Coming of Age in Lima: Chapter 2
Chapter 2. In which Glee is at the bottom of the social ladder, Puck is a jerk, and Fiona makes some friends.
My mom was pretty quick to pick up that something had happened. Which kind of annoys me, because I can try so hard to make sure she doesn’t worry, and then she goes and does it anyway. She works as a nurse at St Rita’s, so it’s her job to worry about people - she doesn’t need to worry more. When she’s on day shift she’ll get home around the time I’m finishing my homework (when I do it), and we’ll watch tv together, with her on the couch and me stretched out on the floor.
Since it’s just me and mom, we try to do stuff together a lot. I know she worries sometimes that I’m not turning out right - I know that my Aunt Cissie definitely thinks I’m not turning out right. My dad had two brothers, and my mom had three, so I had a lot of people around when I was young to teach me how to play football and start a campfire (survival lessons were quickly banned in our house).
Most of our family got out of Lima though. We take turns driving to the various cities my uncles are in for Christmas, and I always come back with a big bag of hand-me-down clothes. Last Christmas we went to Aunt Cissie and Uncle Dave in Cleveland, and she had a whole heap of stuff she’d bought for herself that didn’t fit for me. She’s about half my height, so I didn’t know how that happened - maybe she’d thought those shirts were dresses? But then I saw my cousin Matt (who is my size) giving me a stink eye, and suddenly figured out how Cissie managed to get clothes that fit me. Haha, poor Matt.
Anyway, I bring this up because after the clothes incident, mom started paying more attention to me. I mean, paying more attention to girls my age, and how I’m not like them. She does her best to tell me that I’m fine the way I am and that I can be whoever I want - but I don’t know who I want to be. I don’t like being me, but I like pretending to be someone like Quinn even less. My mom knows what it’s like not to fit in, and how much it sucks. But she tells me that sometimes not fitting in is the best way to be.
Usually we put the whole issue in the too-hard basket, and watch true crime shows.
So while I tried to keep joining Glee and the fight with Quinn to myself, it soon came all pouring out.
“Oh honey,” she said, and hugged me. Then she said, “You should do this.” And I figured that was all I needed. I mean, how bad could things get just because I joined a dumb little club?
*
To be honest, not that bad. Rachel Berry got slushied twice during the week, but that was normal. Kurt’s car got peed on by most of the football team, but in all honesty, I think guys will pee on anything. Quinn watched me a little more, waiting to see if I was going to sprout braces and acne and go sit with the AV club during lunch. But I didn’t. For a while things were normal. Santana was bitchy - Puck and her had broken up, again - Brittany spent more time drawing flowers on her nails than talking to people, I was always too quick with my mouth and too slow with gossip, and Quinn watched over us all.
And inside Glee, well, things were great. Mr Schue had us all doing our own thing. Rachel had some solo she’d won a competition with when she was nine that needed dusting off, and Mercedes could bring the roof down on her own. Artie and Tina had a cute little song that Mr Schue had given them that they traded back and forth, like a round. And me and Kurt?
We were doing ‘Call Me’, by Blondie.
I’ll say this for Kurt, he knows how to fill space. Mr Schue was always telling me to stop hiding behind him (like that would work - he comes up to my shoulder, tops), to get out there more. Kurt got around the problem by grabbing me by the wrist and trying to fling me around. When that didn’t work, he flung himself around and it was my job to stop him toppling over. Maybe my dancing got a little better, but we kept laughing so much I don’t think we got through the whole song once.
The only downside was when practices ended early. Mr Schue would get a phone call, and he’d have to go. Sometimes he got Ms Pillsbury to come and supervise us. “Are you sure you need to go?” she asked him once. “You don’t need to run off and play the white knight all the time.”
Mr Schue had given her a tight smile, and left anyway.
*
“So how’s Geek?” Puck asked as we walked home.
“I’m serious, you call it that one more time and I’m punching you.”
“I’m so scared,” Puck replied, pulling a face. “You punch like a- hey! Ow.”
I smirked at him. “And for your information, Glee is great. You should come along some time.”
“Oh yeah? And why would I want to do that?”
I rolled my eyes. “Because you’re good? I don’t know. You always like jamming with me. If you came to Glee, we’d have enough people to have a whole band, and then some.”
“Yeah,” Puck agreed. “But those left over aren’t even hot enough to make good groupies. Ow. Would you quit that?”
“I’ll quit hitting you when you stop saying stupid things.”
“That wasn’t stupid,” Puck replied. “That was plain old fact.” He skipped out of my reach, and smirked back at me. “For real though, why do you like it so much?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “It’s fun. We sing, and we act like dorks, and no one cares if we suck - except Rachel. And the cool thing is that we don’t suck.”
“Yeah, well,” Puck leered at me. “You know that when you do start sucking, I want to be the first to know.” I tried to hit him again, but he danced away at the last moment. “You’ve got some anger management issues,” he said with a grin. “Seriously, Finn. You know that you’re going to end up shoved in a locker, right?”
“It’s not like I’d fit.”
Puck stopped walking, a dead serious look on his face. “I mean it. I don’t want... I mean, you could get hurt or something.”
“Last time I looked, you were the one doing most of the hurting,” I replied, a little coolly. I’m no Quinn Fabray, but I can let someone know when I’m getting annoyed.
“Yeah,” Puck said, staring me in the eye. “And you notice that I don’t get beat up on anymore? Being nice to those losers doesn’t make you a good person, it makes you one of them. And you don’t want to be one of them.”
“Oh?” I said, my face getting hot. “And why not? Because, what, being one of you guys is so good? Because I’ve ever been one of the guys with those jerks you hang around with?”
“You’re not a guy!” Puck yelled back. “And don’t diss on my team.”
“I can’t diss on your team, but you can talk to me like that?” I loomed over him, and Puck took a step back. “I don’t need you to tell me what I do and don’t want,” I said, jabbing him in the chest. “I don’t need you looking after me. And I sure as hell don’t need your attitude!” I gave him a final shove, and then turned, sprinting down the road.
“Yeah, well, FINE!” he yelled after me. I held my arm out to my side, flipping him off, but I didn’t turn around.
He was such a jerk.
*
“You need to sit with the boys today,” Brittany told me as we settled in to math. “Santana wants to get back with Puck.”
“Then why doesn’t she go and sit with the boys then?”
Brittany gave me a long, empty look. “She doesn’t want to look weird, like you. Duh.”
“Yeah, well, she’s a big girl. She can talk to that loser all by herself.” I sank down low in my seat, before we could get told off for talking. I was still angry at Puck. I was now angry at Santana. I was even angry at Brittany, which isn’t really fair because it’s not like she thinks before she opens her mouth.
I fumed through the morning, even through Spanish. I was so busy being angry that I didn’t hear Mr Schue call on me, and when he finally got my attention I just snapped “I don’t know,” at him. He gave me that look that my mom sometimes gets - kind of angry, but disappointed underneath, and I felt a million times worse.
I was dreading lunch - dealing with Santana, dealing with Puck. It felt like I was always the one to deal with people. How come no one ever had to deal with my attitude? And then I spotted Kurt ahead of me in the lunch line - hard to miss, since he was wearing skin tight black jeans, a corset, and possibly the world’s brightest yellow cardigan. People kept glancing at him, and sniggering. I could see why - I wouldn’t be seen dead in that. And yet...
And yet...
There were a lot of things I wouldn’t dare be seen doing. Things I was too scared to do. And you know what? Being scared fucking sucks.
So I picked up my lunch tray, walked past the table of rowdy footballers, walked past the table of prim cheerleaders, and all the way over to the odd little table at the end of the row.
“Hi, guys,” I said as I sat down.
They stared at me.
“Okay,” I said, “I know I don’t have food on my face. Yet.”
Kurt shook his head. “You never sit with us.”
“I sit with you in Spanish,” I said. “And Mercedes, I’m behind you in math.”
Mercedes gave me the most unimpressed look on the planet. “You and bimbo-head throw spit balls at me.”
I shrugged. “We throw spit balls at everyone. Usually we’re aiming at the stinky kind in front of you. But your hair keeps getting in the way.”
Mercedes’ look didn’t falter. “You throw spit balls at us, and now you’re sitting with us?”
I nodded, biting the end off a French fry. “Pretty much.”
Kurt, Mercedes, Tina and Artie all exchanged looks.
Tina shrugged at last. “Stranger things have h-happened.”
And they relaxed a little after that. They talked about music, a lot. Mercedes and Kurt got into an argument about whether Christina was over it - the interesting thing being that they both agreed that she was, yet kept arguing anyway. Tina and Artie talked about which musical they should rent next, with Kurt and Mercedes breaking away from their own conversation every now and then to make a suggestion. It was so fluid, so natural, and I realised that I hadn’t had a conversation like it since me, Puck, and my cousin Matt had argued about who the coolest member of KISS was while watching the Super Bowl when I was ten.
Artie noticed that I was staring. “What?” he asked, pushing his glasses up his nose. “Did one of us grow another head or something?”
“It better not be me,” Kurt replied. “It would throw off the balance of all of my outfits, and I simply don’t have the time for two moisturising rituals per evening.”
“I’ll take it,” Tina said. “I think an extra head would be cool. One head could do the school stuff, and the other head could be reading comics.”
“Uh, sorry,” I said to Tina. “No new heads. It’s just... I have no idea what you guys are talking about.”
Now it was their turn to stare.
“You don’t know who Christina is?”
“You’ve never seen ‘Rent’?”
“Or ‘Westside Story’?”
“Or ‘Wicked’?”
“Or ‘Repo’?”
Mercedes tore her eyes away, to give Tina a look. “Girl, no one has seen that creepy-ass gothic mess.”
Tina gave Mercedes a pleading look. “But it has Giles from ‘Buffy’ in it! Using a dead guy as a Muppet! How can you not understand that this is the greatest thing ever?”
“You’ve never seen ‘Wicked’?” Kurt repeated, looking aghast.
“I’ve never even heard of it. Or any of the other stuff.”
“Okay,” Kurt said primly, clapping his hands together. “We have a Glee club emergency. We need to perform a musical makeover on Fiona, stat.”
“I’ve got my iPod,” Tina said, digging in her bag.
“And I’ve always got mine,” Mercedes added, trying to untangle headphones from her necklaces.
Artie pulled his laptop out from under his wheelchair. “I can download your libraries, and then transfer them over, along with mine.” He looked up at me and grinned. “I hope you like jazz.”
“I, uh. I don’t have an mp3 player,” I said, stooping down a little.
“It’s okay,” Kurt said, holding his hands up and silencing the three open mouths. “This isn’t an emergency, you can borrow my back up until we find you something more permanent.”
He dug out a slim little thing that was purple. It had stickers of My Little Ponies all over it, and one of Iron Man.
“How can you live without an iPod?” Mercedes asked.
I shrugged. “I got an X-box for Christmas instead.”
Mercedes clearly didn’t think this was a good explanation. “Girl, are you for real?”
I shrugged again. “Call me Finn,” I said at last.
They all stared at me, but Tina gave me a bright smile. “Sure. But only if you call me the Countess De Cohen.”
“And only if you listen to every song on this compilation at least once. Three times for the ‘Wicked’ tracks,” Kurt added.
“I’ll do my best,” I said solemnly.
“Since we’re picking out nicknames,” Mercedes said, “I demand to be called The Diva, Mercedes.”
Artie grinned. “I call GQMF.”
Kurt neatened his fringe. “I guess that leaves me as the HBIC.”
Mercedes snorted. “Good luck breaking the news to Rachel.”
I looked back and forth between them. “I still don’t know what you’re talking about.”
So that’s how we passed lunch. Them talking over each other in an effort to explain who artists were, what musicals were about, how to use the tiny little iPod that felt like it would break in my hands.
“Scroll,” Kurt kept saying to me. “Scroll, no, you have to go around the wheel.”
Mercedes shook her head. “This is honest to God tragic.”
I replied before I could stop myself. “Tragic like your face.”
Mercedes stared at me for a long moment before countering with, “I think you mean, tragic like yo’ momma’s face.”
“Did you just insult my mom?”
Mercedes smiled sweetly at me. “Hey, you talk me down again, I won’t just insult your mom, I’ll cut your face.”
I smiled back, narrowing my eyes. “Yeah, well, if you insult my mom again, I’ll cut your hair off.”
“You insult my mom, and I’m gonna cut you into pieces, and feed you to the dogs.”
“You insult my mom, I’m gonna peel your face of, cut it into chunks, mix it with your hair, tell the hockey team that it’s a new kind of steroid, and feed you to them.”
Mercedes tried to glare at me, but she couldn’t keep the smile off her face, and ended up bursting out laughing. “Okay,” she said at last. “You’re good at this.”
Lunch ended just like it always did, and we stood together in a loud, laughing group. When I turned around to sling my bag over my shoulder I caught Puck giving me a dark look, before turning his head away. I looked over to my other table, where Quinn was outright glaring at me. I wondered if she’d been doing that all lunch, or waited until I turned around. I ignored both of them. Tina and Artie had French next, which was right next to my History class with Kurt. We walked Mercedes to English, and then chatted while Tina got her books out of her locker. I leaned against the cool metal, with Artie next to me and Kurt on Tina’s other side. Tina was asking me about horror games, and Artie was talking about tower defence games, and I was trying to explain that, no, Halo was clearly where it was all at.
And then Kurt’s eyes widened in fear.
I turned around and saw Karofsky walking down the hall, taking loudly and being his usual jerky-self. Puck and Azimo, and Mike were with him. I guess that Matt was probably behind them, hidden by Karofsky’s bulk. At first I didn’t get it. I mean, big guys roam the halls at McKinely all the time. Heck, sometimes I even blend in with them. Then I looked lower.
He was holding a slushie.
Oh god. Just when the day started to get good. I could see immediately how it would unfold. Karofsky’s gaze locked on Kurt, Kurt clutching his cardigan (angora, he’d told me over lunch), Tina turning slowly with her eyes wide. She’d get side splatter, I knew, and I felt terrible.
Karofsky was pulling his arm back, that mean, jerk smile on his face, and over his shoulder I could see Puck looking at him. His face was closed, but damn it, I knew Puck. So, right when the slushie was sloshing forward, towards the lip of the cup, I reached out and smacked Karofsky’s fingers where they wrapped around the cup.
It wasn’t epic, it wasn’t full on facial degradation, but he did end up with ice and corn syrup down his front.
“Fuck man,” I said over his angry cry. “Are you clumsy today, or what?”
“Zing!” Artie added.
And when Karofsky looked up at me I swear for a minute I thought I’d end up stuffed in a locker, whether I’d fit or not, but all I got was the closest he got to wit - “Dumb bitch,” - and then Puck was dragging him off down the hall, saying loudly, “What the hell, man, you got Parkinson’s or something?”
I let out a long sigh, and when I turned back to the guys, Tina was staring at me with wide eyes. “That was s-s-so cool,” she said.
“You stood up to them, and didn’t die,” Artie added admirably.
Kurt went straight to the point, putting the back of his hand to his brow, and pretending to swoon against me. “My hero,” he said breathlessly, and suddenly we were laughing again.
This was honestly the most fun I’d had at school since girls and boys got split up for PE.
Of course, it didn’t occur to me then that I’d pay for it. And pay for it hard.
Next chapter
Back to Master Post
My mom was pretty quick to pick up that something had happened. Which kind of annoys me, because I can try so hard to make sure she doesn’t worry, and then she goes and does it anyway. She works as a nurse at St Rita’s, so it’s her job to worry about people - she doesn’t need to worry more. When she’s on day shift she’ll get home around the time I’m finishing my homework (when I do it), and we’ll watch tv together, with her on the couch and me stretched out on the floor.
Since it’s just me and mom, we try to do stuff together a lot. I know she worries sometimes that I’m not turning out right - I know that my Aunt Cissie definitely thinks I’m not turning out right. My dad had two brothers, and my mom had three, so I had a lot of people around when I was young to teach me how to play football and start a campfire (survival lessons were quickly banned in our house).
Most of our family got out of Lima though. We take turns driving to the various cities my uncles are in for Christmas, and I always come back with a big bag of hand-me-down clothes. Last Christmas we went to Aunt Cissie and Uncle Dave in Cleveland, and she had a whole heap of stuff she’d bought for herself that didn’t fit for me. She’s about half my height, so I didn’t know how that happened - maybe she’d thought those shirts were dresses? But then I saw my cousin Matt (who is my size) giving me a stink eye, and suddenly figured out how Cissie managed to get clothes that fit me. Haha, poor Matt.
Anyway, I bring this up because after the clothes incident, mom started paying more attention to me. I mean, paying more attention to girls my age, and how I’m not like them. She does her best to tell me that I’m fine the way I am and that I can be whoever I want - but I don’t know who I want to be. I don’t like being me, but I like pretending to be someone like Quinn even less. My mom knows what it’s like not to fit in, and how much it sucks. But she tells me that sometimes not fitting in is the best way to be.
Usually we put the whole issue in the too-hard basket, and watch true crime shows.
So while I tried to keep joining Glee and the fight with Quinn to myself, it soon came all pouring out.
“Oh honey,” she said, and hugged me. Then she said, “You should do this.” And I figured that was all I needed. I mean, how bad could things get just because I joined a dumb little club?
*
To be honest, not that bad. Rachel Berry got slushied twice during the week, but that was normal. Kurt’s car got peed on by most of the football team, but in all honesty, I think guys will pee on anything. Quinn watched me a little more, waiting to see if I was going to sprout braces and acne and go sit with the AV club during lunch. But I didn’t. For a while things were normal. Santana was bitchy - Puck and her had broken up, again - Brittany spent more time drawing flowers on her nails than talking to people, I was always too quick with my mouth and too slow with gossip, and Quinn watched over us all.
And inside Glee, well, things were great. Mr Schue had us all doing our own thing. Rachel had some solo she’d won a competition with when she was nine that needed dusting off, and Mercedes could bring the roof down on her own. Artie and Tina had a cute little song that Mr Schue had given them that they traded back and forth, like a round. And me and Kurt?
We were doing ‘Call Me’, by Blondie.
I’ll say this for Kurt, he knows how to fill space. Mr Schue was always telling me to stop hiding behind him (like that would work - he comes up to my shoulder, tops), to get out there more. Kurt got around the problem by grabbing me by the wrist and trying to fling me around. When that didn’t work, he flung himself around and it was my job to stop him toppling over. Maybe my dancing got a little better, but we kept laughing so much I don’t think we got through the whole song once.
The only downside was when practices ended early. Mr Schue would get a phone call, and he’d have to go. Sometimes he got Ms Pillsbury to come and supervise us. “Are you sure you need to go?” she asked him once. “You don’t need to run off and play the white knight all the time.”
Mr Schue had given her a tight smile, and left anyway.
*
“So how’s Geek?” Puck asked as we walked home.
“I’m serious, you call it that one more time and I’m punching you.”
“I’m so scared,” Puck replied, pulling a face. “You punch like a- hey! Ow.”
I smirked at him. “And for your information, Glee is great. You should come along some time.”
“Oh yeah? And why would I want to do that?”
I rolled my eyes. “Because you’re good? I don’t know. You always like jamming with me. If you came to Glee, we’d have enough people to have a whole band, and then some.”
“Yeah,” Puck agreed. “But those left over aren’t even hot enough to make good groupies. Ow. Would you quit that?”
“I’ll quit hitting you when you stop saying stupid things.”
“That wasn’t stupid,” Puck replied. “That was plain old fact.” He skipped out of my reach, and smirked back at me. “For real though, why do you like it so much?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “It’s fun. We sing, and we act like dorks, and no one cares if we suck - except Rachel. And the cool thing is that we don’t suck.”
“Yeah, well,” Puck leered at me. “You know that when you do start sucking, I want to be the first to know.” I tried to hit him again, but he danced away at the last moment. “You’ve got some anger management issues,” he said with a grin. “Seriously, Finn. You know that you’re going to end up shoved in a locker, right?”
“It’s not like I’d fit.”
Puck stopped walking, a dead serious look on his face. “I mean it. I don’t want... I mean, you could get hurt or something.”
“Last time I looked, you were the one doing most of the hurting,” I replied, a little coolly. I’m no Quinn Fabray, but I can let someone know when I’m getting annoyed.
“Yeah,” Puck said, staring me in the eye. “And you notice that I don’t get beat up on anymore? Being nice to those losers doesn’t make you a good person, it makes you one of them. And you don’t want to be one of them.”
“Oh?” I said, my face getting hot. “And why not? Because, what, being one of you guys is so good? Because I’ve ever been one of the guys with those jerks you hang around with?”
“You’re not a guy!” Puck yelled back. “And don’t diss on my team.”
“I can’t diss on your team, but you can talk to me like that?” I loomed over him, and Puck took a step back. “I don’t need you to tell me what I do and don’t want,” I said, jabbing him in the chest. “I don’t need you looking after me. And I sure as hell don’t need your attitude!” I gave him a final shove, and then turned, sprinting down the road.
“Yeah, well, FINE!” he yelled after me. I held my arm out to my side, flipping him off, but I didn’t turn around.
He was such a jerk.
*
“You need to sit with the boys today,” Brittany told me as we settled in to math. “Santana wants to get back with Puck.”
“Then why doesn’t she go and sit with the boys then?”
Brittany gave me a long, empty look. “She doesn’t want to look weird, like you. Duh.”
“Yeah, well, she’s a big girl. She can talk to that loser all by herself.” I sank down low in my seat, before we could get told off for talking. I was still angry at Puck. I was now angry at Santana. I was even angry at Brittany, which isn’t really fair because it’s not like she thinks before she opens her mouth.
I fumed through the morning, even through Spanish. I was so busy being angry that I didn’t hear Mr Schue call on me, and when he finally got my attention I just snapped “I don’t know,” at him. He gave me that look that my mom sometimes gets - kind of angry, but disappointed underneath, and I felt a million times worse.
I was dreading lunch - dealing with Santana, dealing with Puck. It felt like I was always the one to deal with people. How come no one ever had to deal with my attitude? And then I spotted Kurt ahead of me in the lunch line - hard to miss, since he was wearing skin tight black jeans, a corset, and possibly the world’s brightest yellow cardigan. People kept glancing at him, and sniggering. I could see why - I wouldn’t be seen dead in that. And yet...
And yet...
There were a lot of things I wouldn’t dare be seen doing. Things I was too scared to do. And you know what? Being scared fucking sucks.
So I picked up my lunch tray, walked past the table of rowdy footballers, walked past the table of prim cheerleaders, and all the way over to the odd little table at the end of the row.
“Hi, guys,” I said as I sat down.
They stared at me.
“Okay,” I said, “I know I don’t have food on my face. Yet.”
Kurt shook his head. “You never sit with us.”
“I sit with you in Spanish,” I said. “And Mercedes, I’m behind you in math.”
Mercedes gave me the most unimpressed look on the planet. “You and bimbo-head throw spit balls at me.”
I shrugged. “We throw spit balls at everyone. Usually we’re aiming at the stinky kind in front of you. But your hair keeps getting in the way.”
Mercedes’ look didn’t falter. “You throw spit balls at us, and now you’re sitting with us?”
I nodded, biting the end off a French fry. “Pretty much.”
Kurt, Mercedes, Tina and Artie all exchanged looks.
Tina shrugged at last. “Stranger things have h-happened.”
And they relaxed a little after that. They talked about music, a lot. Mercedes and Kurt got into an argument about whether Christina was over it - the interesting thing being that they both agreed that she was, yet kept arguing anyway. Tina and Artie talked about which musical they should rent next, with Kurt and Mercedes breaking away from their own conversation every now and then to make a suggestion. It was so fluid, so natural, and I realised that I hadn’t had a conversation like it since me, Puck, and my cousin Matt had argued about who the coolest member of KISS was while watching the Super Bowl when I was ten.
Artie noticed that I was staring. “What?” he asked, pushing his glasses up his nose. “Did one of us grow another head or something?”
“It better not be me,” Kurt replied. “It would throw off the balance of all of my outfits, and I simply don’t have the time for two moisturising rituals per evening.”
“I’ll take it,” Tina said. “I think an extra head would be cool. One head could do the school stuff, and the other head could be reading comics.”
“Uh, sorry,” I said to Tina. “No new heads. It’s just... I have no idea what you guys are talking about.”
Now it was their turn to stare.
“You don’t know who Christina is?”
“You’ve never seen ‘Rent’?”
“Or ‘Westside Story’?”
“Or ‘Wicked’?”
“Or ‘Repo’?”
Mercedes tore her eyes away, to give Tina a look. “Girl, no one has seen that creepy-ass gothic mess.”
Tina gave Mercedes a pleading look. “But it has Giles from ‘Buffy’ in it! Using a dead guy as a Muppet! How can you not understand that this is the greatest thing ever?”
“You’ve never seen ‘Wicked’?” Kurt repeated, looking aghast.
“I’ve never even heard of it. Or any of the other stuff.”
“Okay,” Kurt said primly, clapping his hands together. “We have a Glee club emergency. We need to perform a musical makeover on Fiona, stat.”
“I’ve got my iPod,” Tina said, digging in her bag.
“And I’ve always got mine,” Mercedes added, trying to untangle headphones from her necklaces.
Artie pulled his laptop out from under his wheelchair. “I can download your libraries, and then transfer them over, along with mine.” He looked up at me and grinned. “I hope you like jazz.”
“I, uh. I don’t have an mp3 player,” I said, stooping down a little.
“It’s okay,” Kurt said, holding his hands up and silencing the three open mouths. “This isn’t an emergency, you can borrow my back up until we find you something more permanent.”
He dug out a slim little thing that was purple. It had stickers of My Little Ponies all over it, and one of Iron Man.
“How can you live without an iPod?” Mercedes asked.
I shrugged. “I got an X-box for Christmas instead.”
Mercedes clearly didn’t think this was a good explanation. “Girl, are you for real?”
I shrugged again. “Call me Finn,” I said at last.
They all stared at me, but Tina gave me a bright smile. “Sure. But only if you call me the Countess De Cohen.”
“And only if you listen to every song on this compilation at least once. Three times for the ‘Wicked’ tracks,” Kurt added.
“I’ll do my best,” I said solemnly.
“Since we’re picking out nicknames,” Mercedes said, “I demand to be called The Diva, Mercedes.”
Artie grinned. “I call GQMF.”
Kurt neatened his fringe. “I guess that leaves me as the HBIC.”
Mercedes snorted. “Good luck breaking the news to Rachel.”
I looked back and forth between them. “I still don’t know what you’re talking about.”
So that’s how we passed lunch. Them talking over each other in an effort to explain who artists were, what musicals were about, how to use the tiny little iPod that felt like it would break in my hands.
“Scroll,” Kurt kept saying to me. “Scroll, no, you have to go around the wheel.”
Mercedes shook her head. “This is honest to God tragic.”
I replied before I could stop myself. “Tragic like your face.”
Mercedes stared at me for a long moment before countering with, “I think you mean, tragic like yo’ momma’s face.”
“Did you just insult my mom?”
Mercedes smiled sweetly at me. “Hey, you talk me down again, I won’t just insult your mom, I’ll cut your face.”
I smiled back, narrowing my eyes. “Yeah, well, if you insult my mom again, I’ll cut your hair off.”
“You insult my mom, and I’m gonna cut you into pieces, and feed you to the dogs.”
“You insult my mom, I’m gonna peel your face of, cut it into chunks, mix it with your hair, tell the hockey team that it’s a new kind of steroid, and feed you to them.”
Mercedes tried to glare at me, but she couldn’t keep the smile off her face, and ended up bursting out laughing. “Okay,” she said at last. “You’re good at this.”
Lunch ended just like it always did, and we stood together in a loud, laughing group. When I turned around to sling my bag over my shoulder I caught Puck giving me a dark look, before turning his head away. I looked over to my other table, where Quinn was outright glaring at me. I wondered if she’d been doing that all lunch, or waited until I turned around. I ignored both of them. Tina and Artie had French next, which was right next to my History class with Kurt. We walked Mercedes to English, and then chatted while Tina got her books out of her locker. I leaned against the cool metal, with Artie next to me and Kurt on Tina’s other side. Tina was asking me about horror games, and Artie was talking about tower defence games, and I was trying to explain that, no, Halo was clearly where it was all at.
And then Kurt’s eyes widened in fear.
I turned around and saw Karofsky walking down the hall, taking loudly and being his usual jerky-self. Puck and Azimo, and Mike were with him. I guess that Matt was probably behind them, hidden by Karofsky’s bulk. At first I didn’t get it. I mean, big guys roam the halls at McKinely all the time. Heck, sometimes I even blend in with them. Then I looked lower.
He was holding a slushie.
Oh god. Just when the day started to get good. I could see immediately how it would unfold. Karofsky’s gaze locked on Kurt, Kurt clutching his cardigan (angora, he’d told me over lunch), Tina turning slowly with her eyes wide. She’d get side splatter, I knew, and I felt terrible.
Karofsky was pulling his arm back, that mean, jerk smile on his face, and over his shoulder I could see Puck looking at him. His face was closed, but damn it, I knew Puck. So, right when the slushie was sloshing forward, towards the lip of the cup, I reached out and smacked Karofsky’s fingers where they wrapped around the cup.
It wasn’t epic, it wasn’t full on facial degradation, but he did end up with ice and corn syrup down his front.
“Fuck man,” I said over his angry cry. “Are you clumsy today, or what?”
“Zing!” Artie added.
And when Karofsky looked up at me I swear for a minute I thought I’d end up stuffed in a locker, whether I’d fit or not, but all I got was the closest he got to wit - “Dumb bitch,” - and then Puck was dragging him off down the hall, saying loudly, “What the hell, man, you got Parkinson’s or something?”
I let out a long sigh, and when I turned back to the guys, Tina was staring at me with wide eyes. “That was s-s-so cool,” she said.
“You stood up to them, and didn’t die,” Artie added admirably.
Kurt went straight to the point, putting the back of his hand to his brow, and pretending to swoon against me. “My hero,” he said breathlessly, and suddenly we were laughing again.
This was honestly the most fun I’d had at school since girls and boys got split up for PE.
Of course, it didn’t occur to me then that I’d pay for it. And pay for it hard.
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