the last goodbye
If there had been one thing they had learned throughout their high school experience,
it had been far much deeper then the simplest way to solve a polynomial or the square root of 75.
It wasn't that you should never wear socks and sandals or eat the cafeterias sloppy joes.
Mr. Will Schuester thought, as he sat at the front of the audience watching the matured faces of each student he had taught as they stood up and shook principal Figgans hand as he handed them a black folded that, undoubtedly held their ticket out of here. Out of Lima Ohio.
The lessons they could look back on while waiting to graduate or even moving into their dorm in the university.
It was the life lessons.
The tough stuff.
Truth is, was it's the easiest thing in the book.
Treat each other the way you want to be treated. Don't be mean. Don't Discriminate.
They had spent all their four years learning what that truly meant. Glee club was all about the tough stuff really. Like Rachel had said all those years ago "Being apart of something made you special." Had she been right?
It was High School. You didn't have the kids at the bottom of the pyramid of society, believing that they were in fact special.
It was a hard thing, Mr Schuester realized as he stood and clapped for the class of 2012. It was a hard thing watching them go.
Not only his Glee kids go but all of them. The ones who pulled it together and passed, the ones who graduated with honors and he felt his heart clench for the ones who weren't here today. The ones who hadn't made it.
In the movies that make High School seem like its the best time of your life, but those movies don't really focus on the ones who studied every night for chemistry or the ones who got slushied every now and then, did they?
Kids would be kids,
And the truth is, getting through what these kids had been through was something he believed was harder then anything then any adults would ever experience.
It was the kind of thing you never truly got over.
Even until this day he would wake up in a cold sweat, knees weak and a grossly chill crawling down his back.
Sometimes he even woke up screaming her name or reaching out for her or something.
His mom didn't get much sleep either those nights.
She had suggested a psychiatrist. Many times. Just as Principal Figgans had ordered when all was restored to their normal Lima Ohio lives.
After that nobody really returned to normal though, well who would after something like that?
Everything kind of flipped upside down. It was like taking a blank piece of paper, crumpling it up and then unfolding it again, trying to smooth it down best as possible.
It would just never be the same.
He sat in his dress suit in his kitchen, a cold Root Beer in his hand. He could hear everybody laughing and mingling just outside in his back yard. Carole and Kurt had insisted on having the Glee kids over to the house after the Graduation ceremony. One last time kind of thing, you know?
Finn twisted on the stool he was sitting on, smiling down looking at his root-beer. He should have been out their celebrating with them, but he just needed some kind of break from it all. A moment to catch his breath.
The sliding door slid open and Finn looked up, expecting it to be his mom coming in to refill the pasta salad but it wasn't.
She stood there in her summer dress that was fittingly formal for the occasion. Her hair was pinned back at the sides and she smiled up at him from under her bangs. His breath caught in his throat.
"What are you doing in here, you're missing the party?"
He couldn't help the smile that spread across his face. It was his immediate reaction with her. "Just needed some time, you know?" He gave her his crooked smile and she walked towards him. Her eyes infinitely concerned.
"Is everything OK Finn?"
She was just as gorgeous as the first day he met her. She had been accepted to NYU at the beginning of the school year and he had never been so proud of her. She rested her small hands together on the counter, right beside his soda.
"I told myself a year ago that If I ever got out of Lima, it would be the happiest day of my life." He looked at her, her eyes big and brown. He placed his big hands beside her hands, but not touching hers. "And now I realize how much I would give just to stay around a bit longer, you know?"
He couldn't tell if the tears in her eyes were made up of joy or sadness.
"Rach, please don't cry." He said, he wanted to lean over and wipe the tear that rolled down her cheek. She gave him a sniffled smile.
"You made it Finn." His heart was either breaking or growing an inch or two. "You have the world ahead of you."
He couldn't smile for her. All the things in the world he could have done for her, but he would not lean forward to pull her into his arms. He couldn't do that to himself.
He was leaving in exactly one week for Michigan. The University there had offered him a Football scholarship. Rachel was right, he did do it.
She leaned towards him now, and he knew by the look in her glossy eyes what she wanted from him now.
He jumped off the stool he was sitting in, backing away from her.
"Finn, I-" And just like he always did, he waited for the next few words to come. But as he knew, they never did.
"Rachel, I think you should go back." He said, nodding towards the glass doors where Kurt and Puck and Mercedes all mingled on the other side.
It was hurt, pain was the first thing that flashed across her face and she looked down at her shoes. That look, it always gave him those fucking chills that ran down his back until he felt sick but he wouldn't stop pushing for it. "Rachel, go. I'm sure they've all missed you by now."
His joke didn't come out the way he had wanted it to and all it did was take a few more hits on his own damn heart. She turned from him, and all he could do was watch her go without saying another word.
"Shit!" She cursed as she dropped her folder to the ground.
Finn turned around towards her and got up from the chair he was sitting in to grab it for her. She was a slender lady. Very pretty, and young. He was surprised. Whenever he thought of a "Shrink" He always thought of a guy with glasses and a notepad or something.
It kind of weirded him out.
"Oh Sorry!" She huffed and walked to her desk which he had been sitting in front of for the last ten minutes. "I spilled coffee all over my cardigan and had to change."
After dropping the rest of the handful of paperwork she had been carrying, onto her desk she took a seat and sighed, turning to look at him for the first time.
"Finn Hudson?"
He nodded and she gave him a smile, and then turned to open one of the folders she had just dropped. She scanned over it briefly, nodding and occasionally looking up at him.
"So from what Dr. Krummens has stated is that you came to talk to me about the event that occurred on May 15th 2011." She pushed her glasses up from the bridge of her nose and looked at him now. "Well Finn, I am a psychiatrist and I want you to open up to me as much as possible. It is my job to help. And no matter how hard these next few sessions will be for us, I want you to try your best for me."
She was nice. She didn't talk urgently or commandingly. She was kind, kind of like his mom. He liked that. He gave he a tight smile, fiddling his thumbs in his lap.
"Oh!" She smiled warmly. "I forgot to introduce myself! My name is Mrs. Boker."
"It nice to meet you." he smiled, and watched as she pulled out a notebook from her desk drawer.
"Talk to me Finn." She smiled at him.
His heart raced like it always did, but what was the quote that used to say? You can't run from your past?
Well he accepted that a long time ago, and now was the time to throw it all out.
Leave it all behind in Lima before taking off and starting somewhere else.
Somewhere new.
He took a deep breath and looked at Mrs. Boker who smiled in return.
"Whenever you're ready"
