Chapter 2

Lucy Fabray practically skipped into Warren G. Harding Middle School the first day back after winter break. The past 2 weeks had been the best she had all year. Even though Frannie hadn't been able to come down from New Jersey, both of her parents had been home for the entire break. For the first time in months they had all been able to sit together in the small living area of the small apartment and just be together. Judy on the sofa reading her celebrity magazine, every so often prattling on about local gossip or about what was discussed at her Christian Women's League meeting, Russell in his old green arm chair sipping on his whiskey offering his opinion to his wife's chatter and Lucy sitting at his feet, a book in her lap, half listening to her parent's conversation and humming under her breath to the songs that played on her dad's old jazz and soul records that could be heard softly in the background.

Although their Christmas wasn't lavish a chalked full of presents and even though they hadn't been able go and visit her grandparent's in West Virginia, Lucy had been more than content on Christmas morning waking up to the smell of pancakes and bacon wafting through the door of her bedroom. As she had walked slowly to the kitchen and smiled to see her parents dancing around the small kitchen as her dad sang along with his Bing Crosby Christmas records slightly out of tune. It had been a long time since Lucy saw her parents look so happy in the same room. After church, where Lucy had sung a solo of Silent Night with the youth group choir and opening the few presents that lay under the tree in the living room; Lucy had received a gift certificate to Barnes and Noble from her dad, a forest green dress from her mom for Sundays and a blue sweater from that store that stunk of its perfume and had a moose on it from her grandparents. The latter of the day, the three Fabray's spent the remainder of the day curled up in front of the TV watching A White Christmas and all the other Christmas movies that played throughout the day.

The rest of holidays had gone by happily and without interruption, but much to Lucy's disappointment, the day she was due back at school her mother had scheduled her long overdue appointments to the eye doctor and the orthodontist. Lucy had grumbled to herself in the car because she wanted to talk to Mrs. Schuster about the books she had read over the past two weeks and ask what she should get with the gift her daddy had gotten her. But Lucy's disappointment soon turned to joy as she left her orthodontist appointment retainer free, thanks to her meticulous care of her teeth and the optometrist with the promise that sometime next year, if her parents could afford it, she could get contact lenses.

Although by the time the appointments were done, the school day was practically over, Lucy; nonetheless, skipped over to Harding Middle School, hoping to catch Mrs. Schuster before she left, but by the time she got there, the library door was locked. In light of her discovery Lucy realized that in the midst of her excitement, she hadn't even gotten the chance to look at her teeth. She quickly made her way to the bathroom on the left hand side of the second floor. The place where Lucy had retreated during lunch hour before discovering the joys of the library, none of the toilets worked and the doors of the stalls never locked, making it a great hiding place to escape the taunts and jeering of the cafeteria. Lucy suddenly stopped a few paces from the door, she heard a a noise coming from inside the bathroom from the silence of the hallway.

Lucy slowly opened the door enough to stick her ear in the opening, and the voice, which is singing, becomes clear. Even though Lucy is positive she knows the song, her brain is too busy processing what she's hearing. The voice is high, pure and delicate and the only word that comes to Lucy's brain is angel.

Losing love I guess I've lost

Well if that's love

It comes at much too high a cost

I'd sooner buy

Defying gravity

Kiss me goodbye

I'm defying Gravity

When she finally pokes her head in to see who it is and Lucy's jaw drops promptly to the floor. It's a boy. Although tall in stature, he's as thin as a rail. His dark smooth hair contrasts sharply against his pale skin, startlingly blue eyes and dark pink lips. Much like his voice and build, his face is delicate, practically feminine. Lucy would usually words like handsome to describe a boy, but this boy's obvious good looks were not at all masculine, they were ethereal and fairylike, like the elves and sylphs that existed in the bedtime stories of Lucy's childhood.

"Pretty," Lucy breathes, she lets the bathroom door shut silently behind her as she continues to watch the angelic boy sing into a hair brush at his reflection, the music of his headphones blasted so loud that Lucy could faintly hear it under his voice.

I'd sooner buy

Defying Gravity

Kiss me goodbye

I'm defying gravity

I think I'll try

Defying Gravity

And you won't bring me down

Bring me down

Oh oh oh

There's a silent pause for just a moment as the final powerful note fades away.

"That was beautiful,"

The boy spins around, his hairbrush clanging to the floor, his eyes wide and round like saucers.

"Your voice, it's incredible, it's amazing, I've never heard anyone sing like that, especially a boy," Lucy begins to babble on, a bad habit she had a hard time controlling.

"Aren't you going to scream or something?"

Lucy stops rambling and looks at the boy, his face is flushed pink, blue eyes studying her intently.

"Why would I do that?" Lucy asks genuinely confused.

"Well, this is the girl's washroom, and if didn't notice already, I'm clearly not a girl," he said matterofactly, his long pale hand gesturing to his body.

"But it's not as if anyone ever comes to this bathroom anyways, and besides, school's over," Lucy replied.

"Yea, it is," the boy began slowly. "Then what are you doing here?"

"I could ask you the same question," Lucy quipped back, raising her eyebrows.

"Well, if you must know, I was practicing, as if it wasn't obvious enough,"

Lucy furrowed her eyebrows together. "Why are practicing in a school washroom? Can't you do it at home?"

The ethereal boy looked taken aback for a moment at Lucy's simple question.

"I- I I already practice a lot at home, and I didn't want to disturb my dad, he's really tired after work,"

Although Lucy was naïve in many cases, she could sense when she was being lied to. Years of being lied to by her parents when she asked if they were alright when the mail came and observing her peers in silence, Lucy was very perceptive, a gift she was proud of.

Lucy gave the boy a knowing look. "So you're telling me your dad doesn't like to here you sing?"

"No, I just….Ok fine, I was hiding, are you happy now!" he said angrily, his voice slightly more high pitched at the end.

"Hiding from what?"

The boy looked down, clearly ashamed. "From Karofsky and his neanderthals, they threatened to throw me in a dumpster after school if I showed up to gym class, I've been hiding here since lunch, and my dad is going to kill me for skipping when I get home"

"Then you should tell your dad the truth, he'll understand.

The boys scoffs at her and looks at her like she just said the most ridiculous thing he's ever heard.

"I know you're only trying to help because you feel sorry for me, but I don't need your pity, your redundant advice or your help. You don't know me, or anything about me, so stop trying,"

After snapping at her, the boy hastily picks up his hairbrush from the floor and stuffs it into his messenger bag and storms out of the washroom with his head held high before Lucy can react to his temper tantrum.

"Hey! Wait! Where are you going!" Lucy shouts trailing after him out of the washroom. I don't even know your name!"

By the time Lucy catches up with him, they're on the main floor of the school, the boy standing near the front door, digging for something in his messenger bag, and for some reason he's blinking furiously. He looks up at her and Lucy sees that his clear blue eyes are wet with unshed tears.

"What do you want," he sneers.

"Can't you see what they're doing to you! You're letting them get to you! And it's making you bitter. You can't just let them do that to you! You have to tell your dad! Or teacher, or someone!"

The boy scoffs at Lucy again, with an icy expression. "You and I both know the administration here doesn't give a crap about anything. And as for my dad, it's bad enough for him and his good reputation to know he has a faggot for a son, that last thing he needs is to know I'm some sort of weak sissy too,".

Lucy gasped as the word faggot was spat venomously from his lips. Even though it wasn't at all the first time she'd heard that word, it still gave her stomach a sick, queasy feeling, that one miniscule two syllable word could protrude such hate.

She remembered the first she had heard the dreadful word. It was a few months into the seventh grade, she had been walking from the abandoned washroom when the bell for third period had rung when she saw the popular boys; namely Noah, David, Azimio and Finn all walking down the hall together. Finn had stopped for a moment, to look at a poster on a passing locker (late Lucy would see it had been an advertisement for the middle school's under populated arts club).

"That's so faggy, dude," David had exclaimed as Finn glanced away from the poster, clearly embarressed that he had been caught looking at it in interest.

"Yea man, I didn't know you were interested in being a faggot Hudson?" Noah quipped. "Santana is never going to be into you if she thinks you like musical fairy shit,"

The boys had continued walking, Finn mumbling something that had sounded like "I'm into boobs". Lucy, who had overheard Noah's remark in the conversation, including that ugly word she had never heard before, was intrigued to know what it meant. That night, when Lucy was sitting at the kitchen table, her history and math homework finished in front of her, she simply asked:

"Mom? What's a faggot?"

Judy Fabray, who was in the kitchen at the time making dinner, nearly dropped the plate she was holding.

"Where did you hear that darling?" Judy asked turning to face her daughter after composing herself from the initial shock of her little girl using such foul language.

"I heard some boys say it at school today, and you and daddy told me to ask you if I didn't know what something meant," Lucy stated quietly but matter-o-factly, remembering the conversation she had with her parents a few years ago after hearing Uncle Robbie use the "s" word that was a rude way of saying poop.

The blonde woman sat down across from her daughter at the kitchen table and simply told her that it was a naughty word and that she shouldn't say. Lucy, being curious, stubborn and as knowledge hungry as she was asked her father when he got home from work. Like her mom, Russell Fabray told his daughter, that it was a horrible and offensive word and that he never wanted to hear his daughter use such filthy language. Of course, Lucy's curious itch was not soothed by either of her parents. Since her mother usually dropped her off at the public library every other Saturday morning when she had a spare shift at work, Lucy decided she would dig for facts there.

Upon arrival, Lucy went directly to the where the dictionaries were, selected her preferred enormous hard cover edition of Webster's New World Dictionary. She opened the large red book on an empty table and flipped the crisp but worn pages to the F section and began skimming, until her finger came across the proper letters: f-a-g-g-o-t.

Faggot or fagot n.

1. a bundle of sticks of twigs used for fuel

2. a male homosexual (slang)

Lucy slammed the dictionary shut. Homosexual. The definition to that word she knew. It was a person who was attracted to the same gender. As far as she knew, at least according to what the had briefly addressed at church at one point (some parents had complained they didn't want their children exposed to inappropriate subjects) and snippets of overhearing her parent's watching the evening news saying things like "those damn gays" while she pretended to be coloring in the kitchen or be reading a book in her bedroom. Lucy had never put all that much thought into gay people before, from what she had heard people around her say, it didn't seem particularly good to be gay, but now she was curious, she wanted to know why it was bad. So she went to the next book she knew could perhaps give her answers besides the dictionary, the bible.

Although she was adamant in her faith and she had a strong belief that there was someone watching over her and that you went to heaven after death, Lucy Fabray was in no, way fanatical about her faith. Yes she prayed often for guidance and thanks, she went to church every Sunday and she proudly wore her gold cross necklace that her parents had given her on her First Communion, but she wasn't obsessed, like some of the people that she saw on TV on the rare Sunday morning when was too ill to attend the service. It had really freaked her out to say the least, and she had no intention of letting religion take over her life, especially when the minister on TV had eerily reminded her of her daddy, and his wife of her mom, but Lucy had just told herself that her mind was playing tricks on her.

Lucy went to the computer lab in the far left hand side of the library after putting the dictionary back with shaking hands. She settled for the computer in the far corner, hidden from general view, even if the room was empty. Senior citizens from her congregation either frequented here or volunteered and Lucy didn't really feel comfortable at the thought of her parents knowing she was researching homosexuals. It wasn't as if she was ashamed, it was an uneasy feeling in her stomach was she tried to imagine her parent's puzzled faces if they were ever to know.

Once at her favourite search engine and went to an online bible passage sight that her youth group leader had mentioned. Once there Lucy looked under the H heading and found what she was looking for. Lucy looked at the page in awe at the words Genesis, she quickly clicked the link, wondering how she had missed the Book of Genesis mention gay people, when she had read the creation story and Noah's Ark so many times. And yet, after reading chapter 19 of Genesis about 5 times, Lucy brows still furrowed together in confusion, the story didn't talk about gay people at all, at least not to her. All she read was that the mob wanted to talk to the angels, what was awful about was that Lot gave his daughters to be raped by the mob, and as far as she was concerned, that was the horrible part of the story.

Not wanting to deal with the fact that the Bible was not the book she thought it was Lucy left the site and proceeded to search "the history of homosexuals" in the search engine. The skimmed through the page of links, unsure of what the choose, until she came to the bottom of the page and saw the words Soul mates and Legend and Love she selected it, as it seemed the safest choice. The website turned out to be a site for reading Ancient Greek literature online. Lucy wasn't quite sure what ancient Greece and Plato had to do with gay people but she read on anyways. What she found was a Greek legend, the story told of a time when people were attached to their soul mates, some pairs were a man and a woman, some two men and some two woman.. All the pairs were attached at back; two heads, 4 arms, 4 legs but one heart, that two true lovers were 2 halves of a whole. As the legend read, the gods separated all the pairs, leaving them to have to find one another again.

As she finishes the legend, Lucy finds her eyes moist and she can't help but think of how romantically tragic the concept is. At the bottom of the page, people have posted comments on the legend, some are clearly from scholars, but Lucy barely skims through them, because they use words that even she doesn't quite understand. Others, she finds aren't quite comments at all. She reads people's tales of how they think they found their other half, as the legend says. After swooning over one about two women who eloped to Paris, Lucy finds one that breaks her heart. She follows a separate link to an old newspaper website from somewhere in Idaho. It's an in-depth report about two boys who went to their senior prom together and according to sources had plans to run away to California together after graduation. But their dreams came to a shattering halt and Lucy felt her heart shrivel and crack in her chest as she learned that their prom was invaded by anti-gay protesters from both of the boy's parishes. The couple was beaten, tortured and exorcised; they were discovered later in an abandoned field, arms wrapped around each other and dead. The golden cross necklace felt heavy and repulsive around her neck as she looked upon pictures of people protesting outside of what was obviously the funeral with sign reading: "If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they shall surely be put to death; their blood is upon them" Lev. 18:22 written in blood red paint.

Lucy's eyes filled with tears, she closed the article window and dashed out of the computer lab to the far left side of the library. She tore a bible off the shelf and violently flipped through the pages. At the sight of the familiar hateful words, the color red dancing through her mind, she threw the book across the aisle, as if it burned her hand and curled up against one of the large shelves.

"Excuse me, little girl are you alright?"

A man with olive skin and a rather big nose, the bible she had thrown in one hand and a 3 books under his other arm. Lucy took the bible from his hand as he offered it back to her and set it carefully on the floor beside her.

"Are you alright?" he repeated.

"My parents told me not to talk to strangers, sir," Lucy replied diligently, sniffing her nose.

The man chuckled. "You have good parents then," he said with a bright smile. "I tell my daughter the same thing before she goes anywhere," he pauses for a moment. "Are you sure you're going to be alright?"

"Yes, no, I'm not sure," Lucy pauses, and looks up at him, directly in the eye. "Sir, have you ever believed in something your whole life, and then it turns out you were wrong about it?"

"Well first off, there's no need to call me sir, you can just call me Adam instead" Adam settles down beside her on the blue carpet. "And yes, a few things,"

"Do you believe in God?"

"Because I'm Jewish, I usually call him Yahweh, but yes, I do believe in God. Do you?" Adam asks, looking at the necklace.

"I don't know anymore. I don't understand why God would send someone to Hell, just because they love someone,"

Adam smiles a little. "I used to think so too,"

"Why?"

"Because I'm gay,"

Lucy's jaw drops a little. "Really?"

Adam nods. "Mhm, I've been with my partner Stefan for nearly 25 years now,"

"How can you believe in God if you're gay? Why do you believe in something that hates you,"

"I don't like to believe that God would have made me this way, if he didn't want me to be,"

"But, but the bible, Leviticus, it says that it's bad, but the boys from Idaho, they loved each other, and they died, and, and," Lucy couldn't stop herself from rambling about everything she had discovered.

Adam simply put a comforting arm on her shoulder and Lucy listened in awe as he talked about the pro gay synoguage he went to with his partner and daughter in Deyton whenever they could and showed her different passages in the bible, one that hinted that Ruth and Naomi were lesbians and that only a few pages earlier in Leviticus it read that the eating shrimp was an abomination.

"You're daughter is really lucky to have you as a dad," Lucy said as she timidly wrapped her arms around Adam giving him an awkward hug.

"You're a great kid Lucy, don't ever change,"

"You shouldn't call yourself that," Lucy snapped at the boy, putting a comforting arm on his shoulder "Just because you like boys doesn't mean there's anything wrong with you, you're just, different,"

He looks down at Lucy's hand, and roughly shoves it off. "I find it incredibly ironic that the girl with the cross around her neck is telling me it's ok to be queer,"

Lucy touches the small smooth cross self consciously, once again the small symbol of her beliefs felt like a constricting chain of guilt.

"I'm just being nice to be you,"

"Look Fabray, I don't need your pity or your Bible Belle act. Just leave me alone,"

Lucy's eyes widened. "How do you know my last name?"

"Just because over half of the student body avoids me like the plague, doesn't mean that I'm blind and deaf to what goes on here," He explains.

"You know my name, but I don't know yours,"

"Kurt Hummel," he says. "I'm actually surprised you haven't heard of me, I don't exactly assimilate well and Karofsky and the other neanderthals have no problem announcing it every time they see me,"

"You should come to the library! It's safer than the cafeteria and a lot more sanitary than the bathroom,"

"I don't know," Kurt starts. "Let's see if I survive tonight, I'm already late. I'll um see you around Fabray," Kurt waves and walks away gripping his messenger bag, and for the first time in what seemed like a century, a small smile grazed Kurt Hummel's lips.