don't own glee or any of the music mentioned here. also still sorry these take me forever to write.
Brittany's dad was glued to the television when she walked in the door: normal, but for his tense posture and creased brow. Brittany detoured into the den and hovered at his shoulder, scanning the screen. It showed an international conference happening in Zurich; Brittany scrunched her nose, confused, and glanced at the bottom ribbon.
Beside the station logo, she caught the phrase disturbance in Lima as it flitted by. "What's up?" she asked casually.
He hesitated, mustache bristling, but admitted, "Something tore a hole in the back of the gas station."
"Something?"
"Someone, I guess." His uneasy shrug confirmed her suspicion: Too vicious for a human.
Brittany wet her lips. "Why a gas station?"
Ice tinked against the glass in his hand. He'd begun drinking water instead of pop to settle his stomach. "Who knows, beetle?" he asked, at once solemn and helpless. She touched his shoulder and squeezed, but he didn't look up.
Quinn called on Saturday, seconds after Brittany stepped out of the studio and onto the parking lot. "Hello?" Brittany answered, surprised Quinn would call.
"Have you figured out your Glee song yet?" Quinn asked. Apparently, brusque and annoyed was her only mode on the phone.
Brittany faltered, digging for an answer and digging for her keys. She hadn't changed back into jeans—had left them in her bag—but the keys were still in the pocket. She squatted and unzipped the main pouch, barely managing, "Glee song? I…"
"Do you want to help me look for one?" The request sounded more like an order. An impatient one, to boot. Brittany could sense Quinn's insecurity, bobbing just below the surface.
Asking for help?
"Look for a song?" Brittany parroted, still pawing for her keys. A girl from her class waved as she passed, and Brittany waved back, tucking the phone against her opposite shoulder.
"Yes, a song," Quinn snapped. "Stop echoing me. Can you help me or what? Or are you busy doing Spanish homework with Santana again?"
Brittany frowned and fished out the keyring. "Spanish homework?" She bit the ring in her teeth to close the zipper. Around it, she asked, muffled, "Why would I—"
"Of course," Quinn continued in a mutter to herself, "you wouldn't answer the phone then…"
Brittany stood and unlocked the car. "I'm not, I'm at the dance studio," she cut off. She wondered if Santana would come out of hiding to help patrol. "And, I mean, we mostly work on it at night, anyway."
Quinn snorted. "I'll bet you do."
Brittany frowned harder. "I don't get what Spanish has to do with—"
"Nothing. Do you want to work on Glee together or not?" Quinn rushed the words together, probably to mask the request.
Brittany remembered choreographing the dance. Quinn's prickliness, and how carefully she'd hidden her gratitude. Where Santana's caution was all bluster, Quinn's was a neat cross-stitch, tucking bedraggled lies beneath the wicking and leaving a pretty picture on top.
"Sure," Brittany said with a shrug. She tossed her bag on the passenger seat and started the car. "I've got nothing else to—"
"Fine. Now?"
"I could use a shower…"
"Fine." Quinn answered immediately. "Text me when you leave."
Brittany dragged her wrinkled jeans from her duffel bag, but grabbed a fresh shirt from her drawer. She'd just pushed through the neck of it when she noticed the brand new Cheerios sweatshirt, still half-folded and drooping out of the bag of gear she'd gotten for surviving the first month. Given the wind outside, she decided to break it in, pawing it toward her with her foot while she texted Quinn leaving n a min.
She loped down the stairs, called her destination to her parents, and stood three strides from her bike when her phone buzzed. Quinn, already: Bring your iPod.
Brittany quashed a sigh and jogged back upstairs. The sweatshirt felt a little tight across her chest, crunchy under the big cheer horn emblazoned on the front, and she yanked it around on her body while she hunted for her iPod. She found it pushed back behind her laptop screen; she slipped it into her pocket and bolted back downstairs.
"Are you taking your bike?" her mom yelled loudly, before Brittany could get out the garage door.
"I don't know how long I'll be gone," Brittany called back. She gripped the door handle and tried not to cringe.
"You shouldn't ride it on the street if you can take the car, honey."
"I'm only going to Quinn's house," Brittany said. Quinn's house was farther than the school or the cemetery, but it still wouldn't take long on her bike.
Her mother emerged from the kitchen, snapping a lid on a Tupperware box with Katie's PB&J. "It's silly to take your bike when both our cars are here," she said in a sad voice.
Brittany bit her lips. "I don't know if I'll be back for Katie's game," she repeated.
"Your dad and I are driving together."
Brittany glanced over her shoulder at the garage door. "I was thinking about riding out to the track, after," she admitted. A lie, but an appealing one. Maybe she could leave Quinn's early and go before patrol.
Her mother sighed, long-suffering. "All right. Please be careful, Brittany," she said like she always did.
Brittany nodded. Her hand went to her phone—quiet in her pocket—and she wondered again if Santana would leave her to patrol solo. "Always am," she told her mother cheerfully, whisking out the door as she said it.
Quinn eyed Brittany's mud-spattered jacket and helmet with curiosity or disgust—indistinguishable expressions, on Quinn.
"Hi," Brittany greeted, hoping to break Quinn's stare.
Quinn kept looking at the raised armor plates on Brittany's arm, bulkier for the sweatshirt underneath. She met Brittany's eyes with fierce urgency and sudden understanding: "You rode your bike here?"
"Yeah," Brittany said, growing uneasy.
Immediately, Quinn stepped onto the porch and walked around Brittany, watching for the driveway to come into view. "Did you ride through a ditch to get here?" she asked, even as she sped her steps when she didn't see the bike.
Brittany followed warily. "No; the mud's from—"
"There it is," Quinn said, somehow worried and relieved at the same time. From halfway down the driveway, she spied the bike, parked up on the sidewalk where asphalt snuck under the evergreen on the lawn: a remnant of an older driveway, long replaced.
"Yeah," Brittany said slowly, forever waiting for Quinn to make sense.
Quinn walked to the bike and turned, gazing through the needles at each of her house's windows. "I guess she can't see it," she thought aloud, quietly.
"The bike?"
With a curt nod, Quinn retraced her path up to the door. Brittany trailed her. Inside the foyer, Quinn faltered again, studying Brittany's muddy gear with clear annoyance. "Let's put it in the mud room," Quinn decided eventually. She guided Brittany to a small closet to the left of the door, tucked between the coat closet and the kitchen doorway.
Without touching Brittany or her helmet, Quinn gestured to the dark, ruddy carpet covering most of the floor. "Just put your things… there," she said, pointing to the mat. The room was nearly empty, but for a two pairs of fashionable flowered rain boots and a set of children's snowpants on a hook. Brittany looked at them curiously as she shrugged out of her jacket and set it on the mat with her helmet. "Whose—"
"No one's, now," Quinn said snappishly. "Come on."
Brittany made a leisurely circuit of Quinn's room while she rattled song options. Quinn had two tall stacks of jewel CD cases—most had come from her sister, when she left for college—and she'd spread them in two neat fans across her bedspread, considering the merits of each out loud.
At first, Brittany had obediently scrolled through her iPod, searching for each Christian rock artist despite knowing she wouldn't find it. When Quinn huffed at Brittany's third apologetic shrug, Brittany switched her tack and asked questions instead, to let Quinn steer her own conversation.
"What do they sound like?" she'd ask. "Is the range okay?"
Quinn had high-level analysis ready for every artist, and a sharp, specific critique of her own vocal capacity. Her church took chorus very seriously, she'd explained, the last time Glee had come up at lunch and Santana had derided Quinn's musical training.
"Oh, I can't use this one," Quinn said mournfully, tapping a nail against the case. Clearly a favorite; clearly beyond one of Quinn's limits.
"Why not?" asked Brittany. Her tone nearly revealed how tired she was of listening to Quinn's demure wallowing. Brittany ran her fingers along the spines of Quinn's books: her favorites, given places of honor along the back of her desk. Two were Bibles.
"I could never do them justice," Quinn lamented with one of her airy sighs.
Brittany carefully veiled her annoyance and walked toward the bed, resolving to leave soon if Quinn kept sighing about her vocal range. "Which one, again?" she asked, sitting on the other side of Quinn's CD waves.
Quinn tugged the corner of the case out of line with its neighbors. "This one," she said. Brittany glanced at it: a colorful cover, with cursive lettering. "A little like Switchfoot," Quinn admitted more quietly.
"My cousins always play Switchfoot when we go to their house," Brittany said, sweeping her eyes over Quinn's collection. Most bands and titles were unfamiliar.
"They're a bit loud," Quinn said. The sharpness sounded forced: too quick to snap back, like a triggered mousetrap.
Brittany cocked her head, laying eyes on a black-and-white cover, distinct from the flowery pictures around it. She eased it out and recognized the woman's face. Her parted lips and white teeth. Her expression, dark and thick.
"I know this one," Brittany said, cutting Quinn off halfway through a word.
Brittany nudged the case further out while Quinn narrowed her eyes. "I don't care for her," she said, a little haughty. "My mom bought it for me last Christmas, because of the title."
Somebody's Miracle. The irony was too dry to smile about. Brittany traced the wave of the woman's hair. It looked like Santana's, a little. The expression, too. Head tilted back. Resigned, somehow.
"Anyway, I didn't think it was that good," Quinn sniffed.
Brittany dragged it out and flipped it over, running her eyes over the song tracks. Her parents had this CD, tucked in faithful alphabetical order among their stacks in the closet with the old stereo. "I like it," she said, wondering when she'd last heard it. Spring cleaning, maybe.
Her finger ran down the tracks. She remembered the title song from the month she discovered the CD, inexplicably morose over her second cousin's engagement and wondering if hooking up with jocks was all she had to look forward to. The other songs were less familiar, though she remembered liking the taste of their names.
"I don't think she matches your voice, anyway," Quinn was saying.
"Huh?" Brittany asked absently.
"Liz Phair." Quinn shifted, rigid on the bed. "I mean, no offense, Brittany, but her voice is just better than yours."
Brittany felt her insides clench and harden, like they were coiling up to strike. "What do you think I should do, then?" Brittany asked, harshness spilled over the words.
Quinn shrugged. "You know. Like, pop. Radio."
Brittany stared down at the CD. "I have to go," she heard herself say.
A beat. "Already?" Somewhere between disappointed and irritated.
Brittany shrugged, shoving her iPod in her sweatshirt pouch. "Sorry."
Quinn's lip twitched. Disbelief. Brittany smiled brightly and said, "Thanks for having me over, though. Call me when you narrow it down, okay?"
Without waiting for response, Brittany turned and jogged out of Quinn's room. Halfway down the stairs, Quinn called from the doorway: "You should try Sheryl Crow, maybe. Something sunnier."
"Sunnier?" Brittany squinted up at her, one foot frozen on the bottom stair.
Quinn rolled her eyes. "Or Avril Lavigne, if you prefer," she said, heavily sarcastic.
Brittany forced another grin to the surface. "Thanks."
Before dinner, Brittany sent Santana a text on a whim: wanna hunt the gas guzler w me? cud b fun.
She left her phone upstairs on purpose. After she'd stalled and washed the dishes, she went up and checked her phone to find a text from Quinn instead: Tell Santana to answer her phone instead of acting like a child.
Brittany sent a noncommittal question mark and trudged back downstairs. Almost as soon as she plopped down beside Katie to watch some inane cartoons, Brittany's mother peered over her newspaper and asked, "Do you have homework to do, Brittany?"
"It's Saturday," Brittany hedged. She slumped against the cushions.
"Still." Her mother shrugged, casual, the way Brittany hated. "Never too early to get the jump on it."
"I just wanna watch cartoons right now," Brittany mumbled. Katie shifted beside her.
Their mother sighed. "If that's what you want to do," she said.
Brittany slowed to a stop after a stop by the decimated gas station and an hour of fruitless patrolling between there and the cemetery. She eased her phone from her pocket and checked the display again. No messages.
She opened a new draft, tucking her stake under her arm, and typed, no sign of baddie. wat r u up 2
She composed a second message for Beiste and Holly Holliday: did u hear about the gas station? i checked it out but didnt find nething.
With one last look, she headed for the fence.
Well past midnight, Brittany lay in bed, awake and restless. The glow-in-the-dark stars offered no inspiration. They hadn't for the past hour or so.
Brittany finally jerked into motion. She slithered out from under her sheets and felt around on the floor, where she'd dumped her clothes before dressing for the sleep that wouldn't come. She fished her iPod out of the pocket and crawled back into bed. She got her earbuds from the nightstand drawer—knotted and snarled—and stuck them in her ears, plugging them in and searching the Albums at the same time. She found the CD she'd seen at Quinn's—Somebody's Miracle—and selected the first track.
The song began immediately. As it played, the screen dimmed and went dark; Brittany turned on her side, curled into herself like a seashell, and listened.
On Sunday, she woke up to stale silence. When she remembered, she pulled the headphones out of her ears; the cartilage released with a soft sound of relief.
Phone. She felt for it; squinted at it with bleary eyes. Sleep-sand pricked under her eyelids. No messages. 8:30.
By the time her father came to wake her up at 10—once her mother and sister had left for church—Brittany was up, rubbing sleep from her eyes and stretching her limbs slowly.
"Hey, sweetie," he called, knocking his knuckle on the door. Unlatched, it opened under the pressure, and he smiled in surprise to see her standing. "You're up."
Brittany half-smiled. "I'm up."
He wrung his hands absently. "You want me to make you some breakfast?"
Brittany stared blankly for a moment—nearly too long—and relaxed. "Yeah." She smiled better. "Thanks, Dad."
Once he retreated from the door and she heard his heavy footsteps on the stairs, she glanced at her phone contemptuously and retrieved her iPod. When she pressed the center button, she noticed that sometime last night, she'd switched from the first track listed down to one near the middle—probably to hear it again. Closer to You. Brittany mouthed the words.
Her phone fell to the floor from her bed. She started at the noise and cursed.
Brittany took an earbud—swinging from the jack, still a rat's-nest snarl—and put it in, choosing the song to see if she remembered it.
As she listened, hearing the hiss of the frying pan in her other ear, Brittany's gaze landed on her phone. She sighed, cursed quietly, and stuck it in her pocket before she went downstairs.
By early afternoon, Brittany had gone for a long run through the neighborhood and received two texts from Beiste and Holly. Beiste's was unsurprising: No coincidences in this town. We'll talk Monday, god instincts kid. The typo made Brittany smile a little.
Holly's was uncharacteristically serious. Full moon that night, talk tmrw.
Nothing from Santana. Or Quinn, actually.
Idly, lounging on her bed post-shower and listening to Katie blast preteen pop in her room, Brittany opened her phone and sent yet another message to Santana: r u ok? how cum i havent heard from u? She initially added did u go c sue yesterday?, but deleted it immediately. Three questions seemed like too many. Even one question had been too many. She sighed and sent it.
To keep her mind off it, Brittany shoved her phone under her bedding, popped her earbuds in, and spread out her homework on her desk. Somebody's Miracle was starting to grate on her nerves. To amuse herself, and with a stab of spite for Quinn that felt ominously reminiscent of Santana, Brittany switched to Avril Lavigne and smirked at the familiar guitar bits.
At dinnertime, Brittany's mother had to walk in to get Brittany's attention over the music. Her annoyance melted into subtly happy surprise when she saw Brittany doing her homework. When Brittany popped her earbud out, her mother said, "Dinner," in her offhand way.
"Be right there," Brittany said, lurching halfway out of the seat to clean the disarray of her desk.
Her mother walked backward to the doorway and said, softly, "Take your time."
Before heading down, Brittany checked her phone and found—still—nothing. More annoyed than disappointed, now, she texted Puck. have u seen santana? tell her 2 call me alredy.
Brittany jogged in a loop before heading to the graveyard, turning the music low as she rounded the corner. Despite her training, she was considering leaving the earbuds in to patrol when she caught a flash of movement.
Brittany froze, seeing only swooping shadows, before crouching and creeping further along the fence. The tombstones were mostly in rows beside her, offering only their narrowest side to shield Brittany from whatever cast the shadow. She paused when she caught sight of the shadow again.
Without knowing why, she glanced to her right. There it was. Parked in the lot: Santana's car.
Brittany frowned. She climbed the fence on silent feet and jumped to a wide tombstone nearby. She could make out Santana, running down a column far across the yard, following a lumbering football player.
Brittany dropped to the grass and jogged toward them, keeping low among the headstones. As she closed distance, the wind shifted, and she heard Santana's voice, shouting.
Spanish, or incoherent. The football player looked as confused by it as unsettled by her.
Brittany slowly stood. Santana chased him the other direction, toward the postern gate. As he clambered over it, Santana's shouts rose in a peak to a shriek. She grabbed the rungs of the fence and shook violently, rattling the gate a few yards down. Brittany could hear the lock shaking against the iron.
The jock was already disappearing from sight. Santana stood, shoulders rising shakily with each breath, and watched after him for a long time.
Brittany slunk back behind the mausoleum and looked at her phone. One message from Puck. havent seen her.