Coming of Age in Lima: Chapter 10
Chapter 10. In which Fiona is a bit of a creeper, and then plays basketball.
I spent all of Saturday trying to pretend that I didn’t have any problems to deal with. Mom had ordered me to stay out of Mr Schue’s problems, Quinn had made me promise not to tell anyone about her baby drama, Rachel didn’t answer my IMs, and Puck... well, I wasn’t thinking about Puck at all.
What he’d said didn’t make any sense. And, I mean, he did dumb shit all the time, but this? I just expected him to have at least some common sense in that department. And then trying to justify it with- Anyway, not thinking about that.
I was mooching around one in one of the prettier parks Lima, shooting hoops with myself. The ball ran away from me, and while I was chasing it, I spotted Mr Schue’s car. I knew Brittany lived nearby, and I knew that she’d said he lived near her. I bet that he lived in the building it was parked next to. I walked over and checked the names on the letterboxes - because what’s the point of betting if you never find out the outcome? - and there was W. Schuester and B. Ryan written nice and neat on a little tab for apartment 3c.
Huh, I guess I won.
I didn’t honestly want to go inside, except I totally did. You know that feeling you get when you sneak around? And you know that getting busted is never going to be worth that little thrill, but you do it anyway? I’d never been inside an apartment building before, except for that time I went to Chantelle’s place a few summer’s back, when her parents had just separated. It looked nice enough through the glass doors. And the doors didn’t look like they had those locks meant to keep ex-husbands out. And it wouldn’t be that bad to just poke my head in and look at the carpet.
And that’s how I ended up standing awkwardly in the hall outside Mr Schue’s door, listening to the yelling going on inside.
“You sold it?!”
“You never used it!”
“You sold my ukulele?!”
“It was a fucking ukulele!”
For a moment I wished someone was with me, so we could turn and look at each other, and giggle at the sound of an adult saying ‘fuck’. So we could whisper and fill in the gaps when yelling became muted by the two of them moving through the apartment, the way Puck and me did when his mom tried dating and it didn’t work out.
The sound of something getting turned over with a crash shook me out of my thoughts. And then the “What the hell are you doing?” and the “I can’t believe you,” and the “Will- Will, don’t you fucking leave this here,” kind of let me know that, hmm, this was one of those messy fights. I was just about to sneak back off down the hall when the front door was wrenched open, and there was Mr Schue with his jacket in one hand and his keys in the other, yelling over his shoulder “I’m going to get my ukulele back!”
He slammed the door shut as he stepped out into the hall, and we both jumped a little at coming face to face. Then there was a kind of plastic-y splintering noise as something small hit the other side of the door, and Mr Schue cringed.
“That sounded like my disco cds.”
I couldn’t help but snort out a laugh. “You own disco music?”
He gave me a look, and his mouth curled a little at one side. “You’re right. It’s probably past time that happened.” We started walking down the hall, Mr Schue with his hands shoved in his pockets and me absently rotating my basketball between my fingers. “Is there a reason you dropped by?”
“Oh, right. Um, there was, kind of. There’s been some stuff... But you sound like you have enough, and I really didn’t mean to hear any of that. I mean, not that I did, I just got there just before you came out and I’m really sorry, I just-”
He cut me off with a laugh as we hit the stairs. “It’s okay.”
“So... you really have a ukulele?”
“Yeah, well, used to, I guess. Unless I can track it down again. But I’ve got a guitar, too. Acoustic.”
“Oh, cool. I’ve got a drum kit. Well, most of it. The seat kind of broke and I need a new pedal for the base drum because the current one sticks. And I’d really like to get one of those double pedals because then you can do all that crazy ba-ba-ba-ba-bah and it sounds awesome.”
“That does sound awesome,” Mr Schue said, and he looked like he meant it to. “Are you okay?” he asked suddenly. “You said you wanted to talk?”
“Oh, that. Right. I’m fine, I mean, there’s nothing really up with me, exactly. But there’s stuff going on with everyone else, and some of it I’ve been sworn not to tell, and that’s just kind of heavy for me, you know? And you’ve always been really easy to talk to, and I was even hoping that maybe some of this stuff, you could maybe not be a teacher when you listen?”
Mr Schue held the door open for me as we stepped outside his building. “I can try.”
I beamed at him. “Cool. I really don’t know where to start though.”
“Try starting with the biggest thing,” he suggested.
“Okay,” I took a deep breath. “Well, this friend of mine. She kind of did something stupid, with a boy who is even stupider, and now she’s kind of pregnant.”
Mr Schue paused, and looked me up and down. “Just to double check, when you say ‘a friend’?”
“I actually mean a friend. I mean, me? Aside from anything else, my mom would kill me. Not that Quinn’s mom - shit, forget I said that.”
“Said what?” Mr Schue asked, and when I looked at him in disbelief he smiled, and nudged me with his shoulder. “So this friend... her parents wouldn't approve, and the boy is an idiot.”
“Yeah. And, I mean, I said that I’d help her and I wouldn’t tell anyone but... She’s pregnant, people are going to notice, right?”
“Has she had any tests done to make sure she’s pregnant?”
I paused. “I don’t know.”
We walked across the grass of the park as Mr Schue explained about how doctors can do a blood test to check hormone levels, and how periods can stop for a number of reasons, and how if you are pregnant there are things you need to do like take vitamins because the baby will pull them from your body, and creepy stuff can happen like our hair falling out, and that there can be problems if your hips aren’t wide enough.
“Wow. You really know a lot about this.”
“I taught health when Mrs Primrose was on long service leave.”
Mr Schue, teaching sex-ed. I still go red thinking about that.
“And you should get your friend, who isn’t Quinn, to make an appointment at planned parenthood, look into what her options are, and what would be the best - the healthiest - thing for her to do. And,” here he paused, considering his words, “and if her parents are going to react badly, you might want to talk about her options. Where she can stay, and things like that.”
“She can stay with me,” I blurted. “I mean, my mom’s a nurse, so that’d be good, right? And, yeah.”
He looked at me, and smiled warmly. “You should tell her that,” he told me. “And ask your mom, of course.”
“Of course,” I agreed. Just as soon as Quinn would let me.
“I’ll keep an eye out at school,” he added. “Just in case any random girls who I don’t teach at all start throwing up and looking ill. You know, help them get passes to some lessons and make sure the nurse knows. That sort of thing.”
“That’d be great. Just, you know, in a very general kind of way.”
“I can keep a secret,” he said.
I turned the ball over in my hands. “I know.”
“So,” he said after a short pause during which I stared at my hands, and he stared out across the park. “Does this friend being pregnant have anything to do with you beating Puck up yesterday?”
“Um.”
“Right.” He nodded at the ball in my hands. “Want to shoot some hoops?”
Mr Schue wasn’t too bad; he was better than Puck. We started off standing some ways apart, taking turns in throwing a shot. He asked me about the other kids in Glee, making sure they were okay.
“Kurt’s doing okay, since he came out. Did he come out? I don’t know. He’s stopped being closeted, I guess. I don’t think anyone’s noticed.”
“It’s good that he’s not getting a hard time. Well, not about that.” Mr Schue looked over at me as I lined up my shot. “Mercedes seemed to be quite angry with him on Friday.”
I missed my shot, and had to run and collect the ball. I passed it to Mr Schue, and he caught the ball easily.
“I don’t know,” I said at last, when he’d taken a shot and the ball had bounced off the hoop. “He just needed to figure things out, I guess. And he used me to do that.”
“Are you angry?”
I was genuinely surprised. “What? No. Kissing is like food, you know? You don’t know if you like the taste until you try it.”
“That’s... one way of looking at it.”
“And I guess I kind of used him to see if I liked guys, so, it’s kind of hard for me to hold it against him, you know?”
I looked over at Mr Schue, and he had this odd smile on his face, like he knew a secret and he wasn’t going to tell me. I remembered Quinn telling me about him being engaged. I guess sometimes having a favourite flavour isn’t so easy.
“So. Puck didn’t kill him then?”
“No,” Mr Schue watched as I lined up my shot. “I sent him home and then yelled at everyone else.”
“You didn’t yell at Puck?”
Mr Schue shrugged. “He doesn’t seem to notice these days.”
When the ball bounced after the shot we both stepped forwards to grab it, bumping against each other and then tousling for the ball. It broke into a real game of one on one then, snatching and shoving, and for one brief moment Mr Schue had the ball, dribbling it with his back to me as I tried to reach around him and grab it, all Octopus Woman with my stupidly long arms. I gave up on getting the ball away from him, and tried just getting him away from the ball, grabbing him by the waist and dragging him back. He laughed, and took a wild shot at the hoop, yelling “Foul!” as he did, and then we both scrambled to get to the ball first.
I completely did not quietly obsess over that one moment. Not at all.
We ended up flopped on the grass, him panting with the occasional small laugh in there, and me puffing and not knowing exactly where to look.
“Is there anything else going on that you want to talk about?” he asked eventually.
“No,” I replied. “Yes. I don’t know.”
He looked over at me, and waited until I got my words sorted.
“Puck’s just been weird lately,” I said at last.
When it became clear that I wasn’t going to say anymore, he said, “Boys are like that.”
“He just... We used to be friends, you know? Best friends. And that changed and, okay, that happens, I get that. But he goes out and he has all these girlfriends and heck, he does more than just kiss them, but somehow I’m not allowed to hang out with someone I like? And he has all of those stupid football friends who are jerks and don’t like each other anyway, but I’ve somehow done something wrong by making friends who actually like me? It’s just, argh. It doesn’t make any sense.”
“You’re growing up,” Mr Schue said.
“He’s the one growing up,” I grumbled.
“You both are. And you’re both changing. I think he just doesn’t want to lose you.”
“Yeah?” I was sitting with my knees pulled up to my chest, doing a pretty epic sulk. “And how is acting like a jerk going to achieve that?”
Mr Schue chuckled. “Some boys just never grow out of the mindset that punching someone in the arm is the only way to say that you like them.”
I glanced over at him, and then reached out and chucked him on the shoulder. He smiled easily and punched me back. Not that it meant anything like that, or... We were just having fun, and it felt good to have fun with someone. Even if it was a teacher.
“I’m going to have to do something about him,” I said at last. “I’m getting sick of fighting with him.”
“Sometimes it’s not a bad thing to clash, if it means you both get your opinions out there and heard.”
“Like you and Bryan?” I asked.
Mr Schue paused. “That’s probably not the best example,” he said at last.
“Sorry,” I said. “I shouldn’t have brought it up.”
“It’s okay.” I got the feeling that maybe since I had shared so much of myself, poking at his life wasn’t the trespass it could have been.
“Did he really sell your ukulele?” I asked, trying to get my head around the idea. Would you go to a pawn shop, or was there some kind of black market for ukuleles in Ohio? There could be - I’d never met anyone who owned one before. Or maybe having a ukulele was just one of those things that people didn’t talk about.
“Yeah,” Mr Schue said with a sigh. “He did.”
“Why?”
There was a long silence then, and when I looked over Mr Schue’s mouth was pulled into a hard line, and he was staring back over at his building. “It’s getting late,” he said finally, getting to his feet.
“Yeah,” I replied, slowly following his example. “Look, thanks for listening to me babble and all of that. It was really cool of you.”
He looked back at me then, all warm green eyes and gentle smile, his hair a little mussed from the game. “It’s fine. You can talk to me whenever you need to, okay?”
I smiled, and probably blushed a little. “Okay. I’ll- I’ll let you get back to your stuff.”
“Don’t forget to think about songs for Invitationals,” he said as he walked away, walking backwards and calling out to me. “We want a rough set list by the end of next week if we’re going to make it.”
“Alright!” I called back. Then I waved, and he waved back, and I turned around and started heading home. It had been a weird day. Weird, but kind of good, in the end.
*
Then I got home, and found Quinn sitting on my front porch. Her eyes were red when she looked up at me.
“They found the pregnancy test,” she said, as if that explained everything.
And I guess it kind of did.
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I spent all of Saturday trying to pretend that I didn’t have any problems to deal with. Mom had ordered me to stay out of Mr Schue’s problems, Quinn had made me promise not to tell anyone about her baby drama, Rachel didn’t answer my IMs, and Puck... well, I wasn’t thinking about Puck at all.
What he’d said didn’t make any sense. And, I mean, he did dumb shit all the time, but this? I just expected him to have at least some common sense in that department. And then trying to justify it with- Anyway, not thinking about that.
I was mooching around one in one of the prettier parks Lima, shooting hoops with myself. The ball ran away from me, and while I was chasing it, I spotted Mr Schue’s car. I knew Brittany lived nearby, and I knew that she’d said he lived near her. I bet that he lived in the building it was parked next to. I walked over and checked the names on the letterboxes - because what’s the point of betting if you never find out the outcome? - and there was W. Schuester and B. Ryan written nice and neat on a little tab for apartment 3c.
Huh, I guess I won.
I didn’t honestly want to go inside, except I totally did. You know that feeling you get when you sneak around? And you know that getting busted is never going to be worth that little thrill, but you do it anyway? I’d never been inside an apartment building before, except for that time I went to Chantelle’s place a few summer’s back, when her parents had just separated. It looked nice enough through the glass doors. And the doors didn’t look like they had those locks meant to keep ex-husbands out. And it wouldn’t be that bad to just poke my head in and look at the carpet.
And that’s how I ended up standing awkwardly in the hall outside Mr Schue’s door, listening to the yelling going on inside.
“You sold it?!”
“You never used it!”
“You sold my ukulele?!”
“It was a fucking ukulele!”
For a moment I wished someone was with me, so we could turn and look at each other, and giggle at the sound of an adult saying ‘fuck’. So we could whisper and fill in the gaps when yelling became muted by the two of them moving through the apartment, the way Puck and me did when his mom tried dating and it didn’t work out.
The sound of something getting turned over with a crash shook me out of my thoughts. And then the “What the hell are you doing?” and the “I can’t believe you,” and the “Will- Will, don’t you fucking leave this here,” kind of let me know that, hmm, this was one of those messy fights. I was just about to sneak back off down the hall when the front door was wrenched open, and there was Mr Schue with his jacket in one hand and his keys in the other, yelling over his shoulder “I’m going to get my ukulele back!”
He slammed the door shut as he stepped out into the hall, and we both jumped a little at coming face to face. Then there was a kind of plastic-y splintering noise as something small hit the other side of the door, and Mr Schue cringed.
“That sounded like my disco cds.”
I couldn’t help but snort out a laugh. “You own disco music?”
He gave me a look, and his mouth curled a little at one side. “You’re right. It’s probably past time that happened.” We started walking down the hall, Mr Schue with his hands shoved in his pockets and me absently rotating my basketball between my fingers. “Is there a reason you dropped by?”
“Oh, right. Um, there was, kind of. There’s been some stuff... But you sound like you have enough, and I really didn’t mean to hear any of that. I mean, not that I did, I just got there just before you came out and I’m really sorry, I just-”
He cut me off with a laugh as we hit the stairs. “It’s okay.”
“So... you really have a ukulele?”
“Yeah, well, used to, I guess. Unless I can track it down again. But I’ve got a guitar, too. Acoustic.”
“Oh, cool. I’ve got a drum kit. Well, most of it. The seat kind of broke and I need a new pedal for the base drum because the current one sticks. And I’d really like to get one of those double pedals because then you can do all that crazy ba-ba-ba-ba-bah and it sounds awesome.”
“That does sound awesome,” Mr Schue said, and he looked like he meant it to. “Are you okay?” he asked suddenly. “You said you wanted to talk?”
“Oh, that. Right. I’m fine, I mean, there’s nothing really up with me, exactly. But there’s stuff going on with everyone else, and some of it I’ve been sworn not to tell, and that’s just kind of heavy for me, you know? And you’ve always been really easy to talk to, and I was even hoping that maybe some of this stuff, you could maybe not be a teacher when you listen?”
Mr Schue held the door open for me as we stepped outside his building. “I can try.”
I beamed at him. “Cool. I really don’t know where to start though.”
“Try starting with the biggest thing,” he suggested.
“Okay,” I took a deep breath. “Well, this friend of mine. She kind of did something stupid, with a boy who is even stupider, and now she’s kind of pregnant.”
Mr Schue paused, and looked me up and down. “Just to double check, when you say ‘a friend’?”
“I actually mean a friend. I mean, me? Aside from anything else, my mom would kill me. Not that Quinn’s mom - shit, forget I said that.”
“Said what?” Mr Schue asked, and when I looked at him in disbelief he smiled, and nudged me with his shoulder. “So this friend... her parents wouldn't approve, and the boy is an idiot.”
“Yeah. And, I mean, I said that I’d help her and I wouldn’t tell anyone but... She’s pregnant, people are going to notice, right?”
“Has she had any tests done to make sure she’s pregnant?”
I paused. “I don’t know.”
We walked across the grass of the park as Mr Schue explained about how doctors can do a blood test to check hormone levels, and how periods can stop for a number of reasons, and how if you are pregnant there are things you need to do like take vitamins because the baby will pull them from your body, and creepy stuff can happen like our hair falling out, and that there can be problems if your hips aren’t wide enough.
“Wow. You really know a lot about this.”
“I taught health when Mrs Primrose was on long service leave.”
Mr Schue, teaching sex-ed. I still go red thinking about that.
“And you should get your friend, who isn’t Quinn, to make an appointment at planned parenthood, look into what her options are, and what would be the best - the healthiest - thing for her to do. And,” here he paused, considering his words, “and if her parents are going to react badly, you might want to talk about her options. Where she can stay, and things like that.”
“She can stay with me,” I blurted. “I mean, my mom’s a nurse, so that’d be good, right? And, yeah.”
He looked at me, and smiled warmly. “You should tell her that,” he told me. “And ask your mom, of course.”
“Of course,” I agreed. Just as soon as Quinn would let me.
“I’ll keep an eye out at school,” he added. “Just in case any random girls who I don’t teach at all start throwing up and looking ill. You know, help them get passes to some lessons and make sure the nurse knows. That sort of thing.”
“That’d be great. Just, you know, in a very general kind of way.”
“I can keep a secret,” he said.
I turned the ball over in my hands. “I know.”
“So,” he said after a short pause during which I stared at my hands, and he stared out across the park. “Does this friend being pregnant have anything to do with you beating Puck up yesterday?”
“Um.”
“Right.” He nodded at the ball in my hands. “Want to shoot some hoops?”
Mr Schue wasn’t too bad; he was better than Puck. We started off standing some ways apart, taking turns in throwing a shot. He asked me about the other kids in Glee, making sure they were okay.
“Kurt’s doing okay, since he came out. Did he come out? I don’t know. He’s stopped being closeted, I guess. I don’t think anyone’s noticed.”
“It’s good that he’s not getting a hard time. Well, not about that.” Mr Schue looked over at me as I lined up my shot. “Mercedes seemed to be quite angry with him on Friday.”
I missed my shot, and had to run and collect the ball. I passed it to Mr Schue, and he caught the ball easily.
“I don’t know,” I said at last, when he’d taken a shot and the ball had bounced off the hoop. “He just needed to figure things out, I guess. And he used me to do that.”
“Are you angry?”
I was genuinely surprised. “What? No. Kissing is like food, you know? You don’t know if you like the taste until you try it.”
“That’s... one way of looking at it.”
“And I guess I kind of used him to see if I liked guys, so, it’s kind of hard for me to hold it against him, you know?”
I looked over at Mr Schue, and he had this odd smile on his face, like he knew a secret and he wasn’t going to tell me. I remembered Quinn telling me about him being engaged. I guess sometimes having a favourite flavour isn’t so easy.
“So. Puck didn’t kill him then?”
“No,” Mr Schue watched as I lined up my shot. “I sent him home and then yelled at everyone else.”
“You didn’t yell at Puck?”
Mr Schue shrugged. “He doesn’t seem to notice these days.”
When the ball bounced after the shot we both stepped forwards to grab it, bumping against each other and then tousling for the ball. It broke into a real game of one on one then, snatching and shoving, and for one brief moment Mr Schue had the ball, dribbling it with his back to me as I tried to reach around him and grab it, all Octopus Woman with my stupidly long arms. I gave up on getting the ball away from him, and tried just getting him away from the ball, grabbing him by the waist and dragging him back. He laughed, and took a wild shot at the hoop, yelling “Foul!” as he did, and then we both scrambled to get to the ball first.
I completely did not quietly obsess over that one moment. Not at all.
We ended up flopped on the grass, him panting with the occasional small laugh in there, and me puffing and not knowing exactly where to look.
“Is there anything else going on that you want to talk about?” he asked eventually.
“No,” I replied. “Yes. I don’t know.”
He looked over at me, and waited until I got my words sorted.
“Puck’s just been weird lately,” I said at last.
When it became clear that I wasn’t going to say anymore, he said, “Boys are like that.”
“He just... We used to be friends, you know? Best friends. And that changed and, okay, that happens, I get that. But he goes out and he has all these girlfriends and heck, he does more than just kiss them, but somehow I’m not allowed to hang out with someone I like? And he has all of those stupid football friends who are jerks and don’t like each other anyway, but I’ve somehow done something wrong by making friends who actually like me? It’s just, argh. It doesn’t make any sense.”
“You’re growing up,” Mr Schue said.
“He’s the one growing up,” I grumbled.
“You both are. And you’re both changing. I think he just doesn’t want to lose you.”
“Yeah?” I was sitting with my knees pulled up to my chest, doing a pretty epic sulk. “And how is acting like a jerk going to achieve that?”
Mr Schue chuckled. “Some boys just never grow out of the mindset that punching someone in the arm is the only way to say that you like them.”
I glanced over at him, and then reached out and chucked him on the shoulder. He smiled easily and punched me back. Not that it meant anything like that, or... We were just having fun, and it felt good to have fun with someone. Even if it was a teacher.
“I’m going to have to do something about him,” I said at last. “I’m getting sick of fighting with him.”
“Sometimes it’s not a bad thing to clash, if it means you both get your opinions out there and heard.”
“Like you and Bryan?” I asked.
Mr Schue paused. “That’s probably not the best example,” he said at last.
“Sorry,” I said. “I shouldn’t have brought it up.”
“It’s okay.” I got the feeling that maybe since I had shared so much of myself, poking at his life wasn’t the trespass it could have been.
“Did he really sell your ukulele?” I asked, trying to get my head around the idea. Would you go to a pawn shop, or was there some kind of black market for ukuleles in Ohio? There could be - I’d never met anyone who owned one before. Or maybe having a ukulele was just one of those things that people didn’t talk about.
“Yeah,” Mr Schue said with a sigh. “He did.”
“Why?”
There was a long silence then, and when I looked over Mr Schue’s mouth was pulled into a hard line, and he was staring back over at his building. “It’s getting late,” he said finally, getting to his feet.
“Yeah,” I replied, slowly following his example. “Look, thanks for listening to me babble and all of that. It was really cool of you.”
He looked back at me then, all warm green eyes and gentle smile, his hair a little mussed from the game. “It’s fine. You can talk to me whenever you need to, okay?”
I smiled, and probably blushed a little. “Okay. I’ll- I’ll let you get back to your stuff.”
“Don’t forget to think about songs for Invitationals,” he said as he walked away, walking backwards and calling out to me. “We want a rough set list by the end of next week if we’re going to make it.”
“Alright!” I called back. Then I waved, and he waved back, and I turned around and started heading home. It had been a weird day. Weird, but kind of good, in the end.
*
Then I got home, and found Quinn sitting on my front porch. Her eyes were red when she looked up at me.
“They found the pregnancy test,” she said, as if that explained everything.
And I guess it kind of did.
Next Chapter
Back to Master Post