September 2010 (cont.)
Santana walked from her mom's car towards the main campus building. There was still a trace of summer in the midst of everything else that screamed autumn. Every tree on the way to school sported hundreds of different reds, browns, and yellows that Santana didn't even know existed. One tree in particular caught her eye. It was the last tree she passed before she stepped on the pavement neat the front doors. She felt so small beside it, but when she stepped back, the tree looked like a baby next to the tall school building. Then she thought the building probably looked small compared to the Mall of America or something awesome like that. She thought standing next to the basketball boys made her look small, but she never felt so insignificant.
Snap out of it, she thought. Get your ass to homeroom before someone sees you staring at a tree like a moron.
She didn't have any classes with Tess this semester, which was a real bummer. School sucked even with Tess to keep her distracted, but without her it was straight torture. Still in her psychedelic thought process about her relationship with the universe, she decided to spend Spanish class wondering why high school was such hell. She was already more proficient than the teacher, Mr. Schue, so she figured spacing out was entirely appropriate.
Why does high school suck so much lately? Well for one, the teachers paid such little attention that Santana had managed to listen to music through headphones for an entire class period, openly ignoring the lecture, and the only person who noticed was Li, the foreign exchange kid sitting next to her. Santana was smart; she liked taking challenging courses, and McKinley was desperately lacking in that area.
She continued to make a list in her head. She almost laughed when she realized that one thing she hated was that their sports teams were terrible. She did not like sports, nor did she really know anything about them, but she thought it would be fun to sit in the stands with some friends cheering for a winning team. She realized she had never done that before — you know, been on the winning side.
She always picked the line that took longer than the other at the grocery store. She always happened to root for the person on Project Runway that designed the most hideous outfit that week. Even during the Olympics, the one time she tried guessing the winner beforehand, the guy came in fourth — no medal, no glory.
Yeah, being on the winning side sounded like a kickass idea.
She pictured being at a football game with "Titans" painted on her face and basking in victory with everyone else in the stands. Santana then saw that her imagination forgot to put Tess in that picture. When she hugged her friends in celebration, they were the friendly acquaintances she talked to during lunch or in line waiting for her mom after school.
Santana finally concluded that class with Tess didn't make school enjoyable, it was just a distraction.
The bell rang.
"Okay classe, practice your verbs for the test mañana!" Mr. Schue said with much more enthusiasm than the sentence warranted. Santana got up from her desk and made her way out the door toward her locker.
Halfway down the hall, Santana's friend Nick caught up with her.
"Hey there," he said with a cheery skip in his voice.
"Oh, hey Nick. How was Euro? Do we do anything today?"
"Huh? Oh, no. Just some stupid worksheet. I slept for, like, half of it."
Santana laughed a little. "Nice. I basically did the same in Spanish just now. I genuinely think someone taught Schuester that adding 'o' to the end of a word makes it Spanish."
They made it to their lockers. Santana's was in between Nick and Tess, but Tess must have already gotten her stuff for her next class. She started turning her locker combination when she noticed Nick leaning his shoulder against his locker, staring at her with a smile that made her uncomfortable.
"Did someone put pixie sticks in your nonfat-mocha-soy-chai-venti-frap-whatever you like to sober up with every morning? What's with the smile?" She said, trying to keep her cool even though she had no reason to not be cool.
"How was he?"
"How was who?"
"The Italian stud, Fabio or whatever."
Santana froze. Nick smiled even wider.
"He was great."
"Oh yeah?" He scooted in closer like they were sharing top secret intell, but his voice stayed the same slightly-louder-than-normal volume. "How big was his—"
"Okay cowboy, you can stop right there. How did you even know?"
"Tess. Duh. Who else would've told me?"
"I don't know… Did you tell anyone else?"
"I told Tracy, but I don't think she'll tell anyone. After Rick the Stick forwarded her dirty pictures to the whole school, she's pretty sensitive about keeping secrets."
"I'm still mad I didn't get those." Santana thought about redirecting the conversation back to her 'best friend' betraying her privacy, but decided she'd better not.
"Wait, you want to see Tracy's pancake nipples? Gross."
"No, I don't want to see them like that. I just feel left out, you know? Like, why didn't anyone think I'd find that funny? I've been hearing people call her pancake nipples for almost a year now, and I don't even know why everyone thinks it's so funny because apparently I'm not cool enough to see Tracy's grody sexts to Rick the Douchebag."
They hadn't noticed that everyone around them had gone to class and the hallway was empty. The bell rang, signaling the end of passing period.
"Oh eff," they said at almost the exact same time. Not even taking a moment to laugh at each other, they went their separate ways to their next classes.
Santana spent European History class staring at the worksheet her teacher had handed out. She wasn't even reading it, but she refused to look away, afraid to make eye contact with anyone in the room. It would give her away too easily.
She was completely dumfounded that Tess, of all people, would spread a story like that about her. Santana felt bad enough about telling the lie in the first place, but neither of them mentioned it after Santana pretended to be heartbroken over losing Fabrizio. She thought she had cut the cord.
Nope.
The more Santana thought about it, the more she felt anger pit in the bottom of her stomach. Tess was the mayor of Secret City, USA. Santana knew so much about her that she could probably get her expelled, kicked out of her home, and possibly arrested with a little embellishment. The difference was, Santana would never tell these secrets to anyone. She made a promise not to, and they weren't hers to tell.
Tess clearly didn't have the same understanding of privacy, and Santana was starting to wonder if her mom was right. Maybe Tess wasn't the great friend Santana thought she was.
Santana assumed that enduring the tragedies that Tess had gone through automatically made someone a good person. She thought it somehow exempted them from being responsible for their behavior. If Tess chose to act like the kind person she sometimes was, Santana was amazed at her strength. If Tess acted like a victim to everything, Santana wrote it off because deep down Santana saw Tess as a victim and nothing more. She didn't know how to hold a victim responsible for their actions without being disrespectful to how much they've suffered.
October 2010
Santana took a moment by her tree — she had now deemed it her tree — as she did every morning these days, to wonder when she could stand by something beautiful and not feel like a gross ant under a microscope by comparison. Maybe someday, she thought. Maybe someday.
Santana wasn't sure how to approach Tess about her conversation with Nick a few weeks prior, but Tess seemed to be making that decision for her. Santana almost never saw Tess by their lockers anymore, and since they didn't have any classes together, that pretty much only left lunch and those ten minutes after school.
Even those were starting to go away. Tess would say stuff like "I have Key Club at lunch today. See you tomorrow." She wouldn't even give an excuse for not hanging out after school. She would just say, "See you tomorrow," and let Santana quietly get the hint.
Santana didn't mind actually. The more time she spent away from Tess, the more time she got to spend with those acquaintances she had mingled with over freshman and sophomore year.
None of them took over as "best friend" and no one asked why she wasn't Tess's sidekick anymore. They didn't acknowledge Tess at all. They just wanted to get to know Santana.
Alright, so just a few notes.
1. I'm on Spring Break right now, so hopefully I'll get a lot of chapters written so updates can be more frequent. Also awesome.
2. For anybody wondering, I'm not going to reveal Tess's dirty secrets. Tess is based off of a real person in my life, and like Santana, I will go to my grave honoring my promise to never tell a soul. I will say that for the most part, Tess is indirectly related to the events. They are things she witnessed happening around her, and sometimes because of her, but only a select few moments actually involve her directly.
Thanks for reading! More chapters soon :) Now go do something incredibly nice for someone you love, for no reason. You'll feel like Mother Teresa, and I don't know about you but I think feeling like Mother Teresa would be a wonderful experience. Now we're just getting off topic. Ta ta for now!