Part Thirteen: Worried

My heart stopped. She knew. Sharpay knew. “What?” I spluttered.

She looked pained, “He didn’t say, but I know. I know he does. Just the way he looked at you whenever you came in the room, the way he’d put down yours and Chad’s relationship. And he spoke about you all the time. And then you started spending more time together, and I had to-”

I shook my head furiously, “But that doesn’t mean he likes me!”

“Yes, it does,” she argued. “You might not realise, but I do. I’ve been seeing it for ages, and I decided to break up with him before he dumped me for you.”

I snorted in amusement, “You think I’d take him? I have Chad, thank you very much.”

She pulled a face, “And he’s kinda cute, and quite nice, I guess. But Troy’s just adorably endearing.”

“He’s not my type!” I protested.

She seemed more comfortable now as she surveyed me critically. She must have had a lot of time to mull this over, I realised. That was the only way that she could be so calm about the whole thing. She had thought about it. “Troy’s everyone’s type. He’s sporty, popular, but different. He’s funny. He’s sweet. He’s hot. He’s a fabulous kisser.” She leaned towards me, “He’s a charmer, Ry. Everyone who’s that way inclined likes him eventually.” A knowing look came into her eye, “And even some who aren’t.”

I rolled my eyes, “He did not turn Kaycee Louden! She was faking lesbianism for attention!”

There was a glint in her eye now, “Just keep telling yourself that. And I don’t blame you for what’s happened. Be careful, though, yeah? I’m not lying when I say he likes you.”

I threw a cushion at her, “Just put on the movie.”

*****

I swallowed nervously as I pressed a finger down on the doorbell, hoping that I’d managed to catch him before he left for school. The door was pulled open, and Coach Bolton was stood there. He looked surprised, “Oh, good morning, Ryan.”

“Morning. Is Troy in?” I asked nervously.

“Of course,” he remarked, stepping back to let me in. “He’s only just gotten up. He’s still in his room. Straight upstairs, last door on the left.”

I thanked him, and jogged up the stairs. I saw Troy’s door immediately. It was the one with sport and music posters all over it. I moved towards it, and knocked twice before entering. Troy yelped, grabbing hold of a pillow. “Ryan!”

“I did knock.”

“Barely,” he remarked darkly.

I sighed, rolling my eyes to the ceiling, “Troy, I have no interest in your penis. Put on a pair of boxers if you’re so self-conscious.”

He sidled over to a drawer, pillow still in place, and opened it. “I was getting to it before you came barging in.” He glanced up at me, “Turn around!”

I held up my hands in mock surrender, spinning on the spot, “Fine…” I heard shuffling behind me as I waited. “You never care in the showers at school.”

“You don’t stand and stare at me there.”

“Was I looking anywhere but your face?” I demanded.

There was a moment of silence. “You can turn around now.”

I turned back, noted the pair of navy boxers that now covered the area which had been concealed by the pillow. I had to force my eyes off his chest. I couldn’t doubt that it was…toned. “I found out why Sharpay broke up with you.”

“What? Why?”

A step was taken in his direction, “Because she knows.”

He looked blank, “Knows what?”

“Oh, that you’re not a natural brunette,” I quipped. “What d’you think I mean?!” I moved even closer, lowering my voice, “She knows that you…”

As I shifted on my feet uncomfortably, realisation dawned in his eyes, “Are you sure?”

“Yes! She…warned me last night.” I narrowed my eyes, “Apparently, your feelings are like an open book.”

He winced, “I’m sorry!”

“Yeah, well, now she’s telling me that it won’t be long before I dump Chad for you and…” I stared at him critically, “You can hide your feelings from Chad, but you can’t hide them from her?!”

Troy rolled his eyes, grabbing a pair of jeans from the end of his bed and starting to put them on, “Like I didn’t try! She just knows everything where you’re concerned. You can’t cover. You can lie, but she knows.”

“Well, we need to make sure that she doesn’t pick up on anything else.”

*****

“Go on,” Chad coaxed playfully. “Shoot a basket.”

I didn’t even look up at him, “It’s not that impossible, you know…”

He came to the side of the stand set up in the gym, where I was sitting on the fifth step up, working on some homework I was behind on. Out of my peripheral vision now, I saw him hold out the basketball to me, “Then prove it.”

“I’m working,” I reminded him.

“Only takes a moment to shoot a basket.”

I wrote down an answer slowly just to annoy him, “The deal was: You could work on your free-throws while I did this.”

“You should take a break.”

I looked up at him, took in his pouting face, “I’ll break when I’ve been working for more than ten minutes. I need to get this done, Chad. Shar wants to work on the stage after school, then we have rehearsal for this play-audition-thingie and… I just need to get this done, okay?”

“Okay, okay, okay,” he soothed, dropping the basketball so that it bounced away as he jogged up the stand to the row behind me. He put his fingers on either side of my jaw, probing. “Unclench,” he ordered, and I released my gritted teeth. “You’re too tense,” he told me. “That’s why you’re so stressy.”

“I’m not stressy.”

He made a disbelieving noise, his magic fingers moving onto my neck. I hummed slightly as he began to work on the knots. “When was the last time you did your yoga?” he asked.

I thought about it, shrugged, “A couple of weeks. I’ve been all over the place.”

“Well, you need to take some you time,” he told me sternly. “This can’t be good for you.”

“Yeah, well, if I knew what was good for me, then Sharpay would be doomed.”

“You can’t let her control your life.”

My eyes had slid closed due to his massage, but now they snapped open again. “I’m not letting her control my life. Don’t be ridiculous. Do you really think I would do all of this if I didn’t want to?”

He turned his attention to my shoulders, “But it’s making you moody.”

“I’ll be fine. It’ll die down soon. We’ll enlist people to help with the musical, and- after the audition- Sharpay will calm down.”

“And you’ll still push yourself this hard,” he muttered. “Ryan, you need to take care of yourself.”

“I am!” I protested.

There was a pause. “Have you eaten this morning?”

Damn it. “Yes.”

“Don’t lie if you don’t like being called a liar,” was all he said.

I harrumphed, shoving my History stuff aside and standing up, walking down to the basketball court, “So I forgot? It’s one day.”

“Now.”

I gave him an incredulous look as I picked up the basketball, “When did you become my mother?”

“Ryan.”

I sighed, before repeating myself: “It’ll get better.” I began to dribble towards the basket and shot. The ball went right in.

“Ryan…” Chad said with a sigh, moving back down towards me. I retrieved the ball and passed it to him. “I just don’t want you to flunk because you’re too preoccupied with other things.”

“I won’t. Don’t worry.”