CHAPTER 5
"I've gotta say guys… I'm disappointed."
The Glee club sat in the choir room at the end of the week, this time in their standard formation against the back wall, but there was still one empty seat amongst them. Mr. Schue's eyes flickered from the empty chair to the rest of the group again and again as he addressed the group, a sad look on his face.
"Mr. Schue, we tried. We really did. But have you met the students at this school? They'd all rather die than join Glee!" Mercedes exclaimed. Mr. Schue sighed.
"Look, guys, I realise that it's not easy. That it's not going to be as simple as walking up to someone and asking if they would join the New Directions." Mr. Schue said. "But if you care about this club and care about winning Nationals as much as I do, which I know you all do, you'll go above and beyond, do whatever's necessary, to recruit people. If nobody agrees on the first ask, you keep asking. Keep persuading them. Try and convince them to come to just one rehearsal as a trial run to see if they enjoy it. Do whatever it takes!"
"Mr. Schue, do you really think we didn't do all that?" Rachel remarked. "Nobody wants to win Nationals more than we do. Of course we want to do whatever it takes. But it's just simply impossible. I think the best move would be to just work with 11 people and for competitions, we can get Jacob Ben Israel or some other person to fill in and just stand there in the background."
Mr. Schue shook his head vehemently.
"No, no, no. We're not doing that!" He declared. "You guys were there in New York last year! You saw how incredible the other choirs were! If we want any shot at all at winning Nationals, we're going to need AT LEAST 12 good, passionate singers. Any less than that and we might as well kiss any chance of winning goodbye. If anything, we need more than just one more person."
A collective silence ran through every student in the room as Mr. Schue spoke. Just hearing his passion was enough to reboot their systems. He was absolutely right. For many of them, this was the last chance they would ever get to win Nationals, so none of them would be able to live with themselves knowing that there's more they could've done but didn't. They needed to put everything they had in every part of the process, and that included the stage of recruiting new members.
After a few more moments of silence, with Mr. Schue's voice trailing off after his passionate speech, it was Kurt's turn to speak up.
"Well, update for everyone… I've been trying to convince Blaine to transfer to McKinley. I don't know whether or not he's certain yet, but I think he's definitely considering it."
"Good. Kurt, that's great." Mr. Schue smiled at him and nodded. "Having an experienced singer like Blaine would be an incredible addition to the New Directions."
"Because there are so many of those just lingering around the halls of McKinley High." Sam snapped sarcastically and annoyed.
"I know, guys. Trust me, I know." Mr. Schue replied, sighing. "It was hard enough to find you guys in the first place, and you guys actually wanted to join Glee club."
"I didn't." Finn pointed out. "You found me, saw I had talent and then… convinced me to join."
"Yeah, and Finn, you did the same with me." Sam added. Mr. Schue nodded.
"That's exactly what I was going to say." Mr. Schue smiled. "Some people in this room didn't join because they knew they could sing. They weren't experienced singers or performers, but they had talent and they had heart. I guarantee that Finn and Sam aren't the only people in this school like this. That's who we're looking for. That's who we stand a chance in convincing to join Glee."
"So how do we find them?" Finn asked. At that moment, all of a sudden, there was a knock on the choir room door and somebody walked in. As they did, every eye in the room widened in shock. It was Quinn Fabray, but not the Quinn they had come to expect over the past week. No, this Quinn was almost… normal? At least she looked back to normal. She had clearly dropped the black and leather and replaced it with her customary Cheerios uniform, clearly having been reinstated back on the team by Coach Sylvester. Her hair was no longer pink, but back to her original blonde. The chains of jewellery were replaced with her old gold cross necklace. Her black nails had become white. Her nose ring disappeared. And her horrific temporary tattoo had thankfully begun to fade away. It was like the Quinn of old had returned at long last, and it was a welcome sight to all of them.
"Quinn! You're back!" Mercedes exclaimed, the first to break the shocked silence. Quinn nodded and nervously looked at Mr. Schue.
"I heard you guys were looking for people who want to win Nationals." She said. For a moment, there was complete silence in the choir room. It was so quiet you could hear a pin drop. All of the students were staring anxiously at Mr. Schue, wondering what his answer would be. And for a couple of painstakingly long seconds, his stony expression gave them absolutely no hints as to what it was. However, just as they were all about to die in anticipation, his face broke into a massive smile.
"Welcome back, Quinn." He said, and at that moment, the entire room collectively cheered. Quinn was welcomed back with open arms by all of them, and she took the final empty chair in the choir room.
"See Mr. Schue. I told you we'd be able to find one more person." Santana said. Quinn raised an eyebrow but didn't say anything. Although almost everyone in the room had spoken to her in the past week, implored her to come back to Glee and return to her old life, it hadn't been any of them who had convinced her in the end. It was a certain new student two days ago.
Mr. Schue nodded.
"Yes, but while I'm as happy as anyone that Quinn is back, that doesn't change what I said earlier." Mr. Schue said. "The level that we need to get to to even stand a chance at Nationals requires more than just the 12 of us."
"There were only 12 of us last year and we still made it to Nationals." Puck pointed out.
"And where did we place?" Mr. Schue responded. Puck immediately shut up and Mr. Schue nodded. "Look, I don't know about you guys, but I'm not interested in just making it to Nationals this year. I want a win, I want all of you to win, but I'm warning you from now that that is not going to happen if it's just the 12 of us on that plane. Vocal Adrenaline only came second last year for the first time in seven years, so they're going to be hungrier than ever to reclaim their throne. There's also last year's champions, the Portland Scale Blazers, to compete against. And then 48 other top level choirs who won their Regionals. The 12 of you really fancy your chances against all of them?"
Finn nodded.
"We get it, Mr. Schue. We need more people." He admitted, resigning to the fact that their failed recruiting drive was not over. "How do we get them though?"
Mr. Schue smiled.
"The only way we know how…"
HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
"12… 13… 14…"
Marcus silently counted to himself as he unrelentingly raised the loaded barbell from his chest into the air. It was Monday morning, before school even started, and he was already in the gym. It was the best time of the day to be there, as there was not a soul there other than him. He didn't have to deal with talking to anyone else as he worked out. He was alone with his thoughts, no sound in the room apart from the sound of his breathing. Over and over and over again he pushed the bar up and down, until he felt his arms begin to tremble and about to give in, at which point he dumped the barbell back on the rack with a loud thud. He took a few seconds to breathe, panting short gasps of air as he recovered from the exhausting set, and he slowly felt his heartbeat lower back down to normal. Mopping the sweat from his brow, he took a deep breath and then lay back down on the bench, ready to start another set. However, just as he was about to grab the bar once more, he heard footsteps enter the gym. While he didn't look up immediately, he did hear the footsteps approach him and stop right beside his head.
"You know you're supposed to have a spotter, right?"
"Don't need one. I look after myself." Marcus grunted in reply as he slowly sat up. He had recognised the voice, and he turned around to face them. However, as he looked up at them, he had to do a double take. This wasn't the same person he had confronted under the bleachers a few days ago. This was someone completely different. This person was without a doubt the most beautiful girl he had ever seen. Wearing a cheerleading uniform that left very little to the imagination, that wasn't even the most attractive thing about her. Having completely cleaned up her face from the unnecessary piercings, over-the-top makeup and flamboyant colored hair, she now looked drop-dead gorgeous. Her blonde hair looked like it had been kissed by both honey and gold. Her dark green eyes looked like pearls picked straight from the ocean floor. And the most intoxicating thing about her… she had a smile so radiant, so infectious that it lit up the entire room.
"Wow…" was all Marcus could say as he stared at her, eyes wide with shock. It took all he could not to openly gawk at her. Quinn couldn't help but giggle slightly at his reaction. Little did he realise though that deep down, Quinn had exactly the same reaction to seeing him. Caked in sweat, Marcus had muscles that put even Puck's to shame, and they were all exposed by his sleeveless tank top.
"Look, this room smells horrible so I don't want to stay in here for too long, but I just came to say thank you." Quinn said. "Thanks to your little wakeup call, I managed to somewhat turn my life back around."
Marcus smiled faintly.
"That's great. I'm happy for you. Glad I could help." He murmured. He was going to go back to his workout, but Quinn didn't look like she was about to leave the room and he immediately knew what was coming. Automatically, Marcus tried to deflect the conversation down a different road. "So how does it feel to be back on the Cheerios?"
"It's good. Really good. I'm feeling a lot more like myself again." Quinn said. She took a deep breath before continuing. "You know, I didn't realise how lonely I truly was without Cheerios and Glee until I came back."
Marcus sighed. Here it comes. He shook his head.
"Look, I know what you're about to say and the answer is no." Marcus responded. Quinn raised an eyebrow.
"Excuse me?" She asked.
"You're about to tell me how lonely you think I am, and how I need to join the Cheerios or something as well because you think it'll help me in some way. I'm telling you, the answer is no."
Quinn scoffed, taken aback.
"Well, you might want to shut up for a moment because that's not what I was going to say." Quinn replied. "Or at least not everything I was going to say. What I was going to say is that something you said the other day struck me really hard. When you said it was too late for yourself to get your life back on track. I just don't think that's true, particularly for a 17 year old. I think you have the ability to change and you even want to change, but you just don't think you're strong enough."
"That right?" Marcus remarked, chuckling mirthlessly for a moment and shaking his head. "You think you have me all figured out, huh?"
"Tell me where I'm wrong." Quinn challenged him.
"Other than Rugby, which I've played my whole life, you know what my favourite sport is?" Marcus asked her. Quinn shook her head. "Boxing. And you know why? Because when you're fighting with someone, standing toe to toe with them, it feels like it's just you and them in the whole world. No teammates. Nobody to blame but yourself if things go wrong. Nobody to congratulate but yourself if things go well. That's how I like to live my life. Solo. So if things go to shit, which in my experience they almost always do, I have nobody to blame but myself."
Quinn sat down on the edge of the bench, face to face with Marcus, and as they looked at one another, Quinn could see right into his eyes. Quinn always believed that you could tell a lot about a person by their eyes and in Marcus', there was so much pain. Pain, exhaustion and loneliness were all buried deep within and as they sat with their faces just a foot or two apart, there was nothing Marcus could do to hide it.
"That sounds… lonely." She commented. "Look, you were right. I did come here to convince you of something. I can see how lonely you are, Marcus. Come to rehearsal with me this afternoon."
Marcus chuckled.
"Thanks, but do I really look like a cheerleader?" He remarked, gesturing to his toned body.
"No, not Cheerios practice you idiot!" She laughed. "Glee practice is at 3."
Marcus sighed.
"Really? Glee? You're like the fourth person in the past week I've been here who has tried to recruit me for this club."
"Yeah, and maybe fourth time's the charm?" She asked, hopefully. "You don't have to be able to sing or dance that well either. I'm sure if you join, you'll pick it up decently quickly."
Marcus thought for a moment, before shaking his head.
"Sorry, but I don't think so." He replied. Quinn nodded and stood up.
"Fine." She said. "But just know that from now on, you can no longer say that some people are too far gone to change. You're not too far gone to change, Marcus. You're just too scared to even try."
Marcus was left speechless as Quinn turned on her heel and walked towards the door. When she made it, she paused for a moment.
"Glee are doing something special in the cafeteria during lunch today. Just please be there, okay?" She asked. Marcus didn't respond, lying back down on the bench and picking up his weights. Quinn sighed and walked out of the room…
