tell the bed not to lay like the open mouth of a grave
Don't Tell Me / Madonna
I felt like I was standing at a great precipice, with no one to pull me back, no one who cared... or even noticed.
Gloria Stuart / Titanic
i. she fills my bed with gasoline
Quinn Fabray only has two things she can call her own, and one of them is a burns-so-hot-it's-radioactive desire to get out of Lima, Ohio.
The other thing isn't a family. It took nine months to conceive, grow and birth an infant and nine minutes to hand her off; barely enough time to realize she'd never know the color of her daughter's eyes because all babies have blue eyes when they're born. Her mother and father are still together, still adamant that their daughter is in permanent possession of a one-way ticket to hell, and still refuse to let her within fifty feet of the only home she'd ever known. Puck had sweet words - and that's all they were, words; sentences lost to the air and lost to meaning the moment they tumble from his lips. With Beth gone he considers himself absolved of all responsibility, and then Quinn doesn't even have his empty promises, his white noise.
She lives with Mercedes, sure. But it's not her family, not her home. Not her pillow she rests her head on at night, not her food that makes up the dinner she forces down with multiple glasses of water and chases with guilt. They're kind, but cautious. Gently distant. Apologetically aloof. And she can't blame them.
The other thing isn't a chance at a full ride. There used to be the potential for an athletic scholarship, but any chance of that vanished the moment she left the Cheerios - and for good, this time. Maybe she'll get some sort of academic scholarship, sure, but her grades suffered when she was pregnant and even though she could take Advanced Placement courses and study until her eyes melted out of their sockets and claw her way back to the top of the academic pile, what's the chance that even the valedictorian of their class will get a full scholarship to a decent school? They have problems funding their own extracurriculars, let alone their students. It's William McKinley High School, not Phillips Exeter Academy.
The other thing isn't money. Okay, so maybe there's a possibility she can get out of Lima but even with a half or partial scholarship, she still has to make up the rest. There's room and board and books and countless other debts to feed and mouths to pay.
The first thing is a burns-so-hot-it's-radioactive desire to get out of Lima, Ohio; if money will make that happen, then she'll do anything to make the money happen.
Correction: she'll do anyone to make the money happen.
Quinn Fabray only has two things she can call her own, and one of them is a burns-so-hot-it's-radioactive desire to get out of Lima, Ohio.
That is why every day, after school, she gets into her car. She exits the parking lot of William McKinley High School and goes straight into the part of town that would make 'seedy' a synonym for 'Eden.' She parks at a little convenience store that straddles the imaginary line that divides the 'better' part of the city from the 'worse;' that in and of itself is subjective since there is no one definite area that splits the city, just a gradual increase in the number of liquor outlets and shuttered stores with graffiti on the boarded-up windows and government-run housing.
Quinn would know; she's memorized every single route to get to that location. She never travels the same way more than two days in a row.
She changes in her vehicle. She walks four blocks to where she's come to learn is a decent area to loiter - it's far enough away from the park where the drug dealers gather when the streetlights come on, but close enough to housing that there are enough people to make her wait worthwhile. Plus, there's a rent-by-the-hour motel another block away.
And there, she sells her body for the chance that she might be able to leave Lima, Ohio, and not even give it so much as the finger when she does so.
Mostly men, less frequently women. Some steal up to her with furtive steps and eyes that remind her of insects with the way that they flit around, rest on a shadow or peek around the side of a building, and then are moving again before they even come into focus. Some walk up to her without shame and assess her like a spring lamb on the butcher's block - and in a manner of speaking, it's not false.
Most are indifferent. A few are rough. Fewer still are those that are kind, and those are the ones she can't stand.
It's easier to go home (no, Fabray, you don't have a home, or a family, or anyone that remotely gives half a shit) and force a smile when Mercedes asks her how her job is going, completely unaware that she's not working some crap part-time job because six-fifty an hour isn't going to get her the twenty thou a year it costs to go to a state school, never mind an out-of-state or private college. It's easier to rest her forehead against the cool tile of the shower and pry her thighs apart with her hands because she's so raw they won't come open of their own volition. It's easier for her to suck back the strangled sob when she does it, taking care not to bite her tongue or her lips because God (God's abandoned you, Fabray... no, even worse than abandoning you, He's just utterly forgotten about you) knows that the last thing she needs is a wound to make her less appealing and provide another route for a STD. It's easier to stand there with the heat cranked to the hottest setting, letting her porcelain-pale skin becoming mottled beneath the water's abuse, and wash away the sweat and mucus and who knew what other kinds of fluids that were clinging to her body.
It's easier than dealing with those who are kind. The indifferent ones see her as nothing more than a willing orifice, a pleasant friction. The rough ones leave fingerprint and palm-sized bruises on her body, stretching and turning and filling and intruding, but at least she knows it comes with the... territory.
No, what Quinn Fabray can't handle are the hands that are too-soft on her hair and too-gentle on her skin, the sympathetic eyes, the whispers directed to the floor as shirts are shrugged on and zippers pulled back up. They all use different words, but it's always the same simple message:
"Why?"
(because my name is Quinn Fabray and I only have two things I can call my own. one of them is a burns-so-hot-it's-radioactive desire to get out of Lima, Ohio. the second... isn't hope.
I deserve this.)