And here I am again. Once month before the big finals that decide over my entire future or something, but of course I rather write fanfiction.

I wrote the last part of this rather quickly, as I first planned on including the next part in this chapter, too, but it got out of hand so I'll just leave this here ... hoping to get more done soon. Or not. We'll see.

First they drove Tiffany home.

Mercedes made sure that her husband was there to take care of her and their older son, Malachi, who got dropped off by a friend's mom from swimming practice around this time.

After she'd assured him to fill him in later with everything going on, she got back in Blaine's car.

"Let's do this!" she said resolutely before she fastened her seatbelt and Blaine pulled out of the Jackson – the name Mercedes carried for more then ten years now - family's driveway.

The ride over to Shelby's house was quiet.

They all looked out of their respective window, thinking about the upcoming confrontation with the woman that once was their competition, and that they had expected to never see again.

"I'm not so sure about this" Rachel said nervously. "If she wanted us to do something, she would have said so."

"Come on Rachel, don't chicken out!" Mercedes rolled her eyes.

"But it's rude!"

"Yeah, and it's so not rude to come here and put us all in a situation we can't deal with" Kurt said with a low voice.

Rachel kept quiet for the rest of the trip.

Beth feared facing Melissa that night.

On her way to the school, she played different scenarios in her head, just to make sure – Melissa being scarily sweet, Melissa being bitchy, Melissa ignoring her.

It was so stupid.

Why was she even afraid? It wasn't like her life depended on Melissa approving of her or not.

Still.

That was the way Melissa owned the school. She just had to look at you and you wanted do everything for her to like you.

Like in that old high school movie - Mean Chicks, or something.

Being a cheerleader was so easy. All you had to do was simply physical – from working out to smiling sweetly over the day. And with all the other things she dealt with besides practice, she couldn't really use any drama in the squad.

When she pulled into the parking lot, her pulse was racing. She waited for a moment, watching a group of other Cheerios pass by, checking if Melissa was outside right now. If she had to face her, then at least somewhere with witnesses. And a teacher.

After everything was clear, she hastily jumped out of the car and grabbed her bag from the back bench.

Somehow it had gotten stuck, so she pulled with more force. In her current state, she was incapable of just bending down and unfasten whatever had entangled there, and as the bag just wouldn't come out, she leaned back, one hand on the handle.

Of course it was just then that it decided to unstuck.

Beth awkwardly fell backwards, the bag right on her face, too fast for her to do anything about it.

She didn't land on the asphalt, though, but on someone's legs.

And yes, they were Melissa's. How could they've been anybody else's with her luck.

Beth slowly looked up, halfway upside down in a very unfortunate ankle, so that the other girl covered the upper range of her vision.

She instantly closed her eyes again. Just pretend it's because of the sun.

"Need help?" Melissa offered her hand.

"Thanks" Beth said nervously, silently waiting for her to push her back to the ground or something equally evil.

But Melissa didn't do anything. She just waited for Beth to clean herself up and then walked with her towards the gym in a silence that wasn't even that awkward

Still, Beth was extremely nervous.

"Melissa …" she started off, not knowing how to finish.

"What?" the head cheerleader asked, smiling friendly.

"About this afternoon …"

Her smile didn't break, not even the tiniest bit.

"We don't have to talk about it. You should make sure, though, to not be seen with them anymore."

"Oh. Okay" Beth replied, stunned by her calmness.

Melissa stepped ahead to open the door and turned around to her.

"I understand that they seem nice, and maybe they told you differently about me. But they can be cruel, believe me. You don't want to get into that."

"I guess not."

Beth fumbled with her bag's zipper nervously. So now they are the bad people?

Melissa's smile brightened even, before she entered the school with long steps, so that Beth had trouble keeping up at first.

"Wait!" she called, running to close up to her "How cruel?"

Melissa just threw her hair back.

"You don't want to know" she answered quietly, and though the corners of her mouth were still bent upwards, her eyes were cold.

This wasn't a girl that got hurt and tried to warn a friend – this was a girl that knew exactly what she wanted other people to think and do.

Beth shivered.

"I would be especially careful of that Tamara girl" Melissa went on nonchalantly, "She might seem like she doesn't care about her reputation, but she tries to pull people down with her all the time. You know, luring them into some corner with drugs so they get caught, while she gets away."

"But she … you know, she sounded nice when I talked to her" Beth replied carefully, but couldn't help but wonder.

Hadn't Tamara been talking about drugs the first day in theater class?

No. She wasn't going to believe this. Melissa was trying to manipulate her for whatever reason, but Beth wouldn't allow it.

"Yeah, that's her trick" Melissa reassured her. "But I saw you were getting along with Linaya, right?

"Right …" Beth agreed slowly, anxious to find out what Melissa had to say about her.

The head cheerleader just shook her head.

"I can't believe that girl, I mean, have you seen her hair? It looks like she put a rainbow skunk on her head."

Beth shrugged uncomfortably.

"I guess." She wasn't into Linaya's colorful style very much herself, and she was glad that it was the only bad thing Melissa knew about her, proving that Linaya's nice personality was definitely not an act. But she didn't want to gossip about her friend either.

Wow, did I just call Linaya my friend in my head?, she thought right after.

Then she smiled, because yes, Linaya was her friend.

"What did you think about those lemon sweatpants she wore in gym class last week? Weren't they just hideous?" Melissa continued, oblivious to the fact that Beth didn't want to take part in this kind of conversation anymore.

"Could we please change the subject?" Beth replied nervously as Melissa turned towards her, one hand on the doorknob of the locker room.

"What?" The eyes of the other girl narrowed coldly.

"Look, Beth" she said, retreating her arm from the door and crossing both of them across her chest. "You're a cheerleader, you are hot and you are my friend, which makes you top class at this school. Those glee losers are bottom. If you are one of those terribly nice people who can't say no to anybody talking to them, at least have the brains not to brag about your relations with them any more, or your status will drown in slushies."

She walked up close to Beth, looking her in the eyes.

"I am merely offering you a chance to fit in" she whispered aggressively. "It would help if you just stopped pretending that there are any connections to those people and play along!"

"Maybe I don't know anybody here very well" Beth replied, her voice shaking as she realized what she was about to do, "But they have been nicer than you so far, and I think we are real friends, not like you and I and the other Cheerios. Could it be that you are jealous? Huh?"

Her voice had gotten stronger over the course of her little speech, but one piercing look of Melissa destroyed her newly found courage again.

Fear flooded her stomach as she watched the other girl.

"Never. Speak. Of. This. Again" she breathed, before she turned around and stormed into the locker room.

Beth exhaled deeply.

Okay.

In the future, she would just try to leave this and never bring up her other friends in a conversation with Melissa again.

Great, now she already called all of them her friends. Was it because of Melissa's agenda insisting that they weren't; a natural protest reaction of her brain to do the opposite than expected?

Anyways. For now, she was just worried about her future with the Cheerios. Not that she was afraid of getting thrown out, of course not. But maybe Melissa decided to turn everybody against her, because she refused to oblige to the head cheerleader's opinions?

Catching her breath again, she stepped inside the locker room.

Whatever might come, she could do this.

As two of the girls in there looked up to smile at her entrance, she felt rather confident that this was going to be okay.

After Beth had left for cheerleading practice, and she'd kissed Taylor goodbye for his nightshift, Shelby just decided to sit down at the piano and train her voice again, when the doorbell rang.

She frowned.

Who could this possibly be?

There weren't many people she'd met here so far, and even less knew her address. And none of those would just come and visit her without advance notice.

On the way downstairs she quickly stopped in front of the mirror to check her hair.

It could be someone important, after all.

Shelby usually didn't have any problems with composure. After years on the stage and years in which things had happened in her life that were definitely not normal, she had learned to control her emotions as well as her facial muscles.

Still, as she opened up the door and not only saw Rachel, but three other adults, two of them looking vaguely familiar, she had no control over her reaction at all.

"Rachel …" she started a little helplessly, glancing over the other three visitors.

"Um, good night, Shelby" Rachel greeted equally awkward, an apologetic sparkle in her eyes as they shot to the slim man next to her who had crossed his arms, looking rather displeased.

"I don't know if you remember my friends … Kurt Hummel" Rachel continued, pointing to him.

Yes, Shelby now faintly remembered him. The adorable kid from back then had grown up to a good-looking adult. But it nothing explained his almost aggressive expression to her.

"Mercedes Jones."

Shelby nodded in acknowledgement of the black woman who smiled at her nicely, much friendlier than Kurt.

"And finally, Blaine Anderson, Kurt's husband" Rachel closed the short introduction round.

Shelby reached out to shake the last man's hand, whose kind face didn't ring a bell.

Still, his name didn't sound new.

"Do I know you from somewhere?" she asked politely.

He grinned openly. "I'm your daughter's theater teacher" he said, quickly adding: "But I'm not here because of school" as her brows were narrowing questioningly.

"We would like to come in for our actual reason" Kurt said impatiently, taking a step forward to further stress the meaning of his words.

"I'm sorry" Shelby said quickly, wondering more what was going on, although she had a brief feeling of apprehension. "Come on up in the kitchen, just leave your shoes in the entrance."

She waved her guests in, pointing up the stairs.

"Give me your coats; I can hang them up – just take a seat …"

Shelby nervously ran one hand through her hair, forgetting that she had it fixed right before she'd answered the door.

For a moment she stood there, trying to compose herself.

Then, with regained confidence, she threw her hair back and walked upstairs, where the four people had gathered around the kitchen table already.

"Do you want anything to drink?" she asked politely.

If they were here for what she thought they were, she'd better made sure for a nice atmosphere.

"Just water, please, no ice" Rachel answered, and the others quickly nodded.

"Great" Shelby managed a smile before she got five cups and a glass can ready.

They were patiently waiting for her, and even though she thought she had it under control now, she was thankful for it.

"This is about Beth, isn't it?" she remarked confidently as she sat down with them.

"Yes" Kurt confirmed, leaning back. He shot an asking look to Rachel on the other side of the table, who shifted in her seat, seemingly unpleased with the role she was taking.

"We were … we were wondering what your intentions regarding your daughter … Beth … were" she muttered, unusually quiet for her theater self.

Briefly, Shelby thought about asking her why she hadn't brought it up earlier, but she sensed that they weren't here on Rachel's demands.

So she looked in the round.

"I take it you are the ones who rather wanted to know, since I already met Rachel since our relocation" she prompted.

As she had suspected, Kurt was the one to speak up. Calmly, but she could feel through his suppressed accusations.

"Today at work, I got a text from my husband" he explained slowly, "telling me that he'd recognized Beth in his class. As it turned out, he was absolutely right with his assumption, so we told Mercedes."

His friend nodded.

"I was thunderstruck" she added, biting her lips.

"We realized that we had no clue how to react to those news" Kurt continued, not trying to hide the accusing tone of his voice anymore. "All we could remember was an agreement that Beth would grow up without us, before she appeared right beneath our noses."

"So you wonder about my motivations" Shelby concluded.

"Basically" Kurt replied and crossed his arms again, waiting.

"And you do, too?" she asked Mercedes and Blaine, who had been rather calm during Kurt's announcement.

"Um, yeah, kind of" Blaine replied quickly, "I mean, I met Kurt right the year after the adoption, so I heard a lot and well … it's a little difficult for me now, how I am supposed to act in class, when I've heard so much about Beth that she isn't supposed to know. No, I really don't want to blame you for anything, I'm sure you didn't know! But … I guess, it would be nice to have some kind of direction, since I now know that she's the daughter of Quinn and everything …"

Shelby realized that for now, Blaine was the biggest problem. Kurt and Mercedes might have had an emotional bond to Beth over their shared past with Quinn Fabray and her pregnancy, but the danger of them running into her were pretty low, like she had assumed when thinking about it before moving.

She had to admit, she hadn't thought of the spreading of the story and affecting other people, like spouses who would then teach theater class at McKinley.

"I'm sorry" she simply stated.

Four pairs of eyes were looking straight at her.

"I thought there had passed enough time for her not to make a disturbance anymore. As Rachel might have told you already, I did move here because of my boyfriend, not to stir up old trouble."

Kurt caught her drift the fastest.

"So we continue to pretend that we don't know her" he commented, his face hardening.

She nodded. "Yes."

Mercedes gasped, while Kurt just looked like he'd known all along. Rachel and Blaine tried to keep straight faces, but it wasn't hard to see their brains working behind.

Shelby knew that it was almost insulting to come here, parade Beth in front of their noses and then practically command them to do nothing about it.

She'd seen them all in the hospital back then, waiting for Quinn and consoling her; and maybe it was cruel to keep them from meeting the baby from then they had cared about so much.

But she also wanted to keep Beth safe.

And once Beth got a hold of the fact how many people in this town actually knew her, she would find out the whole drama eventually, and Shelby wasn't sure if her daughter was prepared for that.

Or if it would strain their otherwise perfect relationship.

Right, she didn't worry about it first. She had actually thought that maybe it was the time for Beth to slowly discover it, but now that she saw all the other struggles her daughter was going through, she didn't need to add that.

"She knows that I had relations with McKinley" she eventually told them. "She knows that Jesse was dating Rachel, and that during the time close to competition, I came over to your school a couple of times. If she gets suspicious, blame it on her being my daughter. Say she reminds you of the old days of our rivalry."

When Kurt opened his mouth again, she knew that they weren't done yet.

Beth was about to be late after her almost-fight with Melissa, so when she hurried into the gym behind the last of the other girls, she was just a little out of breath.

So she was glad when Coach Sylvester called from the tiers: "No big warming up today ladies, we have a new choreography to learn! Five minutes, then you have to be ready!"

Okay then.

They ran a quick lap in the gym and stretched for the last few minutes, before the coach ordered them to take their places for the new choreography.

She had Melissa show them what to do up in front, and Beth was relieved. Since she'd joined the cheerleaders, she had only been part of old choreographies the others knew already and could teach her.

She wouldn't know how to deal with verbal instructions just yet, since she had no clue what half of their moves were called.

It was good that the coach yelled her orders along with Melissa's movements, so she could pick up a few of those terms.

Although she didn't think "Bonebreaker" was a valid name.

"Where's the fire, lazy-butts?" Coach Sylvester shouted furiously after the first three runs of the steps they'd learned so far, "You're a bunch of frozen ice cubes the audience will crash into like the Titanic and die."

Unsatisfied, she crumbled a sheet of paper from her desk and threw it in their direction. Some of the girls winced under her harsh words.

"Let's just throw in a pyramid then" the concluded harshly. "You, you and you – out!"

She casually waved three girls to the side as they were an uneven number to begin with.

"Okay, then you bunch of hunchbacks over there" she yawned, "bottom row."

The cheerleaders she'd been including in her sloppy gesture groaned frustrated.

Sue Sylvester just put her legs up on her desk, sitting there like it was her living room couch.

Beth shifted nervously when she wasn't announced to be in the second row either. She knew well enough that the position in the pyramid basically defined a cheerleader's social status, plus she hadn't been part of a big one yet and only knew the basics in theory.

"You sloth-ass, why again didn't I put you at the bottom? Switch with Doodle-Face right away!"

"Coach, don't you think you're being a little moody today?" Melissa said after a short while, annoyed by her rude tone.

Then she quickly put both hands over her mouth, but it was too late. The words had already escaped.

Beth heard the cheerleaders around her gasping, and she slowly realized what Melissa had done with that single statement as the coaches eyebrows pressed together so firmly that they appeared as one straight line.

But she didn't say a thing.

It was only after her instructions for the next row that she nonchalantly dropped: "I think, I'll put Anita on the top today."

"But I'm head-" Melissa protested right away, her voice even firmer as she knew exactly that she was being punished for her earlier outburst.

Sue examined her for a minute, as if considering.

"No" she sad, a satisfied smirk playing around her lips. "You're leading the forth row, though."

Melissa snorted angrily and crossed her arms.

Beth should have known right away that her placement in the pyramid was fatal then.

The coach assigned her right on the edge above Melissa, so that the head cheerleader was half of her support. She basically relied on her not to loose her grip and fall.

Not good.

The first run, everything went well. Of course, they were far to slow for the coaches tastes, and there were too many insecurely shaking limbs to count, but everybody stayed in place and nothing spectacular happened.

But the second time, Melissa's shoulder suddenly dropped a few inches under Beth's hand, and she didn't have the practice to cover it up – she fell.

And with her, the entire pyramid went down.

Suddenly, there was screaming everywhere – the girls who had rather rough landings, the coach yelling at them, and Melissa shouting at Beth how the hell she dared to let go.

Beth just blinked.

It had happened too fast for her to clearly remember the exact events, and maybe she could have done better with more practice. But if she was correct, then it had been Melissa to move out of line in the first place.

"Are you already trying to manipulate us?" Melissa accused her soundly, and Beth's ears turned hot as she saw some other girls watching from the corner of her eye.

"Maybe you consider staying still yourself the next time!" she yelled back defensively, just to have replied anything.

Melissa gasped overtly loud. The mouths of the girls around fell open.

"YOU. ARE. HORRIBLE" Coach Sylvester's voice suddenly rang echoed through the entire gym, louder as ever, keeping her from another hurtful reply.

It was the first time that Beth was actually glad for her aggressiveness, because now the chaotic shouting began once again, as most of the girls where to emotionally shaken to remember the coach's strict policies.

"SILENCE!"

That brought order back again. The girls stared up front in fear, their eyes wide and their mouths shut.

"You make me sick" the coach spit. "Just go home."

"But we still have over an hour left –" someone said.

Sue Sylvester snorted scornfully. "Go. And I don't want to see you back here tomorrow unless you clean up your act."

She set down her megaphone dramatically before she walked out the door, leaving the stunned cheerleaders behind who slowly caught up on the events.

Beth didn't dare to look up.

As sure she'd been of the fact, that it was all Melissa's fault – it made sense, after all, for her to cause disturbance and then blame it on Beth – she had a feeling that not many of the others were on her side exactly. And definitely not Melissa.

Eyes fixed to the ground, she hurried into the locker room to get changed as quickly as possible.

"I'll try not to send her to …"

Shelby thanked god that she was facing the front window as her voice faded, trying to calm down Kurt more.

Otherwise, she might have caught the motor sound too late, without seeing a flash of a green car outside first.

Nevertheless she turned completely white as she realized what this meant, jumping up immediately.

"What's wrong?" Rachel asked in confusion. "Did we offend you? Oh dear, whatever it was, I'm so sorry …"

"I'm pretty sure we did nothing wrong" Kurt interrupted her firmly, clearly disgruntled over the disturbance.

"I'm sorry" Shelby said as calmly as she could, listening to the car in front of the house positioning itself to park backwards into the driveway.

"But I think Beth is coming home early."

She looked back to the group at her table. Her eyes locked with Blaine Anderson's, trying to avoid any desperation in both her voice and her behavior.

"And I don't know about you, but I think she might have some rather awkward questions if we don't do anything."