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Everyone Has a Problem

Chapter 8: The Path Ahead

By musiclover94 and Baby-M-xo

Last Chapter…

Then, a piece of something caught in her throat, forming a sort of blockade between her throat and the air. Sharpay watched her hands turn a deathly sort of blue. She fell backward onto the cold, tile floor, still breathless, staring at the cracked ceiling. She hit her cranium on the edge of the bathtub. Her head fell with a dull thunk on the floor and Sharpay's world went dark.

--

Ryan was in his room, perfecting his jazz square, when he realized that he hadn't seen Sharpay since dinner ended. She was always in the room across from his, singing loudly, perfecting her vocal chords for whatever theatre even was coming up. He knew she wasn't watching television, the only time she flipped that on was to watch the Tony's, and those had happened last week. Midway through a square, it hit him like a freight train.

He pulled open his door and bolted down the stairs toward the bathroom nearest the kitchen. He almost ran into the closed door. To his horror, the door was locked. He frantically searched for the key to it. He saw it glimmering at him tantalizingly, on a high shelf. How had it ended up there?

He grabbed it and shoved it in the keyhole. With a little jiggling, it was unlocked. He pushed open the door and found his twin sister sprawled on the tile floor, a bottle of pills next to her, her delicate hands blue and her long blonde hair framing her face like an eerie halo. She wasn't breathing.

"Sharpay…" he said, feeling like he just had the wind knocked out of him. He seized her skinny shoulders and shook them. Sharpay's head just lolled to the side.

Ryan looked frantically around the room, trying to fond something to help his sister, who still wasn't breathing and seemed to grow bluer with each second ticking by. He couldn't find anything, but something hit him, along with a shameful feeling of stupidity.

He picked the frail blonde up awkwardly around the waist. She weighed almost nothing, her feet hovering an inch or so above the ground. He adjusted his grip until it was just below her chest and did an upward push (The Heimlich Maneuver). Sharpay still remained rag doll-like. He did it again. Still nothing.

A third time, Sharpay gagged something up and gave a little gasp of life. Ryan spun her around to face her. She still looked very pale and had a blue tinge to her face. Her brown eyes were slightly bulged and she was gasping for air. She staggered around and said, "Ryan!" as if this happened every day.

Ryan looked beyond relief. "Sharpay, what happened?" He gave her a hardened stare.

"Um…I slipped on the floor and hit my head…?" Sharpay was never a good liar.

"Shar, the floor is perfectly dry," he stated.

"I wasn't doing what you thought I was doing," Sharpay said angrily, looking at her brother full on in the face, but you could still tell she was lying.

"I'm taking you to a hospital," Ryan said commandingly, taking a hold of one of her small arms and dragging her out the door. Sharpay used what little body weight she had to resist.

"Sharpay, you have a problem," he said, still holding her arm.

"I do not!" she said hotly. She yanked her arm out of his grip and swung open the door before her twin could stop her. Ryan sighed and rubbed his eyes.

Sharpay looked down at the two bottles of diet pills she had in her bony hand. She had swiped them from the floor when Ryan wasn't looking. She sprinted to her room, opened the door and locked it once inside. She sat down on her bed and stuck her hand into the container, sort of like a deadly cookie jar.

She took an overflowing handful and downed them in her mouth. They all fell one by one into her system with a sickening thud. Again and again she took handfuls upon handfuls of the drug.

She felt her system react to the chemicals. It gave several involuntary jerks and Sharpay felt like barfing again, but didn't. They were diet pills after all. She swallowed a few more before stumbling to the door. She hobbled down the steps and out the door, yelling, "I'm going to visit Gabriella," to the quiet house.

The shaky blonde opened the hospital door and saw her best friend lying unmoving, but breathing, on the bed. There was a large scarlet-filled bag on a hook. The bag connected with a tube in Gabriella's injured arm.

"Gabriella?"

"Sharpay…is that you?" the brunette asked groggily, her eyes still closed.

"Yeah."

"When am I getting out of here?"

"Your doctor said in a week and a half," Sharpay said, giving her a sympathetic hand squeeze.

A single tear fell from Gabriella's still-closed eye.

"What's wrong?" Sharpay asked worriedly.

"It's just…" Gabriella sniffed, "I just want it to end…"

Sharpay's eyes widened. "Gabi, that's…not the right thing…"

Gabriella's weakness was gone in a flash as Sharpay said this. She said annoyingly to her friend, "Not that way, Sharpay, geez. I just want to get out of the hospital."

Instead of backing down, she took a leaf from Ryan's book and said, "Gabriella, you have a problem. I know it."

Gabriella opened her eyes. They had a hollow, bloodshot look to them. "I don't have a problem, Sharpay. You're just paranoid!"

Sharpay took a deep breath. She knew it wasn't tight to argue with someone in the hospital, even if the said person was lying. "I'll be back tomorrow, Gabriella, okay?" Her eyes were closed.

"Fine," Gabriella said huffily, glaring at the blonde. Sharpay did her best to ignore it. She stood up and walked to the door.

As she was walking out the front gates of the center, she rifled in her purse for the pills. She took another handful and shoved them down her throat, the capsules squirming down her throat. The path ahead was fuzzy and floating in and out if focus, but she walked to it, accepting it wholeheartedly.

Author's Note: I liked this chapter more than any of the other one's I've written today. Maybe it's just because I like writing this story, oddly enough. Please review and check out Baby-M-xo. REVIEW!