The bell rings through the McKinley High School halls just as the last few stragglers enter the classrooms. In the choir room, a group of thirteen outcasts and misfits more formally known as the Glee Club or New Directions anxiously await the list of clubs they would be competing against for Sectionals. Mr. Schuester strolls into the room, humming a lesser known Journey song under his breath and clutching a sheet of paper in his hands.
Mr. Schuester steps to the center of the room nonchalantly, waiting of few seconds to see who would be the first to ask. It turns out to be Finn. "Well Mr. Schue?"
Smiling, Mr. Schuester glances down at the paper, waiting another few seconds to build anticipation. "Are competition for Sectionals are the Dalton Academy Warblers…" The teenagers knew the Warbler would be returning as their competition, but it still makes some of the kids nervous. They had gotten tied with the group last year and they might have gotten better. Stepping up their games is their only option. "And the Asheville Boarding School Accents."
Everyone in the room exchanges glances, not knowing anything about Asheville Boarding School or their Glee Club. Everyone except for Kurt. "Blaine told me about that school. It's new this year. Apparently they poached a lot of Dalton' boys." Mumbles follow Kurt's explanation that soon grow in volume until the whole room is expressing worry over the new group.
Rachel, taking charge as usual, joins Mr. Schuester at the front of the room. "Why are we worrying about this new group? They just started and are obviously a bunch of amateurs. We really should pity them. What we need to do is worry about the Warblers and writing new songs for Sectionals."
Despite some grumbling protests, everyone stops their conversations and the Asheville group is not mentioned again.
A red-haired girl stands in line waiting for coffee. Marissa adjusts her scarf, feeling free. Despite claiming to support a free flowing environment, Asheville highly stresses their strict dress code: classic plaid skirts, white button down, and blazer. Adding any personal touches got you into the dean's office. For that reason, Marissa is glad she was assigned a Glee task off campus.
Picking up her coffee, Marissa slips into a chair at a table near the people she is supposed to be watching. It would have been easy to tell since it is a group of tables all put together, but Marissa also recognizes New Direction's members Mercedes Jones and Sam Evans. She picks up the random magazine she had brought, takes a sip of her coffee, and pretends to read.
The reason she had been selected for this job was an obvious one. Lindsay and Hannah are too loud. Damian is too new, being a recent foreign exchange student. Emily and Bryce would have been too busy flirting to do the work. Ellis and Matheus would have drawn too much attention. Samuel and McKynleigh both did not want to participate for various reasons. Alex is an ex-Warbler and the others feared Kurt would recognize him. Cameron is the only other person that could have gone, but he was on a day trip with his parents. Thus, Marissa was an easy choice.
Slowly, the rest of New Directions start to trickle in. Marissa notes a small, but surprisingly loud girl instructing everyone on where to sit and many of the others not so happy to comply. This must be Rachel Berry. She reminds Marissa of a slightly worse Lindsay for even she does not make seating arrangements. "Let's begin discussing the songs we will be writing for Sectionals. I was thinking of a song that can exercise my vocal range…" That sounds a bit more like Lindsay.
"I want to know why we have to be here on a Saturday morning," Mercedes ask like a diva that is lacking at least three hours of her beauty sleep. Marissa somewhat agreed with her. She would have preferred spying at a later hour.
"Kurt told me the Warblers like to drink coffee here in the afternoon and the best songs come from anger which is what you are feeling," Rachel informs her group.
"We could write a song about Lord Tubbington in the morning," a blonde girl suggests in a low voice. From the contents of that sentence, Marissa can only assume that this is Brittany. According to Alex, who had met her at Regionals, she is the stupidest girl you could ever meet. Marissa is beginning to see why as Brittany begins describing in length Lord Tubbington's morning routine.
For the next hour or so, Marissa listens to conversation after conversation of song ideas that always ended in yelling, sometimes in English and sometimes in Spanish. As of now, the red-head is only looking up occasionally, mostly to see who is starting the latest screaming match. Marissa hears screaming in Spanish again and though knowing who it is, she looks up anyway. She lets out a little scream when she does.
"I was waiting for you to look up," Cameron says with a small smile. Marissa has known Cameron for a few months and she has gotten over blushing around him, but he had startled her into flushing bright red.
"What are you doing here? I thought you were out with your parents."
"My dad ate some bad eggs at breakfast and had to go home. My dropped my back off at Asheville and Hannah told me where you were. Instead of checking back in, I came to see how you were doing," Cameron explains, stealing a sip of her coffee afterwards. "How did you get out of Asheville anyway? You couldn't have told them you were going to coffee shop to spy on our rival."
"I told them I was meeting my grandmother for breakfast, kind of like you. Ellis pretended to be my grandmother," Marissa admits, getting a laugh from Cameron. "Now you need to go."
"Why?"
"For one thing, you are still wearing your Asheville jacket." Cameron immediately begins tugging off the blazer, making Marissa giggle. However, she stops when she notices a few of the New Direction's members looking her way with a questioning look on their faces.
"Can I stay now?" Cameron asks and though knowing his presence would throw her focus off, Marissa nods. "Made any progress?"
"Well," Marissa begins, leaning in to make sure the New Directions could not hear them, "They are writing songs for the competition just like Alex thought they would, but they seem to be having trouble coming up with ideas for their songs. That is about all I've got."
Cameron leans in as well and says, "So do you think we can beat them?"
Marissa thinks about this for a moment before responding. "Possibly, but they seem to always pull it together at the last second. I think we need to do more than spying to win."
Before Cameron can answer, someone speaks a little louder than they probably meant to. "See Finn, this place isn't to girly for a date. Not just Blaine and Kurt come here." Turning her head, Marissa sees the leaders of New Directions standing right by their table. Finn is trying to steer Rachel towards the line as she continues to glance back at Marissa and Cameron, who do look very couple like.
The two immediately stop leaning forward and Marissa begins collecting her stuff. "Um, I think that's enough information for one day." Slinging a bag over one shoulder, she heads for the door, too embarrassed to see if Cameron is coming or not. Of course she would like to see what being a couple with Cameron would be like, but she would never dream of asking him. It is pretty obvious he likes Lindsay and Marissa couldn't do that to Hannah, who had been crushing on him since day one.
Marissa catches a bus heading towards Asheville. While she was busy rushing out of the coffee shop, she forgot Cameron would be taking the same bus. She spends the next twenty minutes pretending not to notice him and glancing down at her shoes.
Lindsay isn't an impatient person, but she is having trouble waiting for Marissa to get back. Out of everyone at Asheville, she is probably the only one who hates Saturdays. Everyone has either gone out with parents or hanging out with friends. It isn't that Lindsay doesn't have friends. It's just her friends always seem to want to work or sleep on Saturdays. Or they get shipped off on a Glee mission somewhere.
The choir room is empty except for Lindsay. There would be an Accents meeting in a few hours, but until then she has the room all to herself. Currently, she is reviewing a new duet she would most likely give to Samuel or Cameron to sing with her. However, she just couldn't get into the song.
A knock on the door gives her momentary relief and she looks up to see the new boy, Damian standing somewhat awkwardly at the door. "I think I left my jacket in here yesterday." Damian points to his usual chair, which indeed has a jacket on it and walks over to retrieve it. Before leaving out the door, he stops at the piano and glances over Lindsay's shoulder. "New song?"
"Yeah, a duet."
"Who are you planning to sing it with?"
The names Cameron and Samuel both suddenly get caught in her throat. That Irish accent is strangely blind-siding, being so sweet and innocent sounding. Lindsay makes a impulsive decision. "You could sing it with me, if you want to."
Looking over the first page of sheet music quickly, Damian shakes his head. "Definitely not my skill level. You should ask Cameron to do it. Catch you later." He gives Lindsay a good-natured smile before turning around and leaving, making Lindsay wish she had just said someone else's name in the first place. She has no real attachment to Damian, but she still feels sort of…rejected.
"What am I going to do?" Marissa asks, flopping down on her bed. Emily looks at her and how hopeless she appears. The raven-haired girl does pity her roommate. Though Marissa never seemed to have any major problems, this one was really getting to her.
"This is why I don't get involved in relationships within my school. I just met an amazing guy a few days ago. He goes to some public school and he has a lot of cute football friends," Emily stresses to Marissa, hoping she would jump on the opportunity. It would also give Emily an excuse to hang out with him again, though not that she needed one. However, this idea only makes Marissa sigh.
"I don't want another football boyfriend…"
"You want a nerd boyfriend. I just don't see why you aren't going for it." Emily immediately regrets say that because now she needs to here the whole, long explanation of why Marissa can't just go for it. Emile braces herself by lying down on her own bed and opening a magazine.
"I can't ask him out because he likes Lindsay. And even if he doesn't like Lindsay, Hannah likes him and I can't break Hannah's heart. And even in all those obstacles suddenly disappear, it still doesn't guarantee he likes me," Marissa explains. She looks over to see Emily not even listening to one word of what she is saying. "I might as well join a covenant and live the rest of my life as a nun, never being able to love a man again."
"I wouldn't call Cameron a man," Emily mutters, proving to Marissa she was indeed listening. "Listen Marissa, either man up and tell that boy how you feel or come on a date with me, my football player, and someone who could end up being your football player. Which will it be?"
"I guess it couldn't hurt going on one date with this football player," Marissa says thoughtfully, taking Emily by surprise. She never thought her roommate would actually agree to the date. Emily immediately has her phone out, sending a text to her possible fling. She tells him to meet her tonight and to bring a friend.
The twelve members of the Asheville Accents assemble in the choir room at exactly three. Their coach wasn't going to be there, so he left Lindsay in charge of the meeting. Taking this responsibility very seriously, Lindsay stands in front of her eleven other group members; ready to get down to business. "So, Marissa, what did you find out?"
Everyone turns to look at Marissa, waiting for her response. "Well, they are writing their songs for the competition, but they can't seem to find the inspiration. That is about all I got."
"That's all?" Ellis asks. "I thought you were going to be there for awhile. That meeting had to have lasted at least two hours."
"I had to leave unexpectedly…" Marissa says, trailing off as if trying to think of a good excuse as to why she didn't come back with a good amount of information. Everyone is too busy staring at Marissa to notice the guilty look on Cameron's face.
"It doesn't matter," Lindsay says, cutting off everyone's complaining. "We don't need to know every detail about our competition to beat them. I say we get started on choosing are own set list for Sectionals. Any ideas?" And that was the end of talking about the failed spy mission. The next hour or so consisted of song selection, a few lines sung here and there, and plenty of disagreements.
One thing is for certain though, the Accents are going to be a group to beat.
Author's Note
In case someone hasn't noticed, this starts a few months into the year.
I've been obsessed with the Glee Project lately and there are not enough stories for it. So, I've decided to make my own. I will take couple suggestions, but I have already set some up as you have seen. Feel free to send plot ideas as well. Also, this chapter is a bit longer than the other chapters will be. I wanted to get the story started off and I hate when people start a story and it is just a short prologue. Review!