Disclaimer: I own nothing.

Okay, I just thought about this while I was just watching stuff on YouTube. Anyway, I hope you like it.

On the Fast Track

His chest rose and fell. His ears heard everything being said around him, but he couldn't force himself awake. He was living his life again, watching every moment pass before his eyes just as they had during his lifetime.

Chad's curly hair bounced up and down during a middle school basketball game. Zeke's face showed his heart's emotion as he pulled the burnt cake from the oven. Sharpay danced across the stage at age ten in her little pink tutu, his younger sister, Ana, directly beside her.

"Be strong," he heard in his ear.

He knew that voice. It was the sweet voice of Gabriella. He tried to force his eyes open, but he knew it wasn't happening. He was dying, he knew he was, and he didn't even know why.

All he remembered was he was driving home from Chad's. It was late and stormy, yet he still braved through the rain. He had been thinking about the test he had the next day. Then, blackness. He assumed his car was smashed, but he didn't know. All he knew was that he had stopped at the light and another person had not.

"Come on, big bro, open your eyes and see everyone." Ana. Cute little Ana, she was two years younger, and she loved him so much.

The doctor came in and told everyone but family to leave. There were apparently too many people in the room. His mind laughed, he was even popular when he was unconscious.

He was losing strength and it was hard to keep breathing. More memories rushed into his mind. Ana chasing him around in the yard. His father playing basketball with him. His mother watching him and Ana from the kitchen window.

There were bandages on his head, he could barely feel them now. He knew there were scratches and cuts all over his face. He and his car must look like twins, both totaled and he couldn't help but hope that the other car was like that too. His breathing slowed.

"Where is he?" he heard, then a gasp. "Oh, God. Is he going to make it?"

"Yes!" came Ana's persistent voice. "He's strong."

He knew who it was that had just arrived. His older brother, Scotty, rushing back from his final year of college just to see his little brother. Memories of Scotty rushed through his brain. Scotty playing for East High and then his college team, his dark hair unkempt. There Scotty was, in the backyard helping him with his foul shots.

He heard a sob and knew it was his mother. "Oh, my baby," she muttered, taking one of his hands in hers. His other hand was taken by a small hand – Ana. He was declining fast. These were his final moments, he knew it.

Was there a heaven? He had never thought about it, but now he hoped there was something more. He didn't want to just die. He wanted to be able to be aware, even if he was dead. He tried to wiggle his toes, but nothing happened. Why was he so helpless? He had never felt so alone.

"Come on, Bud," his father's voice said into his ear. "If you can hear us, open your eyes."

Easy for you to say, he thought. He wanted to move something, just to show his family he was there, but he couldn't. All he could see were his memories. His life flashing before his eyes. Sitting in Darbus's class with his friends, dancing at the homecoming dance, Christmas, New Year's, Ana's fifteenth birthday party, the big basketball game. They all were so vivid to him.

Chad and Zeke were in his line of vision, and the moments started rushing through his head. His reel of memories were almost up. He started to dread every stupid joke, every laugh, every cookie Zeke made and passed to him, because they all led up to the same event. He stepped into his car, his beautiful car was probably destroyed. His heart was beating slow, his lungs weren't filling with air. So, this was dying; it wasn't what he had imagined.

He fell to the ground and his memories stopped. The pain was gone, his vision was black. A bright light came before his eyes, the bright, white light. This was it. His last breath was approaching and he could just imagine the machine connected to him flat-lining.

---

Four pairs of eyes looked up at the monitor before looking down at the young body laying in the bed. The loud buzzing was heart wrenching for everyone in the room. Jack Bolton placed a hand over his eyes, trying to shield the tears from his wife, daughter, and remaining son. Katie buried her face into her youngest son's side

Ana still held onto her big brother's hand, as if he could still feel. A nurse walked slowly into the room and stayed off to the side, waiting to be called. Scotty sat on the end of the bed and looked into the mangled face of his brother.

Tears streamed down his face as his eyes fell over every part of his tanned face. A piece of his light brown hair fell into his face and Scotty had to resist from pushing it aside. He shut his eyes and saw the icy orbs that belonged to one person alone. Ana didn't have them, he most certainly didn't have them, neither of his parents had passed them down. No, the lively eyes he would never see again belonged to one person, and only one person, Troy.

Ana rushed from the room, finally coming to grips with the fact that Troy was gone. Jack groaned and ran from the room after her. The blanket that Troy was covered with was soaked with their mother's tears. Scotty sat down in Ana's chair, taking Troy's smaller hand in his own.

He felt his heart break in two. Through out his childhood, he had felt the need to protect his younger siblings. Now, Troy was gone and he felt slightly to blame. He hadn't been there to protect him. Katie fled the room, leaving Scotty alone.

"You always said it'd be you," Scotty said, more to himself than to Troy. "You said that you and Chad were too dumb to make it to eighteen. He might, you won't."

Without any more words, Scotty stood and walked out of the room. He looked into the waiting room ahead. There, sitting and crying, were the most teenagers he'd seen since high school. He picked out Chad right away, he was crying the hardest, his head on Zeke's shoulder and Jason near by. He assumed that they had figured it out on their own when Ana had run out, or that his father had told them when he ran after her. Maybe his mother had told them.

He felt a hand on his shoulder and he looked beside him at the only person he wanted to talk to, his girlfriend, Sam. She grabbed his hand and looked at him with her big, brown eyes full of tears. "I'm so sorry," she said quietly.

Scotty wrapped his arms around her. She had known Troy too. He and Sam had been good friends since seventh grade and she had thought Troy was 'just the cutest little thing!' She didn't have any siblings, so she had basically adopted Troy and Ana as her own.

He looked over Sam's shoulder and his eyes widened. There was Troy, winking at him. Scotty shook his head. No, it wasn't Troy, it was just his mind playing jokes on him.

"You know," Troy said, looking up at Scotty with ten-year-old eyes. "You like her."

Scotty's eyes widened. "What?"

"I said, you like her," Troy said, before lazily throwing a foul shot at the basket in their backyard. It missed and Troy groaned as he ran after it.

"And what would you know about relationships? Your voice hasn't even started to change yet!"

Troy laughed. "Ha, I'm the master of everything! I have wisdom beyond my years!"

Scotty took a deep breath. Troy did have wisdom beyond his years, and that's why he died. He lived his life too quickly, on the fast track, and now the race was over. And Scotty didn't know if his little brother won, or lost.

So, tell me what you thought of it.

And, I was searching the web trying to think about what to write about in Help Me (as you can tell I got side tracked) and I saw the cast list for HSM 2. On it was Matthew Miles Carter in the role of Trevor Bolton. Could this possibly be a brother for our favorite little basketball lunkhead?

Now off to write more on Help Me!

Review!