DISCLAIMER: I do not own Glee or any of its characters.
"Finn?" Marley walked up to the tall figure of Finn Hudson as everyone else left the classroom, chatting amongst themselves or with their newly assigned mentors. "Hey, um…I really appreciate you assigning Santana as my mentor…but the thing is…"
"Marley's kind of already my mentee," Blaine finished, walking up behind Marley and finishing her sentence. "I told her I'd be her glee mentor."
"Well…" Finn said, glancing from Marley to Santana, who was now walking over from where she'd been talking with Brittany. "That's great, don't get me wrong. Do you think you and Santana can both be her mentors?"
"What's that?" Santana asked as she got within earshot. "Share? Santana Lopez does a lot of things, chubby cheeks, but sharing is not one of them. What's going on?"
"Santana, Marley and I have already been working in a mentor/mentee capacity, and she'd feel more comfortable just to continue working with me." Blaine looked at Finn. "I'm just as qualified as Santana to be a mentor, even if I'm not graduated yet. I've even been in glee longer."
"Oh hell no, this boy isn't trying to make out that he's better than me," Santana snapped. "Is that true, little miss Marley? You'd rather not work with me?"
Marley gulped under the fiery glare of Santana. She was skinny, beautiful, apparently talented as anything, and Marley felt nothing but intimidated by her. "Honestly, you kind of scare me," Marley admitted.
Santana pursed her lips. "That's fair!" she decided. "You should be. I'm a hard ass, and if you really want to learn some things, you'll work with me. If you want to get coddled and not really get any better, go ahead working with gel-head gay-man here." Blaine rolled his eyes at Santana and patted Marley's back comfortingly.
"Look, Santana, I really appreciate you coming and saying you'll be a mentor, but I don't want to screw up anything Blaine and Marley have already arranged," Finn finally said. "You'll still help out Quinn and Brittany, won't you? And I know Mercedes would love it if you helped her with vocal trainings."
Santana shrugged. "Fine. Whatever. It's not like I really wanted to babysit little miss dewdrop princess fairy anyway." She turned on her high heels and stalked away.
Finn, his eyes wide, looked back at Marley. "That may have been for the best that she not mentor anyone," he admitted and Blaine and Marley both nodded.
"And…girls, jump!" Marley, out of breath, grabbed onto Joe's shoulders and leapt onto him, thanking God when he didn't immediately drop her. However, the very quick change in her altitude made her start feeling a little light-headed, and things started to blur a little bit. She shook her head slightly to clear her vision and only succeeded in making herself dizzier.
Mike Chang, standing at the front of the stage, shook his head. "Kitty, you were behind. Turn…good, keep going guys. Don't forget to sing. And guys, put them down and go into the sidle…"
Joe carefully released Marley, letting her slide down his back to the ground quickly and she felt herself lose her footing. Despite her efforts to correct herself and continue on, her legs buckled beneath her and she fell, crashing right into Blaine as she did so.
"Marley!" Blaine exclaimed, dropping to her side.
"Hey, cut the music, guys," Mike called to the band.
"Marls," Ryder said anxiously, having pushed his way over as soon as he had seen. He dropped to his knees on the other side of her. "Hey, you okay?"
"I'm so sorry, Marley, that must have been my bad," Joe apologized, kneeling down too.
Marley waved all of them away as she pushed herself up to a sitting position. "No seriously, guys, I'm fine, I swear. I just slipped. I'm fine."
"Are you sure?" Ryder asked worriedly.
Mike had come over by now. "You all right, Marley?" he asked, concerned. "Did you hurt yourself?"
"I'm fine. Guys, I'm fine," Marley insisted. Ryder and Blaine each took one of her hands and helped her up as she continued declaring that she was okay. "It's just that I wasn't ready and I slipped. No big deal."
"Let's just take a five minute break really quickly," Mike suggested. "Marley, go sit down for a few minutes, okay?"
"Fine," Marley muttered, rolling her eyes. "I'm okay, but fine, I'll go sit down." Ryder held her hand as they walked to the edge of the stage. He jumped down first and then reached up to grab Marley by the waist and lift her down to the floor.
Marley collapsed into an audience seat, closing her eyes and silently thanking Mike for giving them a break, despite her numerous objections. Her head was still spinning. She'd been having these dizzy spells lately, but if she just waited them out, they usually passed.
"Hey, Marls," Ryder whispered to her, sitting next to her and holding her hand. Marley opened her eyes to look at him. His soulful brown eyes stared deeply into her clear blue ones. "Are you absolutely sure you're all right?"
"Yeah, I'm fine," she told him, though hesitantly. He clearly wasn't believing that. "I might be a little dehydrated. Can you grab my water from backstage? It's in my backpack."
"Absolutely," Ryder told her with a smile. He kissed her forehead and then, jumping back up onto the stage, jogged backstage to find her water bottle. Marley worried for a split second that he'd find the laxatives that Kitty had given her that morning, but reassured herself with the fact that they were thoroughly hidden, wrapped in tissue paper, in the bottom of the front compartment of her bag, whereas her water bottle was sitting in the side pocket in full view. Even if Ryder didn't see the water bottle, he wouldn't look for it in the pocket that the laxatives were in.
Seconds later, Kitty had taken Ryder's vacated seat. "Well, that was unfortunate, wasn't it?" she commented dryly, examining her nails nonchalantly.
"I slipped," Marley told her, not caring to listen to what Kitty had to say right now.
"Oh I know," Kitty agreed. "I just heard Joe saying that he couldn't hold onto you any longer though, because you were a bit too heavy for him. I mean, I guess he needs to lift some weights or something before Thursday, then, because you're probably not going to be losing any weight at this point are you?"
Marley's heart stopped for a split second, she could have sworn it. "He said that?"
"I mean, he's probably just a weakling, right?" Kitty said in a way that made it obvious she thought the opposite. "Whatever. Oops, here comes knight-in-shining-armor. I'll leave you two alone." With that, Kitty got up and left at the exact moment Ryder jumped down from the stage, Marley's purple water bottle in hand.
He looked after Kitty oddly. "Was she being mean to you?" he asked as he handed Marley her water and sat down next to her.
"No," Marley murmured, taking a small sip of water. "She was being nice."
"Hey, Jake, over here, man!"
The next day, Ryder was laughing at the joke Tina had just told at the lunch table, when Sam yelled at their fellow glee club member to join them. Jake, holding his lunch tray, took a look at the empty seat beside Ryder, and pointedly took one at the extreme opposite end of the table, where it was much more crowded. Ryder rolled his eyes.
"Congrats on getting the dance part in Gangnam Style, Jake," Tina said. "Mike says you were awesome."
"Well, I don't like to brag, but…" Jake said with a sly smile.
As the conversation continued, Ryder glanced over at Marley, noticing she was being unusually silent. She sat with one of her hands holding a plastic spoon, absently turning it over and over. Her cheek rested in her other palm, and she looked about ready to nod off.
Ryder nudged her gently with his shoulder. "Hey, you awake?" he asked, a bit teasingly.
"Hmm? Oh, yeah," Marley said with a small laugh. "Sorry, I…honestly, I haven't been sleeping very well lately."
"Nerves for Sectionals?" Ryder suggested.
"Probably," Marley agreed, sighing. She tapped her spoon absently against her tray.
Ryder looked down at the tray to see that most of her food was untouched. "Hey, you've hardly eaten anything, Marls," he murmured in surprise. "We've got double glee rehearsal tonight, you've got to eat something."
"I had some."
"You've had like half of a yogurt," Ryder pointed out.
"It's the only good thing that was up there," Marley insisted. Ryder gently took the spoon from her hands, dipped it in the yogurt container, and held the spoon up to her.
"Have some more then," he suggested, smiling encouragingly at her.
Marley looked as though she were trying to find an excuse out of it. She apparently found none, because she obediently opened her mouth and let Ryder feed her the half-spoonful he was offering.
"Aw, isn't that adorable?" Marley and Ryder both looked to see Kitty watching them from where she was sitting next to Jake. "Don't you think that's adorable, Jake?"
Jake averted his gaze down to the tabletop. "Yeah, way adorable," he muttered.
Marley quickly swallowed the yogurt and wiped her mouth off with a napkin, taking a long sip of her water. Her cheeks were turning red, a sign that she was embarrassed.
"Eat a bit more," Ryder encouraged, more softly now. He offered her the spoon and she took it from him, scooping up the tiniest bit of yogurt possible and eating it. After watching her successfully eat a few more bites, he turned back to the conversation at the table, but continued to glance back over at Marley every now and again.
Clearly, she really had been hungry, because after the yogurt, she finally ate the salad that was sitting getting limp on her tray, and finished her water.
And the next period, in history, Ryder thought nothing of it when Marley got the bathroom pass not ten minutes into class.
Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. Sectionals in two days. Stupid. Want to be fat? Stupid, stupid, stupid.
Marley gasped as she finished heaving. She blindly reached for the flush handle and then pushed herself away from the toilet, curling her legs to her chest as she leaned against the stall divider, shivering on the cold tile floor.
She couldn't believe that she'd actually eaten lunch. She'd been doing so well, too. She hadn't had anything to eat since Sunday evening, and it was now Tuesday. Mom will expect me to eat Thanksgiving dinner, Marley realized with a sob. Grandma and her and everyone always look forward to it. They work so hard on it. How am I going to get out of it? She took a few deep breaths, trying to suppress her panic of what was now only two days away. You'll be fine, Marley. Even if you have to eat, you can always purge. And then there's…
Marley made a face just thinking about what Kitty had suggested to her.
"Here," Kitty had said simply when she came out to Marley at her locker Monday morning. She held out some small package, covertly wrapped in plain white tissue paper.
"What is it?" Marley asked suspiciously, taking the package wearily.
"Laxatives. Like I told you about the other day," Kitty explained. "If you ever can't fit into an outfit or something, and you can't purge, use them."
"Kitty, I told you I didn't want these," Marley hissed, glancing around and thrusting the package back towards the blonde cheerleader in front of her.
"I'm sorry, do you really want me to take those back?" Kitty asked. "Because you know I think you're a sweetheart and I know you're as excited as anything to perform at Sectionals and it will be really embarrassing for you if you can't fit into your dress at the last minute because you and your meat-loving-mama have Thanksgiving breakfast, lunch, and dinner before the competition, and you have to go on naked—or maybe not perform at all." Kitty folded her arms and raised an eyebrow at Marley.
Marley felt a lump growing in her throat as she stared back at Kitty. Slowly, she pulled the package she held back to her and, with Kitty watching closely, stowed it in her bag.
Kitty smiled at her. "Good girl. You know you're making the right decision." With that, Kitty had turned sharply and walked away, her high pony swinging behind her.
"I can't," Marley sobbed quietly to herself. She sniffed and coughed. "I don't think I can use those," she whispered more softly.
But she knew if it came down to it…she might have to. Because if she was being honest…she was starting to feel like she didn't have a choice about any of this.