Started my daily ficlets to make the hiatus pass, then decided to keep going with a 2nd cycle, and then a 3rd, 4th, etc through 18th cycle. Now cycle 19!
READ MY MIND SET - I've been wanting to do something like this, in some way, for a while now. Listening to the song "Read My Mind" by the Killers, there were a set of lines I thought might be good for inspiration, so...here we are! There will be EIGHT, four in the first week of this cycle, four in the third/last.
TODAY: "The Teenage Queen"
"The Teenage Queen"
Quinn
She'd forgotten how tight the ponytail could feel sometimes. It felt like she could pinpoint every last root of her hair without looking. But at least it was a reminder, along with the uniform… She was one of them… part of the team.
She had the whole summer to consider her next move, now that she'd had the baby. She worked off the weight in those weeks, not having really come to a decision yet about the 'and then.'
She knew what she'd told Coach Sylvester, back in the days of the yearbook photo and she stood by it. But now she was living back home, and things had changed for the better there. And she had her body back, too. Now it was becoming that she had a choice. She hated being invisible… She'd been willing to let people think what they would of her, through the Glist, just so maybe they'd remember that she existed. And while Glee Club was fun and very good to her, she knew it wasn't enough. The only visibility she'd get from there would be as a Slushie target.
It meant… She knew it meant she only had about one option, to get back what she'd lost… She was going to rejoin the Cheerios. Coach Sylvester wasn't the problem; she pretty much knew what to say to make her take her back, that wasn't even an issue. She just had to show up at the tryouts, say her piece, and she'd be back in her flippy skirt…
It wasn't Sue who was the problem; she was. She wasn't going to be happy being back, not really. She'd been satisfied putting that part of her life behind her, for a while… It was hard not to notice the things that changed for the better. She didn't have to worry herself over certain things anymore, which made her feel so much freer. It was like getting out from a long hypnotization… She remembered it all but she had no idea why she'd done some of what she'd done.
Except the longer she was out of the Cheerios bubble, the more she remembered the one thing that she hadn't factored when she'd quit… She'd wanted to belong. Even in joining the Cheerios in the first place, all she could see as her innermost desire had nothing to do with glory. All she ever wanted was for people to accept her, to recognize her as one of them, part of them… Sure, she had that with Glee Club, too; it was one of the reasons why she'd truly gone on to appreciate it. But it wasn't enough to be part of them. This she learned when she became nothing more than the pregnant girl that might as well have been invisible, the way they treated her.
She worried though, even if she was making this decision on her own. She wasn't going to disappear into the hive again. She knew she wouldn't, because she still had her other… her true family… those in this school who cared so much more for her; she was stronger for having them, she knew this. Maybe this move wouldn't make sense to them…
She needed to find herself again and, even if she'd grown so much outside of it, part of who she needed to be at this time was still inside that uniform. In there she could be her… the old Quinn… It wasn't Sue Sylvester she needed, not the pom poms, not the dancing, the trophies, just the ghost of who she was.
So, with just as much purpose as the day she'd talked herself into that squad, she'd marched into that gym and up to the center, across from where the coach sat. As expected, she was met with some resistance, but that wasn't anything she hadn't seen before. She held her own just fine… and she spoke what she'd come up with already. She wasn't going to be denied.
The next morning, she was called to the coach's office, out of first period. She knocked on the door and heard a low call for her to enter. She only had to push the door in a little before she spotted the plastic-wrapped uniform and accessories left on the chair across from Sue's desk. The coach's chair was turned just enough so that she didn't have to appear like she was paying attention, reading a magazine. Quinn nodded to herself, moving to pick up the items left for her, and…
"Don't make me regret this," the coach's voice sounded just as her posture would indicate – 'not paying attention' as far as anyone was concerned. Quinn didn't reply, only took what was hers and left.
She ducked into the girls' bathroom and tore the plastic, pulled out the uniform. Locked in one of the stalls, she pulled off her regular clothes and slipped on the old red, white, and black. She put on the sneakers, and then she turned to the mirror to pull up her ponytail.
For a split second she looked at herself, wondering what she was doing, but she didn't listen. The uniform felt strange at first… Maybe it had just been a while… but she didn't mind. She was going to walk out into that hall and she would be Quinn Fabray, Captain of the Cheerios, someone to recognize once more… she hoped… Head held high, and…
THE END
[A/N: This is a one-shot ficlet, story alert won't get you anything! ;)]