HEY, YOU WITH THE FACE!
THIS CHAPTER IS MUY IMPORTANTE AND NEEDS TO BE READ METICULOUSLY.
comprende?
The sun was merciless against his eyes. He tossed once more, catching her scent of lavender and mischief, and it almost all seemed like a dream. Until he opened his eyes. The sheets that she had chosen were tangled around his legs. The curtains that she had fussed over displayed the morning sun. But the bed was so empty.
Her spot next to him was so vacant and abandoned, it made his heart churn and his head pound. Troy uneasily ran a hand through his disheveled bed head as the telephone rang from the hallway outside of the room. He groaned as he rolled out of bed, hesitant to leave the comfort of what he once knew, and slumped down the empty corridor, to the device that had been delivering several pieces of bad news.
"Hello?" his voice was coarse and unwelcoming to whoever had called him. He wasn't ready for this. He wasn't ready to experience loneliness.
"How's my Troy doing?" It was so difficult to hear his mother's concerned voice. When he didn't answer, she continued. He had been this way for six days, she noticed. Six days since it all happened, six days since his life ended. "Troy... you know what today is... don't you?"
He knew. He knew this day would have to come sooner or later. He knew that he was going to have to face all of those people. It had been six days since he had tasted sunlight, and today of all days, he was being reintroduced. "I'll be over within the hour and we'll get you ready. Troy... this is going to be hard but..."
He knew, dammit. He hated being this way: helpless. But at the same time, it took all of his strength and all of his mother's strength to keep him from crying again. "Troy... you know how much I love you, right?"
He knew. But she could tell him a million times, over, yet there would still be a void that could only be filled with blonde hair, lavender, and mischief.
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The iciness seeped into the back of his jeans. It soaked her hair and captured both bodies in goosebumps. But they still sprawled across the icy snow, the curtain of night stretched across their eyes. The softest of flakes slipped out of the blank void, dusting their lashes and freezer burning their ears. But they still stayed there, thinking of what was supposed to come next.
"I wonder how much trouble we're going to get into for this?" she spoke up first, her warm breath casting a cloud into the atmosphere. A blinking airplane flew overhead, gliding over New York's skyscrapers and into the night.
"Tons." he grinned. But it had all become worth it. He wanted to remember today. Remember everything that had taken place three days prior as to what they were doing that very moment. Remember what he was about to do next. He rolled onto his stomach, snow caking his back and clouding onto Sharpay.
"We're such rebels." she giggled to the sky that looked so adventurous. "My dad's going to kill me when we get back to Albuquerque. My mother's going to be so disappointed and they're going to punish me into the next century..." He examined his girlfriend closely, her hazel eyes taking in the night. Her blonde hair was damp with snow. Her cheeks were rosy, and the lips that she nervously applied lip gloss to every five minutes were in dire need of a kiss.
"...though there isn't much they can do. We live on our own now. But running away?..."
"Marry me."
Her focused chocolate eyes tore away from the sky. She sharply sat upright her facial expression giving way to every thought that reeled in her mind. "Wh-what?" was all she could sputter. She saw the crazed grin on his face and she saw his cheeks displaying a pink color, and she was still utterly shocked. "What did you just say?"
What had he just said?
He had proposed. Maybe it had been the exhilaration of escaping. Or maybe it had just been the way she looked under the snow. But the words and emotions that had accumulated in Troy Bolton's throat had escaped. "Marry. Me. Sharpay."
"I-I..." though a look of concern and confusion were etched across her features, a certainty burned in her eyes. Troy drew to his knees, snow soaking through the denim of his jeans and right to the bone. But feeling the way Sharpay launched herself into his arms initiated a feeling of warmth that rolled through him, from the tips of his frostbitten ears to the toes that were numb. "Yes. Yes. I. Will marryou." she said her words with such a purpose, like she had been practicing for ages.
Troy's stomach rocketed and the snow that sprayed out of the midnight came heavier. But not even the heaviest of snowstorms in Central Park in New York could keep them from kissing the way they did. They claimed to be so ready.
So young.
So in love.
:End Flashback:
His nervous fingers curled over the splintering wood of the podium. A sea of faces watched. Just watched him. Did they not see how hard this was for him? Could they not see he was about to bear his soul? And all they could do was stare, to poke him to do something other than stare back... "My wife..." he began, but cleared his throat, etching away his old words and starting new. "Sharpay was..."
Was what? He looked to the crumpled note cards he held in his fist and realized that they were of no use. Written words were not enough. A speech would never suffice.
Her mother and father sat in the front row of the miserable funeral home, weary hands wrapped around each other, protecting one another from the truth. His mother and father sat in the back, weak smiles, weak spirits. What did they all want from him?
He uncurled his fingers from the podium. He stuffed his note cards in the pockets of his proper trousers. He stepped away from the confessing microphone and he finished.
"My wife. Sharpay was. My. Everything."
Then he promptly bumbled off of the stage and went somewhere.
Anywhere that wasn't there.
Blades of grass nipped at the back of his ears. Dirt stained the back of his best jacket, but he still had deposited himself there, tired of the tears that awaited him back inside of the church. Eulogy after eulogy, apology after apology. Enough was enough.
The sky was the milkiest he had ever experienced. As grey as winter, but the it never threatened even the smallest snowflake. He wanted to be somewhere adventurous. With Sharpay. He wanted to go back to New York in Central Park in that place behind that tree where the snow fell. Troy tried his hardest to recreate the memory in his mind. The ice. The plane. The skyscrapers. Sharpay...
Grass. The grey, clear sky. And absolutely no Sharpay at all.
He still felt her hand in his. He remembered the way they were before the arguments, and he wondered where things had taken a turn for the worse. The rose he had placed over her grave was white. The song he whispered to her was Don't Cry For Me, Argentina. Her favorites.
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Congratulations, Troy, he told himself. You managed to make it through the most difficult day of your life.
But the celebration was small compared to the big picture.
Sharpay was stolen from him and the same questions of 'What If' tormented his mind: What if they had been able to work it out? What if he hadn't made her cry for so many years, or if she hadn't returned her wedding ring and if they hadn't felt such a relief from being liberated?
Troy slumped in the living room chair, bars of moonlight rising onto his lonely chest, the only source of light in the entire house. What a waste of life, he realized. They had bickered and barred themselves from each other, even after promising everlasting love. But finally, there were no do-overs. It was reality this time. And Sharpay had been erased.
The phone.
It rang.
The shrill ringing of the telephone seemed to grow louder and swallow up his atmosphere. He needed to answer it. As much as it pained him to move, he slowly shuffled to the entry hallway, remembering the same way he had shambled to Sharpay's side at the hospital. The telephone sat idle, waiting to be answered, and just as his weary hands reached for it, his eyes were caught on the front door.
Was it a figure of the night? His own imagination? Or was there really the mysterious silhouette of a man in his foyer? But it was determined to be reality when this shadow advanced toward him. Troy snatched for the ringing telephone in hopes of dialing 911 before he joined Sharpay against his will...
Only to realize that it was no longer ringing.
In fact, he realized that the telephone was no longer there.
Clifffffffffy.
Can you handle it?
No?
Understood.
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