Fic: Whatsername (1/5)
When she sees her it’s like looking at impeccably preserved threading in the very fabric of time, and for a moment Rachel Berry is 15 again and her existence revolves around one summer afternoon and a girl with golden hair, and hazel eyes, and a pale blue dress.
Flashbulbs explode behind her eyelids, and Rachel releases the breath holed up at the back of her throat. The universe sends her present self back inside her body in a nauseating vacuum suck that fills her twisting gut with disillusionment.
She can almost hear her overlapping selves snapping into place.
Or maybe not, maybe it’s just the sound of a million flickering camera shutters.
“Rachel!” Flashflash. “Rachel, look over here!” Flash.
Rachel tilts her head at the paparazzo and smiles. As much as she loathes the unscrupulous media outlets and the resulting barrage of public scrutiny, she knows making nice with the industry’s bottom feeders almost always assures she’ll be on the receiving end of better press.
Celebrity status is a double-edged sword after all-one she’d actively sought out for herself at that.
“Can you tell us anything about your new Brookstein project?” Flash. “Ms. Berry!" Flashflash.
“I am beyond thrilled to be working with, let alone in the presence of the creative genius that is Kale Brookstein,” Rachel says, eyes casually surfing the crowd for the girl that very well may be, but couldn’t possibly be Quinn Fabray.
“Did Matt Bell really break his pinky on set?” Flashflashflash. “What do you have to say about the allegations being made in TeenPeeps magazine?”
Rachel’s heart sinks low when she doesn’t spot the doppelganger Quinn.
She swallows the frustrated scream itching to crawl out as four bodyguards flank her sides, creating a uniform embankment of muscle and too much musk-scented body spray. They block the cameras like lousy basketball shots.
Rachel’s gangly PA leans in and says, “You have a 3 o’clock with Star Nation. Whoever you’re looking for is going to have to wait.”
“How did-?”
“Please,” Felipe rolls his eyes, “There’s always a blonde.”
The brunette sighs, mildly aggrieved.
“When are you going to tell me about the unicorn, Rach?” he says, casually browsing through her schedule. “The one you’re always chasing?”
Felipe stops scanning time slots to cant his frosted head at her.
Never, as far as Rachel is concerned. Felipe is and has been an integral part of her brand for over a decade and despite his well-intentioned meddling Rachel has managed to keep mum on the subject of blondes, particularly one Quinn Fabray.
Rachel smiles brightly, casually flips him off, and clambers into the back of her SUV.
The Star Nation photo shoot is bland, the interview, blander. So bland that she needs something to counteract the mild sedative affects that sink into her bones just two hours in.
Rachel is nearly at her favorite coffee bar now, one of the few places where she still manages to blend in. She suspects it’s because the squat, mulatto colored establishment is teeming with people who are too self-absorbed to notice anything or anyone but themselves and their own convoluted pieces of the Western hemisphere.
She falls in line behind a cluster of yuppies and modern hipsters. She wrestles with the sound settings on her cell phone-the world can wait.
Neighboring patrons weigh out the pros and cons of elective surgery, dredging their product stained minds for allegories of rhinoplasties and breast augmentations literally gone askew.
Errant chatter swirls around her like a poisonous dust cloud. Rachel holds her breath.
The teenage barista poised behind the glossy cherry wood counter is charming and prompt. Rachel orders a triple espresso macchiato, and snags an egg-shaped chair by the open door.
She sips on her rich coffee and lets her body sink into the cushions as a sweeping nostalgia settles over her like a heavy film.
Rachel used to hate Lima for all that it wasn’t when she was growing up, but now? The sluggish pace of small town life beckons her and she hears its call.
These days, she thinks about Lima a lot. About McKinley, and Glee Club. Mr. Schuester, and Finn, and everyone else. But most of all, Rachel thinks about Quinn.
Ask any Lima loser and they’ll tell you that Rachel and Quinn’s adolescent relationship was anything but amicable. They’ll recount slushies to the face--one flavor for every day of the school week, pranks of Stephen King’s Carrie proportions, savage tug-o-wars over undeserving boys, a myriad of verbal fisticuffs, even a show-stopping physical confrontation in the senior quad during junior year.
Yep, ask any Lima loser and they’ll tell you the obvious.
Rachel grimaces--if the sorry bastards only knew. One unauthorized glimpse into Rachel and Quinn’s after school special would have shaken the town’s delicate foundation, crumbled the very earth beneath McKinley and dropped the structure into the unforgiving bowels of Hell.
Everyone would have stood around the gaping sinkhole scratching their heads, lamenting:
Who’da thunk it?
Rachel laughs and it’s a short, biting sound that makes her throat dry.
She shuts her eyes, pictures Quinn above her, skirt bunched up around her waist, panties shoved aside to make room for two hungry fingers.
She remembers a curtain of sweet-smelling yellow hair tickling her cheeks as Quinn leaned down to whisper, hiccup really, “I love you.”
Rachel’s shiny eyes glide to the ground, her voice is thick when she says, “You’re drunk.”
Quinn nods and giggles because she is so drunk, but the mirthful sound turns into a throaty moan when she thrusts her hips down and grinds front to back to gnash her clit against Rachel’s slick palm.
Quinn smiles almost wryly and bites her lip. She shakes her head, buries her glistening face in the crook of Rachel’s neck and says with a tender, vulnerable sort of novelty, “I love you.”
No! Rachel opens her eyes and wills her thoughts to shut up. Her overpriced Hollywood shrink once told her that she reeked of "textbook neuroses." He advised her to stop the obsessive ruminations at the slightest indication of an onset. He’d prescribed Xanax up the ass to help her deal. “In the meanwhile,” were the words he’d used.
Felipe fills the prescriptions, but she hates the way the pills make her feel, dull, hates the way it fragments her memories of Quinn, how it makes visions of the other girl run like ink.
“Rachel Berry?”
Rachel flinches, so much for blending in. She doesn’t bother looking up, just slowly pushes the egg-shaped swivel chair away from the voice, hoping that the fruit punch red cushions will swallow her up, open wide and devour her in one devastating gulp.
“Rachel Berry?”
Rachel sighs. Slender hips encased in blue obscure her view. A pale, bejeweled hand comes up to rest on one hip.
Rachel musters her best fangirl face before glancing upward, but the generic greeting she’s practiced dozens of times in front of vanity mirrors and the polished surfaces of silver spoons ruptures in her throat.
“Quinn?” she says, brokenly.
The girl scowls and shakes her head in a very Quinn-like fashion. Rachel studies the girl. She looks like Quinn, so very much like Quinn, from the tips of her toes to the top of her golden head… except, her eyes are different. Not quite hazel, they kind of remind her of a studly boy with a stupid mohawk…
Rachel swallows, “Drizzle?”
The clear-as-day awe pooling in the depths of Rachel’s eyes makes the blonde girl pout. It’s a fierce motion that can be likened to a lion’s mighty roar. The girl laughs and Rachel’s stomach twists in a familiar Pavlovian response.
“No,” she says snippily. “Drizzle? What kind of name is that?”
Rachel shrugs forlornly, dips her head down to peer into her oversized saucer.
“Stella,” she says, chewing down on her lip, “My name’s Stella.”
“I’m sorry. You look a lot like someone I know--knew.”
Stella nods, grudgingly so, and for a second there’s fire, static, something, whirring in her eyes, but it’s gone in a blink. “You want to get out of here?” she says, drawing a little circle on the tile with the tip of her right ballerina flat.
Rachel frowns, balks even, “Excuse me?”
“I thought maybe we could talk somewhere more private?”
It’s bad. Dirty. Wrong, whichever way you angle it.
It’s downright fucking sinful, but Rachel can’t remember wanting anything more since her ascent --descent, who knows anymore?--to Tinsel town and if this nearly-perfect carbon copy Quinn wants to lead her by the hand, drag her to a special brand of damnation then so be it.
She doesn’t remember how they got into the stall. She’ll later describe it as an out-of-body experience, like watching a car’s trajectory before the bone-shattering impact that leaves you paralyzed from the waist down.
Stella slams her against the door, tongue snaking up her vibrating neck, licking higher, over her chin to tease a full bottom lip.
“I loved you in Purple Roses,” she says breathlessly, walking her fingers up Rachel’s sides. “Petra’s Wake… Maximum Carnage… Asylum. You were so sexy in A Schoolgirl’s Lament.”
“Thanks?” Rachel’s voice is a tremor.
“I saw you on Broadway once,” Stella confesses sheepishly. “I kind of love everything you’re in. Even the old off-Broadway stuff.”
Stella cups her breasts, and Rachel swallows hard as her brain fogs over with lust and, in one opposing corner, concern. The girl does seem a little overzealous, one might even say--
“Don’t worry,” Stella whispers, running the tip of her tongue along Rachel’s ear, “I’m not a crazy or anything.”
“That’s reassuring.”
Stella laughs lecherously. She wraps her fingers around Rachel’s hands and drags them up her own taut stomach, over her own pert breasts. She pushes Rachel’s palms against her hardened nipples, and moans, “That feels good.”
The brunette’s head is spinning. A wrenching need propels her body into action, but every attempt at exploring beneath Stella’s dress is reprimanded with a languid smile, and a curt head shake.
Rachel’s eyes screw shut and blink open all at once as Stella suddenly drops into a squat and stares up at her with a misplaced sort of adoration.
Quinn, no, Stella is kneeling in front of her now, trailing kisses across her thighs, between them, over damp panties that cling to her swollen clit. The blonde's knees will be bruised tomorrow, but neither of them cares.
Rachel props her foot on the toilet seat, opening herself wider, steadying herself against the meager wall panels.
Stella’s tongue is fast and fervent, darting across her folds, between them, plunging deep before lapping over her clit.
“What--,” pants Rachel, legs trembling dangerously, “What’s the rush?”
Stella smiles and Rachel’s heart leaps up her throat. She keeps her lips close to Rachel’s wet center as she says, voice clouded with husk, “Someone’s expecting me.”
“Oh,” Rachel frowns, unsettled by the disappointment that sinks in her stomach like lead. Still, she can’t help but pry, “Like a-- a significant other someone?” She hopes her voice isn’t as wrought with distraction as it sounds.
Stella grins, rolls her twinkling eyes back and flattens her tongue against Rachel’s slick mound in an upstroke that elicits a breathy whine.
She licks her glossy lips, stares up at Rachel and says, “Does it really matter?”
Rachel doesn’t answer, just bunches blonde hair in her fist and tugs, bringing the girl’s hot mouth closer, firmer against her clit. They don’t talk much after that.
When Rachel finally comes, it’s messy and galaxy-shattering. She bites her cheek until it tears and tangy blood bursts in her mouth. Rachel can only stare at the other girl as she smoothes her dress out, wipes her own swollen lips across the back of her hand, and reaches for the lock.
She doesn’t acknowledge Rachel once they’re out of the stall, just reapplies her peach lip gloss and disappears.
A pock-marked teenager smiles at Rachel through the mirror as she splashes cold water on her face.
When Rachel finally resurfaces, Stella is seated in a booth with three friends. She makes light, coquettish eye contact as Rachel orders another drink, decaf this time.
She turns her cell phone back on and winces at the procession of missed call and text message alerts:
WHERE R U?
UR LATE FOR HAIR AND MAKE UP, RACHEL! GIVE ME A CALL AND LET ME KNOW UR OK…
PARTY @ LIBBY’S TONIGHT. AFTERPARTY @ BLUE’S.
YOU HAVE A MEET AND GREET IN ONE HOUR, STILL NOT DONE WITH HAIR AND MAKE UP! WHERE R U?!?!
CALL ME!!!
Rachel sighs and drops the phone into her purse.
She stirs her coffee as she considers giving Stella her number...
Maybe it isn’t such a great idea. She doesn’t know the girl from Adam, plus she can’t be more than 20 years old, if that. Rachel shrugs-does it really matter? Wouldn’t it be sort of hypocritical? After all, she herself has dated people 5, 10, 15 years her senior.
Screw it, her mind’s made up. She asks a barista for a pen, and employs the use of a spare napkin. She folds the paper into a neat little shape and pins it to the palm of her hand, steeling her nerves.
Before Rachel can make the what-she-hopes-will-be-a-discrete transaction, a soggy-middled man with a collared shirt claps his hands together at the front of the room, garnering everyone’s attention. She can’t help but peg him as a tourist.
Rachel sighs, but waits patiently for him to get out of her way.
“Listen up for roll call!” he bellows, scratching his ear with an uncapped pen. “Lisa Bowman?”
“Here.”
“Andy Bowman?”
“Yep.”
“Yep is not an appropriate response, Andy. Kevin Gomez?”
“Present.”
“Joanne Philips?”
“Here.”
“Oliver Els...? Oliver Els...?”
“Here.”
“Oliver, wake up, son! Rina Stewart?”
“Here!”
“Beth--" he sighs, "I'm sorry, Stella Fabray?”
Rachel’s blood runs cold. Fuck.
The blonde girl catches her gaze and draws a pinched forefinger and thumb across her lips in a zipping motion. She winks before raising her hand, “Present.”
“Alright, McKinley delegates, let’s get to the van in a timely fashion! And please, no Frappu-anythings on the seats! Steam cleaning is an additional charge.”
Flashbulbs explode behind her eyelids, and Rachel releases the breath holed up at the back of her throat. The universe sends her present self back inside her body in a nauseating vacuum suck that fills her twisting gut with disillusionment.
She can almost hear her overlapping selves snapping into place.
Or maybe not, maybe it’s just the sound of a million flickering camera shutters.
“Rachel!” Flashflash. “Rachel, look over here!” Flash.
Rachel tilts her head at the paparazzo and smiles. As much as she loathes the unscrupulous media outlets and the resulting barrage of public scrutiny, she knows making nice with the industry’s bottom feeders almost always assures she’ll be on the receiving end of better press.
Celebrity status is a double-edged sword after all-one she’d actively sought out for herself at that.
“Can you tell us anything about your new Brookstein project?” Flash. “Ms. Berry!" Flashflash.
“I am beyond thrilled to be working with, let alone in the presence of the creative genius that is Kale Brookstein,” Rachel says, eyes casually surfing the crowd for the girl that very well may be, but couldn’t possibly be Quinn Fabray.
“Did Matt Bell really break his pinky on set?” Flashflashflash. “What do you have to say about the allegations being made in TeenPeeps magazine?”
Rachel’s heart sinks low when she doesn’t spot the doppelganger Quinn.
She swallows the frustrated scream itching to crawl out as four bodyguards flank her sides, creating a uniform embankment of muscle and too much musk-scented body spray. They block the cameras like lousy basketball shots.
Rachel’s gangly PA leans in and says, “You have a 3 o’clock with Star Nation. Whoever you’re looking for is going to have to wait.”
“How did-?”
“Please,” Felipe rolls his eyes, “There’s always a blonde.”
The brunette sighs, mildly aggrieved.
“When are you going to tell me about the unicorn, Rach?” he says, casually browsing through her schedule. “The one you’re always chasing?”
Felipe stops scanning time slots to cant his frosted head at her.
Never, as far as Rachel is concerned. Felipe is and has been an integral part of her brand for over a decade and despite his well-intentioned meddling Rachel has managed to keep mum on the subject of blondes, particularly one Quinn Fabray.
Rachel smiles brightly, casually flips him off, and clambers into the back of her SUV.
The Star Nation photo shoot is bland, the interview, blander. So bland that she needs something to counteract the mild sedative affects that sink into her bones just two hours in.
Rachel is nearly at her favorite coffee bar now, one of the few places where she still manages to blend in. She suspects it’s because the squat, mulatto colored establishment is teeming with people who are too self-absorbed to notice anything or anyone but themselves and their own convoluted pieces of the Western hemisphere.
She falls in line behind a cluster of yuppies and modern hipsters. She wrestles with the sound settings on her cell phone-the world can wait.
Neighboring patrons weigh out the pros and cons of elective surgery, dredging their product stained minds for allegories of rhinoplasties and breast augmentations literally gone askew.
Errant chatter swirls around her like a poisonous dust cloud. Rachel holds her breath.
The teenage barista poised behind the glossy cherry wood counter is charming and prompt. Rachel orders a triple espresso macchiato, and snags an egg-shaped chair by the open door.
She sips on her rich coffee and lets her body sink into the cushions as a sweeping nostalgia settles over her like a heavy film.
Rachel used to hate Lima for all that it wasn’t when she was growing up, but now? The sluggish pace of small town life beckons her and she hears its call.
These days, she thinks about Lima a lot. About McKinley, and Glee Club. Mr. Schuester, and Finn, and everyone else. But most of all, Rachel thinks about Quinn.
Ask any Lima loser and they’ll tell you that Rachel and Quinn’s adolescent relationship was anything but amicable. They’ll recount slushies to the face--one flavor for every day of the school week, pranks of Stephen King’s Carrie proportions, savage tug-o-wars over undeserving boys, a myriad of verbal fisticuffs, even a show-stopping physical confrontation in the senior quad during junior year.
Yep, ask any Lima loser and they’ll tell you the obvious.
Rachel grimaces--if the sorry bastards only knew. One unauthorized glimpse into Rachel and Quinn’s after school special would have shaken the town’s delicate foundation, crumbled the very earth beneath McKinley and dropped the structure into the unforgiving bowels of Hell.
Everyone would have stood around the gaping sinkhole scratching their heads, lamenting:
Who’da thunk it?
Rachel laughs and it’s a short, biting sound that makes her throat dry.
She shuts her eyes, pictures Quinn above her, skirt bunched up around her waist, panties shoved aside to make room for two hungry fingers.
She remembers a curtain of sweet-smelling yellow hair tickling her cheeks as Quinn leaned down to whisper, hiccup really, “I love you.”
Rachel’s shiny eyes glide to the ground, her voice is thick when she says, “You’re drunk.”
Quinn nods and giggles because she is so drunk, but the mirthful sound turns into a throaty moan when she thrusts her hips down and grinds front to back to gnash her clit against Rachel’s slick palm.
Quinn smiles almost wryly and bites her lip. She shakes her head, buries her glistening face in the crook of Rachel’s neck and says with a tender, vulnerable sort of novelty, “I love you.”
No! Rachel opens her eyes and wills her thoughts to shut up. Her overpriced Hollywood shrink once told her that she reeked of "textbook neuroses." He advised her to stop the obsessive ruminations at the slightest indication of an onset. He’d prescribed Xanax up the ass to help her deal. “In the meanwhile,” were the words he’d used.
Felipe fills the prescriptions, but she hates the way the pills make her feel, dull, hates the way it fragments her memories of Quinn, how it makes visions of the other girl run like ink.
“Rachel Berry?”
Rachel flinches, so much for blending in. She doesn’t bother looking up, just slowly pushes the egg-shaped swivel chair away from the voice, hoping that the fruit punch red cushions will swallow her up, open wide and devour her in one devastating gulp.
“Rachel Berry?”
Rachel sighs. Slender hips encased in blue obscure her view. A pale, bejeweled hand comes up to rest on one hip.
Rachel musters her best fangirl face before glancing upward, but the generic greeting she’s practiced dozens of times in front of vanity mirrors and the polished surfaces of silver spoons ruptures in her throat.
“Quinn?” she says, brokenly.
The girl scowls and shakes her head in a very Quinn-like fashion. Rachel studies the girl. She looks like Quinn, so very much like Quinn, from the tips of her toes to the top of her golden head… except, her eyes are different. Not quite hazel, they kind of remind her of a studly boy with a stupid mohawk…
Rachel swallows, “Drizzle?”
The clear-as-day awe pooling in the depths of Rachel’s eyes makes the blonde girl pout. It’s a fierce motion that can be likened to a lion’s mighty roar. The girl laughs and Rachel’s stomach twists in a familiar Pavlovian response.
“No,” she says snippily. “Drizzle? What kind of name is that?”
Rachel shrugs forlornly, dips her head down to peer into her oversized saucer.
“Stella,” she says, chewing down on her lip, “My name’s Stella.”
“I’m sorry. You look a lot like someone I know--knew.”
Stella nods, grudgingly so, and for a second there’s fire, static, something, whirring in her eyes, but it’s gone in a blink. “You want to get out of here?” she says, drawing a little circle on the tile with the tip of her right ballerina flat.
Rachel frowns, balks even, “Excuse me?”
“I thought maybe we could talk somewhere more private?”
It’s bad. Dirty. Wrong, whichever way you angle it.
It’s downright fucking sinful, but Rachel can’t remember wanting anything more since her ascent --descent, who knows anymore?--to Tinsel town and if this nearly-perfect carbon copy Quinn wants to lead her by the hand, drag her to a special brand of damnation then so be it.
She doesn’t remember how they got into the stall. She’ll later describe it as an out-of-body experience, like watching a car’s trajectory before the bone-shattering impact that leaves you paralyzed from the waist down.
Stella slams her against the door, tongue snaking up her vibrating neck, licking higher, over her chin to tease a full bottom lip.
“I loved you in Purple Roses,” she says breathlessly, walking her fingers up Rachel’s sides. “Petra’s Wake… Maximum Carnage… Asylum. You were so sexy in A Schoolgirl’s Lament.”
“Thanks?” Rachel’s voice is a tremor.
“I saw you on Broadway once,” Stella confesses sheepishly. “I kind of love everything you’re in. Even the old off-Broadway stuff.”
Stella cups her breasts, and Rachel swallows hard as her brain fogs over with lust and, in one opposing corner, concern. The girl does seem a little overzealous, one might even say--
“Don’t worry,” Stella whispers, running the tip of her tongue along Rachel’s ear, “I’m not a crazy or anything.”
“That’s reassuring.”
Stella laughs lecherously. She wraps her fingers around Rachel’s hands and drags them up her own taut stomach, over her own pert breasts. She pushes Rachel’s palms against her hardened nipples, and moans, “That feels good.”
The brunette’s head is spinning. A wrenching need propels her body into action, but every attempt at exploring beneath Stella’s dress is reprimanded with a languid smile, and a curt head shake.
Rachel’s eyes screw shut and blink open all at once as Stella suddenly drops into a squat and stares up at her with a misplaced sort of adoration.
Quinn, no, Stella is kneeling in front of her now, trailing kisses across her thighs, between them, over damp panties that cling to her swollen clit. The blonde's knees will be bruised tomorrow, but neither of them cares.
Rachel props her foot on the toilet seat, opening herself wider, steadying herself against the meager wall panels.
Stella’s tongue is fast and fervent, darting across her folds, between them, plunging deep before lapping over her clit.
“What--,” pants Rachel, legs trembling dangerously, “What’s the rush?”
Stella smiles and Rachel’s heart leaps up her throat. She keeps her lips close to Rachel’s wet center as she says, voice clouded with husk, “Someone’s expecting me.”
“Oh,” Rachel frowns, unsettled by the disappointment that sinks in her stomach like lead. Still, she can’t help but pry, “Like a-- a significant other someone?” She hopes her voice isn’t as wrought with distraction as it sounds.
Stella grins, rolls her twinkling eyes back and flattens her tongue against Rachel’s slick mound in an upstroke that elicits a breathy whine.
She licks her glossy lips, stares up at Rachel and says, “Does it really matter?”
Rachel doesn’t answer, just bunches blonde hair in her fist and tugs, bringing the girl’s hot mouth closer, firmer against her clit. They don’t talk much after that.
When Rachel finally comes, it’s messy and galaxy-shattering. She bites her cheek until it tears and tangy blood bursts in her mouth. Rachel can only stare at the other girl as she smoothes her dress out, wipes her own swollen lips across the back of her hand, and reaches for the lock.
She doesn’t acknowledge Rachel once they’re out of the stall, just reapplies her peach lip gloss and disappears.
A pock-marked teenager smiles at Rachel through the mirror as she splashes cold water on her face.
When Rachel finally resurfaces, Stella is seated in a booth with three friends. She makes light, coquettish eye contact as Rachel orders another drink, decaf this time.
She turns her cell phone back on and winces at the procession of missed call and text message alerts:
WHERE R U?
UR LATE FOR HAIR AND MAKE UP, RACHEL! GIVE ME A CALL AND LET ME KNOW UR OK…
PARTY @ LIBBY’S TONIGHT. AFTERPARTY @ BLUE’S.
YOU HAVE A MEET AND GREET IN ONE HOUR, STILL NOT DONE WITH HAIR AND MAKE UP! WHERE R U?!?!
CALL ME!!!
Rachel sighs and drops the phone into her purse.
She stirs her coffee as she considers giving Stella her number...
Maybe it isn’t such a great idea. She doesn’t know the girl from Adam, plus she can’t be more than 20 years old, if that. Rachel shrugs-does it really matter? Wouldn’t it be sort of hypocritical? After all, she herself has dated people 5, 10, 15 years her senior.
Screw it, her mind’s made up. She asks a barista for a pen, and employs the use of a spare napkin. She folds the paper into a neat little shape and pins it to the palm of her hand, steeling her nerves.
Before Rachel can make the what-she-hopes-will-be-a-discrete transaction, a soggy-middled man with a collared shirt claps his hands together at the front of the room, garnering everyone’s attention. She can’t help but peg him as a tourist.
Rachel sighs, but waits patiently for him to get out of her way.
“Listen up for roll call!” he bellows, scratching his ear with an uncapped pen. “Lisa Bowman?”
“Here.”
“Andy Bowman?”
“Yep.”
“Yep is not an appropriate response, Andy. Kevin Gomez?”
“Present.”
“Joanne Philips?”
“Here.”
“Oliver Els...? Oliver Els...?”
“Here.”
“Oliver, wake up, son! Rina Stewart?”
“Here!”
“Beth--" he sighs, "I'm sorry, Stella Fabray?”
Rachel’s blood runs cold. Fuck.
The blonde girl catches her gaze and draws a pinched forefinger and thumb across her lips in a zipping motion. She winks before raising her hand, “Present.”
“Alright, McKinley delegates, let’s get to the van in a timely fashion! And please, no Frappu-anythings on the seats! Steam cleaning is an additional charge.”