Chapter 1

Lord Tubbington was gonna be so upset. It was 1:00 and I'd forgotten to Tivo "The Millionaire Matchmaker" for him. I was such a bad mother.

Maybe there was a way to get out of English class...

I tugged at my blonde hair and looked up as someone strolled into the classroom.

"Everyone, we have a new student joining us today," Mrs. Templeton spoke gently. "Her name is Santana Lopez." She swiveled to face the new girl. "Santana...that's interesting. You're Hispanic?"

Santana was wearing a black leather jacket over a tight, red dress. It was like she was trying to be a boy and a girl at the same time. She probably smoked behind McKinley with the football team after school and shoplifted from Victoria's Secret on the weekends.

The corner of her mouth formed a smirk. "Yeah, I'm Hispanic. Lopez? Santana? It's great to know that even the teachers who don't teach math can still put two and two together."

Mrs. Templeton blushed. "Well, umm, thank you Santana."

"You're welcome." She smiled again, her dark eyes shooting out in my direction.

I promptly put my head down on my desk.

"Yes, so Santana is coming to us from...oh, geez," Mrs. Templeton said. "Sorry, where was it again, dear?"

"Lima Heights Adjacent," she replied, rubbing the edge of her calf with the toe of a black boot.

Black jacket, black shoes, even her backpack was black. It was such a sad color with no feelings.

"Oh, that's only just across town."

"That's right," Santana answered, the end of her sentence drawing its way up into the air.

"Okay, well, you can sit down now. Anywhere..."

But before Mrs. Templeton could finish, Santana Lopez from Lima Heights Adjacent had slid into the empty seat beside me, her brown eyes grinning their way into my blue ones. "Hey, what's up?" she whispered. Her bag fell into the slot between our open chair legs.

The way she was looking at me then was like some kind of secret, a locker combination I could never forget once the door had been popped open. Just one turn. That was all it took.

I fiddled with my tragus piercing and looked down at my desk. On its surface, scratched with a pocket knife was: "Rachel Berry has a dick."

"What's your name?" she asked.

When I looked up to catch her gaze I noticed how deep her eyes actually were, how dark they seemed set against her gray shadow. She had fake lashes on too. She'd glued them there and they were blinking up and down like an alligator's mouth ready to swallow me.

I had to look out the window, look somewhere else. But her nose was perfect, like God had pinched it there out of clay. And her cheeks made pretty pink balloons when she smiled and her mouth was so full that it made me wanna lean in and kiss it.

I wished I could just keep staring at her. If she was so beautiful, maybe her insides were beautiful too. But no. NO. She was clearly just another one of THEM. The next thing out of her mouth, I was certain, would be some jab against my clothing. "What the fuck are you wearing? A cat sweater? You look like my grandmother. You know, if she was drunk and shit." Then she would laugh like a scream in my ears and I would hang my head and make a fist under the desk like I always did.

"What's your name?" she repeated.

"Brittany," I uttered.

"Cool," she breathed.

She looked me up and down, but she didn't laugh. Not at all. Not even a little.

"Santana?" Mrs. Templeton interrupted. "Were you taking Advanced English at your previous high school? Probably not..." she said under her breath. "Well, it might be a little hard to keep up but just try, okay?"

Santana turned towards the front of the classroom. "Well, actually I was studying classical Japanese, but my mother made me quit when Maruyama Sensei asked us to describe our oppai in haiku form. Anyways, I'm sure I'll be okay studying the language of all the advanced white people who've demeaned my race for years now. No problem." She made an OK sign with her painted-black fingers and winked.

Mrs. Templeton's face screwed itself into a question mark. Some of the other kids giggled.

Santana's head was back on me then, the sweetest beam passing her lips. "Oppai means tits, by the way." She pressed her hand into my knee, a shock rolling through me. "Hey, you got an extra pen?" she asked. "I'm an idiot. I fucking forgot mine. First day of school too. Nice impression I make."

"Yeah, sure," I mumbled, digging through my canvas rucksack.

I was there but not there, thinking too hard but then not at all. My body split in two, into Brittany S. Pierce and into the girl being touched by her. It was just like that movie about the man with two heads.

Santana's fingers slid across the side of my leg and fell off, my body coming back together again in a jolt. I coughed, jamming a palm over my Dr. Pepper Lip Smackered lips.

"You okay?" she asked. She put her hand on my shoulder.

"I'm fine," I said, stabbing a Hello Kitty! multi in her general direction. "Sorry for all the colors. I like all colors. I just can't choose."

"Wow, it's Japanese," she commented, rubbing the tip of her finger over Hello Kitty!'s face. "This is a coincidence of capital proportions." She grinned and clicked a rainbow out into the air. Down blue, down yellow, down pink, down green, down red. "You like all colors, huh?" She ripped a piece of paper from her notebook. "I like red." The paper sat in front of her, as rough and ragged as her smoker's voice. She ran that red across it, a series of numbers and her name with a little heart replacing the O in Lopez.

I folded my arms across my chest.

"Anyways, here," she whispered, shoving the paper into my fist. Her hand stumbled against my breasts to reach it. "Now we can talk to each other. You know, outside of school and shit. I might need help advancing my English." She gave a little rolling laugh.

"I'm not really a phone person," I said quietly. "I don't even have a cell."

But I don't think she heard me. She was like a wall in front of me, a wall of glittering black stone.

No way was I gonna call her. No way ever.