My life was perfect. Just perfect. We eventually (unfortunately) had to come back up for air. I smiled. "So does your offer still stand? Can we still hang out some time?" I asked.
"I think it's officially safe to call it a date." He said. "How about right now?" He asked, standing up.
"Huh? Troy, it's sort of late." I said, still smiling at his cuteness, or (more likely) it was because I could stare at him openly now.
"It's a Friday! Come on!" He said, pulling me up.
"Well, I guess so." I said.
"Let's go, I know just the place." He said. He basically dragged me to his car and made me keep my eyes closed for the ten minute drive, I thought it was sort of cute. When we finally got to the place he still wouldn't let me open my eyes. He walked right behind me with his hands over my eye to make sure I wouldn't look.
"What ever happened to dinner and a movie?" I asked.
"Nothing, I just thought this would be cooler." He said, lifting his hands from my eyes. We were in a familiar place. It was a small, abandoned dock that opened to a small lake (A/N I have no clue if this is anywhere near accurate, I don't live anywhere near Albuquerque), it had been abandoned because of some sort of financial failure that closed this place down, but we used to come here all the time anyways. "Do you remember this place?" He asked.
"Yeah…" I trailed off, remembering back to the second grade. "Do you think it's still there?" I asked.
"Huh? What's still there?" Troy sounded confused.
I smiled. "Under the rock shaped like Chad's hair." I said. I looked around and found it, it looked more or less like Chad's head. It took a while but I lifted it, and under it was a shoe box.
"I thought that would be gone by now." Troy smiled as he pulled the shoe box out of the hole that we dug when we were seven.
"Well I guess not, let's open it." I said. We opened the box and inside was a note. I read it out loud. "As of today, Troy Bolton and Sharpay Evans are sworn best friends forever. We swear on our most sacred possessions that nothing will ever come between us and we will be friends for life." I finished and smiled. "Funny, I always thought the Best Friend Forever thing was only for girls.
Troy looked at me and laughed. "I was seven okay?" I couldn't help but smile at that. "So what exactly were our most sacred possessions back then?" He asked.
I looked in the box. "Apparently yours was a GI Joe doll." I said, handing it to him.
"I remember this! It was like my favorite toy!" He said, holding it in his hands.
"Yeah, right next to Malibu Barbie." I teased.
"It was a phase okay? But seriously, this was literally my most sacred possession back then." He smiled.
"That's what the paper said." I said. I looked down in the box and found a small purple plastic ring, you know, the kind you get in those machines outside grocery stores. "No way." I said. "This was the ring my first boy friend Chris gave me in the second grade! I wonder if it still fits." I said, trying to squeeze it onto my finger.
"Chris? Chris Bentley? I still think that kid was a nose picker." He said defensively.
"You're just jealous because back in the second grade you didn't have a girlfriend." I giggled. "Harry and I stayed together until like, the fifth grade! He had to move to Canada, poor guy." I said. (A/N No offence Canada!)
"Can we stop talking about Chris now?" He asked.
"My first and last long term relationship… I wonder if I still have his number." I joked.
"Hello? I'm standing right here!" Troy said.
"I'm joking." I said. "He was not half as cute, or as funny, or as charming, or as annoyingly perfect in every single way as you." I said, finally just slipping the ring onto my pinky instead of trying to force it onto my ring finger.
"Good, and just so you know he really was a nose picker." Troy said.
"Sure Troy… and you really did jump a truck on your bike in the fourth grade." I said with a smile.
"What ever." Troy said.
"Okay, so what now?" I asked.
Troy smiled. "Come on, let's take a walk." He said.
I nodded and took his hand. "So, really, how are things with your dad?" I asked.
"Normal… well at least for us." He said. "He's going all basketball crazy, what with basketball season coming up and now I'm a senior so all the scouts will be looking out for me."
"That must suck." I said plainly. "It's kind of different for me. I have to work extra hard to get a scholarship to an art school if I want to go to one. My mom is well… not going to get me tuition, and my dad doesn't like the idea of me running off to Hollywood, he wants me to stay in Albuquerque forever and take on the family business of… what ever my dad does. I have no clue. My mom never lets me talk to him so I never really got a chance to find out. All I know is that it's something really boring and businessy. Even though I don't have a single clue on what he does, you know just as much as I do that what ever it is I'll hate it." I said. "Which is why this play is so important to me."
"I get it." Troy said.
"You're just about the first one, everyone else just thinks I'm out for attention." I said.
"I know you're not, you're just different, and a lot of people at school are afraid of that." He said. We stopped walking. He was leaning down to kiss me when something caught my eye.
"What's that?" I asked pointing to a few people standing a distance away from us.
"Just a bunch of low life dealers selling some drugs to some kid. Ignore them." He said.
I turned my head. One of them was wearing a crimson shirt and matching hat. Take a wild guess on who it was. "Ryan." I whispered.
"Huh?" Troy asked looking all confused, a moment ago I would have thought it was cute but now I was watching something that was breaking my heart.
"That one, in the red, that's Ryan." I said. "I have to go get him!"
Troy held me back and pulled me behind a park bench. "Are you crazy? If you just barge in like that they'll kill you both! Just go to him after they leave and get rid of whatever they sold him." Troy said, keeping his hand over my mouth.
I nodded. Tears streaming down my eyes. How could he do this again? After everything that just happened? How could he? Didn't he have like a parole officer or something? This was beyond pain, it was like betrayal. Maybe I should have just stopped caring what he did. It would have made my life so much easier, but I couldn't he was my brother.
"Okay, we can go now." He said. We stood up and I wiped my eyes. "Are you okay?" He asked.
"No." I didn't lie. "Come on." I said.
We walked a pretty long distance, across the huge field, in dead silence. We got about twenty yards away from him when I realized that it seemed like we weren't walking towards anything, there were no figures standing. That's when I saw it. I figure, in a bright crimson shirt, keeled over on the ground clutching his stomach. "Ryan!" I yelled and ran towards him. I kneeled down next to him, tears gushing from my eyes, as if no one were watching. "Call 911!" I yelled at Troy who with out hesitation pulled out his phone and started rapidly dialing, then he pressed the phone to his ear and started pacing. The sight of Ryan was horrible, his lip was bleeding and there was a bruise around his left eye. His crimson shirt hid the visibility of blood, but I knew it was there because of the sticky warmth I felt through the thin material. I lifted my hand, it was dripping the red liquid of my brother's blood soaked through his shirt. At that moment I wished that I would faint, or pass out or something, but I had to stay awake during this nightmare, because if I didn't, neither would Ryan.
An ambulance arrived about three minutes later, thank god one was near by. By then I had found the spot on Ryan's chest where he was bleeding and applied pressure to it. Troy had to pull me away from Ryan when the paramedics came to take him away. They let Troy and I ride in the ambulance and assured us that he would be fine but it was still horrible. They let me wipe his blood off my hands, but in a way, it was still there, I couldn't help but think that this was my fault, for not staying with him this afternoon, for letting him drink when he came to mom's house, for everything. And it all landed me in an ambulance for the second time this week.
I crossed my arms in the cold chill of the blaring air conditioner, I guess they needed the cool because of their bulky uniforms but to me it was freezing. Troy put his arm around me, giving me a feeling of warmth. "It'll be okay." He whispered. I believed him more than the paramedics for some reason. I felt safer now with Troy protecting me than I felt while being escorted to school by a body guard. It was different than the way I protected myself, I created a box around myself blocking me from the rest of the world. With Troy it was like I was completely exposed to the world, but he helped me stand up when it pushed me down. I know it sounds incredibly corny but it was the way it was.
"Okay miss, you can stay in the waiting room with your friend." One of them said.
I nodded and walked into the hospital, the same feeling too much air conditioning came over me when I stepped inside. I waited for what seemed like forever with Troy with me, just holding my hand and not saying anything. It helped more than it would if he tried to talk now. "Ms. Sharpay Evens?" A lady in a medical coat carrying a clip bard called. "You may go see your brother." She said. She handed me a clip board and I signed as a family member. "Room 153." She said.
"Thanks." I said. I couldn't say much more to her. I repeated the number over and over in my head, when I got to the room Ryan was alone and awake.
"Sharpay…" He started.
"Are you okay?" I asked. It always had to be the first thing I asked, no matter what he put me through I always had to know that he was okay.
"I fractured my rib cage and broke an arm, other than that its just a few bad bruised." He said. "Listen Shar… I wasn't there to buy drugs." He said, he obviously knew that I knew somehow. "I owed them some money from a while ago. I was supposed to have it by today, but I didn't they gave me an extra week… and this." He said.
"I'm not sure I can believe you." I said.
"Sharpay! I know I've been stupid lately but you've got to understand! I don't do drugs!" He said.
"I'll believe it when they give me the DNA analysis." I said. And left, I had nothing more to say to him.
Okay… I updated pretty quickly this time. As you can probably guess, I suck at fluff. Yeah, at least I'll admit it right? Okay so I don't have much to say after that chapter. I guess nothing perfect can stay for too long right? Okay, so I'm still taking ideas for the call backs, even though I've already received one or two that I think I'm going to use. I'll try to update soon.