Title: Elsewhere

Summary: It's an emotional rollercoaster taking care of three little boys. Especially when they're not yours, and you don't know how long they're staying. Troypay.

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Chapter Two

Troy Bolton was tall and muscular, his light brown hair a bit too long and hanging into his eyes. His bright blue eyes were piercing, yet also soft and understanding, his mouth always ready to crinkle into a smile. Troy was one of those people possessed of a personality so laid-back that practically nothing surprised him. Still, he wished his wife had told him what he had to come to the hospital for. Troy strode into the emergency room in his battered jean jacket and flannel shirt, going up to the front desk in search of Sharpay.

"Troy!" Sharpay's smallness was accentuated next to her husband's height. She was like a sprite, with a head of luminous blonde hair, a round face and rosebud mouth. Her wide brown eyes shone like glass pierced with sunlight, sparkling and knowing. Sharpay moved with a graceful self-assuredness, her muscles supple and capable. Troy grinned. She was cute in scrubs.

"Troy, you aren't going to believe this, but. . . well. . ." Sharpay took a deep breath. She paused for a moment. Then the story bubbled out of her, Troy's eyes growing wider and wider with each new revelation.

"God," he murmured, several times. "That's unbelievable." When Sharpay explained to him what she intended to do, he nodded. "I think we should help, if we can." Then he paused. "Shar, what did you just suggest?"

Sharpay smiled. "Come with me," she said. "You'll see what I mean."

Troy's first impression of the boys was that he had seen better-nourished looking kids in poverty stricken areas of Appalachia. "Shoot," he murmured to himself. "Three cents a day and you can feed this child for a year."

He wasn't exaggerating. Kevin, especially, was painfully skinny, almost gaunt, although this was due to bone structure as well as poor diet. His blond hair curled gently around his forehead and the nape of his neck, badly in need of cutting. It was the only thing about him that was childish.

Kevin had the eyes of someone who had been in a war zone, dark-circled and haunted. Sitting with his dirty hands clasped between his knees, his body hunched over as if against a cold wind, he felt as if a black hole had opened just below his lungs. It was taking all of his resistance not to be sucked into it. He wasn't sure how long he could last; all his energy was being drained away and a weakness was settling over him. He wanted to sleep for a long time, but was scared of what would happen if he did.

Andy wasn't asleep, but he was lying with his eyes closed. The lights were too bright in here. As long as Kevin was around, he'd be all right. Because Kevin always knew what to do, Andy thought, hazily. He wasn't aware of much, except the aching in his chest and his struggle to breathe.

There was an oxygen mask over his nose and mouth, and his skin was flushed a deep red, but there was still something beautiful, almost angelic, about Andy. His eyes were deep blue, Crayola crayon blue, almost. In spite of everything, they held a calm, little Buddha expression. He was someone, Sharpay thought, who would never be able to hide what he was thinking. His eyes would always give him away.

There was a shyness about him, something tentative. Maybe it was the combination of his eyes and his mouth, which was small and delicate, the lower lip fuller than the upper. He looked like he expected someone to hurt him, but seemed surprised when anyone did. A nurse would insert a needle in his arm to draw blood or give him a shot, and he'd open his eyes, startled and confused. "Ooh," one nurse murmured to Sharpay as she left. "I'm not going to be able to live with myself for the rest of the night."

Zac was the sturdiest of the three. Small and stalwart, he had been holding himself together with quiet resolve, a resolve that didn't come from being too young to understand what was going on. He had long lashed brown eyes and a mischievous smile, a round baby face and golden blond hair. Sharpay lifted Zac out of his chair and held him in her lap, feeling his small body relax against hers, his head tucked beneath her chin. He fingered the plastic ID that was clipped to her pocket, mesmerized. "This is Zac," she said to Troy, "and Kevin, and this is Andy."

Troy smiled. He liked kids, but he wasn't sure what to say right now. "Hi. I'm Troy." He sat down next to Sharpay. "Are you guys hungry?"

"Um." Kevin studied a hangnail. He was hungry. The last time he'd eaten was Thursday night. But he didn't want to say that to Troy or Sharpay. He didn't trust them. There wasn't a reason to. Kevin had learned that no one was ever nice to you unless they wanted something. He didn't have any idea what Sharpay and Troy wanted.

Zac, however, was less inhibited. "Yes!" he exclaimed, smiling broadly and throwing his arms around Sharpay's neck. "We are really hungry!" Sharpay and Troy exchanged a smile.

"Really hungry?" Troy asked.

"Really really hungry," Zac assured him.

"We're okay, though," Kevin whispered, quickly.

"No we aren't," Zac corrected him.

"Do you guys want to go to McDonald's?" Troy asked.

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"Those kids ate like they had never seen food before," Troy told Sharpay later. "I'm not kidding. I think they were actually worried that I might take it away from them before they were done."

"God knows what their lives have been like," Sharpay agreed.

"I wish I knew what to do." Troy sighed.

It was much later. Troy had taken Kevin and Zac home and gotten them to bed. Sharpay had decided to spend the night at the hospital with Andy. He was five years old, Sharpay thought, and too young to be there alone. Knocked out with powerful antibiotics and fever reducer, she doubted he had any idea where he was, and was probably terrified. If someone had asked Andy, he would have admitted that part of him was.

The other part of him though, the part of him that was vaguely sensing, through the medication, the pain and the fever, that something else was going on in the world around him, wasn't scared at all. What was scary, Andy thought, waking up in the gray early morning light to see the lady from the emergency room last night asleep in the bed next to him, was when his mother left and they didn't know where she was, and when they had to pretend that she was at work. It was scary when his mother was home and she had a boyfriend with her, or when she was acting crazy and beating him and his brothers up. Andy didn't mind the beatings as much as he did the fact that he could never rely on his mother, that he never knew, from day to day, exactly how she'd act. Sometimes, she was really nice. Other times, she wasn't like his mother at all.

The lady by the bed, though, Andy sensed good things about her. He didn't think she was like his mother. Her hands were soft and warm, gentle when she touched him. Her voice was calm and level. He wondered, gazing at her through the cover of darkness, if she had stayed with him because he was sick. If she had, she was nothing like his mother.

Andy's mother didn't like it when her kids bothered her. That was why she left, Andy thought. They made too much noise and bothered her. He tried to be quiet, but he didn't remember all the time. That was why it was his fault that his mother didn't love him. When Andy was sick, he never told his mother. He'd tell Kevin. If Andy or Zac was really sick, sometimes Kevin would have to go ask his mother for money to go buy Tylenol. Sometimes she'd get really mad, because she didn't have the money, or she didn't want to give it to him. Times like that, Andy thought, were when his mother was the scariest.

Andy knew that sometimes his older brother stole money from his mother. He didn't think that was right. Still, she'd only spend it on drugs, or she'd go out to a bar. If Kevin didn't take the money out of her purse, they'd never have groceries, or pay the rent, and the lights would go out again. Sometimes the phone didn't work, either. They had to pay money for that, too. Andy didn't understand all of that, about money. He didn't understand why people needed it, or what it meant. Sometimes he thought that maybe Kevin didn't, either. Still, his brother took care of things because he had to, because his mother wouldn't.

Andy knew that because Kevin had told him. Kevin told him lots of things, but not everything. Still, Andy usually knew what his brother was thinking, even if nobody else did. He was good at reading people. If you watched them carefully, they told you more than they ever could in words.

Like the lady in the chair by the bed. She was definitely someone who didn't go out and get drunk, not even on the weekends. She was probably like the mother on The Cosby Show, Andy thought, someone who was always nice to her kids, if she had any. Maybe they made her mad, sometimes, but she never hit them.

Then again, Andy thought, maybe everyone's mother hit them. Maybe the Cosby Show mother hit her kids as soon as the show was over. He wondered about that. Did the mother and father on the Cosby Show ever get drunk and start beating their kids? That was what his own mother would do. No, Andy thought. The Cosby Show parents were too nice. He wished he could go live at their house. He was probably the wrong color, but maybe the neighbors were nice, too. Andy was convinced that the Cosbys were an actual family, and that you could go visit them, if you had their address. Cosby. He rolled the name around in his mouth, not speaking it aloud. Andy Cosby. It had a nice ring to it.

Sharpay awoke to find herself riveted in the intense, very serious gaze of a little boy whose wide blue eyes seemed to take in the world. "Hi, Andy," she whispered, not wanting to scare him.

"Hi," he answered back, a small smile flickering across his face.

"How are you feeling?"

"Better than I was before." He yawned. "Where's Kevin and Zac?"

"They went back to my house," Sharpay told him. "My name is Sharpay, and the three of you are going to be staying with me and my husband Troy for a few days."

"Does my mommy know?" Andy asked the question guilelessly, an almost hopeful look in his eyes.

Sharpay sighed. "No, honey. I'm sorry."

Andy took a deep breath, closing his eyes for a moment. "It's okay."

"You're really tired," Sharpay observed.

"Yeah, a little bit," he agreed.

"You should go to sleep now," she told him.

"Okay," he whispered. Obediently, he closed his eyes.

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