Author's Note: I actually started to write this sometime in December (!!), planning on posting it pretty soon after. Or at least before the Back 9 started up again. Well, I got one of those right ;) This takes place after "Wheels" but before "Sectionals". I have three chapters planned out for this, but I'm posting the first two together since Chapter 1 is relatively short. I'd love to hear from you, so please let me know what you think!
Disclaimer: I most certainly do not own anything.
The last several weeks were horrible for Tina. But she deals with it the she always has and there are no outbursts, no angry shouting directed at the person involved. She goes to school, goes to glee practice and comes home, rinse and repeat. It's a routine that helps her quietly and firmly act like everything is okay, that nothing's really changed. But it all comes to a head eventually one chilly night after yet another Glee practice in which he studiously avoids her gaze and Kurt gives her that infuriating pitying look that says, "Oh, honey."
It's around midnight and in her bedroom Tina is blasting Hole's Live Through This at what must be an illegal volume. Paramore just isn't gonna do it right now. Not with how angry-no, pissed-she's feeling at the world, at Artie. The words he's said to her that night (the most he's said to her since then) are ringing in her head and she just needs something, anything to drown it out. For once she's grateful that her mother is working late as there is no one around to pound on her door and tell her to turn it down. Most importantly there's no one around to see how self-indulgent she thinks she's being right now. The Cohen-Changs do not do anger (or any extreme emotion it seems), and they most certainly do not make a scene.
People think that she and her parents are from different planets, that their perfectly tailored designer business suits and immaculate leather briefcases don't mesh with her fishnets, black hoodies and dark blue nail polish. She thinks they're wrong. Sure, she'd rather be tied to a chair and forced to listen to Miley Cyrus until her ears bleed before she'd apply to the Wharton School and spend the rest of her life in business meetings, but underneath that there's no denying that they're kindred in more ways than just blood.
What makes her parents so good at what they do is that they both have one hell of a poker face. Calm, cool and collected always. And Tina knows that she's just as good as they are.
Rachel gets yet another solo? That's okay. Slushie facial and it's not even 9am? Fine, she's bought a change of clothes. Best friend and the biggest crush she's ever had pulverizes her heart and ditches her so fast her head spins a little? Well, that's alright too. She'll just deal with it the way she always has.
With cautious silence, her face a blank, stiff mask.
But tonight, she doesn't want that. She wants to throw things, specifically every single mix CD he's ever made her. She's embarrassed to look back and see herself pouring over the track lists and over-analyzing every song for hints that he might like her. She wants to put on her combat boots with the steel toes and kick holes into the wall. But she doesn't. Because she is her parents 'child and she is not going to make a scene.
She throws her Jack Skellington pillow at the wall anyway.
Its soft 'thunk' is unsatisfying.
About twenty minutes later when she's calmed down a little, she sits in her bathroom staring down a container of Manic Panic hair dye in Infra-Red wondering if she wants to do it. She wants to express how angry she is and dying her hair seemed less messy than throwing and smashing things. As a bonus, the cleanup is a little easier. She goes ahead and decides to do a test run. She bleaches a thin strand of her hair then applies the dye. It comes out bright red. She smiles at the little strand in the mirror. It's violent red. Fuck You Red. She smirks at her own reflection. The strand is a little bit behind her neck and hidden beneath a curtain of black and bright blue but she likes knowing that it is there.
But then the next song comes on, slower and a little quieter than the rest of the album. It's sadder too, or maybe she's just projecting… she doesn't know.
I am the girl you know can't look you in the eye
I am the girl you know so sick I cannot try
I am the one you want can't look you in the eye
I am the girl you know
I lie and lie and lie
She sighs. The red isn't her though. Well, it's her now but she knows she'll regret it if she goes all Infra-Red. Bright cobalt blue is her favorite color and she thinks that says more about her than Fuck You Red.
She turns off her stereo and gets ready for bed. She crams her textbooks and her iPod in her messenger bag and pulls back her flowery duvet cover that hasn't been replaced since she was twelve. She lies in bed, and the silence and darkness of her room seems suffocating after the loud music. She tries not to think about him.
She keeps the hidden red streak in her hair.