It was eighth grade when they met Brittany. Quinn was skeptical at first but Santana convinced her that all the best friendships happened in threes: Buffy, Willow, and Xander, Ned, Cookie, and Moze, and Harry, Ron, and Hermione. (Quinn didn't get any of these references so Santana mumbled off something about Torrance, Missy, and Cliff.)
Santana wasn't sure what had made her do it. She had barely talked to the new girl, but when Quinn started talking trash about her, Santana made sure to stop it. "Hey, she doesn't seem anything but nice."
"Wow seems like Snixx has left the station." They sitting in Santana's basement kind of watching Dallas Cowboys Cheerleading: Making the Team, but mainly complaining about the practice they had had earlier that day. "Since when did you go soft?"
"Whatever, I'm just saying." Santana mumbled and focused on the chips in front of her. Quinn started talking again. It was something about how much she wanted to be a flyer. (They couldn't do that until they got into high school because it was too dangerous for kids in middle school or something like that.)
Quinn went on to say something about the tumbling lessons she was planning to take in the meantime. But the other girl wasn't really listening. It wasn't that she didn't care; Santana was always interested in Quinn's new plans to step up her cheerleading game. She was just distracted, not by the TV (she had already seen this episode) it was about what Quinn had just said, about Brittany.
Brittany was a pretty common name, but Santana had never met anyone with that name. She had also never met anyone with hair as blonde as Brittany's. Quinn had blonde hair, but she dyed it. (She didn't talk about doing it but Santana knew that hair didn't magically get lighter in the middle of winter.) Brittany also had blue eyes. Santana had always wanted blue eyes or really anything but brown. She would have settled for green but everybody knew that blue was the best and brown was the worst. Brown was just boring really, especially when your hair was the same color. Puck used to tease her about it in sixth grade, talking about her "poop brown eyes."
She had talked to her in the locker room once or twice, but that was it. Santana made a vow, right then to talk to that Brittany girl, maybe hangout over the weekend or something.
"Santana!" Quinn yelled.
"What? Oh god sorry." She shook her head, trying to shake of the cloud that seemed to have settled over her.
"I said, I have to go." Quinn said gesturing down to her phone. "My dad said I have to be home for dinner."
"Oh, do you need a ride? I'm that my parents could-"
"I'll just walk. Thanks though." Quinn got up and picked up her duffle bag. Next year that bag would have Cheerios embroidered on it, but for now it just said MMS. "See you tomorrow." Santana waved in response as Quinn climbed the steps.
Santana spent the rest of the day trying to figure out what to say to Brittany and trying to figure out why she was trying to figure it out. She never had to figure it out with Quinn. The girls met two years earlier at a mutual friend's birthday party. Santana reasoned that in sixth grade she had been too young to have to "figure it out". At that age, things just flowed. At this age, things stopped flowing.
Santana was quiet at dinner, but her parents didn't notice because she was always quiet at dinner. Tonight, her father was talking about some new patient that had been rushed into the ER. She had gone into apoplectic shock but wasn't responding to epinephrine. Santana understood most of the story but soon got lost imagining herself in a doctor's scrubs. She could not and did not want to be a doctor, contrary to her father's hopes. Maybe that's why she had put so much time and energy into sports, to give her an excuse to do something else in college.
Pretty soon Santana was up in her room dreaming of herself in the stupid scrubs. She was playing out Dad's story in her head with her receiving the patient. She tried to pull the hat off the patient's face, but for some reason she couldn't. After multiple failed attempts, she finally succeeds in pulling of the hat, only to see that the patient is the new girl on the cheerleading squad, Brittany. Dream Santana opens her mouth to say something, but before she can get a world out Brittany starts screaming.
It takes Real Santana a couple seconds to figure out that it was her alarm screaming, not Brittany. She pounds the alarm, angry that she has to wake up, that she dreamt of herself as a doctor, and that that Brittany girl was haunting her dreams. (Maybe it wasn't so much anger. Santana couldn't find a word for it exactly but anger would work. Anger would be an excuse.)
But the "anger" faded. Throughout the day it diminished little by little. It was then turned into anticipation. She was excited for practice. Not actually for practice but for what would happen after practice. She was excited for the locker room and for Brittany.
After nine boring and awful periods she finally gets her chance that is, after cheer practice. Cheer practice is hard. Every time someone complains about it Coach Harris tells them that she is only preparing them for Coach Sue's brutal training destined to come next year. After the warning, they have to run two laps. Coach Sue would make them run five for complaining, but Coach Harris is nice and only makes the offender run the full five laps.
It just so happened that Santana was said offender. She can usually be pretty sneaky about her groaning to Quinn, but she was being sloppy today. While Santana was running her extra laps, the other girls got released. She realized this meant that the other girls would be gone by the time she got to the locker room. This meant she wouldn't be able to talk to Brittany until next week on Monday.
With her newfound, and this time real, anger, Santana sped up the laps trying to put her emotion into the running. This method failed and she was still fuming when she stumbled into the empty locker room. She changed and shoved her old clothes and shoes into her bag ten flung it over her shoulder and stomped out of the room.
Before she could search for her mom's Buick, Santana heard her name called out from across the parking lot. Brittany was getting up from the wall by the other side of the school and jogging toward Santana.
"Hey, Santana! Uh my mom didn't see any other cars in the parking lot and wondered if you needed a ride home." She had waited for her. She had held up her mom for her. She had told her mom about her.
All of the sudden, Santana forgot what the opposite of "no" was. "Um…uh…yeah" she said nodding her head and slowly remembering the English language. "Yeah I could use a ride."