Rachel Berry was sitting at her table thinking to herself as she smiled and thanked each fan for their appreciation and support.
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I cant believe I'm sitting here doing my first official book signing. Only four years on Broadway and I have a line of people out the door wanting my signature on a book about my life. A Berry On Top: The Semi-True Story of Rachel's Berry's Rise To Stardom is on the NY Times Bestseller List. I cant help but think about the real story of how I got here. Sure the book is real. At least most of it is. Some things may have been exaggerated and there might be some mild fabrication. My fan base is young. They appreciate the drama. Although the book is more of a comedy that is loosely based on my life. I mean, it says semi-true right there in the title. I like my fans not really knowing what's true and what isn't. Anyway, all of this began when I was a child but the story didn't start coming into play until I was sixteen years old and joined my high school glee club, as most people already know.
All I ever wanted was to be a star and I would have done anything do get there. I tried becoming Youtube famous but that didn't seem to work. I blame Justin Beiber. He beat me to it. Also, evil people in the school, like Quinn Fabray and Santana Lopez, made it difficult for me. You know them from the book but I'll get back to them.
After I made up a story about the glee club teacher being a pedophile to get him fired because he wouldn't give me solos the school's Spanish teacher, Will Schuester, took over the club. Yes I really did get my glee club teacher fired and I'd do it all over again. That'll teach him to not recognize someone's star potential.
Mr. Schuester started gathering more people to add to the club. Tina, Mercedes, Artie and Kurt. Our little group of misfits sucked, except me of course. And maybe Mercedes, but I'll get back to her too. The only thing missing was a strong leading male vocalist to match with my talents. To be perfectly honest we never found him but we did get close. My fans know him as Finn Hudson.
Finn was my man throughout the story. The popular jock guy being chased around by the naive ingénue girl looking for a leading man on the stage and in her life. Finn was everything. Finn was perfect. My readers loved Finn. They all tell me they wish they could have a boyfriend who would be willing to give up anything for them. A man who would fly all the way too New York just to tell someone to stay away from their woman. Girls really dig all that hero stuff. I always just smile at their optimistic view on relationships and what they think the perfect one really is. They all tell me how lucky I was and ask me where Finn is now. I always laugh a little because there is no Finn Hudson. I made him up. The leading man in the glee club was my then boyfriend, Noah Puckerman. He wasn't as strong of a singer as I am but we harmonized well. He wasn't a jock and he wasn't popular. He wan an outcast just like me. He loved music, singing, and he really did clean pools. It was Quinn and Santana who got some of the popular guys to join the club. The man I really knew was Noah but the man I wrote was Puck, the douche bag jock loser guy that I dated briefly. I was pretty mad at him back when I was in high school and he's the reason I created Finn. Noah cheated on me with Quinn Fabray, so we didn't last too long. He still remained the lead of the glee club with me. Not because I wanted him too. It was Mr. Schuester's call. I made Finn up because I figured it would make a more interesting story. Teenage girls haven't changed much since I was a teenage girl. They all still think there is this perfect person out there who will come into your life and give it meaning. You didn't think there really was a person that infallible, did you? Or that I've ever really stalk someone until they give up and date me? Please. I'm Rachel Berry.
There was no epic love triangle. I just let Quinn have Noah. Why would I fight to keep someone who cheated on me? I mean, be serious. Especially when he got the girl pregnant. Quinn did give the baby up for adoption but not to anyone named Shelby Corcoran, because she also doesn't exist. I still have no idea who my biological mother is and I'm okay with that. I was never really interested in finding out. My dads raised me and whoever that woman is was only a surrogate anyway. I actually prefer not knowing. I'm assuming she has talent so I kind of get off on the idea that I might be beating my own mother out for starring roles. With that being said, Idina Menzel and I do seem to have a striking resemblance. It's fun to think about anyway. There was, however, a Jesse St. James. I did have a brief affair with the lead of a rival show choir, much to my teammates dismay. He never transferred to McKinley and that relationship went nowhere fast. It was Santana who made sure I stayed away from him when he made a fool out of me. Especially after Mr. Scheuster hired him to co-run the glee club. Apparently Schue had a thing for making me have to awkwardly interact with my exes because he's 2 for 2. Anyway, back to Santana. Yes, Santana Lopez, the evil bitch from the beginning of my book helped me out with my breakup with Jesse. She and Quinn joined the glee club to supposedly help the cheerleading coach, Sue, take it down, just like the book says. Santana ended up loving it, which I knew she would. No one else knew besides myself and Kurt that Santana was always a performer. We've known each other since we were children back in dance class. No matter how mean she was to me at the time I kept her secret, as did Kurt. It just seemed like something she was ashamed of for some reason. Luckily she got over that.
As you may have already guessed I've never been engaged. The only engagement was between Mr. Schuester and Ms. Emma Pillsbury, the guidance counselor. They got married in my senior year and the whole glee club attended their wedding, which was a success. No one was left at the alter, there were no hotel room sex parties or anything crazy like that. They are still married to this day and have two children. They have an 8 year old boy named William and a 5 year old girl named Quinn. They named the little girl Quinn as a tribute because Quinn really did get into a car accident while driving to their wedding and she died. I figured writing that she was paralyzed and learned to walk again and getting accepted into Yale would be a better send off and give my readers someone to root for. Writing her having an affair with her college professor was just something extra I came up with for reasons. I think it gave her a little bit of a badassness. Same reason I wrote her sleeping with Santana. Well, technically that part is more of a joke between Santana and I. I'll touch up more on that later. We didn't actually find out about the accident until after the wedding. Everyone was devastated. Santana took it terribly since Quinn was her best friend. To be honest I've always known Santana had a little bit of a crush on Quinn. To be even more honest now that I think about it I kind of did too. She was beautiful and everyone either wanted her or wanted to be her. I was pretty upset myself but Santana took it harder than anyone. Good thing she had Brittany to help her through it.
Santana and Brittany were an adorable couple. Always holding hands and sneaking kisses in the back of the choir room when they thought no one was looking. Brittany was extremely naive and not exactly the brightest bulb on the Christmas tree. Their friendship made Santana very happy and their relationship made her even happier. The kiss they shared in front of the entire school on Valentines Day was such a beautiful moment. Her being so strong after Finn outed her sexuality for the whole school, and eventually all of Lima, to hear. But you already know Finn doesn't exist so that couldn't have really happened. Something else doesn't really add up either. Remember how in the beginning of the story it's Santana and Quinn who are picking on me and plotting with Sue to take down the glee club? There is no mention of Brittany until much later. It's because it took me a while to come up with that character. Brittany doesn't exist either. I was the one who helped Santana cope with losing her best friend. She helped me with Jesse so I figured I should be there for her. There wasn't any romance involved or any big coming out story. We did end up building a very good friendship together though. Like I said before, we've known each other since we were kids. We used that as a stepping stone into a friendship and we found out we had a lot in common. Santana admitted she's always been a big broadway fan, which to be honest didn't exactly surprise me. She's had the role of Rizzo from Grease memorized since she was one year old, after all. We starred in our high school production of West Side Story together and owned the glee club with our dynamic duets. She also did admit to me that she is a lesbian, but I never told anyone. The glee club never knew either. It was kind of our little secret. She's out now though. The look on her face was hilarious when she started telling people and everyone seemed to already know. I guess the saying is true that everyone in your life knows before you do. I didn't figure out until many years later how true that really is. I just had to give Santana something really over the top in my story. I kind of put her through hell in my book but she's not mad. She understands why I've chosen to keep a lot of things between us private.
Graduating high school was an emotional moment for us all. Kurt and Santana really did move to New York with me. There is no NYADA. That school doesn't even exist but my fans haven't seemed to notice. The three of us went to NYU. At the time I had no idea how important Kurt and Santana would be in my life. We were best friends through the better part of our senior year and decided since we're all going to the same college might as well get a nice apartment together. It ended up being the best decision I ever made. Mercedes and Noah started dating some time in the middle of our Junior year and they moved to California together after graduation. He still owns his own pool cleaning business but expanded it into a celebrity pool cleaning business, thanks to his now wife, Mercedes, who is an international pop singer. Mike really did go on to be a dancer in Chicago, but he never dated Tina. I made that part up. Tina and Artie stayed together all through high school but they did eventually break up. I still keep in touch with Tina, who is a talent agent now. Artie did eventually become a famous movie director. I only know this because I see his name pop up on a movie screen from time to time. The little Fondue For Two show that I gave to Brittany was inspired by the real Fondue For Two, which is a talk show hosted by Sam Evans. He's kind of a poor mans Jimmy Fallon but I've done him a solid and appeared on his show a couple of times. I was just on his show promoting my book a couple weeks ago. He bragged to the audience about how I asked him to the prom and he turned me down at first. He and I both know I made that up but I played along.
The Entertainment World's best kept secret is Sam is gay and dating our ex-classmate, Blaine Anderson, who always seems to be starring it whatever movie Artie is directing. Blaine was never part of a rival glee club. Kurt didn't meet him by transferring schools because of bullying. Blaine joined the glee club along with Sam during our Junior year when we were recruiting new members. He and Sam started dating shortly after. It's cute that they've been together this long. In my story I wrote Blaine with Kurt because I've always thought they would have been cuter together. I wrote Sam dating almost every girl in the glee club since I couldn't exactly out him in my book. It's not a tell-all and not my place.
I'm sure people are wondering if I really dated a prostitute. The answer to that question is no. Brody is real but he wasn't a prostitute. We never even dated. He was just the first friend I made outside of Kurt and Santana while at NYU. He's totally gay and of course I introduced him to Kurt. They've been together for years now and got married as soon as we graduated. Kurt became a fashion designer and Brody is a Broadway actor. The truth is I didn't date any more guys after dating Jesse. I didn't start dating again until I went to college. I found out a lot more about myself and what I really wanted. I made my education and goals more of a priority. Of course I dated but I didn't want a relationship to steal any of my focus away. I did eventually find myself in a serious relationship after college. I can't say I didn't see it coming but at the same time I wasn't looking for it. But you know what the proverbial they say: It always finds you when you aren't looking. We're still together to this very day and I couldn't be happier.
My college life was pretty amazing despite never having a relationship with a male hooker. Remember that professor Quinn had an affair with? That was actually me. It was my dance teacher, Cassandra July. Yes, a female. I've always known I liked woman as well as men but I never imagined I'd actually act on it by sleeping with my teacher. I couldn't help myself. She was just so sexy. Just like the book says, I was alone with her helping her perform some stretches. What the book doesn't say is one thing lead to another and she ended up being the one stretching me out. Sometimes I think I should have included the real story but I'm happy with the way I wrote it. I was the one who slept with Santana too. Obviously it didn't happen at Will and Emma's wedding but it did happen at a wedding. We got very drunk and hooked up at Kurt and Brody's wedding. There was no sense in keeping my bisexuality a secret at that point, not that I ever really did. It was just something everyone knew about but no one ever talked about. It's not like I was the type to bring random girls, or guys for that matter, home every other night and I didn't date often anyway. And any time I did date Santana always looked around to try to find something wrong with them. That part of the book was true, she just didn't do it to Brody. She did it to oh, um, everyone else. It became a game we played. I'd just come home from a date and immediately ask her why it's not worth a second one.
As for my old glee club, my book has a lot of action happening with relationships and superheros and school musicals but the truth is I don't really know what happened to it. We all graduated and our seats were filled by Blake, Marley, Kitty and Jake. At least those were the names I came up with for them. I actually have no idea who was in the glee club after we all graduated. Blaine, Sam, Joe, Sugar, Tina and Artie were still there and that's all I knew. I found out from Tina that Unique did transfer there from Carmel High. Only god knows why though. It's not like the club was going to win any more competitions without me there. As far as I'm aware they haven't but in my story I throw them a bone. I didn't want to seem like too much of a ham that the club crashed and burned after I left. Did anyone really think it wouldn't though? I mean, really. Not to say that who was left in the club weren't talented but still. Really?
The rivalries, the friendships, the performances- it was all real. The glee club was a family to me. We had our ups and downs. We had our drama and our sweet moments. They all helped me realize who I am and who I could become. All of us became a success in our own way. I'm a huge Broadway star, I have a book, I have offers for TV roles. I couldn't have ask for anything better. Santana really landed her dream job too. She does some stage acting from time to time but she's really more well known for being the star of Forensic, which is a crime drama filmed here in New York. I always joke that only she would be able to find a career that combines both her love of acting and her love of snooping into everyone's business.
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Rachel continued signing copies of her book while laughing to herself thinking if her fans knew some of the real story of her life they would have no idea what to make of it. Her head is still down when the next person in line steps up to the table. She takes Rachel's hand and slips a ring on her finger. As Rachel looks up and sees it's Santana standing in front of her. "I hope you saying yes is the real ending to this story."
Rachel's smile was so wide you could see it from space. It's moments like these that remind her why she changed her relationship with Santana in the book. All of those tiny moments in their lives add up to a really good story but it's their story.
The End
