She took a moment to study herself in the mirror, wondering how the tide had turned so perversely against her. Her scalp and hair sticky with the thick syrup, her smooth, fair skin now stained a faint purple save for where angry traitorous tears had eroded a clean path down her cheeks. Her hands released their death grip on the porcelain sink and went to work cupping water and bringing it to her face. The bathroom door gave a creak, heralding the arrival of another. Quinn felt a pang in her stomach as she turned and saw who.
Rachel Berry stood in the doorway. She normally always had an uneasy look when she walked into the girls' room to find Quinn Fabray already in there, but the emotions that passed over her features as she realized what had happened to Quinn left the blonde feeling guilty and nauseas. Apprehension, definitely; Pity, please God not pity, not from her. The expressions on her face continued to run the gamut between fear, helplessness, compassion and understanding. What disturbed Quinn the most about Rachel's reaction was the lack of the emotions Quinn expected to see. No face of private victory or sadistic glee, not even a glimpse of 'I told you so'.
"Go ahead," Quinn proffered, turning back to the mirror, her voice low and thick. "Laugh, say something, cut me down," she demanded, trying to provoke contempt, anything to get the look of pity off of her face "I deserve it."
Rachel opened her mouth to say something, and then closed it. Then tried again, with no words coming out, giving her the look of a fish out of water, which was exactly how she felt at the moment. She was saved by having to think of something, anything, to say by a soft tap on the door. Rachel opened it to see Finn standing there, holding a neatly folded Cheerios uniform in his arms.
"Oh, um," he stammered, clearly not expecting to see Rachel, but quickly recovered and looked past her to Quinn. "I, uh, got your spare out of your locker," he said softly, holding out the red, white and black pile. There was also a small makeup bag, Rachel now saw, perched atop the garments. Just when she thought Finn couldn't get sweeter. Rachel turned to see one corner of Quinn's mouth turn slightly upward to offer him a soft grateful smile. She turned back to Finn and took the clothes from his arms.
"I'll take it from here," she said softly.
"Oh, uh, okay," he looked back to Quinn and gave her a remorseful smile before walking away, letting the door swing shut behind him. Rachel set the uniform on the corner of a sink they weren't using and pulled up a chair to another.
"Here," she said, gesturing to the chair. "Sit down".
Quinn shook her head, "Rachel…"
"I know….." Rachel quickly countered, "you don't want my pity. So look at it this way: I'm a professional. You try to do this yourself, it will probably take you over an hour. I can have you done in twenty minutes. And you're an honors student right? I'm sure you don't want to miss any classes."
She was right. But now, it wasn't a matter of not wanting to miss class, she couldn't afford to. Now more than ever she needed that high GPA to get out of this town and into a college of her choice, whatever she decided to do with her life. She couldn't afford to be working at a local mall for the next 5-10 years of her life to pay off sonogram and, even worse, the delivery bills. Not to mention now that her hormones were all out of whack, screwing with her concentration and energy (which was already low from getting up every other hour during the night to pee or puke) she was barely maintaining her A average. And A-B honor roll might be fine for some people but not for Quinn Fabray. Not then and definitely not now.
Rachel heard Quinn sigh submissively as she looked down at her ruined uniform. She removed her raincoat, a Glee Club fashion staple they had all adopted since the "slushie war" started, and offered it to Quinn. "Change into this. Otherwise you'll be pulling off a dirty shirt over a clean face or putting on a clean shirt over a dirty face," she babbled, uncharacteristically inarticulate.
Quinn wordlessly and somewhat reluctantly took the coat and stepped into a stall. Shrugging out of her cold wet top and long sleeved shirt, she found herself wondering why she hadn't just gone down to the girls locker room in the gym for a shower. Her chest and shoulders were sticky as well albeit nowhere to the magnitude of her hair. She pulled on the pink polka-dotted raincoat which Quinn was loathe to admit, simply for the fact that it belonged to Rachel Berry, was very cute. She pulled it closed and stepped out of the stall folding her arms in front of her and sat down dejectedly on the chair at the sink.
She pulled the band out of her pony-tail and leaned back, draping her long blonde hair into the basin. Rachel let the water run until it was warm before grabbing a cup to begin rinsing Quinn's scalp. "Why are you doing this?" Quinn asked.
"I told you, I'm a professional." Rachel replied, trying to infuse a jokey lilt into her voice.
"No," Quinn countered. "I've done this to you. I think our freshman year I slushied you, what, 5 times?"
"Six," Rachel corrected her tone still light. "But who's counting."
"Right, so why help me?"
Quinn's query hung in the air for a handful of seconds before Rachel answered softly, "because you're one of us now."
One of us. A slushie facial, the rite of passage, a christening if you will, ordaining her as an official Gleek. She would have felt punched in the stomach if it weren't for the fact that she knew it was true. As much as she denied it, she knew Rachel was right. Her life as a Cheerio would soon be over and Glee club would be all she had left. Sure Coach Sylvester had been understanding and compassionate so far, even to the extent of sitting Quinn down to have a (highly uncharacteristic) heart-to-heart. Something along the lines of, I was hurt you didn't tell me. I trust and respect you, Q, and I thought you felt the same about me. I don't want you to feel like you can't come to me with things like this. You're special. I made you captain after all. What are you talking about? Of course you're not off the Cheerios, we'll work something out. Sure she said that now, but she had also strangely been in a very good mood lately, and Quinn had been her 'right-hand-man' long enough to know that Sue Sylvester's good moods tap-danced on a razors edge. She just hoped Sue didn't slip and cut herself any time soon so that she could pretend for just a little while longer that everything was going to be okay.
A rivulet of water running into her ear snapped her back to her current reality, reminding her just how preposterous and foreign the idea of 'okay' really was. Quinn Fabray, Quinn freakin' Fabray was getting a Mckinley High Slushie of Shame rinsed out of her hair by arguably the most annoying and unpopular girl, if not student, in the entire school.
Okay, take that back; most annoying girl. She'd somehow forgotten about that Jacob Ben Israel guy, the one who was responsible for the whole school knowing about her 'condition'. Breathe a sigh of relief Rachel Berry; there is now officially someone higher than you on my 'People for me to Publicly Humiliate' list.
Rachel grabbed a bottle of shampoo out of her book-bag and lathered a palm-full into Quinn's hair. As if Quinn needed another reason to feel even worse about how awful she'd been, not to mention the reassurance of the grisly social future before her, Rachel had just given her more proof. She was so accustomed to this she carried shampoo with her to school. After Rachel had thoroughly rinsed the suds out of Quinn's hair, she wrung it out with her hands before offering Quinn a hand towel. "All done," she said, "with that part anyway." Quinn took the towel and stood, drying her hair some more as Rachel fished another bottle out of her bag. "Here, it's a gentle exfoliator, it works really well on the dye." Quinn smoothed her hair back into her regulation ponytail, then took the cleanser and set to work on her face.
Rachel busied herself rinsing the dried syrup off of Quinn's sunglasses, taking care not to scrub too hard. 'These things probably cost more than my entire outfit,' she thought ruefully. Rachel and her dads were not poor by any means, but the Fabray's traveled in a completely different social circle. They were the Joneses so to speak.
Finished with her face, Quinn ran the hand towel under the faucet then moved past Rachel to get her extra uniform. Rachel saw a sticky sheen on the right strap of Quinn's book bag and set to work wetting and wringing that out as well while Quinn retreated into a stall to dress. Removing the coat, Quinn took a moment to take stock of her body as she sponged it off with the wet towel. The barest bump showed on her lower abdomen and Quinn knew that even if Ms. Sylvester's good mood held out, the second her baby bump became more than the control top on her Cheerios uniform could handle she would change her tune. Quinn sighed, blinking back tears, refusing to cry anymore over the mess that in all honesty she'd gotten herself into. She quickly pulled the long sleeved shirt on and followed with the emblazoned WMHS Cheerios top.
She exited the stall, set the raincoat in the chair, tossed her stained uniform into her book bag that Rachel was now done with and went to the mirror with her small cosmetic bag and began applying her makeup. She never usually wore much, she had been blessed with quite natural beauty, so she just went with the basics of covering the dark pink flushes on her skin where she felt like she had scrubbed about three layers of skin off. Her mother would be appalled. Tears stung her eyes once more and she angrily willed them away. Her mother's disdain at her skincare was the least of her problems. What would be appalling would be when she found out her little baby was having one of her own. The thought of her father's reaction was enough to cause a twisted knot in her stomach and an acidy taste of bile in her throat. Quinn knew she was foolish, thinking she could keep this from them, but just as with Sue Sylvester she wanted to pretend for one more day. Pretend she was the perfect trophy daughter they had told everyone she was. The Captain of the Cheerios, President of the Celibacy Club, honors student, Belle of the Chastity Ball, overall Queen of McKinley High, everything they wanted her to be. Not the mean, spiteful, calculating tease who was insecure about her weight, her image, relationships and status. The girl who had been so vulnerable when she felt those areas waning that she gave in to the first guy with a kind smile and the right words. Worse still when that guy was your boyfriends best friend. She kicked herself mentally (for the millionth time since that night), zipped her makeup bag shut, grabbed her book bag, squared her shoulders and walked to the door. She stopped, hand on the door prepared to push it open, bowing her head slightly and turning her eyes but not her face to Rachel's general direction.
"Thank you," she uttered then disappeared from the room.
Rachel, who had been drying small puddles from the impromptu bath, smiled softly at her retreating form. Quinn's thanks, while curt yet genuine, with a definite tone of 'this never happened and if you tell anyone I'll deny it' was more than Rachel expected. She didn't fool herself into thinking she and Quinn would be friends now or anything, no she still fully intended to make Finn Hudson hers, and that would always create tension between the two of them. But now at least she felt they had an understanding, and maybe, just maybe, it meant no more "artwork" of her on the bathroom walls or, at the very least, no more masculine nicknames for a while. She wasn't particularly keen on finding out how Quinn was going to top "treasure trail".