"Rachel, what are you doing?"
"Look, there's another one here. I'm writing it down. They have to give some clues about who's writing them," Rachel said and saw the other girl roll her eyes, "I know you think I'm just being crazy, Mercedes, but I'd appreciate it if you at least didn't show it to my face. Besides, I know I'm right."
"Yeah, you're right, Rachel, I do think you're being crazy," Mercedes said, rolling her eyes again and walking out of the bathroom, leaving Rachel to continue her scribblings in her little notebook. The diva had taken to carrying a notebook with her wherever she went, and in typical Rachel Berry style, it was bright pink with a gold star embossed into the front cover, and right now it was in her hand, pen flying across the page, copying the writing which was scrawled on the back of the bathroom door. There was something in the handwriting, something in the loop of the 'g's and the join of the 'e's which seemed familiar to Rachel, but she could not put her finger on where she might have seen them before.
The words formed a poem, adorning the otherwise pristine door of the girls' bathroom, the black ink of the permanent marker stark against the white so that if you stared at it too long, the words would imprint themselves on your retinas and appear still as light when you looked away. Everyday Rachel would see the back of that door, and everyday there had been nothing but clean, white paint. Today, there was this:
Your eyes observe but never see
Anything except who you want me to be.
Who am I really? You'll never understand.
That's why you won't reach out to hold my hand.
Sit next to me, behold my life,
Enter a reality where loneliness is rife.
A shiver crawled up Rachel's spine, her entire body tingled - there was something about those words. It might have been a short piece, but the words meant something profound to her; it was almost as if she could have written them herself, every sentiment relevant to her own existence. Whoever the poet was, their words seemed to echo the thoughts which ran through her head and bare open the feelings which hid in her heart; the connection left her breathless.
Curiosity crept up on Rachel and grabbed her around the navel, forcing her stomach to clench and her teeth to grind, pushing her to discover the identity of the poet. They were a student, undoubtedly - no teacher would graffiti a bathroom door - and, if the placement of their most recent piece was any indication, they were a girl. But the poet, or the Poet, as Rachel dubbed her, was elusive as ever, a ghost whose presence would have gone completely undetected if not for the words penned in permanent marker in her wake. Not the slightest piece of information was given about the Poet, except in their words, so Rachel, in a bid to identify the Poet amongst her peers, began copying the writings only to spend hours pulling them apart, analysing them, putting them back together and still not advancing any closer to discovering an identity for the mysterious girl.
The poem, marring the door, had only one thing to accompany it, the same thing Rachel had seen written below the other poems: 'Errant'. She assumed this was the Poet's tag, their signature, so to speak. The choice of adjective as a name placed the Poet outside the regular line of thinking, somewhere above the rest of the student body and Rachel, seeking opportunities to meet someone of her own high intellect, was bursting at the seams with curiosity, determination flooding through her to find this Poet. She had the notion that the writer would be an excellent ally to have when it came to writing songs; songs were basically poems with music set to them anyway.
The word 'errant' was in itself a source of curiosity for Rachel; it hardly held any positive connotations, implying deviation from the norm, and in high school, being different was the worst thing a person could be - Rachel knew this from personal experience. She couldn't understand why someone would sign something with a word, which when used in describing them would result in their crucifixion by the rest of the student body at McKinley. Perhaps the Poet didn't really care, perhaps she was so determined to be different, that she wouldn't mind being known as the outcast of the school. There was only one problem with that theory and that involved Rachel not knowing anyone outside of Glee club who was determined to be different - in fact, even those in Glee tried hard not to stand out so much from the rest of the student body. Nobody sprang to mind when Rachel attempted to think of someone who did.
So, Rachel began to keep her notebook with her own copies of Errant's poems. So far, nothing appeared to give her any indication of who she might be, but it didn't lessen her determination - every time she saw a new poem, out came the pink journal, a pen appeared in hand, and the words, inscribed on a wall by one hand were meticulously copied onto a page with another.
Rachel just wanted talk with Errant a while; she, if she was indeed a she, seemed like a very interesting person - deep and artistic, melancholy and fragile - and there was something in that which made the poet endearing to Rachel. Finding the identity, the person behind the poetry, became an obsession for the tiny girl' thoughts about the words, scrawled on walls and tables, the backs of chairs and on lunch trays consumed her mind, filling it to the point of overflowing and she found focusing on anything else a nigh impossible task. Even Glee, her usual focal point, took a back seat to her new addiction; being a star one day in the future was all well and good, but Rachel realised it wasn't going to happen immediately, so losing some time by doing other things was not going to harm her chances.
This latest poem, on the back of the bathroom door, was the fourth such one that Rachel had seen and the sixth she knew of; the other two she hadn't had a chance to see for herself as one was written on a lunch tray, and the other on a chair in a classroom in which Rachel had no lessons. In typical Rachel Berry fashion, she had a plan for seeing those two poems with her own eyes and adding the lines to the pink journal for further analysis. She felt like a forensic scientist or a detective, using nothing but the clues offered to her to find out who was behind the graffiti. And she wasn't the only one.
"Children, as a matter of grave importance, anyone with information about this Errant person leaving graffiti on school property is asked to come forward. Graffiti on school property is an offence and when the perpetrator is caught, he or she will be punished with a suspension. Remember children, if it is not your property, you may not write or draw on it," Principle Figgins had warned just the other day in school assembly. Interest was awakened in the student body and following assembly, that was all anybody had talked about. Rumours spread like wildfire around the school, that it was a student, that it was a teacher, or the most ridiculous one Rachel had heard, that it was a serial killer, telling the school in code that they were planning to attack soon. Within a matter of hours, the buzz had died down. Other pieces of graffiti began appearing - they were the typical types: tags scribbled in permanent marker, slander against fellow students, declarations of love, but none, with the exception of Errant's work was poetry, fortunately for Rachel. Some of the students responsible had been caught, and as promised, were awarded with suspensions. However, Errant's poetry, as evidenced by the piece on the bathroom door continued. In fact, this piece was so fresh that the chemical fumes of the marker still lingered in the air. Rachel desperately strained her memory to see if she'd caught a glimpse of anyone leaving the bathroom just before she and Mercedes had entered. She came up blank. She had been so close, she must have missed the Poet by seconds. She restrained herself from growling in frustration.
A moment after Mercedes had left the bathroom, and as Rachel was copying down the last line, a stall door swung open, its hinges creaking, and a girl with a shock of pink hair emerged, the heels of her boots clicking against the tiles. She shot a glance at the diva before heading to the sink.
"Hello Quinn," Rachel said, jotting down the last word of the poem onto her page. She snapped the journal shut and turned to the other girl.
"Hey Rachel," Quinn replied in kind. Unfamiliarity made the silence which followed the greetings between the two awkward. Rachel was still not used to this girl with pink hair and a look as if she had just walked out of a punk music video. Quinn, so different from the girl Rachel knew only a few months ago, had no interest in building a friendship with the brunette girl. She still had the same face as the Quinn Fabray they all knew, still walked the same way, still had the same voice, and although her hair now had a pink wash through it, blonde was still visible where the dye had started to wash out. But she was so different; where Santana and Brittany had rejoined the cheer squad at the beginning of senior year, Quinn had rebelled against their decision, and opted to mingle with the punks of the school. Rachel was taking this new Quinn with a grain of salt - as changed as she appeared, Rachel knew that some fundamental things of a personality didn't change - she was just waiting to see how much of the Quinn she knew still remained behind the façade of pink.
Rachel turned to leave the restroom and the uncomfortable silence within it when she again caught sight of the graffiti on the door. She reacted as if she'd been slapped in the face, holding a hand to her face and widening her eyes. She turned on her heel to face Quinn again, steeling her stomach against the hope which had arisen there with her realisation.
"Quinn, did you happen to see anyone else in the bathroom just before Mercedes and I came in?" she asked. Quinn gave her a sideways look, one eyebrow raised - a vestige of the old Quinn which still remained. It was the look which without failure made Rachel feel stupid. An explanation came tumbling out of her mouth, an attempt to save face in front of the other girl, "it's just, I'm trying to find out who Errant is - I really like her poems and I think she and I could be really great friends, and maybe she could us write some new songs for Glee club."
"You're so sure it's a girl. Why would you assume that? You don't know the first thing about Errant."
"Well, whoever they are, they've written on the door of the girls' toilets. I can only assume from that that they are a girl," Rachel said, slipping into her defensive mode, seeing the judgemental look in Quinn's hazel eyes.
"That doesn't mean Errant is a girl. It's so easy to get into the bathroom - the only thing stopping anyone going into the one of the opposite sex is propriety. A boy could easily walk in here to write that if he dared."
"I - I suppose you're right," stammered Rachel. How did Quinn always manage to make her feel stupid?
"Besides," Quinn continued, "I know for a fact that there is a piece in the boy's bathroom too." And with that, she closed the tap and brushed past Rachel, making sure to give the brunette a flick of water from her still wet fingers. Rachel didn't even wince - compared to a slushie shower, water was nothing. Anyway, she felt too ill to notice the tiny water droplets. She had been so sure that Errant was a girl, before Quinn came along and crushed that theory beneath the heels of her Doc Martens. Now Rachel didn't know what to think - she couldn't even think. Thoughts fled her mind, leaving her in a haze. She exited the bathroom in Quinn's wake, not even knowing where she was heading, disappointment eating at her stomach.
On the bright side, that brought the total of poems she knew about up to 7.
A/N: new story! The title won't become significant till later.