Sorry this took much more time than I would have liked for me to update. There have just been some crazy things happening in my personal life. Hope things are going well for all of my readers and thank you so much to those of you that are sticking with me. Here is the next chapter for you!

Chapter 2

Blaine wasn't one that normally got nervous on the first day of school. He usually didn't care enough about anything in school but his best friend Hunter, so what difference did it make. His school in New York City hadn't cared if he showed up or not, so he skipped school more times than he could count. His school in Westchester, New York was a lot different than his one in the city. McKinley High School had cared if he showed up, but wasn't challenging. Blaine was bored in a lot of his classes and was bored with several of his ignorant classmates. He could already tell that Elton Walker School for Boys wasn't going to be that way, though. He was already informed that he would have to meet with his Head of House on a weekly basis to discuss how he was doing in all of his classes and adjusting to the school. His teachers may not take attendance in every class, but the student to teacher ratio was small enough that they would all know if he wasn't there.

"Dude, don't worry," Jeff said the morning of the first day of the semester. He was messing with his hair in the mirror, already dressed in his uniform. His tie was slightly crooked, and his top button was unbuttoned. Blaine could tell that he was trying to go with a slightly rumpled look. Instead of making his hair neater, he was making it look even more messy and sleep tousled. "You'll have me with you all day!"

Blaine laughed, shaking off his nerves and straightening his tie. He figu6red if the work was really that tough he could definitely ask Jeff for help. The kid was clearly more than eager to help anyone that he possibly could.

Blaine, Avery, Nick and Jeff all ate a quick breakfast together in the dining hall before heading off to their classes. Classes were split by house, with a couple houses having class together at a time. The first class that Blaine and Jeff had was U.S. History with Carlisle House.

"Good Morning Mr. Chapman," Jeff said, walking up to the teacher as soon as they entered the classroom.

Blaine watched in confusion as Jeff took a slip of paper from Mr. Chapman before walking to the back of the classroom. Blaine followed behind and sat next to Jeff in the back row.

"I have to get this signed by Mr. Chapman after class to prove that I've been here for the whole class," Jeff explained before Blaine could even ask. "I do this with all my teachers and then have to hand all of the slips to our Head of House at study hall today. They do this for all students that were sent here for truancy. It's annoying, but effective I suppose."

Blaine just nodded along, overwhelmed by the whole new situation.

"So I think we really killed that cover yesterday," Jeff said, switching topics abruptly. "We should work today on another song. Should we stick to the same band or should we cover something else? I'll ask people in the comments section what they think."

"What?" Blaine asked, raising an eyebrow in confusion. "What comments section?"

"On YouTube," Jeff replied like it was the most obvious thing in the world.

"You put our cover on YouTube?" Blaine asked, trying to keep his voice down.

"Yeah," Jeff shrugged. "I asked if you guys were cool if I filmed the video."

Jeff pulled his phone out of his pocket and messed with it for a few moments before turning it so Blaine could see. Blaine was confused by what he was looking at. It was clearly their video. That wasn't the confusing part. The confusing part was that it had over 4,000 views already.

"How does it have so many views?" Blaine asked.

"Oh I have a little bit of a following on YouTube. I upload some covers and some videos of me just doing crazy shenanigans. It's how I relieve stress," Jeff said, putting his phone back in his pocket.

"I just asked them what cover they want to see us do," Jeff said. "There should be enough of a response by this afternoon that we can pick a song to work on."

Blaine didn't have time to respond to that, since the class officially began. Throughout the day he found classes to be a lot more challenging than they were at McKinley. It was clear that the teachers really did care for the education of their students. The material was harder, but they really took the time to explain it and cared if you had questions.

Blaine never really got a chance to talk with Hunter to see how he was doing. He saw him hanging out with some other guys from his house and thought it seemed like the boy was doing fine. Hunter could make friends anywhere, so Blaine wasn't worried that the boy was lonely.

After the official school day ended it was time for Music/Sport. Blaine headed with Jeff to the music room where they met up with Avery and Nick once more. There were about fifteen boys total that were choosing to do music for their activity. There was clearly a wide variety of instruments. There was everything from guitars and piano to saxophones and violins. Several boys were choosing to do vocal performance over an instrument. Blaine was surprised to see that Hunter was not there, wondering what sport he had chosen instead.

It was pretty clear that most of the boys had chosen how they wanted to compete at the showcase already, be that in groups or solo. Avery, Nick, Jeff and Blaine were the only group that was trying for a 'band' with two guitars, drums and bass.

Mr. Fitzgerald, the faculty supervisor, called for order once the bell rang.

"So thank you all for choosing to take part in this new program," Mr. Fitzgerald began. "Hopefully this will be very successful and we will be able to continue with it in the future. Now I'm sure you are wondering how this is going to work, since obviously you can't all practice in this room at once playing all different songs. That would just be chaos. Now it seems to me like most of you already have an idea of how you want to approach this for the showcase. I'm going to give you five minutes to discuss things though, and then you will write your groups or your solo act on this sheet of paper here. After that is done I will explain how we are going to work this."

Mr. Fitzgerald gestured for the boys to discuss amongst themselves, the classroom erupting into noise immediately.

"So have we decided?" Jeff asked, biting his lip in his anxiousness. "Are we going to compete together?"

"I'm in," Nick immediately replied. "I thought we sounded great together."

"I guess I can work with y'all," Avery said with a smirk.

"Okay so we have a drummer, a bassist, and a guitarist," Jeff said, turning towards Blaine. "Do we have our other guitarist?"

Blaine thought about leaving Jeff in suspense for a while, but couldn't help the grin that spread across his face. "Fine, I'm in too."

Jeff literally jumped up out of his chair and did a little dance.

"This is great!" Jeff exclaimed. "We are so going to win. That freaking boy band from Walker House doesn't stand a chance."

Blaine wasn't entirely sure what Jeff was talking about, but shrugged and went along with it.

"Okay so the comments on the video were all over the place," Jeff said.

Neither Nick nor Avery looked confused by that statement, so obviously Jeff had told them about it at some point.

"There was no answer that was even given twice," Jeff continued. "I think we should collectively come up with different things to cover. We should aim to put a cover up every few days. The commenters on YouTube are very straightforward. If they don't like it, they will tell you. They will be our tester audience."

Blaine thought that was a very interesting way to develop their sound. In some ways it would be up to the guys because they were choosing the covers they were doing. They were originating what they thought their sound could and should be. The commenters on YouTube would just critique it.

"So what should we do for today?" Avery asked.

"I think we should do something different and unexpected," Nick continued. "We don't want to do another Blink song. How about something by Good Charlotte?"

"What about The Used?" Avery suggested.

"Are those really unexpected?" Jeff asked.

"What about Nickelback?" Blaine threw out, mostly joking. He enjoyed Nickelback's music, but knew a lot of people didn't (or claimed they didn't).

Jeff turned and stared at Blaine for a moment, his jaw dropping.

"GENIUS!" Jeff exclaimed.

Blaine raised an eyebrow in confusion, not at all expecting that response.

"No, that is good," Nick added. "It's still a cool sound, and different enough. Who would expect that we would follow up a Blink song with Nickelback?"

"I'm for it," Avery said with a shrug. "My friends back in Texas and I used to blast Nickelback and rock out in my pickup truck."

Before Blaine could say anything else on the subject, Mr. Fitzgerald called for order and asked for one member of each act to come forward and sign up. Jeff took the liberty of doing that for them.

"Okay so the way that this is going to work is we are going to cut into your study hall hours. You are all going to get an assigned time slot to use this room. If it is not your time slot then you will be in study hall. That means that you could have study hall much earlier than usual," Mr. Fitzgerald explained.

Mr. Fitzgerald quickly scanned through the list and started to write times next to the entries.

"So here are your time slots," Mr. Fitzgerald said, turning and posting the sheet on the bulletin board behind him. "Everyone other than Chester Adams and Mark Fillmore please look at your time slot and head to study hall."

Blaine glanced at their time slot and saw that they had the room the last possible time slot. The four boys headed to their assigned study hall rooms and got to work. Blaine actually like having the study time. He got all of his work done quickly and without any distractions. They passed notes to each other every once in a while, but other than that he was really able to focus. An hour into study hall Blaine caught Hunter walking in out of the corner of his eye.

Hunter nodded to the guy that he was with and then walked over and sat down across from Blaine.

"I thought for sure you would have taken music," Blaine whispered, watching Hunter start to unpack his bag.

"No, a bunch of guys in my house persuaded me to do archery with them," Hunter shrugged, whispering in reply.

"So how are you liking it here?" Blaine wrote on a piece of paper and slid it to Hunter.

"It's not terrible," Hunter wrote back. "I mean most of the guys in my house are cool. So who are your friends?"

"The blond one is my roommate Jeff. The one to your left is Nick and the one next to me is Avery," Blaine answered.

"I know Avery, he's in my house. He's kind of the traitor of the house because he mostly just hangs out with people from different houses," Hunter wrote back.

Blaine couldn't help but roll his eyes at that. Of course this school would have such strong house rivalries.

Next thing Blaine knew Jeff was tugging at his sleeve, gesturing that it was time to go. Blaine shoved all his books into his backpack and rushed out after the guys. They got to the music room right as the guy before them was heading out. He was the student playing the saxophone.

"Welcome guys!" Mr. Fitzgerald said as they walked in. "I admit I'm quite excited to see what you guys pull together for the show. Do you know what song you want to do?"

"No, we are actually going to try out several different songs just to see how things go. We have three weeks until the first showcase, so I think we have a little time to mess around," Jeff explained.

"Sounds good," Mr. Fitzgerald. "You guys just get to it. I'm here for any advice if you need it. For now I'm just going to observe."

The boys messed around with some Nickelback songs for a little bit, finally landing on the song How You Remind Me.

It's not like you to say sorry

I was waiting on a different story

This time I'm mistaken

For handing you a heart worth breaking…

Blaine thought the session went great. They weren't amazing by any stretch of the imagination, but he thought they gelled pretty well together. He had a couple moments before dinner, so he decided to call Kurt so that he could talk about how excited he was.

"It felt awesome," Blaine gushed. "These guys love music in the same ways that I do. Like it's incredible."

"That's great, Blaine," Kurt replied, so happy to hear that his boyfriend was happy. "I have some exciting news too"

"Oh yeah," Blaine asked, sitting down on his bed and crossing his legs.

"I auditioned for Sound of Music just at the local community theater," Kurt began. "I just got the call after school! I got it! I'm going to play Friedrich."

"That's awesome, Kurt!" Blaine exclaimed.

"Yeah, the director is a guy who is a freshman in college," Kurt continued. "His name is Adam. I don't really know much about him yet other than he is from England. He cast me though, so that means he is automatically awesome in my book."

"Blaine! Dinner," Jeff said, peeking his head into the room.

"Gotta go, Kurt," Blaine said. "I will talk to you soon though! Congrats again."

Blaine hung up the phone feeling like things could only go up from here.

How You Remind Me- Nickelback is the song that is used in this chapter. Hope you all enjoyed and have noticed some of the drama that is stirring! Love you all so much and thanks for reading.