It is the summer of 5th grade and Lucy Quinn Fabray swears right there, in the middle of the amusement park, that she would never again call anything on this earth beautiful ever again.
"Daddy, daddy!" she tugs on his trousers and pulls on his sleeve. "Daddy, I want cotton candy!"
When Russell Fabray just keeps talking on his phone about sales and marketing techniques, she turns to her mother and holds her hand. Judy smiles warmly at her youngest daughter and gently raises a sculpted brow. "What is it, Lucy dear?"
"Mommy, can I have some?" she points to a stall crowded with kids. Her mother smiles and nods and pauses and digs through her worn-out purse for change. "Here you go, baby. Good thing I still have some spare change here." And off Lucy runs, diving straight into the mob of children while her mother just laughed and waited for her to get back.
The Fabrays didn't have much. Well, at least not yet. Russell Fabray was a business man and Judy was a humble accountant. The couple didn't earn a lot, but enough for them to survive and still enjoy life's luxuries now and then. Her husband would always dream of moving out, into a better city and a bigger home, but Judy knew they could be happy the way they were. But things would soon change. Russell's business would bloom and sales' numbers would explode, while Judy gets offered a higher position and a better paying job, and the Fabrays would soon be burdened by the pressure of keeping up images and building reputations that comes with position.
But right now, Lucy is making her way to the cotton candy stall and her mother is happily watching her. She mutters 'excuse me's and 'out of my way's as politely as she can. Then someone accidentally bumps the hand that she uses to hold the money and the coins fall to the ground where they get lost in the many pairs of legs and feet.
Lucy feels the tears burning at the corners of her eyes. She almost runs back crying to her mom, but before she could even yell for Judy, something caught her eye. She turns her head to the side, and there, not far away she sees two men and a little girl about her age between them.
The word 'mom' feels like it's stuck in her throat. She watches the little girl with brown hair skip and laugh. She stares at the way the mid-afternoon sun touches the girl's hair, how it makes her gold star hairclip sparkle, and then the girl turns her head a little and she admires how the sunshine lights up her eyes and face but how it would never match how her genuine smile and melodious laughter light up the world. She listens to the girl's mary janes hit the cobbled stone path and how she moves as if she was in one of those musicals Lucy loves to watch. The little girl is beautiful. She wonders how someone small can fill up her vision and then shrink down her world into just her and the other girl. She also wonders if it's possible to have her world consist of only two people, her and the girl.
"Lucy? Lucy, are you…" Her mother's words sound like they were mashed together, she couldn't make out a single one. Her eyes follow the girl, not even seeing the two other men at either side, as she floats right in front of her.
Her mother shakes her and she is pulled back to reality. She blinks and remembers the cotton candy, the coins, and how they all fell and got lost in the sea of legs and feet.
Years later, Lucy would grow up drowning in insecurities. She would feel so alone and unworthy of comfort that she learns to hate herself. The day her parents tell her about moving out, she tells them about wanting to get a nose job and they agree. She changes everything about her— the way she looks, the way she carries herself, and the way she treats people around her. Lucy Fabray becomes Quinn Fabray. And she forgets... She forgets the day; the moment where she felt like one girl was enough to complete her world.
But when she walks through the parking lot of McKinley and sees Rachel Berry older but still just as beautiful, she remembers. She remembers the reason why she never found anything beautiful because there was nothing more beautiful in Quinn's world than the girl with the gold star hairclip.