It took almost every ounce of strength Rachel possessed to shake the memories welling up inside of her and remind herself that she needed to get her children up and feed them because ,regardless of whether or not she wanted it to, life went on. With a sigh she laid the ring on her bedside table and proceeded down the stairs and into the kitchen to start breakfast for her children, and a large pot of coffee for herself. After Rachel had started the coffee she checked the time on the oven clock and realized that it was a little after six thirty. She knew that she had any prayer of getting Jenna ready and out of the house on time she should start the process of waking the sixteen year old up now.
Wandering up the stairs and down the hallway, Rachel stopped at her daughters door and mentally prepared herself for stepping into the pigsty that her daughter tried to pass off as her bedroom. Opening the door, Rachel was greeted with the strong fresh scent of Febreeze and the sight of her daughter, showered, dressed, and desperately spraying her backpack with whatever was left of the Febreeze. "Jenna, what are you doing?" Rachel questioned her daughter. Jenna whirled around, looking slightly surprised, but recovering quickly.
"Febreezing my backpack." Jenna replied with her ever present sarcastic charm.
"I see that, care to explain why?" Rachel tried again, trying to be patient with her. She knew that Jenna was taking her father's death the hardest, but Rachel was growing weary of her attitude. Though she realized that the anniversary of her husband's death would be hard for their entire family, she had hoped that Jenna would try to be a bit more pleasant seeing as it was her first day of her junior year. Jenna had always liked school, she was a straight A student, just like her mother. Unfortunately, Rachel could already tell that Jenna's attitude was still intact, and she saw no end to it in sight.
"Not really." Jenna huffed, gathered her things, and brushed past her mother. "I'm going in early, and I have practice after school I'll be late." Rachel heard Jenna shout from down the hall, and then a few seconds later she heard the sound of the front door slam and her daughter's jeep roar to life. Rachel looked around the room before her, trying to find some remnants of her daughter somewhere among the piles of revealing clothing gathered in piles on the floor, and the stacks of music she would never understand on the dresser because the girl she had just encountered was not her daughter. Rachel could only hope and pray though that at some point she would see her little girl again.
Letting out a defeated sigh, Rachel left the room and started down the hallway to wake up Aaron, her ten year old son. Rachel slowly opened up the door and poked her head in to her son's perfectly organized room, only to find his bed made and Aaron organizing his school supplies, by size and color, before carefully placing them into his new rocket ship backpack. "Hey little man. Ready for your first day of fifth grade?" Rachel asked Aaron, who looked up at her with his sparkling blue eyes and simply nodded his blonde head before zipping up his backpack and headed downstairs, leaving Rachel alone once again. "Well, this is going smoothly." She said sarcastically to her sons empty room.
After seeing her son off to his first day of fifth grade, Rachel made her way to William McKinley High school. Being an English teacher and the current Glee coach had never been her dream job. Actually, if you had asked her when she was sixteen what she wanted to do with her life, being a teacher wouldn't even have been an option. Now, at 34, she honestly can't see herself anywhere else. Sure there are some days she honestly wants to strangle half the children in the school, but she genuinely loves her job and cares about her students. Especially now, because goodness knows she needs the escape they provide more than ever.
Sitting down her desk in the corner of her small classroom, Rachel takes a long sip from her coffee mug and proceeds to shuffle through the mail she hurriedly grabbed from her mailbox on her way out earlier that morning. She sorts though the bills and the junk mail, but as she comes to the end of the pile she spies a small envelope with familiar handwriting. She's not sure she wants to open the letter, but she knows ignoring it would be rude, and Rachel hates to be rude, especially to someone who had always been kind to her. Hesitantly, Rachel opens the envelop, pulls out the small piece of paper occupying it, and begins to read the content of it. It's and invitation. From Tina and Artie. An invitation from Tina and Artie to attend an end of summer bash this coming weekend. For the first time in a while, Rachel feels her mouth tug at the sides, threatening to turn itself into a smile.
The normalcy of the invitation finally gets to her and she can't help the smile spreading across her face and the small amount of happiness the invitation brings. She hasn't seen her friends in a while, and it's been a year since she socialized with anybody outside of the supermarket. She decides to go, and she refuses to let the guilt of being happy again get to her. She's still alive damnit, and she deserves to be happy. She knows that Jason would want her to be happy and forward with her life, but sometimes it was just so fucking hard.
AN: okay, so I realized half way through that I totally changed the tense from present in the first chapter to past in this one. I am very sorry for that, and from now on I promise for all of it to be in past tense. I'm also changing the rating to mature because I like to curse, a lot, and so does Noah. So there it is, Review.
