Title: Have You Ever Been Alone in a Crowded Room?
Rating: G
Fandom: Glee
Words: 302.
Characters: Rachel, Quinn, slight Santana, Brittany.
Summary: Two eight-year-old girls reflect.
Notes: I'm thinking of continuing this, kind of depends on the feedback I get.
In third grade Rachel Berry ate her lunch alone everyday, outside a lot of the time. No-one wanted to sit with her because she was the girl with two dads and they lived in a small town in overly Conservative Ohio. She wasn't exactly normal either, she wore brightly colored sweater and skirt suits while the other girls wore Lizzie McGuire t-shirts and jeans. She dreamed of being on Broadway, they would rather be in a movie like Cinderella Story where you got to kiss Chad Michael Murray.
So she sat alone, with her Les Mis lunchbox stuffed with bologna and mustard sandwiches, carrot sticks, and a milk thermos and watched the other kids giggle about which boys they thought were cute while they stuffed their happy faces with Hostess Cupcakes and Juicy Juice boxes. Rachel thought a lot of boys were cute, but she never had anyone to talk to about it with.
Quinn Fabray was far from alone at lunch time. As long as she remembered she had Santana and Brittany swarmed on either side of her, along with her favorite boys that week. Santana and Brittany would whisper in a huddle on either side of her and argue over who would get to hold which one's hand on the playground afterwards. Even then they knew it was inevitably Quinn's choice in the end and they would take whatever was leftover.
Sometimes Quinn got sick of them, all they ever wanted to do was talk about boys and celebrities. They never read books that she liked, they never did their homework, they didn't listen in church when the minister told them about God. Sometimes she thought they didn't even listen when she talked, they just heard what they wanted. Sometimes, she really wanted someone who could listen.