This story has officially gotten more than 200 reviews. That's just... wow. That's far more than I ever expected, and I'd like to thank every person who's reading this story. The support I've recieved is amazing. Thank you all so much, especially my beta Tuuzmorado, who still takes time out of her busy schedule to help me with this story. Everyone send her love, because she's a wonderful person who deserves all that and more. :)


Sam scowled as he stared down at the chemistry problem he was trying to figure out. He had to balance some stupid equation, which he hated, because he had never quite figured out how to do that. He sighed and turned to ask Blaine for help, but Blaine was busy explaining something to Ryder. Ryder had the same study hall as the two of them, and recently the three of them had started studying together. And by that, Sam meant that Blaine basically agreed to help the two of them out, because he was awesome like that.

A book suddenly dropped onto their table, and Sam turned to see Kitty standing over them. He frowned. "What are you doing here?" he asked. She definitely wasn't in this class. Sam was pretty sure that she wasn't even taking a study hall.

She ignored him and dropped into the seat next to Ryder instead. "We need to plan out what we're doing with Sue," she said.

"What?" Blaine asked, sounding just as confused as Sam felt.

Kitty rolled her eyes. "Well, we planned on breaking into her office to look for proof that she cheated, right? Now we need to figure out how we're going to do that. And I figured that since you three losers are already in the same place, I might as well drop by to see if we can figure stuff out."

"Oh, yeah," Sam said. "Wait, isn't Brittany going to be involved in this? We should wait for her to be here. And she probably shouldn't skip any classes." After all, he knew that she really didn't want to get held back again, and she needed all the help that she could get to keep from failing her classes.

"Too late," Kitty said, as Brittany bounced over and sat down next to Sam.

"It's okay," Brittany said, patting the top of Sam's head in a way that was probably supposed to be reassuring. "I have art class this hour, and the teacher already promised to give me an A if I didn't eat the paste and stopped using crayons for every one of my projects."

"So, what exactly are we planning?" Ryder asked, glancing around the group. "I mean, what kind of evidence are we looking for."

Sam turned to Blaine, and everyone else followed suit. Probably because Blaine was just naturally the type of guy who figured stuff like this out. Blaine frowned and leaned hsi elbow on the table, his head resting on his hand, looking like he was thinking about that. "I don't know exactly what we're looking for," he said. "All we need is some sort of evidence that she cheated. We can't know what exactly we're looking for because we don't know how exactly she cheated. So I guess just look for any signs of bribes or blackmail, or anything else that seems suspicious."

Kitty nodded slowly. "So, how exactly are we going to do this?" she asked, her voice vaguely challenging, like she didn't believe that Blaine would be able to come up with an answer. "Sue's in her office all the time, especially now that the competitions are over, so she has nowhere else to go. How are we supposed to get her out of there long enough for us to sneak in, find whatever it is we're looking for, and get out without getting caught?"

"Someone is going to have to distract Sue," Blaine said.

Kitty gave him a look filled with disdain. "Obviously."

"Or we could do it on Thursday," Sam said, making all of them turn to stare at him. "She's doing some mother-daughter thing. I think she said something about kickboxing."

Blaine frowned, his forehead furrowing with confusion. "When were you talking to Sue?"

Crap. Sam still hadn't told Blaine about what had happened with Bobby last Friday, or about getting called to Figgin's office yesterday. It wasn't like he didn't have a good reason – the Cheerio competition had been too important for Sam to distract Blaine right before, and he hadn't wanted to interrupt their date to start talking about sad stuff. Or give Blaine something more to worry about when he was already nervous about Sam meeting his dad. Sam was running out of excuses, though. And this was probably something that he should bring up.

"...I'll tell you later," Sam said. He couldn't say anything now. Ryder, Kitty, and Brittany were all listening. And, well, Kitty and Brittany already knew about Sam wanting to date Blaine, but Ryder didn't. And that didn't mean that they needed to hear about his bullying issues.

Blaine's frown deepened, probably hearing something weird in Sam's voice, since Blaine seemed to have some secret radar that told him when Sam was upset. But he just nodded slowly. "Later. Okay."

While Sam had been thinking over his response, Kitty had pulled out her iPhone and started typing something on the screen. Now, she looked up and said, "The only Mommy and Me Kickboxing class meeting anywhere near Lime begins at three, and it's about a half hour drive from here. That means that she'll have to leave at two thirty at the latest."

"Woah, you googled that fast," Ryder said, sounding honestly impressed, which made Kitty roll her eyes.

"I always thought that a google was a mix between a poodle and a goldfish, but Santana says that that's not true," Brittany said.

"Class gets out at three, and Glee starts about fifteen minutes after that," Sam said, thinking out loud. "So, we skip the last half hour of class so that we can search her room?"

"What about the locks on the doors?" Ryder asked. "I mean, I've never been in Sue's office, but I know all the other teachers lock up, and she's kind of crazy paranoid, so..."

"Yeah, she does lock her office," Blaine said. He leaned forward, resting his chin on his hand as he thought. "What we need to do is get the key somehow. Or we could try to sabotage the lock, but that could get us into trouble if we're caught."

"I think I'd be too scared to do that," Sam said quickly. He didn't even want to think of what Sue would do if she saw them do something like that. Then again, they were already risking having her go psycho on them just by sneaking into her room, but at least that was something that needed to be done. He figured that they could find a better way in then sabotaging the locks. At least, he hoped that he could.

"Well, how do we get the key then?" Ryder asked.

Kitty crossed her arms, leaning back into her chair and looking like she was considering something. "As far as I know, there's only one key to her office," she said. "And I've never seen her let anyone touch it except for Becky."

Surprisingly, Brittany was the first to catch on. "So, we see if Becky can get the key, then use the key to sneak into Sue's office?"

"Do you think that that will work?" Blaine asked doubtfully.

"Maybe if we just ask very nicely?" Brittany suggested. "Pretty please with sugar on top?"

Blaine shook his head. "Becky would never help us if it meant exposing Sue's cheating, and I'd feel bad if we tricked her into helping us without telling her what we were doing." Sam nodded in agreement.

"So, what?" Kitty asked, her voice filled with contempt. "You think that you can come up with something better? Well, I'd like to hear it."

Sam bit his lip and glanced at Blaine, who also looked like he didn't have any better ideas.

Kitty smirked. "Thought so."

"Does she lock her windows?" Brittany asked, glancing around the group. "Why don't we just climb through there?" She sounded confused, like she didn't understand why no one had thought of that. And, for that matter, Sam didn't know why he hadn't thought of it, either. The office was on the bottom floor, after all. Meaning that this just might work.

"I'm sure there's some sort of lock on the windows," Blaine said thoughtfully. "But she probably wouldn't notice if it was left unlocked. Meaning that one of us could sneak into her office while she wasn't looking, unlock the window, and get out before she returned. Then, after she leaves for her class, the five of us could open the window from the outside and climb in."

"And nobody will notice if a whole group of us leave class, go outside, and climb through her window?" Ryder asked doubtfully.

"Well, only one of us would have to climb through the window," Blaine said. "Once one of us is inside the office, he can open the door and let everyone else in that way."

Sam grinned. "Ooh! Ooh! Can I do it?" he asked. Because his attempt to follow Sue unnoticed had failed, and it was about time for Blonde Chameleon to redeem himself. Plus, that sounded like a ton of fun.

"If you want," Blaine said, obviously amused by Sam's enthusiasm. "But we still need to decide who will sneak in and unlock the window."

"That would be you," Kitty said. "You can use your dorky superhero persona to pretend you're fighting crime or whatever it is that nerds like you and Sam do when you're in costume. Besides, if you get caught, you'll have the best excuse for being there, since you're the co-captain."

Blaine thought it over, then nodded. "I won't use the costume, since it would attract too much attention, but Nightbird is on the case," he said. Sam gave his a fist bump. Whenever Nightbird and Blonde Chameleon joined forces, the results were always awesome. Like when the two of them had stolen their trophy back from Dalton. This was going to be just as epic, even if they couldn't use costumes.

"But you have to distract Sue," Blaine added to Kitty. "Sue already knows that Ryder and Sam are onto her, and she probably thinks the same of me, but she won't suspect anything if you start talking to her in the hallway."

"What about me?" Brittany asked. "I could help distract Sue."

Blaine hesitated. Sam thought that he understood. As sweet as Brittany was, there was no way that she'd be able to keep a secret. It was probably a good idea to keep her as far away from Sue as possible until all of this was over.

"We can be the lookout," Sam offered. "The two of us can stand in the hallway and text Blaine if we see Sue coming so that he has time to get out." There. That would give Brittany something important to do. And Sam could be there with her to make sure that she didn't accidentally spill their plan to Sue. Brittany smiled and nodded enthusiastically.

"I could be the second lookout instead," Ryder offered. "I mean, since you're already the one who has to sneak in through her window. That'll give me something to do."

Sam shrugged. "Sure," he said, since it was only fair that Ryder got a job of some sort.

"So we have a plan," Blaine said, and everyone nodded.

"Now that that's done, can we keep working on my math homework?" Ryder asked, sounding somewhat sheepish.

"Sure," Blaine said easily, scooting his chair closer to Ryder's and bending over the worksheet together.

Sam glanced down at his own chemistry worksheet, which he still hadn't started. "And after that, can you help me balance these equations?" Blaine looked up from helping Ryder long enough to nod, then turned back and kept explaining something about pi.

"Here, I got this," Kitty said, grabbing Sam's worksheet and taking a look at it. "Okay, so you want the equation to be equal on both sides, right? So you-"

"You've taken chemistry already?" Sam asked.

"I'm taking it this year," she said, "and trust me, this junk is easy. I'll explain how to do it if you want. But keep in mind, I'm only helping you out because I like making you feel stupid for not understanding things that even I know."

Sam just shrugged. By now, he'd been around Kitty enough that he barely payed attention to her insults anymore. He'd figured out that it was the stuff that she did that counted, not the things that she said while she did it. Because even when she was doing something nice, the stuff she said while she did it was basically guaranteed to offend you. "Hey, at this point I'll take whatever help I can get."


When Sam left study hall about twenty minutes later, he was in an awesome mood. For one, they had a plan that would hopefully let them prove that Sue was cheating. One that sounded like something out of a spy film while still being realistic enough to work. (Okay, most spy films would have something a lot more bad ass than just climbing through an unlocked window, but Sam liked to pretend.) Not to mention that Kitty had been surprisingly good at explaining chemistry, so Sam had gotten all of his homework done. By now, he was feeling like nothing could spoil his good mood.

Until he saw Bobby glaring at him from across the hallway. Then he remembered that, yeah, there was definitely one person who could make him feel like crap.

Actually, there was more than one person, Sam realized, when another guy from the soccer team bumped shoulders with him as they passed in the hallway. It wasn't enough to hurt, or push Sam into a locker or anything. But it did remind him that the whole team still hated his guts. So yeah, that kind of killed his mood.

Sam ducked his head and grabbed the right book from his locker, then hurried to his next class as quickly as he could. The less time spent in the hallways with these guys, the better.

It didn't stop there. It seemed like every time that Sam walked down a hall, he ran into at least one of the soccer jocks, and all of them kept giving him looks like they were imagining him dead or something. None of them said anything, but it still made him feel nervous, and he swore that the force of their glares was enough to make his skin crawl. Or maybe he was just getting itchy and uncomfortable because he was sure that a slushy was going to come flying at him any second. But it never did, so Sam did his best to relax and try to ignore them.

Blaine seemed to sense that something was wrong when they sat together at lunch, but Sam just waved away his concern and got him talking about his role-playing club instead. Which Blaine was more than happy to ramble on about – it was obvious that he couldn't wait until Regionals were over and he had enough time to attend the meetings again.

"See you in Spanish," Sam said, as he and Blaine parted ways after lunch. Blaine nodded and waved as he walked away.

The soccer jocks were hanging out a few feet from Sam's locker again, just like they had been yesterday. And again, Sam did his best to ignore them, but it was getting harder and harder to do. Especially since he was getting more and more creeped out by the fact that they always seemed to turn up wherever he was.

"What is your problem?" he finally demanded, turning toward them as he slammed his problem. "What are you doing here?" Not that he expected an answer, since trying to talk to them yesterday had just gotten him insulted.

Bobby raised his eyebrows. "What are you doing?" he spat back. "We're not doing anything but standing here, so stop bothering us."

"Me? Bothering you?" Sam would laugh at that if he wasn't so weirded out by whatever it was that they were doing.

"Yeah, that's right," Bobby said, leaning back against the wall with his arms crossed, glaring at Blaine. "Let me guess. You're going to try to get us to say something bad so that you can sic Sue on us like the stupid little teacher's pet that you are."

"I have no idea what you're talking about," Sam said, turning away. Okay, so trying to talk to them had been stupid. He wasn't about to do that again. Now he just had to get to chemistry as fast as he could, and try to forget about all of these jerks.

"Oh, right," Bobby said. "And the fact that Sue always jumps in and rescues her whenever you go whining to the teachers, even when you don't have any proof? Or that you say one word and Beiste'll punish whoever you say, even though you're not even on the damn team anymore? You know nothing about that, either?"

"Maybe it's because you're a jerk and the teachers are sick of you getting away with shit," Sam snapped back, before remembering that he'd decided not to say anything.

Bobby laughed. "You're just a damn teacher's pet," he said, sounding more scornful than Sam had thought he'd be capable of sounding. And for some reason, that hurt more than Sam had thought that it would, even though he shouldn't care what Bobby had to say. "Maybe you think that you can get all the teachers to believe whatever you say, but we know you're full of shit."

"Hey, back off."

Sam turned, surprised. Or maybe shocked was a better word, because if Sam has stopped to think of all the people who would have stuck up from him, Lipoff would have been at the bottom of the list, slightly below Voldemort (who was a fictional character and evil to boot). Which is why it was hard to believe that Lipoff was the one who stepped out of the crowd of soccer players to tell Bobby to stop. Though judging by the look on his face, he didn't do it out of the goodness of his heart.

"You said it yourself, he's got the teachers going crazy about him," Lipoff said, sneering at Sam, then shaking his head and turning away. "You mess with him, and Sue will be going after your ass to get you kicked off the team." He looked back at Sam, his face angry enough to make Sam flinch, then mentally kick himself for it. "Just back off. He and his fag boyfriend are messed up, anyway. Why bother teaching them a lesson when they're already doomed to be freaks?"

This time, Sam managed to keep himself from wincing at the words. Which shouldn't bother him. He knew that some people weren't going to like him when he started dating Blaine, and he knew that the soccer team was among them. So what? He should've resigned himself to this already.

He didn't think it could ever be that simple, though.

The bell rang, making Bobby scowl. "Shit, you remember what Beiste said about us not skipping class anymore," he said, the looked at Sam. "Lipoff's right. Just forget the fucking fag and let's go."

Sam watched them leave until all of them were out of side. Only then did he turn and head off in the opposite direction, towards the science classroom. He'd just had a run-in with the soccer team that didn't end with him being hit or slushied. And they sounded like they didn't want to get in trouble with Sue anymore, and they knew that they would if they bothered Sam, so maybe that would make them back off a little, like Lipoff had told them to? Sam could hope, anyway. So this could be a good thing, even if it didn't feel like it.

He tried to tell himself that. It wasn't really working.