It is the first day of two hundred and seventy.

I wake up slowly, half-resting between reality and dreams because I don't want to think about what I am waking up for. Between my cracked eyelids I see the soft pink pastels of my room. I remember going to the paint store with my mom, picking out that particular shade because of its name. First Kiss.

Door opens. My shoulders tense deeper into the blankets that protect me.

"It's time to wake up, love. First day of school."

My mother's voice is soft, but loud enough to reach my ears. I try in vain to plug my ears with the soft cloth, but I can still hear her. Should I pretend to be asleep? Steal a few more seconds of peace. But no. I make a mumbling noise in the back of my throat, push myself out of my fortress.

"Breakfast is ready. I even bought orange juice, your favorite."

I am relieved when she disappears. Free to rip off my skin and look in the mirror, see the damaged doll that looks back. I touch my lips, thinking first kiss first kiss. No, not there. I must stay away from that place. That place that place.

I put on clothes, like a robot forced to wear a human outfit. The happy yellow shade of my dress leaves a smooshy, garish feeling in my gut. Yellow used to be my favorite color. I don't know what my favorite color is anymore. Maybe I should turn emo, my favorite color black, my bangs cut crookedly across my forehead. I pin my bangs in half and wonder what the World would think.

I go downstairs, I eat breakfast. My parents are there waiting for me, my father all smiles and "Ready for your first day?" and my mother all "You look darling in that dress, Quinn."

Quinn. Quinn Quinn Quinn. Quinn.

"Lucy."

I look around in surprise to see who said that, before realizing I said it. Lucy. My real name. Lucy

Quinn. Why did I say that?

"What?"

"I want to be called Lucy this year. Not Quinn."

My parents exchange Looks. It's never a good thing when parents exchange a Look. It means they're communicating telepathically. It means they're frowning, they're worried, they're surprised. All of the above. It's a bad thing. I kick myself, tell myself to shut up.

"Whatever you want, love," my mother says, but it's not whatever I want. I know they'll call me

Quinn anyways.

I drive to school. The drive feels short, even though I live a good fifteen minutes away. I don't want to do this. I have no idea what's going to happen. I wish I could just drive and drive and drive, all day long, and never go to school. I could run away. That would be a story worthy of a news report. Rich Fabray girl heads for the hills, parents buy a mannequin to replace her.

As I glide into the McKinley parking-lot, people watch me. I've never felt self-conscious about my car before, but now I'm thinking I'm the stupidest girl in the world for asking for a bright-red, cherry-red, apple-red punch buggy for my birthday. I'm the most obvious car, a kiss of red in a sea of rusted grays and hit-a-mailbox blues. I see some kids punching each other as my car drives by.

Ha ha.

Punch buggy no punch back.

I get out of the car, walk alone into the front doors. I keep my eyes averted, though I can feel theirs burning straight through me. I tell myself to move, move move move. Faster, pull out my schedule, read what I've already memorized. Locker 413. Thirteen. Bad luck? Good luck? Does the four cancel out the bad luck? I don't know.

I almost make it, almost, almost, but some of the cheerleaders corner me. I don't know how they find me like this. I think Sylvester has a built-in radio in all of their ears but mine, tells us our locations at any given point. Maybe she's even chipped us, like we did to my dead dog. Well, he was alive when we chipped him.

"Hey, Quinn!"

I almost keep walking, pretend I'm deaf, wishing I was, maybe I can pretend I lost my hearing over the course of a few weeks. But I have to turn around. My spine forces me to turn three hundred and sixty degrees until I'm facing Santana and Brittany.

"Quinn, where the hell have you been? We've been trying to call you ever since Rachel's lame-ass

party. That was over three weeks ago."

I swallow hard. Think think think, fast faster fastest. There's no good excuse. I've been ignoring my only friends and they know it. Well Santana knows it, Brittany doesn't really know anything.

"I'm sorry," I say, even though I'm not.

Santana stands there, an eyebrow raised. It makes her look angry. Her head is cocked, her hair is pulled into a curled ponytail. It flicks back and forth like a horse tail swatting at flies every few seconds.

"That's all you have to say for yourself?" she inquires, her voice remarkably like a growl.

"What else should I say for you?" I ask flatly. I know immediately it was the wrong thing to say.

"After Rachel's party, you totally dip out on us and we don't hear from you for weeks. Nobody has.

For all we know you're dead. There's rumors, and people are talking... I don't know what to believe.

Now it's the first day and you're different."

Different. Diff. Er. Ent. I don't know what that means anymore.

"You wouldn't understand," I say, voice shaking. "You weren't there. You didn't see it. You were drinking, drunk, having fun. Being a teenager. I wasn't. People are talking but they always talk. They don't know anything. If you're my friend, you'll ask me what's wrong. Please ask me."

But I don't say those things. In my head, the movie I imagine as my life, I say those things and then she asks what's wrong. I tell her, and emotional music plays, and then the credits roll. Not to be continued, possibly to be a sequel if it makes enough money. But this isn't in my head. It's outside my head. And outside my head, I just stand there.

Brittany, who's been quiet the whole time (probably trying to piece together what we're talking about) suddenly talks. "Quinn, did you cut your hair? It looks shorter."

Santana refocuses on me. She realizes that Brit is right, that my angelic golden locks have been chopped off. She wonders how she didn't notice this immediately, maybe she thought my hair was tied back and hidden behind my angelic head. She is confused.

"What the hell is wrong with you, Quinn?" Santana asks vehemently. That's a great word, isn't it? Vehemently. It was a vocab word once for that one teacher in that one English class.

I stare at her, wonder if we were ever really friends anyways. Most of our friendship was long days at cheer camp, sweaty ponytails and gossip and competition. A part of me never even liked her, and now I realize I don't like her at all. I can't look at her another second.

I think she's cussing at me as I turn away, but it's like I have a remote to the world and I've just clicked the mute button. I walk through the silenced hallways, watching mouths flap and feet walk and lockers slam but hearing nothing.

It's not until I stop at my locker, at locker 413, that I decide it's bad luck after all.

There's some people gathered like safari animals flock to a watering hole, and teachers stare for a second before calling the janitor. I stand among the animals, reading the five letter word written in red marker across my locker.

WHORE.

The sound of the world shattering is oddly quiet. At first it's like a far-off rumbling, a train maybe, and then it gets louder. It rips everything apart as it approaches until finally you're the last thing in its way and it screams as everything is destroyed.

My legs keep walking even though I'm locked in place, still staring at that word. Maybe they won't see me. Maybe if I pretend I'm invisible, I'll cease to exist.

The bell rings. I can hear it, breaking through my mute button and hurting my ears. It's a godsend. It
gives me a place to be in this shuffle of gawking students, rumoring students, whispering staring

students. The buzzing sound of angry bees grows louder in my head.

My first bell is advanced placement literature. Why am I here? I think I used to like words. Words

put together, thousands of them, to form a story. Books that we study, stare at, contemplate, rip apart in the hunt for symbolism and metaphors and more isms and ors. I sit in the back, a change of pace. I used to always sit in the front.

The teacher is Mr. O' Connors. He says that literature is a form of escapism, a way for the human mind to retreat to a world that doesn't have them in it, and therefore doesn't have their problems in it. He is unlike other teachers in that he doesn't waste time with horrible icebreakers and introductions and pamphlets and lets go around the room and say one thing about yourself. He dives right in. I'm not sure if I like it or not.

When Mr. O' Connors sees my backpack, still clutched behind me since I deigned to break into my whorelocker, he says it's against school rules to carry a backpack, but since it's the first day he doesn't mind, as long as it's in a locker tomorrow. I nod, keep my face to my desk, face warming when I feel the millions of faces staring at me. I was hidden until he called me out. I hate him for this.

He then goes through the names of everyone, which thankfully takes the attention off of me because it's oh-so-hysterical to watch teachers accidentally butcher names on the first day of school. Giggles and howls of come from the peanut gallery.

Then.

"Lucy Fabray?"

Silence.

Mr. O' Connors looks up from his list of student names. "Lucy Fabray?" he repeats.

I don't want to raise my hand. I don't want to claim ownership to that name. I sit there, facing the backs of heads until they begin to turn around. Before I look look deaf or something I raise my hand. I don't correct him, though. Maybe I'll go by Lucy after all.

"Kurt Hummel?"

"Here."

I stiffen. His voice is high-pitched, somewhat distant as if halfway across the room. I don't look at him. I wonder if he looked over at me when my name was called.

The last thing O' Connors does before the sheep are herded to their second bell is put us in assigned seats. Assigned seats, groans, unhappiness. Separated from your best friends, your group, forced to sit with that weirdo so-and-so just because his/her last name is closest to your last name on the alphabet. Stupid stupid stupid. It only takes me a second to realize who I'm going to be sitting next to all year. Abcdefgh...

I end up in a seat towards the back of the room, which is okay. I watch out of the corner of my eye as Kurt Hummel comes and sits down right behind me. Alphabetical order stupid stupid stupid. Who came up with alphabetical order anyways. They need to be gunned down.

My back is rigid for the rest of class. I sit very still, daring not to breath too much in case I call too much attention to myself and they can all hear my thudding heart. Thud thud thud. Like a heavy rock pounding back and forth in my chest. It hurts.

He's right behind me. I can feel him looking at the back of my head, but I can't do anything about it. I can't think about him because then I think about the summer and then I think about Rachel's party. And then something malfunctions and I can no longer form a thought. My brain is going haywire. I should call a brain repairman.

Does he remember? I wonder. Does he remember it as well as I do? Has he forgotten, like I've tried to? I like to imagine that after it happened, Kurt simply forgot about the entire incident and so sitting behind me was no big deal to him because I'm just another stranger.

But we aren't strangers. We aren't. Not after what happened.

What does he know? Did I tell him anything? Mumble in my sleep, half-drunken rambles? Screams and tears turning into words that he could understand despite a creeping feeling of horror?

He knows nothing. He remembers nothing. He helped me in a time of need, and we have both forgotten about it. This is what I will tell myself, over and over again, in order to remain sane in Advanced Placement Literature First Bell With Mr. O' Connors.

The bell rings, and I disappear.

Here's the thing...

When I started writing "The Butterfly Effect" about a year ago, it was fun. I loved exploring the relationship between these two dynamic characters. But then something happened, and it changed. It was no longer fun, the characters weren't what I wanted them to be. Quinn was too evil, Kurt was flat as a piece of paper, and I wasn't doing the story justice.

If you're a new reader this probably makes no sense, but if you're an old reader you know what I'm talking about. I was not happy with the direction it was heading, and I was going to just delete it.

But after you put so much time into something, it's hard to give it up. So instead of deleting the story that had gotten out of control, I went back. I changed everything that was wrong with the old story, and it became this.

This is a brand new take on "The Butterfly Effect", and I hope to succeed in places where the old story did not. It's an entirely new way to tell Quinn's pregnancy story, the kind of story I've always wanted to tell.

Thank you for taking the time to read my rambles, and thank you again to all of my readers!