A year passed without a single word escaping the fleshy barrier of my lips. I couldn't seem to form words anymore; my mind appeared to have called it quits with its verbal region. Sometimes, I wondered whether I even had a single sound within my body; for all I knew, all that nestled by my bones and flowed through my veins was noiselessness; mute blood and tissue.

After the end of my third year of high school, I spent my months of summer heat in nightmare-satiated slumber and restlessness. Pale jaw lines sliced away at my dreams, white luminous teeth sunk themselves into my mind, and sweaty palms still clamped down on my thoughts.

How do you like our story so far? Does my tragedy intrigue you? Have I captured your attention, have you begging for more? I'm glad my weakest moments have you riveted. Now, sit back, while I bring you to the day where I meet Quinn Fabray for the first time; where two broken souls came together to repair themselves.

The morning of my first day of my twelfth school year had me at age eighteen going on dead. The sky was a musky purpled salmon hue. I faced my bathroom mirror, noting my face was as pallid as a bed sheet. My eyes were dark brown, and when I closed them I saw the same shade of brown reflected through the window of the bedroom of sin. My eyelids lifted and I set about rummaging through drawers until I came up with a silver tube of seashell pink lipstick. I unscrewed the cap and twisted the bottom until the lipstick emerged higher and higher from its silver captor. I leaned forward and smeared the pink over the mirror until I only saw tiny slivers of myself peeking beneath the coral color. I dropped the lipstick into my sink and left for school.

The classrooms felt like a tomb. The hallways were just solid blurs of color. I felt like a sinking ship, being submerged by the crashing waves of my peers. If they thought that over the summer I'd start talking again they were proven wrong. I had silence down to a science. I could teach any group of people on how to keep your mouth shut.

My last class of the day was Glee club. My teacher had already been informed of my muteness; this wasn't my first year in his class. Music was a passion of mine, and although I couldn't participate in singing along, I enjoyed listening to everyone else. Music in my eyes was a beautiful thing.

I sat in the last row. The clock ticked away the pointless minutes of my life. Mr. Schue began to inform us that we would be given partners to create an original song with. I paid no attention, just felt a twinge of sadness for whatever kid got the wrecked and ruined me.

"And...Quinn Fabray, you will be partners with Rachel Berry," Schuester said. The girl in front of me turned around to look at me; clearly she was Quinn. I met her eyes for a second and I was startled. I swear to you, God had created emeralds and Quinn's eyes on the same day. The way they glinted light green, yet I could see the stripes of gold in them. It was like sunlight peering through the branches of a tree. It took me a while to dip my eyes to look at her lips, which I realized were moving in speech.

"So, guess we'll be getting to know a lot of each other this year," she said. She had peach lips that lifted up at both ends into a sweet smile. A knife of guilt jabbed into my gut, oozing out my remorse. I bit my lip and looked down, not saying a single word.

I waited a couple of beats before I looked beneath the rim of my eyelashes to see Quinn's reaction. She was twisting back around in her seat.

"Stuck up bitch." I heard her say under her breath.

Yes, Quinn and I's relationship started with detest on her part, shame on mine. I told you not to expect big, valentine hearts.

The bell rang and as I shuffled out of the room. I heard Schue call out to Quinn. No doubt he was going to break the news about her reticent partner.

"Yes, I'm sorry but Rachel doesn't talk." I could see Mr. Schuester saying. "No one knows why really. She just stopped last year. Her parents took her to countless doctors but there just didn't seem to be anything to help Rachel. It's a shame too; she had a beautiful voice when it came to singing."

I fled school, running, moving my feet as fast as I could. I knew my destination, the only place of my solace nowadays.

I pushed past the gate and padded through the grass. The only place I felt at home: the cemetery.

Since the night of the party, death had piqued my interest. Maybe it was the fact that the party had me leaving my fate and innocence in a body bag. Or maybe it was the fact that the dead souls and I shared something in common: our lips never uttered a word. Either way, the cemetery was the only place where my silence was welcome.

I walked until I reached a grave with no flowers, no signs of the person beneath being remembered or thought about. I stretched out on my back and tilted my face so my cheek was pressed against the tickling blades of green. I thought about the person buried mere feet beneath me, separated only by dirt and a coffin. I closed my eyes and breathed in the smell of grass and wondered what it would be like to be pressed down into the earth. To be grounded forever. The thought of death didn't scare me, because I basically felt like the walking undead as it was. But the thought of being held prisoner under the earth's pebbly surface unsettled me. I wouldn't want to be trapped, not after what had happened, after my being held down by another's limbs. If I was to die, I'd have my ashes blown across the world, let my soul drift with the wind and burn beneath the sun. It wasn't a cheerful thought, but my life was a black, dank cave that suppressed any sort of light.

The barren, lonely grave made me wonder what my burial place would look like. Would it always be covered in flowers and tokens of remembrance? Would I be missed? Or would I be like the poor corpse beneath me, nothing but dusty bones and a forgotten spirit?

I stood, and made my way back to the cemetery's entrance. I stopped short, as did she. We were locked eye to eye. I opened my mouth, the tips of the words "What are you doing here?" at the edge of my tongue before I realized I couldn't speak. That I didn't speak.

Quinn looked like she was about to ask me the same question before she realized it would be pointless; I wouldn't answer her.

We stood across from each other, only the dead between us. She finally spoke.

"Mr. Schuester… he told me you don't talk," she said. Her voice got quieter towards the end, and an uncomfortable silence followed. I waited for her to either speak again, or brush past me on her way.

"I...think you heard what I said about you," she said. She kept twiddling with her fingers, a nervous habit I guessed. "I just wanted to say I'm sorry about that. I thought maybe you didn't say anything to me because of my appearance. I'm new this year, but people are already getting the idea that I'm self-centered. I'm not."

More like your eyes were rendering me speechless, I thought.

Quinn bit her lip and shuffled her feet. She studied me, emeralds scanning me up and down. I didn't feel violated though, I felt as if she was trying to understand me, trying to search for the context clues that hid behind the pillars of my silence.

"I'm here to visit someone," Quinn finally said, "Come on."

She walked past me, didn't look to see if I was following or not. Curiosity snapped at me to follow, but sensibility held me back. The two warred within me, and I found myself trailing behind Quinn's footsteps. Those green eyes held trust in their jade depths, and I couldn't help but believe them.

We walked a short distance before Quinn came to a stop, standing in front of a white marble tombstone. Samantha Reed was emblazoned into the stone, and painted with gold. I looked at the date and saw that she had died one year ago...at the same age I was today.

I glanced at Quinn, waiting for her to speak again. She didn't disappoint.

"Sam was my girlfriend," she said. I could hear the pain that bled from her voice. "We had an argument one night, and she took off, running. Didn't live to see the next morning. Didn't live to have me apologize. She died thinking I hated her."

We stood in silence, staring at the final resting place of Quinn's girl. She turned to me swiftly and I found myself backing away.

"Why don't you talk?" she questioned.

I think it was the guilt of wishing that I was Samantha, dead and gone, that made me speak. That made me unlock my mouth and feel sound whizzing up my throat and coming out, breaking into the atmosphere. I took so much time trying to make words that I didn't focus on what those words were.

"I'm sorry I'm your partner" was what squirted, like ketchup from a bottle, out of my lips.

Shock did not register her face, a look of mild surprise maybe flitted but she didn't let it show.

"I'm not," she said casually, shrugging. Now it was she who waited for me to speak.

My voice came out soup can rusty. "I don't know what to say." I licked my lips, dry as an empty riverbank.

She smiled. "Not surprising since you haven't been saying anything in a while from what I've heard."

I grinned.

Quinn's expression turned soft, raindrop gentle.

"What happened to you?" she spoke softly.

"I...," I started to say. But suddenly it was like his palm was plastered over my mouth, squeezing, squeezing, suffocating me. My tongue felt like a noose around my neck, hanging my words. My memory of that night had never hit me so hard; it was like being swung at with a cinder block. My heart hurt with every painful pound. Every molecule in my body weighed me down, making me want to collapse inside myself.

"Please," I begged, the word falling from my lips; a plead, a desperate cry.

Quinn was suddenly there, her hands gripping my shoulders, trying to hold me up but I was already free falling. Too late; and I hit the ground.

Sobs vomited out of my mouth, harsh and hurtful. They shook my body like a fever.

"He wouldn't get off me," I choked out. "He held me down, I didn't want it. I didn't want it, but I didn't try hard enough."

My ocean-salted tears flowed down my cheeks and I stared up at Quinn.

"I was raped," I confessed. The words were virgin to me, never before spoken aloud.

In the graveyard, where lives were ended, a new one blossomed; the life of Quinn and I, together. A rose romance, beautiful but wounding.

Well, I've left you on a good note, a shiny, happy moment. Just know that all good things must come to an end. And endings tend to be bitter, swift, and completely unanticipated. Quinn and I are just beginning as are the earthquakes on which our rocky relationship is founded on. Prepare for a natural disaster, it's not going to be pleasant.