Some people think that high school love doesn't exist. That when you're seventeen, you can't possibly know what love is. Quinn Fabray, however, knew that this wasn't true. Yes, she'd gone through multiple boyfriends. Yes, she'd even gotten pregnant by one before they even started dating, when she was in the midst of another seemingly-perfect relationship. And yes, she'd cheated on two of them. But no, she had never faked her feelings for any of them.
It was her third boyfriend that really did it for her. He'd been perfect. A new student coming in for his sophomore year while Quinn was a junior, he hadn't yet found a way to fit into William McKinley. A bit too into Avatar and Star Wars, one of the first thing Sam Evans had ever said to her was associated with Avatar. Granted, it was a comment that could've been taken awkwardly, but the look he'd given her when saying it was just one of the cutest things she'd ever seen on a guy.
Cheating on Sam had been the worst decision she'd made that year. She didn't know how she'd let a guy like Finn talk her into doing it, but what baffled her most was how Santana knew, along with why she told. That second relationship with Finn hadn't been as much of a joy as it had been the year before, and when he broke up with her at the funeral, her life seemed to plummet even more than it already had.
She tried to make amends with Sam that summer. However, when she went to his house to do so, she was surprised by a visitor that Sam happened to have over – Mercedes Jones. Now, Quinn was somewhat of a believer of not dating your friends' exes. With the fact that the two girls were still friends – not as close as they had been at the end of their sophomore year, but still – added onto the fact that she still had feelings for Sam among other issues in her life, this just seemed to make matters worse for Quinn, leading to her actions of that summer.
Julianne. That was the girl who became Quinn's new best friend that summer. Julianne was the kind of girl Quinn never expected to get into. Twenty-three years old, inked-up, and part of a biker gang, the two met at a very unexpected place – WalMart.
Quinn had been busy looking through the magazines while her mother was grocery shopping, a task the teenage girl had grown to hate. It started with a look through the teen magazines, things like J-14 and Seventeen, but when she noticed that there was another female in the aisle, Quinn quickly put those aside, suddenly feeling a bit ashamed. After all, she was about to turn eighteen. She couldn't be seen looking at such…childish reading material. She didn't know what caused her to do it – maybe it was the habit of needing to look "cool" in front of others – but when she noticed that the female had an arm full of tattoos and several piercings, Quinn quickly moved on to the tattoo magazines. You know, the ones that are filled with page upon page of tattoo ideas and designs.
She hadn't meant for it to turn into a full conversation, or even a summer-long event, but it happened. As she flipped through the pages, trying to feign interest as she did so, she was a bit surprised to hear the other girl speaking to her. "Bit too young for those mags, aren't ya?"
Quinn quickly looked up, glancing from the page to the other female quickly as she tried to come up with an adult-like response. "I, uh….uhm. No, not at all," Quinn managed to get out after a few stammers. "Not at all. I'm totally into these kinds of things. I just haven't had a chance to get in on any of it."
The smirk that was slowly starting to form on the girl's face was a bit unsettling to Quinn. "Cute." That single word seemed like it had a hint of sarcasm to Quinn, and she was about to say something before she was cut off. "I'm Julianne. What do they call you, kid?" Julianne watched as Quinn kept her mouth shut for a few more moments, genuinely curious as to what this innocent girl's name actually was.
For some reason, Quinn didn't think it'd be such a good idea to reveal her actual name to Julianne, and she found herself desperately searching her mind for a buyable alias. Unfortunately, Quinn hadn't been born with that kind of creativity, so she settled on the only "tough" thing she knew – Coach Sue's nickname for her when she was on the Cheerios. "Q," Quinn answered her finally, giving a firm nod. "They, uh. They call me Q."
Julianne's eyebrow raised a bit when she was given this information. "Q? Short name. What's it stand for?" She herself had come up with quite a few nicknames for herself in order to keep herself in the kind of sanity that she wanted. She'd grown up on the streets, not by choice, but by force, and having a made-up name had been the key to her own survival.
Quinn shook her head quickly. She couldn't tell Julianne her real name; after all, 'Quinn' wasn't exactly the kind of name established adults had. "I'd rather not say. It'd ruin the illusion." Immediately after speaking, she regretted that last sentence. Illusion? What was she trying to make herself look like? Criss Angel, mindfreak? Lame, just all around lame.
"…right." Julianne didn't seem to buy it, not by the sound of her throat clearing as she let Quinn go back to perusing while she went back to doing her own. After a few minutes of a rather awkward silence, she turned back to the younger girl. "Look, kid. You kind of fascinate me, in a weird-naïve kind of way. Let me give you my number, and maybe we can look into getting you some kind of real style." Q's outfit was different than what Julianne was used to. The wholesome sundress and flats look definitely had to go, especially if Jullianne was going to spend any time on her. She needed the help, obviously.
Everything changed after that. Julianne took her to stores that Quinn had never even thought about going into. Stores that Quinn had always been too disturbed by to even consider entering. She'd learned a lot from these outings, the most educational one being the trip into Spencer's Gifts for "a sexier look" as Julianne had put it. And not much longer, maybe just a few weeks after, Quinn found herself moving into Julianne's apartment. She'd told Judy that she was doing it to teach Julianne the word of God and to help her with other spiritual things, and it'd worked. It wasn't something Quinn was quite proud of, but it wasn't like she could change it. And to this day, Quinn still hadn't told Judy the real story.
They bought the hair dye on July fourth. Instead of spending the night watching fireworks, they spent the night inside Julianne's small apartment, putting bottle after bottle of bright pink hair dye in, eventually leading to a hot pink new hair-do. Quinn wasn't fond of it, but refrained from telling Julianne for the sake of their friendship. And the worst part of it all? It was a definite permanent bottle of hair coloring. Great.
The next day, Quinn lit her first cigarette. The thought of smoking had always repulsed her, having grown up in a family that had absolutely forbid it. None of her friends smoked, so she'd never had the pressure to take the habit up herself. Well, with the exception of Santana; she smoked cigars, but had never once offered one to Quinn or even asked her to try it. Julianne and all of their other friends did it, and so eventually Quinn did feel the pressure to try it. It was gross at first, but she had eventually formed an acquired taste for it, but never actually enjoyed it.
Two weeks later, she met Lamar. Forty and still skateboarding on the streets, he owned a tattoo parlor that Julianne claimed to be a frequent visitor of. One thing led to another, and the next thing Quinn knew, she was agreeing to a nose piercing and a tattoo. Lamar seemed rather nice, if anything. He was a little creepy at first, but in general, he seemed nice.
"It will only hurt a little, I promise," Julianne told her before dragging her into the parlor. It had taken more begging than she had expected, considering what Q had told her back when they first met regarding her desire for ink of her own. She led the younger girl into the shop, giving the much older male sitting at a table a bright smile as they approach. "Hey, Lamar," she greeted him, pulling Quinn up closer to the two of them. "I've brought a friend with me. She's ready for her first tat and her first piece of metal."
Quinn simply nodded, but inside, the old Quinn from sophomore year was rolling her eyes in judgment at how enthusiastic this girl was. She'd been hoping that it was obvious that she didn't really want to go through with it, but apparently that wasn't the case. And it didn't help that this Lamar guy was giving her the strangest looks. It was almost as if Quinn was forcing herself not to say something to him about his apparent staring problems.
"She eighteen?" the man asked after a long silence. This girl looked like she was barely old enough to get her license, let alone a tattoo or a piercing. She was pretty, but not pretty enough for him to risk going to jail for illegally inking someone up.
Julianne nodded. "She's totally of age, Lamar. Don't worry about it, 'kay? You know you're my guy." She gave a smile, nodding once more. "And it's completely on me."
Quinn immediately tried to protest. For one, she wasn't eighteen yet; Julianne knew that. And secondly, she really didn't want her paying for it. She'd done enough for her over the past few weeks, and Quinn had her own money. It didn't seem fair. But as soon as she started to say something, she was cut off from speaking. This seemed to happen way too much for her own taste.
"What're we getting done, then?" Lamar asked, looking Quinn up and down. This just didn't seem like the type of girl who'd go for that. He could've been wrong. That tended to happen a lot recently.
"I was thinking a nose ring. Yeah. Q would look great with one of those," Julianne said, nodding as she glanced at Quinn. "And for a tattoo…I'd say something a bit out of the ordinary."
Well, this is awkward, Quinn thought to herself as they spoke. "Why not just plaster Ryan Seacrest on my back," she stated. It was supposed to be more of an under-the-breath sarcastic statement, but somehow both Julianne and Lamar heard her.
"Hot," Julianne spoke, a smirk creeping it's way on that face. Quinn had learned by now that that was never a good sign. "I'd say go for it. Give little Q here the most unexpected tramp stamp ever."
"I-I was kidding," Quinn stated quickly. Tattoos were permanent, after all, unless you had the money to get it removed. While the Fabrays were well off, they didn't have quite that much money. She did have plans on going back home, and coming home with Ryan Seacrest's face permanently imprinted on her lower back was not something she wanted to bring home to Mom. Not to mention she didn't want this freaky man handling that area of her body.
Eventually, she gave in, and when they left the parlor, Quinn was tacking on yet another regret onto her list of lifetime choices. 2011 was definitely turning out to be a horrible year. Not only did she leave with a piece of metal shoved into one of her nostrils and a permanent drawing on her body, but she also left with a phone number. She wasn't sure how it happened, or why, but somehow she left that parlor with a new boyfriend. A much much older boyfriend that she was sure was legally too old for her.
Their relationship didn't last long. They had nothing in common, and they knew absolutely nothing about each other. She was just uncomfortable with the relationship in general, not only because of his age, but because of his habits. Three days after her eighteenth birthday, which was celebrated by a drunken night at home with Julianne, he showed up at the apartment, messed up on God knows what. After spending the next hour and a half of dealing with his bullshit and having to repeatedly tell him that she wasn't going to have sex with him, he finally left.
She knew then that it was time to go home. Her mom was surely going to kill her for the way she looked, but Quinn knew that Judy would eventually get over it. She always did, after all. There was no way that Quinn could've stayed, not with the fear of Lamar, who she broke up with as soon as he was sober enough to remember her telling him it was over. She explained to Julianne that she was moving back home, but didn't tell her what had caused her to make this final decision. She'd seen how close the two were, and she didn't want to be the one to ruin that. She'd learned from Santana telling Sam about Quinn and Finn. Not the same circumstance, but close.
Quinn lost all contact with both Julianne and Lamar. It was for the better of it all, and while her mom was in complete shock about her daughter's appearance when she came back home, things eventually turned back to normal. Of course, Quinn made a whole group of new friends, but she still found herself missing her old group. She was starting to feel more and more lost, and when Shelby came back around, bringing Beth back, she was more confused than she was before.
All she knew by this point was that she missed Sam.