A/N: Okay guys, this is my first ever fanfic so if you wanna go hard on me go ahead. So buckle up and R&R.
Disclaimer: I do not own Glee or any of its characters. If I did, they would have won Regional's (Oral Intensity? WTF?) I do own the Beginners Guide to Creative Writing though, and Ms. Patterson.
Chapter 1: Beginner
"Being a writer is taxing, as such. He or she is to cut, to chop, to skin, the English vocabulary and to fry, simmer, toast sentences until they are verbally pleasing and heart-moving. Alas, writing in that manner is akin to being an ill-tempered French cook."- Beginners Guide to Creative Writing.
It had all started with a lesson in third grade.
Ms. Patterson who taught English gave her class an assignment one day, to which the whole class groaned. Except for her, her with her billion-watt smile and her hand that shot up so fast it hurt.
"Ms. Patterson!" A sing-song voice called out. Behind her desk, Noah sniggered. "Even when she talks she's exercising her vocal chords." He murmured behind her back, coughing loudly to cover it up. She pretended to ignore him.
"Yes?" The teacher had enquired, with what Rachel would then remember with a benevolent tone. Also, she would understand later on, with a tinge of exasperation.
"Will we be able to write anything we want?" She asked sweetly. (That was what she learnt; her Daddies told her that if she was very sweet she could get anything she wanted. Anything.)
"No, sweetie." Her billion-watt smile dimmed for all of a second. (Almost anything, anyways.) "It has to be a person you admire." She pursed her lips in confusion. She admired… herself. Her daddies, and Barbara Streisand. But, nothing, nothing held a candle to the person she had in her mind.
"Well…" She uttered after much thinking. "Can I write about my mom?"
She swallowed the blank stares and silence from her teacher and the kids around her with pride; it was not rare that she would get the same thing from her Daddies' friends, the therapist, everybody else. They just didn't understand.
"Can I?"
The teacher had stared at her, long and hard before giving her a small nod and a furtive sigh. "I-I guess so, dear."
The next day she handed in her assignment, bright-eyed and hopeful, and smiling even wider, she left. Afterwards, Rachel got her first ever slushie from Noah Puckerman, and had to call her Daddies all the way from work to get a new pair of clothes. She shook her head that day, through her tears, they just didn't understand.
I won't tell you
That I love you
Kiss or hug you
Cause I'm bluffin' with my muffin
I'm not lyin'
The day after that, she was glum and snapped even at Daddies in the morning, but at the prospect of English class her spirits lifted in tentative hope.
Imagine her disappointment when she received a frowning face and an urgently scribbled 'See Me' on her carefully written homework. Her brow scrunched up in confusion… she stayed up the whole of the previous night, looking up pretty words in the dictionary to suit her mother, even past eight. There was no reason for her English teacher to give her such low marks.
"Ms. Patterson?" She asked at the teacher's desk.
"Yes?... oh, Rachel." Her teacher's face softened upon looking at her wounded look. She gently pried the piece of paper the girl was clutching in her hands, and scanned it once again. "Dear, I think we need to go outside." A caring hand led her back out of the door, shooting a warning look to the class.
Rachel accepted the tissue given to her readily, sniffling pathetically. She swallowed a big gust of air, an indication that she was going to start ranting.
"Th-there's n-n-no reason that you'd give me a D, Ms. Patterson, because my Daddies tell me that if I have to get into Julliard, I must have really good grades, and to do that I need all As, and this D isn't helping and this is about my mom, so I hardly know her and-"
"Rachel, honey…" She murmured gently, running her hands soothingly on the whimpering frame's arms. "I'm so sorry… but this just wasn't…" She trailed off, dazed by her situation, and the soulful eyes staring back at her painfully. She looked away, pinching the bridge of her nose. "Just wasn't realistic."
Rachel did not even try to mask the tears as they fell, her heart following suit. Suddenly her nostrils flared in indignation, and she opened her mouth to spew in anger, but they closed in shame. Her shoulders slumped, as if defeated, and sniffled once again.
Her English teacher considered the child quite thick-skinned to insults hurled by the younger boys in her class, headstrong and vibrant, lighting up the whole class with her smile. But at this moment, with her back facing the white-washed school wall and on the verge of tears, the motherless girl looked hopelessly broken.
Maybe it was her hardwired maternal instinct, -or her distinct and sudden need to get away- but suddenly the woman remembered a book she received when she was much younger, something that she could say changed her life… and something she was sure the only way she could help the little girl.
"The Beginners Guide to Creative Writing."
"Oh." A silence. More like a pause. "Ms. Patterson?"
"Yes, Rachel?"
"Why do I need this book?"
"It's very special. It helped me when I used to feel sad. It still does. When my parents fought, I used to run to my room and to just read this book. My tears dried up instantly."
"Oh. So it's a funny book?"
"Something like that. But it has big words that you might not understan-"
"I know big words. Even if I don't I can look them up in the dictionary."
"Of course, Rachel. But don't you ever lose this book. It's very special and important to me."
"Yes, Ms. Patterson."
Ms. Patterson was absolutely correct, of course.
She read the book like it was the Bible, memorizing the examples and verses inside by heart, murmuring them when she was exhausted to keep herself awake, writing out stories when she was especially bored.
Whenever she would feel sad, she would fetch herself a cup of water (there is a thin line between thirst and sadness) and sit down with the thick-covered book. Especially in the darkest of the nights, when she would feel the ghost of a mother's embrace, and wonder for the thousandth time how she would have looked like.
Sometimes, sometimes she would close her eyes and believe for a second her mother's voice was lulling her to sleep, soft and deep and soothing. When she would almost feel her hands brushing her hair, the tears will start pouring down mercilessly, staining the yellowed pages on her lap.
"As a writer, your favourite and most menial task should be to feel. To feel a lover' loving embrace, cry as if you have just lost your Dalmatian, to giggle as if the Sun is shining bright outside your porch. If you have managed to feel, then you are one step closer to writing."
It was the sound of his voice that had made her start writing.
Honestly, it was rather clichéd, and her lips would tug upwards later on at the thought, but she never really comprehended the power of writing until she heard him. Rachel Berry never knew who this 'he' was, was he a reincarnation of the ghost voice that lulled her to sleep every night, or was he merely a janitor doing his rounds in the middle of noon?
All she understood that the voice pulling to her was a man's, (deep, masculine, powerful and yet shaky at the same time, something so perfect she wanted to cry) crooning a tune she recognized instantly.
She had been walking down an empty corridor late at school, humming quietly to her parents' car when she crossed the choir room and heard music wafting out from the doors. She stopped, intrigued, stepping closer to the door. She knew that eavesdropping was not very polite, but she really did not care then and she needed to know. She strained her ears, pressing them against the wooden surface.
His voice flowed like poetry, ribbons of ink so intricately placed on translucent paper, his pitch that spoke more volumes than the deepest of oceans, and leaning against the only thing that separated her from that mysterious voice, Rachel trembled. No one made her feel like this before.
And then he reached to the crescendo (when she felt higher than the uttermost tip of a star) and as smoothly as it had begun, it ended. Rachel stood, stunned beyond recognition. For a moment she stood there dumbly, but in a flash she ran outside, her parents' car honking out to her incessantly.
Later that day, she huddled up in her room, barely speaking and shaking. Because she had no other choice, (because she knew that no song would compare to what she felt, no lyrics or rhythm could match the beating of her heart) she wrote, hoping the words she used to describe could bring his voice justice.
From that day on, his voice would snake into her dreams, dark and breathtaking and so fragile that she woke up with wetness on her cheeks, and lips tasting of salt.
"A fickle thing among writers- It is thorny, vile and yet beautiful adorned like a velvet rose, as a writer you shall attempt to master the torrent of emotions that pour out of a human being's heart when they are in love, and somehow communicate it to the reader. In other words, to write romance." – The Beginner's Guide to Creative Writing.
It was ironically in the same corridor (by the very same choir room) where she stood gawking at the wall.
Well, it was not exactly the wall that she was staring at, but what most of student body passing her thought so, as she stood frozen in time, unwilling and unable to understand. She was a delicate statue, ignoring petulantly the stares and whispers flowing through the sea of students that dodged her, lips still partly apart in barely concealed shock.
She looked like she had seen a ghost, her face papery white and ready to tear at the seams. Not that it was far from the truth, actually. She had been walking down from the girl's bathroom, freshly changed from her previous slushied form when a wisp of his voice caught her ear, a low hum that sighed past her earlobe.
She knew she was not hearing things, she simply knew it. (If she was he would not be singing George Michael under his breath, she was sure of it.) And now, she knew that her mysterious voice was indeed not a janitor but an avid George Michael fan. And he was real.
She scrunched up her eyes in defiance, she will not cry in the middle of school, with everybody to see her, with the Cheerios and Finn- she breathed in and out, her yoga lessons finally doing her some good.
"Noah?" Her voice was much squeakier than she wanted it to turn out to be. He pretended to not hear her, emptying his books while eyes glued to his PSP.
"Noah?" She was more persistent now, slightly irritated.
"Huh?" He glared at her. "You called, Berry?"
"Yes." She scowled, Puckerman was a sickening imbecile, despite his amazingly muscled arms- she shook her head, pointing. "Could you just tell me who that is?"
He eyed the slushie in his hand suspiciously, then at the teacher, and smirked to her. "Sure, freak." He emptied the contents onto her face, letting out a little chuckle as she stood there speechless.
He strode out smugly. "Mr. Schuester. He's in Beginners' Spanish class." He called over his shoulder, feeling slightly guilty.
In a moment of divine revelation, in which she understood that the world was unfair and ironic in so many ways, it all made sense. It, when she was convinced it was stable for all of a second, crumbled and withered into pieces that dusted hopelessly at her feet, as she heard Mr. Shcuester sing as if his life depended on it.