Chapter Twenty Five: You Don't Need Their Spotlight
It was a hot, muggy night, but we had the RV windows flung open wide to air the incense out of the RV, so a gentle breeze kept it from being unbearable. I lay on my couch-bed for a long time, thinking about Rachel and Kurt and Blaine and all of the conversations that I'd had since my return to North America.
Somehow I felt like the more time I spent around anyone, the less I really knew them.
I'd spent my entire adulthood immersed in strange an unfamiliar things, but I'd never been as confused as I was once I was back with people who should have been familiar.
I think that I spent so much time dwelling on the tragedy that had happened after high school that I never really let myself think about all of the wonderful and difficult things that had happened in high school. I'd spent so much of the Soundtrack tour so far wondering how the shooting had really affected my friends that I'd sort of forgotten everything we'd gone through together before the shootings.
Who was I in high school? Who was I back when I really knew these people? I had clear memories of they'd been in high school—or at least I knew how I'd perceived them. But all I could really member about myself was being perpetually confused and overwhelmed.
In high school, Rachel had been the annoying overachiever that had driven everyone crazy. She was insufferably self-obsessed and seemed entirely oblivious to acceptable social behaviour. She'd been endlessly picked on by people like me who couldn't understand why anyone would be so unabashedly passionate about something as campy as musical theatre. It wasn't until I joined glee club that I started to respect what made her so unlikable.
I was a pretty stereotypical football quarterback when I joined glee club—so concerned with how other people perceived me that I'd never really given much thought to who I really was or what I really wanted. Rachel had made me feel bad about that. She made me realize that most people, including myself, were so afraid of failing and embarrassing ourselves that we never really let ourselves care about things the way Rachel Berry cared about her dreams. Rachel Berry was going to be a star because she wasn't afraid of chasing it. And no matter how difficult and frustrating she was, I—and everyone in our glee club-respected her for that. I'd fallen in love with that.
Loving Rachel was never easy. She was self-serving to the point of self-destruction, but so earnest and venerable underneath all of her blind ambition that when she screwed up you felt bad for her-even when she deserved what she got. She was this crazy, incomprehensible blend of complete confidence and complete insecurity that sent me on a perpetual rollercoaster of anger, admiration, and empathy. We broke up and got back together several times over the years. In our senior year, when I realized that the only thing I knew about myself was that I loved her, I proposed, and she said yes. It seems crazy now, but at the time, it was the only option I could think of to keep her and I together when I knew the looming adult world would try to pull us apart.
And the funny thing was that after all of those years had passed with us being apart, I still felt all of the same things about her. And fundamentally, she was still that unrestrainedly determined and passionate girl. But there was a new thoughtfulness and a new compassion that hadn't been there, and it scared me. A Rachel Berry who was able to look past herself and her ambition to channel that unending passion into relationships and self-awareness was somehow a lot more intimidating and unpredictable than the one-track Rachel I'd once known.
And then there was Kurt. I'd known him since kindergarten; we'd been at the same elementary school. When we were really young, I remember him as a hyperactive kid who'd had every girl in our grade completely captivated with his elaborate make-believe games and love of dolls and dress-up. He'd alienated himself from the guys in our grade from a pretty young age, but he didn't let our teasing and taunting bother him, so it was never fun for us. Then, when we were in the third grade, his mother had died in a car accident. Everyone left him alone after that; no eight-year-old knew how to act around a kid who'd just lost his mom. We were all very nice to him, but he disappeared inside himself and kept buried in books and magazines for the rest of elementary school.
He'd gone to a different middle school than me, and by the time we met again in high school, he'd become a sullen, sarcastic, teenager, dancing defiantly just outside of the closet door as if daring someone to try to chase him back inside. And trust me; we'd tried. I shudder a little when I remember all of the shitty, awful things we did to him. Even after I'd joined glee club, it took me a long time to get comfortable with Kurt's flamboyant homosexuality. It was just too foreign to my sheltered, ignorant, football player brain.
When we were sixteen, our parents started dating, and it was incredibly awkward. I remember a lot of painful and uncomfortable accusations and fighting. When I look back at my teenage years, I'm constantly humiliated by all of the stupid, pointless agony I put myself and Kurt though as I struggled to accept Kurt as my brother. I realize now that his own struggle to accept himself and his place in the world was a hundred times more significant than my own petty insecurities, and I hate myself for it. The teenage Kurt had been an unusually kind and unselfish person, full of optimism and romanticism. He hadn't deserved any of the miserable crap that I'd said and done to him, or stood by and let be said and done to him.
In our junior year, Kurt had been bullied and threatened so ruthlessly that he'd had to change schools. He enrolled at the Dalton Academy, and that's where he met Blaine Anderson. I know that most people who know Kurt credit Blaine for saving Kurt from the dark and scary place that he'd been disappearing into. I don't know if I'd ever really seen him happy before he started dating Blaine. When Kurt returned to McKinley high towards the end of junior year, he was a stronger, more grounded man. His confidence was no longer an act of defiance against the world; it was genuine. And suddenly, I no longer had any qualms about calling him a brother.
The twenty-three year old Kurt was essentially a stranger to me, but I still saw that same defiant determination in his eyes as I'd seen when we were fifteen and I was tossing him into dumpsters, and that gentle confidence that he'd returned from Dalton possessing. He was still sarcastic and a little bit guarded, but the way he spoke and carried conversations was very unlike the Kurt I'd once known. The nativity and idealism that had once shone underneath his defiant effeminacy was gone. His edges were sharper now. He, more than any of us, seemed like an adult.
And Blaine? I think it makes sense that I'd noticed the fewest changes in him, since I'd known him the least in high school. I didn't really have much to do with him until he transferred to McKinley for his junior year, which was my senior year. And I'd always been very threatened by him. He was too talented. And too charismatic. Too confident. He was everything I wished I was, and he didn't seem to have to try at anything. It made me want to hate him, but I couldn't because he was too nice. Too poised. Too cool. He never said or did anything that rubbed anyone the wrong way. Everyone liked him. Everything seemed to come easy for Blaine Anderson, and I'm ashamed to say that I resented him for it.
Looking back, I realize how stupid that was. If anything, I should have respected him. He'd grown up gay in a very homophobic community, and I knew he'd been victimized and even assaulted because of it. His confidence should have been admirable. But my own self-esteem was so low that I couldn't even begin to see it that way.
After he finally called me out for being an asshole to him and I admitted my jealousy to him halfway through my senior year, we called a truce and finished the school year as allies. Still, I'd be lying if I said that he and I had ever really been friends. Blaine had always been a bit of a mystery, and that hadn't changed, even five years later. He never revealed very much of himself.
He wasn't shy by any means; he'd always thrived on being the centre of attention. He could talk to people for hours. He asked questions people wanted to answer, and he really listened to the answers, staring at you with those intense, unreadable green-brown eyes. He expressed enthusiasm for all the right things at just the right time, and he gave out the compliments people needed and the advice that they wanted. Most people seemed to be instantly charmed by all of this, but it made me uncomfortable. He always seemed interested in other people, but I could never really understand his interest. I could never figure out what he was thinking.
Blaine only ever offered up anything about himself was when he when he spoke about his music and his writing and his plans for the future. His energy when he spoke about stuff like that was occasionally frightening. But he never spoke about anything past or internal. Sometimes he would offer analysis of other people's behavior, but that was about as personal as a conversation with Blaine would get. And for the first few weeks of tour, this really drove me crazy.
It didn't really help that he had Kurt. They their engagement and their history and their strange, almost telepathic connection with each other. It kept them just a little bit distanced from everyone else. They were extremely private about their relationship, requiring large amounts of one-on-one time away from everyone else. I didn't know what they talked about when they were whispering in dressing room corners or giggling at cafes down the street, but they never seemed to run out of stamina for each other. It was sweet, but a little bit alienating—I was finding it difficult to really reconnect with either of them because they kept disappearing with each other.
To be honest, everything was sort of driving me crazy. Things were a lot less messy when I only had to worry about myself and how best I could compartmentalize my life and my ideas into fifteen-minute video diaries. When nothing was constant so I didn't really have to understand any of it.
But when Rachel walked into our RV site the next morning looking serene and gorgeous, I loved her and everything around me anyway.
And she was with Quinn. Quinn, whose blonde hair was longer than I'd ever seen it, and who had her arm linked with Rachel like they were sisters.
How insane was the world that two girls as completely different—who shouldn't have anything in comment except the town they grew up in—were still so important to each other after all of these years?
I wasn't at all interested in remember the whole complicated, ridiculous, painful history that I had with Quinn Fabray.
"Oh my god, Finn!" She threw her petite body at me for a big hug. "Hi!"
I hugged her back and tried to catch Rachel's eye, but she wouldn't look at me. "How've you been, Quinn?"
Quinn shrugged, stepping back to look deep in my eyes with this searching look that I couldn't place. "I'm good," she said after a pause. "Very good."
"And where were you two all night?" I asked, not patient enough to pretend like them disappearing together for ten hours hadn't pissed me off.
"At my place," said Quinn, not even blinking. "Talking. Girl time."
I shrugged. I had this yearn inside of me to sit down and find out everything that Quinn had been up to for the past five years, but should have been on the road to Iowa half an hour earlier, so there was just no time.
"Rachel, we've got to go," said Kurt, barely acknowledging Quinn, "We're already running late. Are you ready?"
She nodded and gave Quinn a long hug goodbye.
"Don't be a stranger," Quinn told me, and then we were gone.
Kurt and Rachel argued about her disappearing act all the way to Des Moines while Blaine slept and I edited my vlog. It was an exhausting haze of a day after my sleepless night in Minneapolis, and I think I spent more time thinking about the conversation I knew I needed to have with Rachel than I did actually paying attention to my surroundings.
When the day was over and Kurt and Blaine went out for dinner alone, I sat down with Rachel in the RV and said, "Okay, we need to talk."
She froze, looking up at me with a fear in her eyes that I didn't understand. "We do?"
"Yeah," I said, "We do."
She sat very still and asked, "What do you want to talk about?"
I said, "Rachel, I think you know."
She didn't say anything.
I said, "You were treating all of us like crap yesterday. And then you just disappeared all night? Rachel, come on. What's going on?"
She was sitting with her legs crossed and her hair draping over half of her face. Her expression twitched slightly as if she was trying to decide what to say.
"Look," she said, "I know it's not okay to act the way I've been acting, but maybe life just isn't working out the way I want it to. And maybe I'm just not as good at accepting that as everyone else seems to be."
That venerable, insecure sixteen-year-old girl that I'd once known was peeking through the 23-year-old woman before me, and I couldn't help but move closer to her. "Aw, Rachel, I'm sorry. Talk to me about it. Don't take it out on us."
She sighed. "I'm sorry, but I never wanted to live in an RV, and I never wanted to be a roadie and a stage hand and all of the other crap we have to do here. I can appreciate why you guys get so much satisfaction out of the Do It Yourself thing, but to me it just reminds me constantly of how far from where I want to be I really am. And I don't want to be that ungrateful bitch when all of you are having such a blast, but I just can't help it."
I had this wave of unidentifiable emotion that I made me put my hand on her shoulder comfortingly. "Sweetie, none of us expected this to be easy for you. You don't have to try to be someone you're not. You just can't take it out on us. Just tell us how we can make it easier for you."
Staring at her knees, Rachel said, "Honestly, it's just been a tough couple of days. I found out that I didn't get the role I've been auditioning for in New York-the one I was at a meeting about that day you first came into New York. They've been stinging me along for months, and now they're going in a 'different direction.'"
My stomach dropped a little. "Oh Rachel. I'm so sorry. You were really counting on that, huh?
She paused, finally looking up and pushing her hair behind her shoulders. Slowly, carefully, she explained, "I've landed several off-Broadway roles from that casting director. He's been telling me for years that I'm a star and that he'll find me my spotlight soon. This new Zetsen musical was supposed to be it. They told me that they were writing the role for me. They told me that I was their muse. They promised me their spotlight. And now they don't want me at all."
My stomach felt heavy. She was starting to cry. I took her hand in mine and said, "Rachel, you don't need their spotlight. You have your own spotlight. You know that."
She nodded, brushing away tears quickly, "Of course I know that. I'm just really disappointed. And really upset with myself for it. I know that Blaine gave me an incredible gift when he wrote Rita for me in Soundtrack. The role I'm playing right now is probably the greatest role I'll ever play, but I just can't appreciate it, because it's still so far removed from my childish vision of what success as a stage actress would be."
I smiled a little. "Rachel," I said, "The mere fact that you can acknowledge that your ambition clouds your perception of your current situation shows so much growth from who you were five years ago. I don't think you need to beat yourself up about knowing what you want as long as you can find a way to appreciate what you have in the meantime."
She smiled a bit too. "Well," she said, "That's the problem, though, isn't it? I can see that I should appreciate all of this… but I'm struggling to actually get there."
"Anyone can see that you were born to play Rita."
Nodding, Rachel said, "Of course. Blaine wrote me the perfect character. And I certainly adore being on stage playing such an ambitious and challenging role. I really believe that Blaine could take Soundtrack to Broadway someday. I just know how far we have to go before that's going to be a reality, and I don't know if I'm patient enough. I so badly wish that I was, but I just don't know. I want to be on Broadway, Finn. That's all I've ever wanted. And I never thought it would take so long. I never thought it would be so hard."
The pace of her speech was increasing, and I felt a familiar rush of panic. I started talking, "I'll give you the same advice I preach constantly on my vlog; try to just enjoy the Right Now. You've got to dream and you've got to plan for your future, but the most important thing is to find joy in your current reality. If you can't stop comparing what you have now to what you want, you'll never be able to do that. And I know that that advice is easier to give than to follow."
She paused, eyes closing as she thought. I pulled her in for a hug, which she accepted readily, curling up against my chest. After a while she said, "To be honest, I think most of what's stopping me from finding the joy in all of this is how entirely confused I am about you."
I laughed weakly. "Oh my God, tell me about it," I said, "I feel the same way—about you."
She smiled. "I love you," she whispered.
My blood suddenly felt like it was on fire. I whispered back, "I love you too."
And then we sat there for a very long time in silence.
Rachel finally just leaned in and kissed me. An electric chill ran through my body, and I kissed back. My hands immediately tightened around her back. I expected her to stop me as I drew myself nearer to her and slipped my tongue into her mouth, but she just nodded and invited more.
"Let's just love each other," Rachel whispered, "I was wrong to think it should be complicated."
I nodded. "Okay. Keep it simple. So simple. Life is both too long and too short not to do the things you're uncertain about, right?"
She nodded along with me, and took off her shirt.