She should have seen it coming, honestly. It was almost an insult, the fact that she hadn't thought to prepare for this inevitability.
It was Wednesday, two full days since she made up with Jesse and fought with Kurt, so she really should have expected it.
Rachel eyed her phone warily, at the text message that had come earlier that day but harangued her whenever she saw it in her inbox.
Kurt sd u mvd out. Wt did u do? R u lvng w/ tht guy?
It was odd, the fact that after having been so involved in her relationship (and sometimes non-relationship) with Finn for the better part of the past few years, she felt so distant and separate from him, that she hadn't even factored in that she should tell him about being in a new relationship, especially since she was again dating Jesse. That when she had thought not to tell people about it yet, her thoughts had gone to the people likely to judge and disapprove of Jesse, and not to the boy she had once been engaged to marry.
But here she was, thrown off her equilibrium from one text message from said boy, hit by sadness that she was officially actively avoiding taking his calls that he had known to just send a text message, and the realization that the content of his message showed, once again, how the people who supposedly knew her in high school were so quick to think the worst of her.
"Oh," a voice suddenly sang from beside her, "why you look so sad?"
Rachel, startled, turned to the culprit to find Anthony, who preferred to be called Anton, one of the dancers in the troupe she and Claire (but mostly Claire) were helping, who was also a good friend of Amy's. He had been one of the first to welcome Claire in the role of temporary lead, and had fallen in love with Rachel with their mutual love for musical theater and Celine Dion. "What?"
"Tears are in your eyes, come on and come to me now." Anton continued, ignoring her question, "Don't be ashamed to cry. Let me see you cry, let me see you through 'cause I've seen the dark side too."
Rachel furrowed her brow, trying to place the song. It was familiar, and she knew she should know it, but for the life of her she couldn't figure it out.
"When the night falls on you, you don't know what to do nothing you confess could make me love you less." Anton frowned at her, since not only was she not joining in, but she also seemed genuinely confused as to what it was he was singing. Thankfully, he had gotten to the chorus. "I'll stand by you."
Oh.
"I'll stand by you, won't let nobody hurt you. I'll stand by you." Anton gasped as he stopped singing. "With the exception of the first line and the last verse the rest of the song doesn't work, but more importantly, you don't know the Pretenders?!"
Rachel's expression brightened and snapped her fingers in enlightenment. "The Pretenders!" A pause, then, "Who are the Pretenders?"
Anton mock gasped in affront. "Your musical knowledge is sorely lacking, my dark-eyed beauty. How can you not know Chrissie Hynde?"
"No, I know Chrissie Hynde!" Rachel protested. "I just don't know her - their songs that well."
Anton shook his head in a show of disappointment, but he laughed after. "We should have a listening party."
"What, like what they do for album launches?"
"Yes, only better." Anton saw her complete confusion. "Really? I grew up in Kansas and I know what listening parties are. Wait." He looked up as Claire approached, dropping her bag on the space beside Rachel. "What do you say to a listening party, Swan Queen?"
Claire paused, and glanced from his excited face to Rachel's puzzled one. "Who has a record player?"
"Christian." Anton answered, naming one of his friends that he had introduced into their group. "And he has an honest-to-goodness apartment, so we'll have space."
"Involved parties?"
"Christian, obviously. You, me. Rachel, since she obviously needs to attend one. Amy, since she'll have an aneurysm if we don't invite her. Rachel can bring her mystery man/boyfriend, if she wants. Do you think your boyfriend will want to come?"
"Maybe not to our first listening party."
"Good point."
"Should you be inviting us over to Christian's without his permission?" Rachel asked curiously.
"He'll be fine." Anton waved his hand dismissively. "He's in love with Amy and Claire, he won't mind."
Claire carefully considered the proposition. "Can I bring CDs?"
"Five each." Anton nodded.
"That's a little much, don't you think, given there'll be at least five of us." Claire pointed out.
"What are we talking about?" Amy asked, joining the group.
"Anton wants to have a listening party." Claire told her.
"Oooh." Amy cooed. "I'm in."
"Funny, I don't recall inviting you." Anton remarked.
"Funny, I don't recall you knowing my friends if I hadn't introduced you to them." Amy retorted. She turned to Claire. "They're checking my ankle later, do you want to come with?"
"No." Claire replied, as if she'd asked her to come along to a lobotomy. "You're on your own, Xandadon't."
"I thought they were checking it on Friday?" Rachel asked Amy, who glared at Claire for the unfortunate (but oddly fitting) nickname.
"I'm sorry, all I heard was 'yay, you might walk like an average person sooner!'" Amy remarked, this time mock-scowling at her, making Rachel smile apologetically. "Do you want to join me?"
"I'd love to, but I believe clinics have an extraordinary amount of germs and I get really paranoid about that."
"You're weird."
"I know."
"I can schedule it tomorrow, psych yourself up." Amy offered. "You can wait outside, if it'll help the paranoia."
"My boyfriend is picking me up tomorrow."
"Better, so I can meet this boyfriend." Amy decided.
"He was here last night."
"You mean the pretty boy you abandoned us for when you saw him waiting for you at the front of the school?" Amy retorted.
Rachel winced. Okay, so she was that girl. "He's picking me up again tomorrow night, you can meet him then."
"Meet who?" Claire asked, turning away from her conversation with Anton.
"Her boyfriend." Amy answered.
"We can have the party on Friday." Anton suggested, interrupting them.
"Again, no." Claire shook her head, turning back to him. "I have plans."
"Saturday?"
"Still no."
Anton frowned at her. "What, are you going to be doing your boyfriend the whole weekend?"
"No." Claire frowned at him with an odd expression. "And, I'm flattered you think my boyfriend and I have that kind of prowess and stamina, but no."
"I wanna meet him." Anton declared.
"Me too." Amy added.
"Ooh, me three." Rachel piped in. "I want to meet Tom."
Claire frowned at her. "Didn't you already meet him?"
Rachel shook her head. "Being in the same hallway while you practically made out with him a few feet away from me doesn't count as meeting him."
"Good point." Claire conceded. "His band's performing Saturday night, you should show."
"I'm there." Amy announced.
"So there." Anton agreed, nodding.
"You're not going home for Spring Break?" Rachel asked them, curious.
"No." The duo replied, giving her a bewildered look.
Claire turned to Rachel to explain the bewilderment. "You remember yesterday, when they said the preview's next Wednesday and the school will be open during that time?"
Rachel nodded.
"The subtext in that is nobody's allowed to leave until after the preview and the school will be open so rehearsals will continue while school isn't in session." Claire told her. "They can't make it mandatory because students should be on break, but it's a happy coincidence that the entire company will still be in town so why not have rehearsals."
Rachel laughed softly. "Of course."
It was a good thing she had really planned to stay for the preview, or else she'd be disappointed about the change in plans.
Before anything else could be said among them, Marco entered the room and called everyone's attention, officially starting the afternoon's rehearsals.
The next few hours kept everyone preoccupied, even Rachel, who had been assigned by Marco to be his assistant as she was, as he put it, the most 'realistic' dancer in the sessions with Claire and Amy, and it was her job to ensure the rest of the group knew their cues. Considering they had only been working all together for the past week, Rachel had to admit the show was looking technically flawless, despite Janet's continued reticence regarding Claire. Amy was allowed to join in, mostly for blocking, and things were looking good for next week.
Cassandra July, who had steered clear of Rachel the day previous, came up to where she was sitting with Amy, and turned to her former student. "Are you going home for Break?"
"No." Rachel replied, recalling the last time Ms. July had called her out about going home to Lima.
"Good." She nodded shortly, nothing in her tone indicating approval. "You've still got a lot to learn."
Rachel frowned and turned to ask her former instructor to elaborate, but Ms. July was already walking towards the area where Janet was working with Marco. Rachel turned back to Amy, who returned her confused look.
"Don't look at me, it's Black Swan who speaks Psycho Bitch."
Since it was a school night, and it was getting late by the time anyone remembered about dinner, they were dismissed early, which led to the inevitable discussion on where they were going to eat.
They were heading to the exit, the four of them going between discussions about where to eat and making plans for the weekend, when Rachel spotted Kurt and Adam in the corridor, making her pause and the rest of her friends stop with her.
Amy and Anton, who didn't know Kurt, glanced in the direction Rachel was staring at and checked why she had stopped so abruptly.
Rachel wasn't sure what she had been expecting, whether Kurt would confront her like he did on Monday night or if he would ignore her, so she wasn't sure how she felt when Kurt merely turned back to Adam and gave no indication whatsoever of acknowledging Rachel.
"Who's..." Anton began, but Amy gave him a sharp look. She wanted to know, too, but even she knew better than to ask for information in the middle of the gossip-laden halls of NYADA.
Rachel got no such discretion from Claire, who pulled her away from Amy and Anton the minute they crossed NYADA's threshold. "Let's go get dinner." The tall dancer said in a manner that defied protest.
"Hey, we're hungry, too!" Anton jokingly protested after them as he and Amy were left behind by Claire and Rachel.
Dinner turned out to be salad and sandwiches in a coffee shop/diner that Rachel had never been to but Claire seemed to frequent, if the way the service crew greeted her and took a phenomenally short time to put together their meal, was anything to go by. While Rachel chewed on the sandwich Claire had ordered for her that she found surprisingly pleasant, she bore the careful scrutiny of the other girl.
"I saw Cassie talk to you." Claire finally spoke up. "What did she say?"
"She asked if I was going home for Spring Break." Rachel reported. "But you already told me why it could have been a trick question, and she and I have history about that sort of thing."
If Claire had questions about that answer, she didn't ask them. Instead she asked, "That's it?"
Rachel thought back and added, "she said I still have a lot to learn."
Claire nodded, her relief showing as she exhaled. "Okay."
"What did that mean?"
"It means she's going to make sure you're in her 201 class next semester."
"What?" Rachel exclaimed, aghast. She had barely survived Dance 101 with Cassandra July, and while she was confident she had improved from her lessons with Claire, another round with Ms. July was just asking for trouble.
Claire shrugged. "She let you have your fun and took 102 with someone else, but she thinks you'll thrive better with her. So, see you next year."
"But..."
"She already signed me up as her TA next year, so don't you worry your pretty head." Claire reassured her. "It'll be fine."
Rachel had her doubts, but she really couldn't counter that point.
"Now," Claire started, stirring the ice in her drink before she looked back up at Rachel. "What's the story with you and the artist formerly known as Rachel Berry's sidekick?"
"He's not my sidekick." Rachel quickly denied.
"I don't mean anything by it. People think you're my sidekick, which is weird, since you're the girl who won the Winter Showcase."
Rachel considered that, and conceded that she may have some hero-worship for Claire, since she found that she didn't really mind being considered the dancer's sidekick. She sighed, and decided that since Claire was kind of an involved party, she should know at least some of the details. "Kurt. He and I are fighting."
"About?"
"You." Rachel answered, but corrected herself. "Well, it started about you, and Janet. The whole understudy/preview situation."
"Fair enough."
"But it wasn't." Rachel argued. "It sounded bad on paper, but in context it isn't, and if there was anyone I had expected to take my word over someone else's I thought it would be him."
"You said 'started'. There's more?" Claire queried.
"He kind of implied that our friendship is detrimental to me as a person."
Claire stopped eating and arched an eyebrow. "How am I managing to do that?"
Rachel shook her head. "You didn't know me in high school, so you don't know what I was like that entire time."
"Let me guess: too ambitious, too obnoxious, too focused on New York?"
Rachel laughed softly. "That's it, pretty much. Can you tell?"
"I was widely considered to be some queen bitch killer bee dancer in my school." Claire shared. "I was a ringer, and I went to school with a lot of girls also taking ballet and dance, so the reputation of being ruthlessly ambitious went with me everywhere."
Rachel smiled sympathetically. "So you know."
"So I know." Claire agreed. "What does that have to do with your friend?"
"He was pretty much the only real friend I had in high school."
Claire sat back, and regarded the younger girl. "You've known him how long?"
"Since we were kids. But we only became friends in high school, we were in glee club together."
"Best friends?"
"Yes."
Claire sat back, and prodded her salad with her fork. She seemed to be contemplative, her gaze down at her salad, but eventually she sighed and looked up at Rachel. "This show has already destroyed one friendship."
"I would hardly call my disagreement with Kurt 'destroyed'..."
"I was talking about Amy and Janet."
Rachel's eyes widened, realizing her error, and she lowered her head to acknowledge the correction. Funny, how she had already forgotten that Amy and Janet had been friends before this show had even started being conceptualized. Even before the whole drama regarding Amy's injury, she had been spending increasingly more time with Claire and Rachel in rehearsals, especially after Janet started skipping them.
Claire smiled weakly. "Consider the fact that they've been friends since they were freshmen, and how everything turned out."
"I'm sure they'll make up eventually; it's just a show." Rachel said, before she stopped herself and caught the skeptical look Claire gave her. She pursed her lips, because she and Claire both knew the basic truth: it was never 'just' a show. They were leads, they thrived on performing, and Rachel had no doubt that a majority of the people in NYADA were just like them.
She forgot sometimes, the very thing Amy had said about having to give up the lead in the preview to Claire: a lot of them were the best in their fields in their respective hometowns, that most of them were used to being the best... except that no longer held true once they were in NYADA. It held to reason that Janet probably felt the way they all did, and had at one point been the best there was at home. To get so close to elevating herself from the rest, to be the lead, a star, in a performance showcasing some of the best dancers in the school, and have it taken away had to hurt.
Especially since it had been her friend who had inadvertently suggested letting someone else step in. And handed the lead to a ringer, which probably made the insult to the injury hurt even more.
No. It wasn't 'just' a show.
Claire exhaled. "I don't know your life, and I won't even pretend to know what your relationship with this guy Kurt is like, but take it from someone who knows: this career we've chosen has a lot of baggage, and one day all we'll have are our friends. I don't know what he said, but I'll trust you to know whether or not he was right or wrong. But don't destroy a friendship, if you can help it."
"It's not just the show." Rachel told her, quietly. "It's not even really you; it's this idea, that you get what you want just by wanting it. I've worked hard to get where I am, I've given up a lot of things to be where I am, and I know you have, too. I didn't win the Winter Showcase by being more popular than the other performers, and you didn't even want to do the preview. We've proven our worth and other people can see that; Why is reveling in that acknowledgment so wrong?"
"Because nobody likes to believe that getting what you want isn't always easy." Claire answered simply. "What you said? The attention, the acclaim? One of my instructors once told me that ballerinas work twice as hard and put in twice the effort, just to make it look easy. That when you get people to believe that it's easy, that's when you know you're doing a good job. Some people like to think it's really just easy."
"But that's my point! You were there, for every rehearsal, working with Marco and Amy, and you're not even in this troupe. There's a personal sacrifice, I know, but people just can't see it, and I'm just so tired of him, and a lot of other people, telling me that I'm wrong, just because they don't agree with me. I grew out of that in high school - not entirely by choice, but I did - why can't they?" Rachel complained.
Claire, figuring out that there was so much more to the story than what Rachel was telling her but knowing that this rant was just the tip of the iceberg, said nothing and merely took a sip from her drink. Finally, she spoke again. "Just promise me you won't just cut him out, OK? You obviously feel strongly enough about your fight, and whether or not you remain best friends is another thing entirely. Fix it, but don't compromise on what you believe, especially if you really think you're right."
Rachel lowered her gaze, and nodded slightly to tell the other girl that her advice had been heeded.
They continued eating in silence, Rachel deep in thought and Claire allowing the younger girl the opportunity to think things through.
After dinner, which Claire paid for since the diner had been her choice, they walked back in the direction of NYADA, where they would part ways: Claire towards the nearby dorms, and Rachel to head towards Shelby's apartment. En route to NYADA, they talked about more superficial matters, like classes and what they could be doing if they weren't due to be stuck in rehearsals for almost the entire break, as well as what Claire did last year for Spring Break.
"You didn't go home?" Rachel asked in surprise. "Would you have, this year?"
Claire shrugged. "I never really fit in at home, and there's not much of anything to do, so staying in New York's honestly the better alternative. Besides, Tommy's here, so..."
"It would be nice to go home." Rachel mused. "If there was a guarantee not to run into certain people from there, but it would be nice."
Claire hummed her agreement. She ran a hand through her dark hair, and grumbled when she realized it was still in the bun she had tied it up in before rehearsals. "I can't believe I went out with my hair like this."
Rachel watched in amusement as Claire removed the pins in her hair. Trust the pretty girl to bemoan that her hair was a mess when it was barely even mussed. "What would you do?"
Claire gave her a puzzled look.
"If you were in my shoes, and your best friend doesn't understand why you sometimes need to be selfish take the lead to the betterment of the group as a whole."
Claire sighed. "I've been in your shoes. And as much as we share the same focus on our crafts, I don't think our stories can really compare."
"Yeah, because I'm not a ringer." Rachel pointed out.
Claire smiled wryly. "Because I learned the hard way that there's a reason it's called show business, and not show friends."