~*~Dear Artie, Count Me In Redux~*~
by Hatter of Madness
Usually I don't put an author's note in the beginning but I feel I need to on this story. I wrote a story called Dear Artie, Count Me In on this account, but I didn't like the story line and scrapped it. I revisited this story line in a new light the other day and came up with this. I hope it's better than the last one. It's still on the site, but I do not recommend reading it for sanity purposes. Just stick to this. Please and thank you. By the way, this first chapter is going to be pretty boring, but I needed to introduce the story. Thanks for reading.
Chapter One
I had told my parents that I didn't mind moving from our beautiful home in sunny Sanger, California to Lima, Ohio, a place I was convinced was the end of my life. My stepfather, John, whom had been my father figure for thirteen and a half of my fourteen years, had said I was being melodramatic and that I needed to learn to try new things, but I was not looking forward to that move.
It wasn't that I was losing any friends in California - I was socially awkward and girls and boys alike teased me. The thing I didn't want to leave behind was glee club. I was a freshman in high school and at Sanger High, I had joined glee. Ever since I was young, I had taken voice and dance lessons and was budding into a lovely soprano, one of the only ones at Sanger. Now, I would be leaving California forever and moving to Ohio.
On the first day in Lima, I was helping my parents unload the boxes out of our SUV when I heard Dad - what I had grown to call John - say, "Missy, your mother wants you outside."
My name was Melissa Amanda Widman, but both of my parents called me Missy for short to save time. Usually, the only time I was ever called Melissa, a name that I personally loved, was when one of my parents was angry.
"Okay," I told Dad, putting down the box in my arms - it was supposed to go in the kitchen, the room I was standing in, anyway - and went outside. Mom was standing at the car, about to unpack another box, when she turned around.
"Missy, someone's here to see you," she said. "Take a break, okay?"
"Alright, Mom," I said and walked to the end of our driveway. There stood a teenage boy, sixteen from the looks of him, wearing a very expensive jacket. I didn't want to be rude and ask how he could afford such clothing and ignored it. "Hello?" I said shyly.
"Hi," he said back. His voice was high pitched - a little too high pitched for my taste, but it was pleasant enough - and sugar coated. "You just move in?"
"Kind of," I said. Hence the moving truck, right?
"I'm Kurt Hummel. I live across the street." He jerked his head across the street at a pleasant enough house. "You new to Lima?"
"New to Ohio, really," I said. "I'm Melissa, by the way. Melissa Widman." Kurt seemed very nice. He extended his hand to me. I looked at it cautiously and finally shook his hand.
"Nice to meet you, Melissa." We talked for a little while and he filled me in on the events of Lima, Ohio and the high school I'd be attending, William McKinley High School. Finally, he said the five words I desperately needed to hear: "They have a glee club."
"A glee club?" I said hopefully. "Like a serious glee club?" When I had lived in California, glee was the one thing that kept me focused and kept me from going insane. I had thought I had lost that by moving to Ohio. Luckily, all I had to do, Kurt said, was make it past the glee club teacher, William Schuester. "And Mr. Schue lets anyone in glee club," he added.
"Anyone?"
"Anyone willing to try, I guess." Kurt played with a loose strand of his hair. "He's a Spanish teacher, too, you may have him if you're taking Spanish."
"Ah," I said back. I was never any good at making conversation. "I won't know until Tuesday." My parents had decided that I needed an extra day off before starting school - a day, I had insisted, that I didn't need - so I would be even more confused when I started.
"KURT!" yelled a voice from behind us.
Kurt turned around. Coming towards us was a man, middle aged and balding. I assumed it was Kurt's father.
"Yeah, Dad?"
The man was holding hairspray. "You left this on the bathroom counter again."
"Well, there's not many other places it can go."
"Just don't be so cluttered next time, okay?"
"Alright."
The man walked away. I was even more confused. Hairspray? In California, only girls used hairspray. "Uh...hairspray?" I asked.
"It's organic," Kurt responded. I had no idea what that had to do with - well, with anything - but didn't say anything. "So I'll see you around?" he asked.
"Uh...sure."
"Do you need a ride to school? We can carpool," Kurt offered. Kurt, it seemed, was a lot like the sole friend I had had in California, Monica, but I didn't say anything about that, either.
"I'll talk to Dad about it," I said.
"Talk to you later." And with that, he left. It was odd, but it almost seemed like I had a friend.
I went in the house and closed the door behind me. Mom and Dad were standing in the kitchen, discussing the coloring of the walls. It seemed that Mom had wanted a neutral shade like a pale, pale pink or tan, but Dad wanted an olive green. I cleared my throat to announce my presence and added, "Kid in the room."
Mom and Dad immediately stopped. "Oh, Missy," Mom said, as though she was expecting someone else. "Who was that outside?"
"Kurt Hummel," I said, only barely remembering the name as I said it. "He lives across the street. He wanted to know if I needed a ride to school Tuesday. You know...carpooling."
"Oh, sure," Mom said. "It'll save your father time."
I was never sure why Mom always referred to John as 'your father'. I had called him 'Dad' strictly for the reason that ever since I could talk I had called him Dad and when Mom had sat me down and told me about my biological father I had grown too used to the name to stop using it. Mom had said in that conversation that she would refer to him as 'John', seeing as he wasn't my biological father, even though he was the closest thing to a father figure I had ever had.
When Mom was in high school, she went to senior prom with a boy named Jacob. They went to a party after the prom and Mom had gotten pregnant with me. Jacob, not wanting a child, ran off to Mississippi, where he had always wanted to go to, and lost contact with Mom. I had never met him before.
Shortly after this had happened, Mom had met John, five years her senior, and they fell in love. After I was born and Mom was done with high school, she married John. Since I was too young to remember their wedding, I had always assumed John was my father, and to me, he was. He was always there for me, unlike Jacob.
I could never bring myself to call my biological father 'Dad' - to me, he was Jacob, a total stranger. I had only seen pictures of him, and, looking at them, it was obvious I was his child - same sparkling blue eyes, same curly dirty blonde hair, same face shape and structure. Mom refused to associate me with him, though, and did not give me his last name of 'Riley'. Instead of having John's last name, Tyler, I had Mom's maiden name, Widman. I was perfectly fine with this, as I prefered Widman to Riley and Tyler, as both, to me, were merely boy's names.
"Your stuff's in your room," Dad said, bringing me out of my thoughts. "It's up the stairs, last door on the right."
"Thanks, Dad," I said, embarrassed. They had brought all my things to my room because I had decided to be a gossip. I went up the stairs to my new bedroom.
Well, if Mom wanted a neutral kitchen, all she'd have to do was move everything from the kitchen up to my bedroom. The walls were the perfect shade of pale pink for her tastes. A bed, sans mattress, was already pressed against the right wall under a window. The windows had royal blue drapes that horribly clashed with the walls. I assumed it was for privacy that night as I slept.
After a minute or two alone, Dad came up. "How is it?" he asked.
"Um..." did not even begin to describe how I felt. "It's roomy," I said, which was a plus - my old bedroom in Sanger was practically a shoebox. "And there's wooden floors like I wanted." For some reason, I hated having carpetting in my old room. I had asked Dad that if we absolutely had to move here, my bedroom have wooden flooring. It seemed I had gotten my wish.
"You hate it," Dad said. I had hoped that he would find the only two pleasant things I could find to be sufficient. It seemed that my stepfather knew more about me than my own mother.
"Well, a little," I said. "Mainly the walls, though. I really don't like pink, Dad, no matter how close to white it is. But it can stay as long as the curtains go..."
"The curtains stay up for now," Dad said. "We'll get you new ones when your mother takes you shopping tomorrow," he finished, and immediately I was crestfallen. I shouldn't have been - I knew I couldn't get what I wanted that easily. However, as a perfectionist, until the new drapes were up, I would be driven to insanity. "We can repaint if we have to."
"If I put up a few posters and stuff it should be fine." I had brought along posters of my favorite singers and bands, including Michael Jackson, Avril Lavigne, and the Beatles. I even had one or two for the Harry Potter series. Originally, it had been to remind me of home but now I was thankful that I had brought them. I had always wanted a wall in my bedroom where there wasn't really a wall, it was so covered with posters, and now it seemed like I'd be getting the chance. "Thanks, Dad." I wasn't sure why I was thanking him exactly, but he didn't seem to catch up on that. "Uh, will I at least be getting a matress?" The only thing besides the clash of the walls and curtains that bothered me was that there was a bed, metal framed, but no matress.
Dad frowned. "I think it's downstairs...I can go find it..."
"Take your time," I said, and he left again. I started going through my boxes of stuff. There was one filled with magazines and posters. Time to do some redecorating, I thought.
Five minutes, several magazine posters, and three real posters later, my wall looked much better. It was still a bit bare, but the pale pink paint choice was not as obvious anymore.
That night I fell asleep, having a weird dream about kissing someone. It was odd. I couldn't see the boy's face and I had no idea who he was. Whoever it was, though, was sitting down and hard dark brown hair. For some reason, though, somewhere in the back of my mind I felt that this was meant to be, like it was really going to happen. I immediately forgot about it as soon as I woke up.
After Mom had taken me shopping for school clothes (which I didn't need) and new curtains for my bedroom, I got dressed on Tuesday in a new pair of denim shorts and a white polo with the new black Converse Mom had forced me to get (I already had enough Converse, I defended, but she tried to tell me that all I had were hightops, not just regular sneakers). I pulled my hair out of my face and got ready for school. As soon as I called, "Bye, Mom, bye, Dad, I'm leaving," I heard footsteps bounding down the stairs. Mom and Dad had appeared, Dad with a camera in his hands.
"Dad, I'm fourteen, you don't need t-" I said, but was cut off by the flash of the camera. Immediately my hands went behind my glasses and covered my eyes from the camera flash.
"Good luck, Missy," my mother said.
"I don't need luck," I mumbled.
"You sure you don't need a ride?" Dad asked hopefully. At that moment, a car horn honked from outside.
"Sorry, Dad, but Kurt told me he'd give me a ride," I said, retreating to the door, glad to have an excuse to get out of there. "Bye."
I got in Kurt's car. It was pretty nice, I reflected. As I buckled up, I said, "Thanks-you spared me the embarrassing car ride with Dad."
"No problem," Kurt said. He started towards the school. Under his breath, he was humming some song (though to me it sounded like Gibberish): "Rah, rah, ah ah ah..."
"What?"
"Lady Gaga."
"Lady-who?"
He slammed on the breaks. I realized quickly that I had not said something smart. He turned to me, shocked. "You don't know Lady Gaga?" I was glad that we were the only ones on the street, as we were stopped in the middle of the otherwise empty road.
"Um...well, I just like Michael Jackson and the Beatles more than...well, than Justin Bieber and All Time Low," I said quietly.
He was still staring at me like some sort of freak. "Haven't heard of...you deprived child!" I didn't see what the big deal was. Lady Gaga was only a singer. To Kurt, though, it seemed, she was some sort of idol. He grabbed a CD from the dashboard and shoved it into his car's player, pressing play. Immediately, I hard, "Whoa oh, oh ohhh, oh oh, caught in a bad romance..." This was the song Kurt was singing. To me, it sounded like techno noise, not really a "real song", but for some reason, I liked it.
"That's Lady Gaga," he said. I nodded.
Apparently, not knowing Lady Gaga was the least of my worries.
I had gotten a William Schuester for fifth period Spanish, like Kurt had said I might, but other than that, my schedule did not look promising.
1. Advanced Biology - Mrs. Villalovos
2. Pre A.P. English - Mrs. Rouse
3. Advanced Geometry - Mr. Raynes
4. P.E. - Mr. Banegas
5. Spanish - Mr. Schuester
6. Dance - Mrs. Morey
I had been put in three advanced classes. P.E. before lunch was favorable, and according to Kurt, Mr. Schuester was a great teacher, but the rest was not that amazing. Kurt helped little as I tried to decipher the map.
"Mrs. Rouse is nice," he tried to assure me, "and Mr. Raynes is cool, too. Mrs. Morey is nice as long as you stay on her good side." That helped the least of all. "Mr. Banegas..." He trailed off. Uh oh. "And, well, I don't think Mrs. Villalovos really knows what she's doing. She's pretty new to teaching. I had her as a long term sub last year in chemistry."
I was not having a good time.
The bell rang. "Oh, meet me at lunch, I'll be with Mercedes," Kurt said. I didn't have time to ask who Mercedes was before the rush of students came at me. I was lost to wander the halls.
I looked at my map. Biology was down the hall to my right, continue straight, and take the second left.
This day was not going to be any good.
I hope that wasn't too bad. I'm getting into the story a bit better I think. Next chapter, Artie will come in, trust me. In a big/small/Tinkerbell sized way (kudos if you got the Glee joke of what I just said).
-Hatter of Madness
