There wasn't any Glee that day, so Rachel went straight home. She opened up her purple laptop and pressed the on button, drumming her fingers impatiently against the table as she waited for it to start up.
In a few minutes it had whirred to life and she was signing on to MySpace, her mind already made up on what song she was going to sing today. Defying Gravity from Wicked sounded pretty dang perfect.
It had been a few days since she had posted a video. Yesterday she had been uh, preoccupied, and this Kurt thing had been bothering her since it started. So she was surprised when there was a little red box to the left side of the screen, telling her that she had a new message.
She moved the mouse and clicked on the words curiously. It couldn't be the Cheerios tearing her apart. There weren't any new videos for them to comment on, and she had already seen all the old comments.
Needless to say, she was very surprised to see that she had a message from Kurt. She didn't even know that she was friends with him on MySpace!
Rachel opened up the title-less message, reading through it quickly. It was short, blunt, and sounded like the way Kurt talked. He was asking her why she hadn't put a video up. She could sense the smugness behind it, like he knew that he was the reason she had missed the past two days.
Well, she wasn't going to respond to him. See how he liked that! She did, however, glance up at his profile picture, barely recognizing him. He was in a tux and holding a black fedora in front of his face. A very show-ish pose. She liked it.
Ten minutes later her video was up and she was left with nothing to do. She could wait around for the cheer leaders to smash her singing, or she could get up and do something productive.
She got up, closing the lid of the laptop, before walking away.
Rachel woke up early the next day. She ate breakfast and dressed quickly, getting to school fifteen minutes earlier than normal. There was barely anyone there when she was dropped off.
She quickly moved to an empty wooden picnic table a few feet away from the dumpster, sitting her backpack down before dusting off the seat. She didn't want to get anything on her outfit, after all.
The sophomore girl didn't have to wait long. Kurt walked by her five minutes later, head held high even though he knew what was coming.
"Hey Kurt!" she called, standing up. He turned, blue eyes seeming to seer through her.
He didn't greet her with any more than his usual, "What do you want?"
"Um, um." What was she going to say? She hadn't thought this far ahead! She grabbed her stuff and walked over him. "Hey."
He raised an eyebrow at her. "I believe you've already said that." He gave her that 'what the heck is wrong with you?' look that she got from every other girl in the school on a daily basis.
She shrugged, trying to cover up her blunder. "Why do you walk this way?" she asked him.
"It's the shortest way," he said simply, not looking at her anymore.
"But if you walked around, you wouldn't get bothered by the football players."
He let out a little snort. "I'm not going to go out of my way for them. That's degrading."
"And getting thrown in the dumpster isn't?" she shot back, her eyes never leaving him. She was polite. She looked at the person she was talking to.
"Touché," he mumbled, and she thought she saw a smile play across his face for a moment. "You still put videos up on MySpace."
"Yes, of course!" she replied, not making the connection. "That's because fame is the most important thing in this world! My talent needs to be out there for the world to see!"
He rolled his eyes. Sometimes, she really was too peppy. "But you know that every video you put up is going to get smashed by the…" He seemed to struggle with the next word, and spat it out. "Cheerios."
"I'm not going to change for… oh." Rachel realized she was repeating what Kurt had just said. Neither of them was going to change for anybody else, no matter how much pain they had to go through. They were their own people, and others just couldn't understand. "I see."
"Good," he replied, cutting his eyes over at her. "You're trying to save me, aren't you?"
"Save you?" she replied innocently, acting if she had no idea what he was talking about. "What do you mean?"
He sighed. "You think that they're not going to bother me if you're here." He considered it for a moment. "You're really that full of yourself, aren't you?"
Darn it. Found out. "Of course not!" she insisted, trying to play the innocent card. "Sorry for just wanting to talk!"
Kurt rolled his eyes, and she noticed that his pace quickened as he walked by the dumpster. She had expected this, and stayed right by his side. Either she was right, or they just didn't feel up to throwing him in the dumpster that morning. Or maybe they were just saving all their spite for later.
You could never tell with jocks.