Valediction
Title: Valediction
Author: lennoxave
Pairing,Character(s): Quinn and ensemble, with a special supporting appearance by Sue
Rating: PG
Word Count: 3616
Spoilers: Through 3.21, "Nationals"
Summary: Quinn is valedictorian for the class of 2012, which means she has to give a speech at graduation. But how do you talk positively about a place that's caused you so much heartache?
Valediction
“Quinn Fabray.” Principal Figgins greets her when she walks into his office. She had just finished taking her last final and was getting ready to meet the glee club for a jam session when his secretary called her name over the loud speaker. Quinn's not really sure why she's supposed to be here, though.
“Um, hi,” she says.
“Have a seat.” He gestures to the chair in front of his desk. Quinn sits, and Figgins walks back around until he's sitting in his chair.
“Quinn Fabray,” he says again, and Quinn doesn't love the feeling that he's judging her a little more each time he says her name.
“Former head cheerleader, ex-pregnant teen, reformed rebel girl, cautionary tale about the dangers of texting and driving . . .”
Yeah, she really doesn't love that feeling.
“. . . I'd like to congratulate you on being McKinley High's Class of 2012 valedictorian.”
Quinn's jaw drops. “I'm what? You know that already? I just turned in my Calc final!”
“And Mr. Grisby assures me that it's statistically impossible for you to get anything other than an A in the class,” Figgins says. “You are it, Quinn Fabray! Our valedictorian!”
“Wow, I . . . wow,” she says. She shouldn't be surprised, not really; she's been on the honor roll all four years, basically gotten straight As, even when she was busy dying her hair and cutting class to smoke under the bleachers. But the fact is, ever since sophomore year? She's not used to winning things. At least, not by herself.
“I wanted to tell you now so you have time to fulfill your valedictory duties.”
“Which are . . . ?”
Figgins smiles. “You have to give a speech, obviously.”
“Oh.” Right. “At graduation.” A speech. About high school. At graduation. That will be fun.
“Yes!” Figgins sounds positively delighted.
“But that's on Saturday. I only have two days?”
“One day,” he corrects her. “I need a draft by tomorrow so I can approve it for any potentially unsavory content.”
Despite her ambivalence toward the whole idea, Quinn shoots him a look. “You know I was president of the Celibacy Club and a founding member of the God Squad, right?”
“Sure, but you never know. I have seen you talking to that Tina Cohen-Chang. I don't know what kind of an influence she might have had on you. We can't have any references to the occult or seditious activity against the school.”
Quinn opens her mouth to question him, but there's nothing you can really say to something that crazy. “Okay. Tomorrow, then.”
“Tomorrow!” Figgins turns back to some sort of paperwork, and Quinn takes this as her cue to leave. She walks out of his office, wondering what on earth she's going to write about that won't be deemed “unsavory.”
* * *
As she walks to the choir room, she can hear that they've already started singing; in the quiet of a late afternoon high school during finals week, they're kind of hard to miss. It's not until she gets closer that she recognizes the song.
“Hey! Must be the money!”
It almost stops her in her tracks. They've gotten together every day after school since Nationals and played through all their favorite songs they've done together. Quinn guesses they're finally reaching back to things you could barely even say they performed.
There's something about that memory, though, really one of the first times they'd ever sung together just because it was fun, not because it was what they did in the club. Because they somehow, weirdly, kind of enjoyed each others' company.
It makes her chest ache, and it makes her wish that she could relive the past few years with the knowledge that she has now, the wisdom that she's earned, and avoid all the B.S. that put her at odds with so many of the people in that room for far too long.
The song ends, and that's when she opens the door to the choir room.
“It's about damn time!” Santana shouts at her. “What'd Figgins want? Is he worried that the rampant teen lesbian PDA virus might spread to you next?”
“No.” Although, possibly yes, knowing Figgins. “He said I'm valedictorian.”
The only thing Quinn can really process is Rachel's gasp before she gets hit by a fifteen-person group hug.
“Thanks! Thanks, you guys,” she says as everyone offers their congratulations. “But it means I can't stick around today.”
“Gotta get your speech on?” Mercedes asks.
“Yeah.” The thing that's been bugging her since Figgins's office is coming to the fore, though, and she figures that these people out of anyone will understand. “I just . . . don't know what to write about.”
“It's pretty standard, isn't it?” Kurt says. “'These are our best years, we shall look back fondly' . . . I mean, you could pretty much just recite that one Vitamin C song, right?”
“I like vitamin C,” Brittany says. “It makes oranges taste like sunshine.”
“But . . .” Quinn takes a deep breath, “I mean, there are things about the last four years that I've loved. But this place? Isn't one of them. Like, I'm not sure I have words to describe how much high school has been the worst part about high school.”
“Amen, sister,” Santana says. “I say, let 'em have it. Every shitty thing the administration's ever done, every blind eye a teacher's ever turned on the bullying? You let them know. In detail.” She pauses. “I probably have a list somewhere.”
“Me, too,” Rachel says.
“That's tough talk coming from someone who spent a lot of high school being one of those bullies,” Artie points out.
“Whatever,” Santana says. “I've grown and stuff. And honestly, do you think I would have pulled half the stuff I did if there had been any chance someone would have called me on it? This school is ridiculous.”
“Yeah,” Mercedes says, “but it's ours.” When Santana looks at her like she's crazy, she continues. “I don't love this place, either, I really don't,” she glances at Kurt, “but I don't want to spend my last day here talking about the stuff that sucked. I want to spend it remembering the things and the people I loved. Love.”
“I'm with Mercedes,” Finn says, just as Puck goes, “I think Santana has a point,” and it looks like it's going to turn into a big fight until Quinn cuts in.
“It doesn't matter anyway. Figgins has to approve whatever I say, so I can't really blast the school. I just . . . wanted to know if other people were feeling conflicted about this.”
“We are,” Rachel says. “But Quinn, you aren't valedictorian for nothing. You'll figure out the right thing to say. I know you will.” Rachel looks at her with that smile, not her million-watt show face, but that quieter, more intimate I-believe-in-you smile, and Quinn can't find it in herself to argue.
“Thanks,” she says, and she wishes that she could ever believe in herself half as much as Rachel believes in her.
* * *
The next day is Friday. The underclassmen still have finals, but the seniors have graduation practice, which mostly involves walking around the football field while Sue Sylvester yells at them with a megaphone, since Figgins apparently put her in charge of graduation logistics this year. Quinn finds the familiarity of it comforting, though. At least Sue doesn't make them run sprints.
She drops her speech off with Figgins's secretary afterwards. It's terrible. She actually did listen to that song Kurt suggested, but it didn't help. She wound up just throwing platitudes together, making sure to say nice things about the school, and the faculty, and her classmates. It's so generic she wonders why she didn't just find something on Google and save herself the trouble of actually writing it.
Quinn walks back to toward her locker, intending to clean it out, but Sue's office is on the way. It seems important, for some reason, to see it one last time.
“Q,” Sue says when she walks in. Sue hasn't looked up from her notebook, so there's no reason she should know that it's Quinn, but one of life's great mysteries will always be how Sue Sylvester's mind works.
“Coach.”
“What can I do for you?” Sue asks, taking off her glasses and leaning back in her chair.
It's something she never would have done before, but Quinn thinks they've both changed in the past few years, at least a little bit, so she blurts out, “I just turned in my valedictorian speech.”
“I see,” Sue says. “Congratulations, by the way. I'm impressed you kept your GPA up, what with all the time you've spent homeless or in the hospital over your high school career.”
Quinn sits down. “I hate it. I hate what I wrote. It isn't what I feel about this place, about the past four years. Not at all.”
“On a scale from one to Will Schuester, how shiny happy people is it?”
“Will Schuester. Possibly two Will Schuesters.”
Sue lets out a low whistle. “This place has kicked you and your freakish band of misfits around like it was David Beckham and his sweet, sweet abs, and you were a soccer ball. You have every right to be angry.”
“But it's supposed to be a happy day, right? I don't want to spoil it for anyone.” She pauses. “Besides, I already turned in my speech. It's too late to change it.”
Sue laughs. “Are you kidding? You're the one giving it! What to you think Figgins is going to do, cut your mic?”
“Or not let me graduate.”
“At the ceremony? No way. He hates making a scene, and they already printed out your little piece of paper and stuck it in a frame. Once you hit that stage, he can't touch you anymore.”
“What are you suggesting I do?”
Sue leans in. “Trust your gut.”
Quinn considers it. “The last time I trusted my gut, I basically tried to kidnap a baby and get a teacher fired.”
“You always did remind me of a young Sue Sylvester,” Sue says, beaming with pride. She gets up out of her chair. “Let me tell you a little story about a twenty-two year old cheerleading coach with a penchant for sharp track suits and her first year teaching at McKinley High. The year was 2002 . . .”
“Oh my god,” Quinn mutters under her breath as she rolls her eyes.
“. . . and the McKinley High Pep Squad---yes, that's what they were called--hadn't gone to a state cheerleading tournament in seventeen years. The program had no funding, no boosters, no money. The cheerleaders were supposed to wave their pompoms for the dismal football team, and nothing more.”
“So what happened?” Quinn plays along.
Sue crosses behind her. “That cheerleading coach had a meeting with the principal, who told her that she was going to have to either work with the zero dollars she got from the school to make her Lima Loser Barbies into competitors, or she was going to have to hit up the working-class parents of the student population to donate money for the cause.”
“And which one did she do?”
Sue sits on the edge of her desk and smiles. “Neither. She went to the General Mills corporation with an idea for an advertising campaign, and two years later, the McKinley High Cheerios won Nationals.”
Quinn finds herself being weirdly impressed.
“And do you know who that cheerleading coach was?” Sue adds.
Quinn just stares at her, because: duh.
“It was me.”
“Right.” Quinn raises an eyebrow. “How much of that story is actually true?”
“Oh, one or two of the numbers might have been a little bit off, but the gist of it is what's important.”
“That there's a third way?”
Sue winks at her and makes a clicking noise with her tongue that Quinn has only ever seen other people do while busting out finger guns. “It's nice to see you earned that valedictorian spot. If you don't follow your gut, follow your head.”
It's not bad advice. “Thanks, Coach,” she says. She gets up to leave, but she turns around when she reaches the door. She'd always assumed that Sue must have gotten her degree in either physical education or demonology, but she's starting to think that might not be the case.
“Can I ask you something?”
Sue, already back in her chair with her glasses on, doesn't look up. “You can ask me another thing besides the one you just asked.”
“In college, what did you major in?”
Sue looks up and quirks her head to one side. “Business,” she says. “I was a business major.”
* * *
Quinn knows she's going to break the rules, now, and she has an idea of what she wants to say, but she's not quite sure how to say it. It's not until she opens her locker and something falls out that she figures it out.
If you haven't finished writing yet, I thought you could use some inspiration. ~Mike
The note is taped to the back of a jewel case, which holds two CDs.
* * *
Quinn doesn't really hear the first part of the graduation ceremony. She's onstage with the administration and some other students who are getting awards for . . . something, and she knows she has to look like she's paying attention, but nothing really registers until she hears Figgins introduce her.
She walks up to the podium to the sound of applause. She looks down at the binder on the lectern that holds the speech she handed in. It's stuck in plastic so it won't blow away in the wind. She looks back up at the audience as she says the first line of her speech.
“Class of 2012, congratulations! It was a long, hard road, but we made it!”
The crowd cheers, and Quinn looks back down. She could just read the first speech she wrote. No one would get angry. No one would think she was a bitch. But she glances over to where the teachers are sitting and sees Sue Sylvester staring intently at her, with just a little bit of a smirk on her face, and she knows she's not going to change her mind.
She slips the note cards out of the sleeve of her graduation gown. No one in the audience catches it, but she can hear Figgins shift in his chair, like he's about to get up and stop her. He doesn't, though.
“I've struggled a lot, trying to figure out what I was going to say to you today. I've struggled, because I think I'm supposed to come up here and talk about how high school is the best time of our lives, and how much I'll miss all of you and this place.”
She pauses. “The problem is that none of that is really true.” A little gasp goes through the audience. “At least, not for me, and certainly not for a lot of the people I know.”
Quinn knows where each one of her friends is sitting in the audience, but she wills herself not to look at them yet, because she's pretty sure she doesn't want to see their reactions.
“The truth is, high school can be awful. It's the time when we are the most insecure we will ever be in our lives and the most cruel we will ever be to others. I've been terrible to a lot of you, and a lot of you have been terrible to me, too. Being a teenager feels like being pushed out of a boat into the ocean, screaming for help, but no one ever throws you a life jacket. You've just got to figure out how to swim yourself.”
“And the things we learn in class don't really help. The quadratic formula doesn't make you feel less lonely. Stoichiometry doesn't temper your anger. Being able to diagram a sentence doesn't give you the self-esteem to keep your head held high through the taunts and the jeers and the fights. These things are important, but they aren't the things that teach you to become a better person.”
She flips to the next note card. “So how do you become better? What makes you grow as a person? How do you learn to swim if that's not what school teaches you? These were the questions I was grappling with, until I realized the answer: You're not the only one in the water. There are other people, as scared and as lonely and confused as you are. And you find those people, you come together, and you teach each other what you know. And you help each other when it feels like you're sinking. And somehow, sometimes in spite of yourselves, these people become your friends.”
She takes a chance and looks at Mercedes. She sees her friend wiping tears from her eyes, and the emotion that wells up in her chest almost makes her stop right then. But Quinn Fabray is going to be an actress someday. She can keep it together until she's done saying her lines.
“So that's what I'm going to miss, and the one thing we all have in common is that we are going to miss that same thing. Our friends. The people who have helped us, supported us, made us who we are. The people who made coming to class every day worthwhile. The people who showed us that we can be more than we'd ever dreamed. And I wanted to share with you, on the last day that all of us will ever spend together, some of the things my friends taught me, in the hope that you will recognize some of the things your friends taught you, too.”
“Express yourself. It's okay to show your true colors, to sing, to wanna dance with somebody. Even when it feels like you're getting buried by a landslide, you are a firework, and that's what makes you beautiful. It's not unusual to find somebody to love, even if you sometimes get caught in a bad romance. You are not unpretty; you are perfect just the way you are. If anyone gives you hell, be bad. Say to them, 'Forget you.' Say 'Hate on me' like it's a dare. In fact, shout it out loud. Keep holding on, because what doesn't kill you makes you stronger, and you have friends who will tell you, 'Lean on me,' and who know they can lean on you in return.”
“Class of 2012, we are young, and our dog days are over. Maybe we've had the time of our lives, maybe it's just been toxic, but we have arrived here, on the edge glory. I, for one, never can say goodbye, but I offer this message to my friends: My life would suck without you. I've been lucky to know you, and I want you to remember that even though you're losers like me, we're going to light up the world. And when we meet again, it will all come back to us, how we found love in the niche we carved for ourselves in high school, and it will be as if we never said goodbye.”
“So I'm going to leave you with one last piece of wisdom my friends have taught me, by way of Top 40 radio and the great American songbook: You can't always get what you want, but as long as you don't stop believing, you will find yourself somewhere over the rainbow, right where you belong. Thank you.”
The crowd applauds, apparently having forgotten the first part of her speech, and Quinn can hear a few whistles from the audience. One is Rachel. Another is Santana, who is giving her a standing ovation, totally not caring that no one else is standing.
They really have come a long way, haven't they?
As she walks back to her seat, she sees Finn giving her a thumbs-up. In the row behind him, Puck gives her a goofy wink. Another scan of the crowd shows her that Santana isn't the only one standing. Mercedes is, too. So is Mike.
And Sue Sylvester sits next to Mr. Schuester. Mr. Schue looks overcome with emotion, but Sue is clapping as stoically as ever. When she sees Quinn looking at her, she smiles, just a little, and gives a nod. It's the highest praise Sue can give, Quinn realizes, and she's pretty sure she's never been more proud of herself.
Quinn sits down in her chair as Figgins introduces whatever's happening next. She takes a moment to soak it all in: the field, the audience, her friends. For everything she hates about the place, she knows there are things that happened here that she never wants to forget. And she's kind of glad she got the chance to bid those things goodbye.
Author: lennoxave
Pairing,Character(s): Quinn and ensemble, with a special supporting appearance by Sue
Rating: PG
Word Count: 3616
Spoilers: Through 3.21, "Nationals"
Summary: Quinn is valedictorian for the class of 2012, which means she has to give a speech at graduation. But how do you talk positively about a place that's caused you so much heartache?
Valediction
“Quinn Fabray.” Principal Figgins greets her when she walks into his office. She had just finished taking her last final and was getting ready to meet the glee club for a jam session when his secretary called her name over the loud speaker. Quinn's not really sure why she's supposed to be here, though.
“Um, hi,” she says.
“Have a seat.” He gestures to the chair in front of his desk. Quinn sits, and Figgins walks back around until he's sitting in his chair.
“Quinn Fabray,” he says again, and Quinn doesn't love the feeling that he's judging her a little more each time he says her name.
“Former head cheerleader, ex-pregnant teen, reformed rebel girl, cautionary tale about the dangers of texting and driving . . .”
Yeah, she really doesn't love that feeling.
“. . . I'd like to congratulate you on being McKinley High's Class of 2012 valedictorian.”
Quinn's jaw drops. “I'm what? You know that already? I just turned in my Calc final!”
“And Mr. Grisby assures me that it's statistically impossible for you to get anything other than an A in the class,” Figgins says. “You are it, Quinn Fabray! Our valedictorian!”
“Wow, I . . . wow,” she says. She shouldn't be surprised, not really; she's been on the honor roll all four years, basically gotten straight As, even when she was busy dying her hair and cutting class to smoke under the bleachers. But the fact is, ever since sophomore year? She's not used to winning things. At least, not by herself.
“I wanted to tell you now so you have time to fulfill your valedictory duties.”
“Which are . . . ?”
Figgins smiles. “You have to give a speech, obviously.”
“Oh.” Right. “At graduation.” A speech. About high school. At graduation. That will be fun.
“Yes!” Figgins sounds positively delighted.
“But that's on Saturday. I only have two days?”
“One day,” he corrects her. “I need a draft by tomorrow so I can approve it for any potentially unsavory content.”
Despite her ambivalence toward the whole idea, Quinn shoots him a look. “You know I was president of the Celibacy Club and a founding member of the God Squad, right?”
“Sure, but you never know. I have seen you talking to that Tina Cohen-Chang. I don't know what kind of an influence she might have had on you. We can't have any references to the occult or seditious activity against the school.”
Quinn opens her mouth to question him, but there's nothing you can really say to something that crazy. “Okay. Tomorrow, then.”
“Tomorrow!” Figgins turns back to some sort of paperwork, and Quinn takes this as her cue to leave. She walks out of his office, wondering what on earth she's going to write about that won't be deemed “unsavory.”
* * *
As she walks to the choir room, she can hear that they've already started singing; in the quiet of a late afternoon high school during finals week, they're kind of hard to miss. It's not until she gets closer that she recognizes the song.
“Hey! Must be the money!”
It almost stops her in her tracks. They've gotten together every day after school since Nationals and played through all their favorite songs they've done together. Quinn guesses they're finally reaching back to things you could barely even say they performed.
There's something about that memory, though, really one of the first times they'd ever sung together just because it was fun, not because it was what they did in the club. Because they somehow, weirdly, kind of enjoyed each others' company.
It makes her chest ache, and it makes her wish that she could relive the past few years with the knowledge that she has now, the wisdom that she's earned, and avoid all the B.S. that put her at odds with so many of the people in that room for far too long.
The song ends, and that's when she opens the door to the choir room.
“It's about damn time!” Santana shouts at her. “What'd Figgins want? Is he worried that the rampant teen lesbian PDA virus might spread to you next?”
“No.” Although, possibly yes, knowing Figgins. “He said I'm valedictorian.”
The only thing Quinn can really process is Rachel's gasp before she gets hit by a fifteen-person group hug.
“Thanks! Thanks, you guys,” she says as everyone offers their congratulations. “But it means I can't stick around today.”
“Gotta get your speech on?” Mercedes asks.
“Yeah.” The thing that's been bugging her since Figgins's office is coming to the fore, though, and she figures that these people out of anyone will understand. “I just . . . don't know what to write about.”
“It's pretty standard, isn't it?” Kurt says. “'These are our best years, we shall look back fondly' . . . I mean, you could pretty much just recite that one Vitamin C song, right?”
“I like vitamin C,” Brittany says. “It makes oranges taste like sunshine.”
“But . . .” Quinn takes a deep breath, “I mean, there are things about the last four years that I've loved. But this place? Isn't one of them. Like, I'm not sure I have words to describe how much high school has been the worst part about high school.”
“Amen, sister,” Santana says. “I say, let 'em have it. Every shitty thing the administration's ever done, every blind eye a teacher's ever turned on the bullying? You let them know. In detail.” She pauses. “I probably have a list somewhere.”
“Me, too,” Rachel says.
“That's tough talk coming from someone who spent a lot of high school being one of those bullies,” Artie points out.
“Whatever,” Santana says. “I've grown and stuff. And honestly, do you think I would have pulled half the stuff I did if there had been any chance someone would have called me on it? This school is ridiculous.”
“Yeah,” Mercedes says, “but it's ours.” When Santana looks at her like she's crazy, she continues. “I don't love this place, either, I really don't,” she glances at Kurt, “but I don't want to spend my last day here talking about the stuff that sucked. I want to spend it remembering the things and the people I loved. Love.”
“I'm with Mercedes,” Finn says, just as Puck goes, “I think Santana has a point,” and it looks like it's going to turn into a big fight until Quinn cuts in.
“It doesn't matter anyway. Figgins has to approve whatever I say, so I can't really blast the school. I just . . . wanted to know if other people were feeling conflicted about this.”
“We are,” Rachel says. “But Quinn, you aren't valedictorian for nothing. You'll figure out the right thing to say. I know you will.” Rachel looks at her with that smile, not her million-watt show face, but that quieter, more intimate I-believe-in-you smile, and Quinn can't find it in herself to argue.
“Thanks,” she says, and she wishes that she could ever believe in herself half as much as Rachel believes in her.
* * *
The next day is Friday. The underclassmen still have finals, but the seniors have graduation practice, which mostly involves walking around the football field while Sue Sylvester yells at them with a megaphone, since Figgins apparently put her in charge of graduation logistics this year. Quinn finds the familiarity of it comforting, though. At least Sue doesn't make them run sprints.
She drops her speech off with Figgins's secretary afterwards. It's terrible. She actually did listen to that song Kurt suggested, but it didn't help. She wound up just throwing platitudes together, making sure to say nice things about the school, and the faculty, and her classmates. It's so generic she wonders why she didn't just find something on Google and save herself the trouble of actually writing it.
Quinn walks back to toward her locker, intending to clean it out, but Sue's office is on the way. It seems important, for some reason, to see it one last time.
“Q,” Sue says when she walks in. Sue hasn't looked up from her notebook, so there's no reason she should know that it's Quinn, but one of life's great mysteries will always be how Sue Sylvester's mind works.
“Coach.”
“What can I do for you?” Sue asks, taking off her glasses and leaning back in her chair.
It's something she never would have done before, but Quinn thinks they've both changed in the past few years, at least a little bit, so she blurts out, “I just turned in my valedictorian speech.”
“I see,” Sue says. “Congratulations, by the way. I'm impressed you kept your GPA up, what with all the time you've spent homeless or in the hospital over your high school career.”
Quinn sits down. “I hate it. I hate what I wrote. It isn't what I feel about this place, about the past four years. Not at all.”
“On a scale from one to Will Schuester, how shiny happy people is it?”
“Will Schuester. Possibly two Will Schuesters.”
Sue lets out a low whistle. “This place has kicked you and your freakish band of misfits around like it was David Beckham and his sweet, sweet abs, and you were a soccer ball. You have every right to be angry.”
“But it's supposed to be a happy day, right? I don't want to spoil it for anyone.” She pauses. “Besides, I already turned in my speech. It's too late to change it.”
Sue laughs. “Are you kidding? You're the one giving it! What to you think Figgins is going to do, cut your mic?”
“Or not let me graduate.”
“At the ceremony? No way. He hates making a scene, and they already printed out your little piece of paper and stuck it in a frame. Once you hit that stage, he can't touch you anymore.”
“What are you suggesting I do?”
Sue leans in. “Trust your gut.”
Quinn considers it. “The last time I trusted my gut, I basically tried to kidnap a baby and get a teacher fired.”
“You always did remind me of a young Sue Sylvester,” Sue says, beaming with pride. She gets up out of her chair. “Let me tell you a little story about a twenty-two year old cheerleading coach with a penchant for sharp track suits and her first year teaching at McKinley High. The year was 2002 . . .”
“Oh my god,” Quinn mutters under her breath as she rolls her eyes.
“. . . and the McKinley High Pep Squad---yes, that's what they were called--hadn't gone to a state cheerleading tournament in seventeen years. The program had no funding, no boosters, no money. The cheerleaders were supposed to wave their pompoms for the dismal football team, and nothing more.”
“So what happened?” Quinn plays along.
Sue crosses behind her. “That cheerleading coach had a meeting with the principal, who told her that she was going to have to either work with the zero dollars she got from the school to make her Lima Loser Barbies into competitors, or she was going to have to hit up the working-class parents of the student population to donate money for the cause.”
“And which one did she do?”
Sue sits on the edge of her desk and smiles. “Neither. She went to the General Mills corporation with an idea for an advertising campaign, and two years later, the McKinley High Cheerios won Nationals.”
Quinn finds herself being weirdly impressed.
“And do you know who that cheerleading coach was?” Sue adds.
Quinn just stares at her, because: duh.
“It was me.”
“Right.” Quinn raises an eyebrow. “How much of that story is actually true?”
“Oh, one or two of the numbers might have been a little bit off, but the gist of it is what's important.”
“That there's a third way?”
Sue winks at her and makes a clicking noise with her tongue that Quinn has only ever seen other people do while busting out finger guns. “It's nice to see you earned that valedictorian spot. If you don't follow your gut, follow your head.”
It's not bad advice. “Thanks, Coach,” she says. She gets up to leave, but she turns around when she reaches the door. She'd always assumed that Sue must have gotten her degree in either physical education or demonology, but she's starting to think that might not be the case.
“Can I ask you something?”
Sue, already back in her chair with her glasses on, doesn't look up. “You can ask me another thing besides the one you just asked.”
“In college, what did you major in?”
Sue looks up and quirks her head to one side. “Business,” she says. “I was a business major.”
* * *
Quinn knows she's going to break the rules, now, and she has an idea of what she wants to say, but she's not quite sure how to say it. It's not until she opens her locker and something falls out that she figures it out.
If you haven't finished writing yet, I thought you could use some inspiration. ~Mike
The note is taped to the back of a jewel case, which holds two CDs.
* * *
Quinn doesn't really hear the first part of the graduation ceremony. She's onstage with the administration and some other students who are getting awards for . . . something, and she knows she has to look like she's paying attention, but nothing really registers until she hears Figgins introduce her.
She walks up to the podium to the sound of applause. She looks down at the binder on the lectern that holds the speech she handed in. It's stuck in plastic so it won't blow away in the wind. She looks back up at the audience as she says the first line of her speech.
“Class of 2012, congratulations! It was a long, hard road, but we made it!”
The crowd cheers, and Quinn looks back down. She could just read the first speech she wrote. No one would get angry. No one would think she was a bitch. But she glances over to where the teachers are sitting and sees Sue Sylvester staring intently at her, with just a little bit of a smirk on her face, and she knows she's not going to change her mind.
She slips the note cards out of the sleeve of her graduation gown. No one in the audience catches it, but she can hear Figgins shift in his chair, like he's about to get up and stop her. He doesn't, though.
“I've struggled a lot, trying to figure out what I was going to say to you today. I've struggled, because I think I'm supposed to come up here and talk about how high school is the best time of our lives, and how much I'll miss all of you and this place.”
She pauses. “The problem is that none of that is really true.” A little gasp goes through the audience. “At least, not for me, and certainly not for a lot of the people I know.”
Quinn knows where each one of her friends is sitting in the audience, but she wills herself not to look at them yet, because she's pretty sure she doesn't want to see their reactions.
“The truth is, high school can be awful. It's the time when we are the most insecure we will ever be in our lives and the most cruel we will ever be to others. I've been terrible to a lot of you, and a lot of you have been terrible to me, too. Being a teenager feels like being pushed out of a boat into the ocean, screaming for help, but no one ever throws you a life jacket. You've just got to figure out how to swim yourself.”
“And the things we learn in class don't really help. The quadratic formula doesn't make you feel less lonely. Stoichiometry doesn't temper your anger. Being able to diagram a sentence doesn't give you the self-esteem to keep your head held high through the taunts and the jeers and the fights. These things are important, but they aren't the things that teach you to become a better person.”
She flips to the next note card. “So how do you become better? What makes you grow as a person? How do you learn to swim if that's not what school teaches you? These were the questions I was grappling with, until I realized the answer: You're not the only one in the water. There are other people, as scared and as lonely and confused as you are. And you find those people, you come together, and you teach each other what you know. And you help each other when it feels like you're sinking. And somehow, sometimes in spite of yourselves, these people become your friends.”
She takes a chance and looks at Mercedes. She sees her friend wiping tears from her eyes, and the emotion that wells up in her chest almost makes her stop right then. But Quinn Fabray is going to be an actress someday. She can keep it together until she's done saying her lines.
“So that's what I'm going to miss, and the one thing we all have in common is that we are going to miss that same thing. Our friends. The people who have helped us, supported us, made us who we are. The people who made coming to class every day worthwhile. The people who showed us that we can be more than we'd ever dreamed. And I wanted to share with you, on the last day that all of us will ever spend together, some of the things my friends taught me, in the hope that you will recognize some of the things your friends taught you, too.”
“Express yourself. It's okay to show your true colors, to sing, to wanna dance with somebody. Even when it feels like you're getting buried by a landslide, you are a firework, and that's what makes you beautiful. It's not unusual to find somebody to love, even if you sometimes get caught in a bad romance. You are not unpretty; you are perfect just the way you are. If anyone gives you hell, be bad. Say to them, 'Forget you.' Say 'Hate on me' like it's a dare. In fact, shout it out loud. Keep holding on, because what doesn't kill you makes you stronger, and you have friends who will tell you, 'Lean on me,' and who know they can lean on you in return.”
“Class of 2012, we are young, and our dog days are over. Maybe we've had the time of our lives, maybe it's just been toxic, but we have arrived here, on the edge glory. I, for one, never can say goodbye, but I offer this message to my friends: My life would suck without you. I've been lucky to know you, and I want you to remember that even though you're losers like me, we're going to light up the world. And when we meet again, it will all come back to us, how we found love in the niche we carved for ourselves in high school, and it will be as if we never said goodbye.”
“So I'm going to leave you with one last piece of wisdom my friends have taught me, by way of Top 40 radio and the great American songbook: You can't always get what you want, but as long as you don't stop believing, you will find yourself somewhere over the rainbow, right where you belong. Thank you.”
The crowd applauds, apparently having forgotten the first part of her speech, and Quinn can hear a few whistles from the audience. One is Rachel. Another is Santana, who is giving her a standing ovation, totally not caring that no one else is standing.
They really have come a long way, haven't they?
As she walks back to her seat, she sees Finn giving her a thumbs-up. In the row behind him, Puck gives her a goofy wink. Another scan of the crowd shows her that Santana isn't the only one standing. Mercedes is, too. So is Mike.
And Sue Sylvester sits next to Mr. Schuester. Mr. Schue looks overcome with emotion, but Sue is clapping as stoically as ever. When she sees Quinn looking at her, she smiles, just a little, and gives a nod. It's the highest praise Sue can give, Quinn realizes, and she's pretty sure she's never been more proud of herself.
Quinn sits down in her chair as Figgins introduces whatever's happening next. She takes a moment to soak it all in: the field, the audience, her friends. For everything she hates about the place, she knows there are things that happened here that she never wants to forget. And she's kind of glad she got the chance to bid those things goodbye.