A/N: Still no luck with the job front. Boo. I've just been writing this and poems and penpal letters. That sums up my days. Stay tuned for Chapter Four!

Chapter Three

"Sorry about the mess," Gabriella apologised as she put her helmet and jacket in the hall closet. "We haven't exactly had the time to unpack."

Troy eyed the bare walls and the pile of boxes set at the bottom of the stairs. "I can tell. So do I get to see Gabriella Montez's bedroom?"

"No, you get to see her kitchen," she exclaimed as she led Troy down the hall. She set her bag on the island counter and gestured to the opposite side. "Take a seat."

He dropped onto a stool and began taking out the relevant books. He glanced around, noticing a couple of more boxes on the counters. They had evidently focussed on installing appliances, rather than unpacking. It looked more like a storage facility than a home. He thought about his own house where the floor was littered with pairs of sneaker, the walls were covered with pictures of the family, and the counters were usually cluttered with crockery but were clear of cardboard boxes. He'd never known anything different. He wouldn't even know where to start with packing things into boxes.

"Where is everyone?"

She shrugged. "Work." She tipped a packet of Oreos onto a plate and poured two glasses of milk.

He began dunking an Oreo into his milk.

She pulled a face as she set her laptop up. "I should've known you were a dunker."

He quirked an eyebrow. "And you're a twister?"

To prove a point, Gabriella twisted an Oreo, licked off the cream, and ate the remains. She logged onto her laptop and began searching for past production of Romeo and Juliet to gain some inspiration. Drama had never been her strong point, which was pretty much the only reason she stayed to be Troy's partner. If he was as good as Ms Darbus said, he would be able to drag her grade up from the Cs she had been receiving her entire life.

She glanced over her laptop at him to see that he had spread several books in front of him. She spied a copy of the play, his notebook and what looked to be two textbooks. She focussed her attention back to her laptop but couldn't help but wonder why he was so into drama. From what she'd seen during the eight hours she'd known him, he had everything going for him and would bet solid hard cash on him receiving a basketball scholarship to the University of Albuquerque, which seemed to be the destination for athletes in New Mexico.

"So, have you thought about the project at all, or have your brain cells been preoccupied by Katherine all day?"

Troy glared across at her. "I apologised," he muttered. "Forgive me for wanting to relax for a while. And in answer to your question, yes. I have thought about it."

"Relaxation," she mused. "Because being the resident golden boy is so tough."

"Actually, it is," he exclaimed.

At the tone in his voice, she lifted her eyes to see frustration glistening in his eyes. She realised that he believed it was tough. Probably not in the spoilt way she had originally though. But it was clear something, or someone, was giving him a hard time.

Troy cleared his throat, realising what he had said. "I was thinking about costumes. We need a way to clearly distinguish the Montague's from the Capulet's."

She nodded slowly. "Right. Any ideas?"

"I came up with three key possibilities which all leave room to be tailored to appeal to high school students," he began.

"Go on." While he spoke, she logged into her Facebook, seeing several messages from her brother. She read each one but didn't reply.

"Well, I first though about stereotypical high school cliques: jocks and geeks," he explained.

"Pass," she mumbled, going back to her internet search results.

"What's wrong with it?"

She lifted her head. "Presumably Romeo would be the jock, which leaves Juliet to be the geek. It's demeaning. Not to mention how I'm the new girl and playing a geek won't do me any favours."

"Funny. I didn't think you worried about what people think," he said quietly.

"I've been the new girl before. I just don't want a label slapped on me so soon," she muttered. "Next idea."

"What about sports teams?"

She quirked an eyebrow. "What about them?"

"The rivalry," he said as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. "The Cowboys and the Eagles, Notre Dame and Stanford, the Yankees and the Red Sox, the Lakers and the Celtics. It's there, embedded in the nature of sport."

Gabriella frowned and was quiet for a moment.

"What's wrong with it?" he asked.

"It seems a little distant. A rivalry because the Montague's support the Lakers and the Capulet's support the Celtics? It seems a little...loose."

He rolled his eyes. "Okay. And this is the last one. If you don't like it, it's on to you. Schools."

"Schools? I prefer the stereotypes," she exclaimed.

"No, listen to me. You heard people talk about the West High Knights, right?"

"Taylor mentioned them when we were talking about the scholastic decathlon," she said slowly.

"They're the Wildcats' biggest rivals on every sport. Even the teachers hate each other. So when it's a championship game, it's a pretty big deal," he explained.

Gabriella stood up and paced the kitchen floor. "Interesting," she muttered. She stopped in her tracks and faced him. "It could work. Not to mention how the class will relate to it."

He shrugged. "Those were my thoughts."

"You have to be the Knight," they exclaimed at the same time.

Troy glared. "Why do I have to be the Knight?"

She shrugged. "I'm the new girl. I don't want a reputation of supporting the enemy. Besides, you're East High's golden boy. If you're the Knight, it's a risky artistic choice. It would be like using a freshman as a shooting guard for the championship game."

He frowned, cocked his head to the side and stared, absentmindedly tapping his pen on the counter.

She folded her arms. "What?"

"Nothing. It's nothing. So we're going with the Knights and the Wildcats?"

"Sure. I'll go to the school store tomorrow and buy a t-shirt."

"You can borrow my letterman jacket if you'd like," he offered.

"Thanks. How are you going to get a Knight t-shirt?"

He shrugged. "I know a guy. Okay, a guy at West High owes me a favour. Okay, my cousin owes me a favour."

She laughed. "You have a cousin at West High."

"I have a cousin who prints t-shirts for a living," he mumbled, pulling a face. "Anyway, what have you been thinking about? With the project."

"Well, something needs to be done about the language. Not necessarily change it to how we speak."

"Why not?"

She gave him a look. "Romeo, why do you, like, have to be, like, Romeo?"

He rolled his eyes. "I see your point. So what do we do?"

She picked up another Oreo and licked the cream off first. She leaned back against the refrigerator and closed her eyes. She pictured herself as Juliet Capulet, donned in East High school colours and Troy dressed in West High clothes. She tried to imagine how Juliet from high school should speak and what high school students should hear. Grabbed her copy of the play and reread the passage.

"Music!" she exploded.

He raised his eyebrows. "What?"

She pushed the book in front of him. "It's all here. The majority of it is in iambic pentameter so the rhythm and the rhyme is there. If we add music to it-"

"-we'll turn it into a musical which is the best way to attract teenagers," he mumbled sarcastically.

She threw an Oreo at him. "I don't mean it that way. What about...rap?"

"What do you know about rap?"

"My brother discovered Kriss Kross when he was about fourteen. He even had braids. Suffice to say that rap was all you could hear in a five block radius."

"What broke him out of it?"

"He got rejected from the entire female population of the high school for the Christmas dance," she explained.

"Nice," he mumbled.

"Rap's easy. Really. You just need a beat and you just go with it."

He quirked an eyebrow. "If it's so easy, do it. Right here. Right now."

She held his gaze, wondering if she should. She hadn't rapped since she was about ten and, even when she had, it had been in the comfort of her own bedroom. Part of her wanted to take the entire thing back. The other part knew it was the way to go. She flashed back to her obsession with the TV show Saved By The Bell. The gang had performed Snow White with rap and it had worked. It could work for Romeo and Juliet as well.

"Give me that," she snapped as she snatched her copy of the play from his hands. "Okay. This would be me." She quickly read through the text and glanced up at Troy. Before she started rapping, she began clapping her hand on her thigh, giving her something to work with.

Good pilgrim, you do wrong your hand too much,
Which mannerly devotion shows in this,
For saints have hands that pilgrims' hands do touch,
And palm to palm is holy palmers' kiss.

The words came out in a clear albeit rocky rhythm. It was harder than she'd remembered but she felt it. The meaning worked with the rhythm and she pictured the ending when Romeo and Juliet died, even though they didn't have to perform it, and knew it would work just as well. The rhythm was seductive, flirtatious and dramatic, everything that a Shakespearean tragedy was all about.

When she finished, she took a moment to catch her breath. "Don't laugh."

"I wasn't going to. I mean, it'll need work but hey, I've never rapped in my entire life," he said, shrugging. "I think it'll work. It's outside of the box, that's for sure."

Before she could respond, the front door opened and she turned to see her father walk in. Of course, she couldn't even get a word out before Spanish was spilling from his lips. She watched him put his things away, wondering what Troy was thinking. But when she glanced at him, she found him looking back at her.

"Mi hija, I didn't know you'd invited a friend over," Greg Montez exclaimed, his voice thick with a Spanish accent.

Gabriella shut down her laptop and began shuffling her books together, anything so she wouldn't have to look at Troy or her father. "We're not friends," she said at the same time as Troy. She glanced up, surprised and somewhat hurt that he had said it as well.

She coughed. "We're project partners," she explained, finally looking up at Greg. "Drama project."

Greg nodded in understanding and held his hand out. "Greg Montez."

Troy stood and shook his hand. "Troy Bolton."

A smile spread across Greg's face. "Troy Bolton. Captain of the basketball team."

Troy blushed a rather unmanly shade of pink. "That's me. How'd you know?"

"I work at U of A. You're all people talk about," Greg exclaimed.

Gabriella nudged his arm. "Papi," she warned and began loading the used crockery into the dishwasher.

"Right. Sorry about that," Greg apologised.

"It's fine. I should probably get going." Troy loaded his books into his bag. "Nice to meet you."

Gabriella led him towards the front door. "Sorry about him. He's excited about his new job."

Troy shrugged. "It's cool. I'll see you tomorrow?"

She nodded. "Let's do this again and work on our rapping skills."

He laughed.

"Did Troy Bolton just laugh at something I just said?"

"Don't tell anybody."

"No one will hear it from me," she promised.

Over the course of the next few days, Troy and Gabriella continued to work on their rapping skills after school and getting on each others' nerves during school. She had been introduced to all of his friends: Chad, Taylor, Jason, Kelsi, Zeke, Sharpay, Ryan and Martha. They were all nicer than anyone she knew at her previous schools. The only downside, of course, was Troy who was flaunted around by Katherine like a trophy and she clearly despised Gabriella. She supposed it was because she had caught their on-campus affection and she was Troy's project partner.

Despite that, Gabriella had never felt more included. All of Troy's friends had made her feel welcome, asked her about her studies and her motorcycle. She helped Taylor and Sharpay with preparations for the dance and she was actually excited about it. She'd even gone shopping with the girls to buy an appropriate outfit (Sharpay had made her disdain of leather and denim perfectly clear).

Overall, it was a promising start to her senior year.

It was this stream of thought that was interrupted by Sharpay pressing a piece of paper against Gabriella's face .

Gabriella pushed it away and sputtered. "What the hell is this?" She looked down at a hand painted paper oak leaf.

Sharpay sat down in the empty seat beside her in the library. "We're running out of time. The dance is tomorrow and we only have a third of the decorations done."

Gabriella yawned, covering her mouth with her hand. "But I've been painting these leaves until midnight every day."

Sharpay shrugged. "I know. But we're way behind schedule and Taylor is running frantic, saying that the ball will be a disaster."

Gabriella looked down at the leaf. "Why do I not like where this is going?"

"I know you're new and you're not technically a member of the dance committee but you've been such a huge help so far. The only way we're going to do this is by pulling an allnighter," she explained.

"But it takes me a good half an hour just to make one to a Sharpay standard. And I've had my dad helping me!" Gabriella protested, rubbing her forehead. She kept thinking about her project with Troy. They'd made progress but it still needed work. She could only imagine how long she'd be up combining her work with Troy and her work for the dance.

Sharpay pulled a pleading face. "Please? We're desperate."

Gabriella looked around the library and saw Troy sitting at the far side, at the back. She saw earphones plugged in his ears and he was scribbling in a notebook. She watched him stretch his back muscles and saw him look over in her direction. He relaxed and held her gaze. He neither smiled nor frowned and she couldn't tell what he was thinking. It made her nervous, even nauseous.

"Gabriella," Sharpay exclaimed, clicking her fingers, snapping Gabriella out of her trance..

"Ssh!" Ms Flagstaff, the librarian whispered from the desk.

"Sorry," the girls said in unison.

"Please,"Sharpay whispered.

Gabriella sighed. "Look, Troy and I will be working on our drama project all evening, finalising the details. It's not ready. But," she said, holding up her finger. She saw Sharpay opened her mouth and Gabriella stopped her in her tracks, "once we've finished for the night, I'll stay up as long as it takes to finish those leaves. I'll even ask my brother and his girlfriend to help."

Sharpay breathed an audible sigh of relief. "Gabby, you don't know what this means to me."

"I prefer Gabriella," she mumbled. "But whatever. You owe me."

Sharpay hugged her. "I'll see you later. I have to go and find Taylor. God knows how Chad's coping."

Before Gabriella could respond, Sharpay had left the library. She sighed, looking down at the in progress report that had to accompany hers and Troy's performance. They had to outline the technicalities: desired audience and what their chosen components would achieve. She and Troy had been so focussed on perfecting their rapping skills that they'd kind of forgotten about it.

She glanced back up to see Troy still looking at her. She raised her hand in a small waved but he only smiled in response. The kind smile someone makes in response to something funny. He turned back to his work and Gabriella turned back to hers, wondering where his precious girlfriend was.