Chapter 2
And so it began...the countdown to their European adventure.
In the days and weeks following those ecstactic first phone calls to family and friends announcing their invitation to participate in an internationl work-study program coveted by college students all around the world, Chad, Taylor, Gabriella and Troy had begun to talk seriously about all the plans and preparations that would have to be made prior to their trip, with the most important and immediate topic being to secure reasonable paying jobs for the next few months to offset their expenses abroad.
Although they were aware that everyone in the program, no matter their field of interest, would earn a salary for their internships, and that their plane fare, room and board would be covered, they also understood that additional money would be a necessity, even with the promise of financial assistance made to them by their parents and to some extent their respective schools whom they would also be respresenting while overseas.
Because none of them were planning on returning home for summer break, as they had done during their freshman and sophomore years before the days of sharing a condo, the two couples unanimously decided to stay in San Luis Obispo and earn what they needed there.
Having made quite a few friends in the community over the last year as part-time residents, Troy and Chad were luckily able to secure jobs working for a prominent family who owned both a ranch and orchards and were known for paying their workers higher than average wages, while Gabriella and Taylor were hired on at the most popular and expensive coffehouse in town, in addition to taking on work as math and science tutors to a handful of students whose wealthy parents were eager for their children to achieve top notch scores in the coming school year's SATs.
Once the job front had been successfully tackled and their chances for making a decent amount of money was less of a concern, Chad and Troy made the necessary arrangements to end their lease on the condo by summer's end, while Gabriella and Taylor made sure that all the belongings they planned to take to Europe would be shipped over in a timely manner while what remained was either sold, given away, or placed into storage back in New Mexico. As a team working in sync, the four of them were unstoppable.
It was in the middle of August, during the last few weeks before they would leave for home and a short visit with their families prior to catching a flight to London at the end of the month to be met by Sharpay, Kelsi and Ryan, that the exciting changes about to enter all of their lives were suddenly interrupted by a strange twist of fate that was both bizarre and frightening in its timing and undertone.
Saturday afternoon.
Taylor entered the condo at half-past 3:00, hungry and tired but exceptionally happy too.
After getting off her shift at the coffeehouse, where Gabriella still had another hour to go, their boss, Liz Chandler, had called Taylor into her office where she presented her with not only a bonus for all her hard work that summer, but a personal gift of additional money to help toward her costs while in Europe. To say that Taylor was shocked by the gesture of genorosity was an understatement. In fact she was completely stunned but equally pleased when she found out that Liz planned to do the same for Gabriella at the end of her shift as well.
Now, as Taylor rooted around in the refrigerator for something to eat before she changed clothes and headed out for her tutoring session with the mayor's youngest son, all she could do was smile from ear-to-ear not only about her own good fortune, but that which awaited her best friend too who had no idea that she also would be walking away from a summer of hard work amply compensated.
Just imagining the look on Gabriella's face when Liz handed her those two checks, was enough to make Taylor grin that much harder. She couldn't wait until that evening when Chad and Troy came home so they could share the good news with them as well. In fact, Taylor thought that since they'd barely been able to have a night out on the town together in quite some time because of the long hours they now all worked, that tonight would be the perfect time to take a much needed break and kick back. Maybe, if everyone wasn't too tired, they could have dinner at their favorite Mexican restaurant and then go dancing or take in a movie.
Suddenly Taylor's thoughts about plans for that night were interrupted by the ringing of her cellphone, which had her slamming the refrigerator door shut with a piece of cold chicken in hand, and rushing to her bag on the kitchen table to answer it.
"Hello," Taylor said in an upbeat voice, as she took a bite of chicken waiting for a response which didn't come.
"Hello?" she repeated again.
The caller still remained silent although soft breathing could be heard on the other end of the line.
"Hello? Anybody there?" Taylor inquired for the third time, when she caught that the message screen on her phone did not display a name but the words caller unknown instead.
She gave whomever was calling a few more seconds to respond and when they didn't, hung up with the belief that they must have had the wrong number.
Not giving the incident a second thought, Taylor continued to munch away on the chicken leg that lessened the rumbling in her stomach, as she shifted her attention to the small stack of mail she'd brought with her inside the house. Sitting down at the kitchen table, she began to flip through the envelopes, noting letters from the office of the coordinator of the work-study program, as well as one from Zeke whom Sharpay had informed planned to meet up with them in London a few days after they arrived.
Then Taylor saw it: the plain white envelope addressed to her with a name written at the top that caused her to nearly choke on what she was eating as her eyes widened in horror. This can't be happening. This can't be real her mind screamed as she sat there looking at the past come to life and yet, despite the revulsion she felt, couldn't stop herself from opening up the envelope to read the letter inside. For Taylor, in that moment, time seemed to have stopped, as she steadied herself as best as possible and forged ahead into the darkness of dangerous memories from long ago.
Slowly she began to read:
Dear Taylor:
I hope this letter finds you happy and well.
I can only imagine what you must be thinking in this moment trying to understand how it is that you find yourselfreceiving and reading something from someone whom I sure we can both agree you likely hate to the depths of your heart. I too wondered if corresponding with you after so much time and all that has passed between us was such a good idea. But, due to the guidance and urging of others who told me that I cannot move forwrd to fully embrace my rehabilitation until I've made proper atonement for my past, you now find yourself with my conscience in your hands and a hope that you can forgive me for all the pain I've caused. You will never know how truly sorry I am for the part I played which nearly cost both you and Chad your lives, and ultimately those of my own family. All I can hope for now is that my debt to society and you can be paid to the best of my ability.
Have a good life Taylor McKessie (or is it Taylor Danforth now?) and perhaps one day the malice you may or may not still feel for me will fade into a faint memory of the ashes from the past that I'm sure by now a woman like you has arisen from tremendously.
All The Best,
Julian
Taylor was unaware of just how long she sat there in the quaint white and yellow kitchen with the afternoon light streaming in, the letter from Julian trembling slightly in her hand, unable to know what to think or say.
Then, as she began to regain her bearings again, the first thought that leaped into her mind was how in the hell that monster of a man had even known where to find her? Surely no one she knew would have divulged such information to him willingly, and yet here she was holding a piece of paper touched by his hand and addressed to her as if they were long lost pen pals. Even that simpliest of connections made Taylor shudder and her stomach sicken.
Standing up from the table, she walked out of the kitchen and past the living room in a surreal trance, finally reaching the door to the downstairs bathroom. Going inside, Taylor turned on the light, glanced at her face in the mirror which looked drained upon reflection, before suddenly falling to her knees to wretch horribly into the toilet bowl.
Forty-five minutes later, Chad and Troy came into the house laughing and joking about their day, when Chad caught sight of Taylor's purse and keys sitting on the kitchen table next to the small pile of unopened mail.
"Tay!" he called out, as Troy took off his jacket and headed straight for the fridge and an ice cold beer. "Baby we're home! Where are you?"
There was no reply.
"Maybe she's upstairs taking a nap or something," Troy suggested, reaching for the mail as he sat down with a tired thud.
"Naw. She's got a tutoring gig at 4:00 p.m. At least that's what she told me before leaving this morning," Chad advised, peaking into the living room only to find it empty. "I'm gonna go and check our bedroom. She could be taking a shower."
"It's possible. You go and check and I'll sit right here and enjoy a well deserved moment of laziness," Troy laughed, with an encouraging wave.
Chad made his way up to the second floor and saw that the door to his and Taylor's bedroom was slightly ajar. He walked inside to find her lying on the bed staring at the wall.
"Hey baby," Chad greeted softly, sliding onto the bed while wrapping an arm lovingly around his fiancee's waist. "Didn't you hear me calling you?"
"I heard," Taylor replied in a tiny voice without turning to face him.
Just from the stilliness of her body alone even at his touch, Chad immediately sensed that something wasn't right.
"Hey...what's going on? Is everything alright?" Why aren't you getting ready or better still gone for your tutorting job at 4:00 p.m.?"
"I didn't feel like going," came Taylor's almost lifeless reply.
"Really? How come?"
"I just didn't is all."
Chad looked down at her profile and saw what looked like tear stains upon her cheek. Something was definitely wrong.
Gently forcing Taylor to turn over and face him whether she wanted to or not, he was struck by the remanants of tears in her eyes and a look of what he could only label as fear in her expression.
"Okay spill. What in the world is going on and don't you dare say nothing," demanded Chad, his heart racing with concern. "Did something happen at work today? Is that why you look like you've seen a ghost? And what's with the tears?"
Taylor looked up into his warm brown eyes gazing down upon her with undeniable love and wanted nothing more than to curl up in his arms and never leave them. But she knew that he was not going to let her hide this from him no matter how hard she tired to, so she gave up her attempts and came clean.
"I cancelled my tutoring session this afternoon because I was upset. I'm upset because something happened today that I never saw coming and it hit me like a fist to the gut. No it has nothing to do with work, which was actually great, but everything to do with this," she replied, reaching over to the nightstand and unfolding Julian's letter which she handed to Chad.
In less than five seconds, once he realized who the letter was from, he was seething mad and ready to kill. Taylor quietly watched him read, her heart pounding a mile a minute.
"I guess I should also mention that right before I opened the letter that I got a weird call on my cellphone too."
"What do you mean weird?" Chad growled suspiciously, his head snapping upward, his blood boiling like molten lava. "Are you trying to tell me this lunatic not only took the time to write you a letter after three long years but called you up too?"
"No...no...that's not what I'm saying," Taylor replied nervously. "Only that coincidentally, right before the stuff with the letter, I got a caller unknown on my phones' ID with no one responding on the other end. But there's just as much chance that it was a wrong number as it could have been Julian, which would just be too much for me to handle right now."
"Oh baby," Chad exclaimed, pulling Taylor tightly into his arms and rocking her back and forth. "I'm so sorry you had to have something like this happen, especially now when we've put so much distance between ourselves and the insanity of the past."
"I know. Seems Julian's timing still sucks as bad as it ever did."
"Don't even try to joke about this Tay," Chad scolded with open indignation. "This guy has no right or business contacting you even with some phoney bit about needing your forgiveness. He and his whole damn family tried to kill us and our best friends twice so if you think I can take this lightly, think again."
"Of course I don't think that," Taylor apologized. "I may have sounded like I was joking but this is nothing to laugh at, not in the slightest. I'm still just scared and nervous wondering if this is the beginning or the end with this guy. I mean come on Chad. You said it yourself. Why after three long years does he decided to contact me now?"
"Oh you better believe this is the end. This is the first and definitely the last time that nutjob intrudes on our lives on that you can be sure."
"And just how do you plan to stop him from doing something like this again?"
"We'll discuss that later. For now I need to go back downstairs and talk to Troy about this okay?
"Okay," Taylor answered with a nod.
Chad gave his girl the warmest smile he could, hoping that it made her feel somewhat safer than she had been less than an hour ago, then kissed her lips tenderly before sliding off the bed. He was about to leave the room but stopped at the doorway and turned.
"Say...what time is Brie supposed to be home?" he asked.
"Her shifts over at 4:00 p.m. I know she's got a meeting with our boss, Liz, right after so my guess is that she should be here around 4:30 maybe quarter to 5:00."
"I want you to give her a call right now and tell her we need her home as soon as she can get here," Chad suggested, feeling that it was what Troy would want him to do even though he still had no idea yet what had transpired.
"Okay. I'll come down afterwards," Taylor promised, trying to give him a brave smile so he wouldn't have to worry about her so much.
Twenty mintues later, Gabriella came screeching to a halt in the driveway behind the wheel of Troy's jeep.
Jumping out, she raced into the house in a near panic to find her fiance and friends all seated in the livingroom drinking beers while awaiting her return home.
"Okay...what is going on?" Gabriella demanded, anxiously dropping her purse onto the coffee table. "I could tell just from the sound of Taylor's voice that something was really wrong. So what is it?"
"Easy babe easy," Troy gently urged, standing up to give her a kiss and then pull her down beside him onto the couch. "Everythings cool...for now."
"For now? What does that mean?"
"It means that today I got a letter from Julian Brie and possibly a phone call too," Taylor explained, diving right in to explain things.
Gabriella sat there next to Troy like she'd just had the wind knocked out of her.
"You're joking right?"
"No sweetie, I wish I was. He actually wrote me a letter from prison and somehow knew to send it to me here?"
"You mean that pyscho after all this time has suddenly crawled out from under his rock and decided it's time for you two to become what? Pen pals? Not to mention the fact that he has knowledge of where you actually are which is totally crazy given that we left home for college over three years ago? How is that possible?"
"Yes to the first question. I don't know to the second. Yes to the third, and I don't know to the fourth," Taylor replied.
Gabriella stared at her friend as if she'd grown a second head, then reached for Troy's beer of which she promptly took a nice long swig.
"Better?" Troy asked.
She shook her head in a decisive no. Then her eyes drifted to those of her best friend across the room.
"Oh Taylor," Gabriella groaned. "Honey...I'm so sorry about this."
"It's okay Brie, I'm fine now. When I first got home though it was a totally different story."
"I bet. Have you guys called the police with this? I mean...should we call them and make out a report or something."
"No babe, we haven't called anyone yet," stated Troy, draping an arm around her shoulders. "The most important thing Chad and I had to do first was to make sure both you and Taylor were safe. Now that you are we can discuss what to do next."
"Well I say we call the police and report this whackjob before he decides to start sending out Hallmark cards on a whim," was Gabriella's suggestion.
"That's one way to go but how effective will that be?" Chad thoughtfully surmised. "I mean...for one thing this guy isn't even imprisoned anywhere near here so which jurisdiction do we report this too? Secondly, while we might hate the idea of him sending Taylor that stupid letter, he cleverly didn't put anything in it that could even be closely considered as threatening or remotely dangerous. What are the authorities gonna do about a guy who basically writes a forgive me for my sins letter?"
"But isn't the whole point that he shouldn't be making any contact with Taylor at all?" Gabriella argued. "This is a convicted criminal whom none of us, least of all Tay, has seen or spoken too in almost four years now who suddenly knows where she lives without any logical explanation for how that can be? And what about this phone call he made?"
"We don't know for sure that it was him," Taylor conceded. "It could just have easily been a wrong number for all we know."
"Do you really think it could be nothing but a coincidence?"
"I don't know Brie," Taylor admitted. "It would seem unlikely given that, as you just pointed out, it happened right before the whole letter incident. But I can't prove a connection between the two that would convince anyone who could help us of that being an indisputable fact."
"You know..." Troy began, getting up from the couch to go and stand next to Chad, who had been slowly pacing the floor ever since Gabriella arrived. "This really might not be as big a deal as it seems or at least one that we have to be tied up in knots over considering the fact that in a few weeks we won't even be here."
"Are you crazy Troy Bolton!" his fiancee snapped. "Am I hearing you right in that because we're leaving to go to Europe for a year that we should just ignore this little stunt of Julian's and hope that it goes away all by itself?"
"Well...it could happen. The guy is locked up after all and can't get to either Taylor or you or Chad or me so what real danger does he pose? He sent a letter and maybe tried to call but when all is said and done, we're still out of here in 10 days and after that it all becomes a moot point doesn't it?"
"How so man?" Chad wondered, curious to hear more of Troy's rational.
"How? Because in that time we'll have cut off having anymore mail delivered here at least for a year if ever again. I mean...who knows where we'll be when we come back. My guess is that while it would be nice, I doubt it's gonna be here. Any attempts to play pen pal again will be ceased permanently by our moving out of the country alone."
"And what what about the phone call?"
"Taylor just needs to get a new number for her cell and that will put a stop to anymore unknown calls possibly being made by Julian if that is in fact what happened today."
"So what you're saying is that we maybe got overly excited about this whole thing and that we should try to forget about it in light of the fact that we'll be leaving for Europe soon and once over there this problem won't be a big deal any longer?"
"More or less," Troy replied. "Look Chad...I want Taylor safe just as much as you do. In fact I want us all to be safe and free of anything having to do with Julian. But the bottom line is that it's gonna take time and likely a bit of expense we don't have to spare when we've got bigger fish to fry."
"You mean we shouldn't even try to report this to someone, at least at the prison?" Gabriella asked.
"Well...no. I do think that's the least we can do but then drop it from there if Taylor decides that's okay with her."
They all turned to look in her direction as she mulled over their words in her head.
"Troy's right. Why turn our world upside down when we're about to embark on the adventure of a liftetime just to give Julian attention he doesn't deserve. I think that yes, we should contact the prison and report the incident and request that no more letters to me from him be allowed to be sent and then leave it at that. Tomorrow I can call the wireless company and get a new number. Case closed."
"Are you sure that's the way you want to handle this baby?" questioned Chad, not wanting her to feel as if her concerns for her safety weren't important enough to pursue.
"Yes, I'm sure. I admit that earlier I was completely freaked out by everything that happened but after talking it over with all of you, I see that Troy's suggestions are the best way to handle things. Why give Julian power that he doesn't really have or deserve? He apologized. Fine. If sincere then great. If not, it won't matter because I'll be beyond his reach once we step on that plane two weeks from Sunday."
Chad reached out for Taylor and pulled her into his arms.
"Do you know how much I love you?" he whispered against her ear. "How I'd do anything in the world to protect you from harm?"
Taylor smiled. "Yes. I do. It's the same for me with you."
"Good. Then I guess it's okay if we shake off all this unpleasant creepiness and go out for some dinner and try and have a little fun? My treat."
"I vote Mexican food," Troy quickly spoke up with a hungry smile.
"I'll second that," Gabriella chimed in.
"Sounds alright by me," Taylor agreed. "Give me and Brie some time to pull ourselves together okay?"
"You got it. Just don't take too long. This is Saturday night and you know how quickly the best booths tend to fill up."
"We won't be long," Gabriella promised, taking Taylor by the hand and leading her upstairs.
When Chad and Troy were alone again, Troy turned to his best friend with a knowing look in his eyes.
"I assume you went along with everything I suggested regarding Julian more than likely for Taylor's benefit but..."
"But what?"
"Come on Chad. This is your boy you're talking too. I know you. You are being way too calm and agreeable about this whole thing when I know deep down what you really want to do is see Julian get punished for messing with your woman, even if it's only her head."
"Chill man I'm fine. Really. As long as Tay's okay I am too. Now why don't you go upstairs and shower that stink off you so your woman won't be ashamed to be out with you in public tonight. I'm gonna call the restaurant and make us some reservations."
Troy laughed, assured that Chad wasn't still harboring thoughts of doing something crazy where Julian was concerned, and then proceeded upstairs to see if he could horn in on Gabriella's shower for one.
After he found himself alone, Chad remained in the livingroom deep in thought, hating that he'd lied to Troy about everything being cool with him knowing that it wasn't.
Just remembering the hell of three years ago when Julian and the rest of the DeLeon family had nearly destroyed the lives of everyone he knew and loved, especially Taylor, was enough to make him see that he had to make sure something like this never happened again. He admittedly was no longer that same person Julian had come up against before: a fun-loving high school kid with crazy hair who loved to play ball. Many qualities of that Chad still existed within him on some levels, but there were also differences now too, the biggest of which was that he was no longer a kid but a grown man who wasn't going to allow anyone to ever again threaten the safety, implied or not, of those he loved.
For now he would maintain a deamor of calm. He owed it to Taylor who needed his strength to lean on. But, when the time was right, and it would be in a few weeks time, Chad planned on dealing with Julian and putting whatever end he had to any more reawakenings of the past.