Puck looked at the picture for a bit longer. It was the first photo Shelby had deigned to send the biological father of her child.
She was beautiful, with Quinn's blonde ringlets and his green eyes. It was then that he realized how much he had been pushing away the memory of her very existence. It hurt to know she would always wonder, just like he had always wondered about his jackass of a father.
God. What was the fucking POINT?
He dropped the photo in his locker and slammed it, but somehow that wasn't enough. His palm flew against the door, again and again and-
"Noah?" asked a soft, tentative voice.
He turned around, slowly, to face Rachel. She was stock still, a deer in the headlights. At that moment, her face seemed abrasive in it's innocence and concern.
"You don't know anything, Berry, alright? You know nothing about what it's like to be totally cut out of someone's life, so don't just stand there and judge me."
"I'm not-"
"Why don't you just go talk about what a horrible, violent person I am with Finny," he snaps.
When he walks away, he screams inwardly at himself not to look back, but he does anyway, to a girl biting her trembling bottom lip. He may have just alienated the only person who cared, but he can't tell which makes his stomach sink: that or the fact that he just made Rachel cry.
Regardless, he turns back and walks the rest of the way in his letterman armor