This is just a completely random fic that has nested itself in my head while I was watching "High School Musical" the other day. It came from the part where Ryan is attempting to pronounce "D-R-A-M-A" after the basketball players do their little, "Go Drama Club!" thing. That part was absolutely hilarious, but it just sort of spawned this idea. I read into things too much, I suppose.

…

Sometimes, when Mrs. Darbus handed out the scripts to everyone but him, he felt a tinge of something roaring inside of him. It was something that made him feel like he was only a few inches tall, while people like Troy Bolton seemed like giants or skyscrapers.

Sharpay would accept her script (lead female, who else?) graciously, already eager to begin practicing and reading her lines. In his mind he would see Mrs. Darbus presenting him with his script (lead male, of course), and himself, flipping it open to begin divulging himself in the fictional world of his character. In reality, he would stand there grinning dumbly, too consumed in his dreams to even care that people had stopped applauding and gone on with their lives.

Sometimes he wished he didn't get so mad at Sharpay when she read him off his lines so he could practice them. Sometimes he wished he would be angrier with her, because who was she to make him feel dumber then he already was? And then sometimes, when she told him he'd just have to figure out what the letters spelled out for himself and stop being so stupid all the time, he wished that she would just stop lecturing him and help him practice. Because then he would go and try to prove her wrong and find out that she was really right—the letters that he knew had to spell out words and all those other sounds just didn't seem to go together the way they were supposed to.

Sometimes when he would yell out, "Line!" during practice to someone off to the side armed with a script and they would fire back with a sentence even a six year old could read, he felt himself having that feeling of something roaring inside of him return, and would look up to see everyone towering above him, sneering. It was times like that when he wished maybe the spotlight wasn't hovering above his head so that he could just fade into the shadows, embarrassed and degraded.

Sharpay sometimes had one of those girl fits she had a lot and decided to take it out on him, calling him stupid and pathetic, and why couldn't he just learn to read like everyone else? But then Ryan would go into one of his fits and fire back that maybe if Sharpay wasn't such a bitch to everyone she'd have friends and wouldn't have to deal with his stupidity so much. And then they would stare at each other, seething with anger, and then realize they were all each other would ever had—no one else could understand them.

It was times like those, after receiving standing ovations because his performance had been every bit as good as his sisters, that he was proud of himself. Sharpay could read off her lines perfectly, she could see the emotions and directions written on paper and use those sentences to form her character. Ryan let others tell him who his character was, he let Sharpay read him his lines, and he would find the inner character himself. It was when the spotlight was shining on him that he realized he didn't care that he was dyslexic and that 9's looked like e's to him, and he didn't even know how to spell the word 'stage', as long as he was on it, everything was okay.