent most of her days sleeping but her brother Harrison James looked up at the ceiling, the windows, the doors, wondering where in the world Gabriella Montez had gone, and dreaming of the glorious ways she would come back to him, to shower him with love and affection that he would never get from his father only due to the fact that his black hair and tan skin painfully spoke the name of his mother like a carbon copy.
A/N: This chapter… Is sort of blah. But review? Tell me what you think? -love- Desireé