It was Monday, and it was time for another week of the Beatles in Glee club. Mr. Schuester walked in as Sam hopped off the piano, where he'd been sprawled atop it, evidently pouring his heart out to Blaine, who'd been playing and listening. To be such a popular guy, Sam sure was strange.
Mr. Schue announced that they'd be moving into the Beatles' experimental years next, which Kitty found fitting, as she and Artie were in the middle of an experiment of their own.
"Now, the Beatles were the biggest musical act in the world," Mr. Schue was saying. "They could have remained in their comfort zones, but instead, they risked everything to explore new worlds."
Artie exchanged a smile with Kitty just then, and she knew what he was thinking, because she was thinking the same thing. If that's not us, I don't know what is.
"Good afternoon, McKinley High," interrupted principal Sue Sylvester, over the P.A. system. "This year, all the proms are being fused into one giant Brundleprom."
"What's a Brundleprom?" someone asked.
"I don't get that reference," said another.
"That's from The Fly." The last comment was Ryder's, causing Artie to look over his shoulder, bemused.
"Lots more closeted nerds in here than we knew," he whispered to Kitty, still grinning at Ryder.
"And now, for the moment that will crush ninety-nine percent of your misguided views about your own popularity," Sue continued. "Here are your nominees for Prom King and Queen. First, here are your nominees for Prom King. Blaine Anderson..."
The glee club erupted into cheers.
"... Mohamed Omar... Artie Abrams..."
Artie's jaw dropped as the club cheered louder still, and Kitty patted him on the shoulder. Artie ducked his head and gave a shy wave, mouthing thanks to the rest of the club. Kitty hoped this was a good sign, that maybe her status had actually brought his up, instead of the other way around. It would be a refreshing change of pace.
"... And Stoner Brett Bukowski."
Or maybe not. Some of these nominations sounded like jokes, now that she thought about it. Stoner Brett? And wasn't that Mohamed kid president of the AV Club or something? Suddenly, Kitty did not have a good feeling about this.
"Wait, I really didn't get nominated for King?" Sam asked, aghast. As captain of the football team, Kitty thought he was right to be confused.
"And now, onto the Queen," Sue continued. "Kitty Wilde..."
"But I'm a sophomore," Kitty said, her brow furrowing as everyone applauded for her. She'd started applauding, too, before she'd even realIy registered the fact that her name that had been called.
"... Aimee Ryan," Sue continued. "Jordan Stern, and inexplicably, Tina Cohen-Chang."
"Yes!" Tina screamed, standing up and bounding down the risers, to the front of the room. "Yes! Yes! Oh, my god, yes!" She did a little jig at the front, as everyone continued clapping for her.
"Tina, wow," Sam said, rising to his feet to approach her. "Even though I'm not nominated, it's such an honor to be going with a potential queen."
"Oh..." Tina said, as she momentarily paused her celebratory dance. "Sorry, Sam. It was so nice of you to offer to go with me, but I'm going to have to decline your invitation."
"But you already accepted," replied a very confused and dejected Sam.
"Yeah, Tina, this is very uncool," Artie added.
"Losing is uncool," was her retort, with a finger up to silence him. She flipped her hair. "I need to maximize my odds of taking the crown, so I think I'm gonna go with a group of single girls to corner the dejected wallflower vote."
Mr. Schuester stood up. "Alright, alright, Tina," he said, cutting her off before she could continue alienating everyone. "If I may, I need to interrupt. We can't forget about a certain person, another one of our prom court nominees, who has a birthday today."
Blaine produced a white cake box that he'd been hiding behind the piano. He flipped it open to reveal a cake, with frosting that said 'Happy Birthday, Artie!' Jake pulled a lighter out of his backpack, along with two candles, a '1' and an '8.'
"Oh, uh, thanks guys," Artie said, blushing and rolling to the front of the room, pivoting to face his friends. As Jake put the candles on the cake and got ready to light them, Kitty saw Tina opening her mouth, ready to make a correction.
"Tina!" Kitty cut her off, quickly. Then, looking from side to side as everyone stared, she chuckled and said. "Uh, before I forget to t-tell you, I just wanted to say you can count on my vote for prom queen."
"Thanks," Tina said. "Jake, actually..." As Kitty gestured for her to stop talking, giving her a wide-eyed stare, Tina finally caught her drift. "Oh, um... nevermind. Not important. Carry on."
Everyone sang to Artie, in perfect harmony of course, and enjoyed cake for the rest of the rehearsal. Nationals were so far off, or at least it felt that way, so nobody was too worked up about it yet. Rehearsals were more about hanging out and enjoying each other's company.
As the bell rang to signal the end of the day for the after-school club meetings, Kitty once again waited for Artie, who had the box of leftover cake perched atop his lap. "Guess I won't get a ride out to the parking lot today," she said.
Artie smirked. "Not unless you want a buttercream butt." He looked rather proud of his pun, as Kitty rewarded him with an eye roll, as she fell into step beside him.
"Thanks for not telling everyone I'm nineteen," he said. "And for stopping Tina from saying something, too. It gets old, having to rehash the story every single time."
"You could always start telling people you flunked out," Kitty said, shrugging and grinning down at him. "Of course, Artie. Happy eighteenth, again."
She leaned over for a kiss.
"Hey, so, I was thinking," she went on. "How about Breadstix tonight?"
Artie cocked his head to the side. "But you hate Breadstix," he pointed out.
"But you don't," she replied. "And besides, it's not that bad. I just said that because I figured you could come up with something a little more original for our first date. And you did, when you thought of taking me to the carnival."
"That was fun," Artie agreed. "Okay, it's a date. But since it's my birthday and all, you're paying, right? Ow, it was a valid question..." he rubbed his bicep, where she'd just slugged him.
"So, uh, are you excited about being nominated for Prom Queen?" he went on to ask.
Kitty rolled her eyes at this. "Artie, don't you see what happened?" she asked him. "Someone obviously tampered with the ballots. Two guys from glee club? The AV club president? Tina? Me, a sophomore? Whoever did it is pathetic. And I'm sure Sue was complicit in this. Why else would she have announced those names?"
"So, you don't think I was really nominated?" Artie asked, not hiding his disappointment well.
"Artie," she said, shaking her head. "Be serious. Do you think you were nominated?"
"Well, yeah," he said, adjusting his glasses. "Yeah, I do. There are a lot more nerds in this school than you realize. And I've got all the sub-types, the academic ones, the ones who love weird movies, and the ones in band."
"Alright, alright," Kitty said, with a laugh. "I'll vote for you, then. You and Tina."
"Oh, no, don't do that," Artie said, quickly. "I mean, Tina, sure. Obviously it's going to be the highlight of high school for her. But vote for her and Blaine, please. I want no part in that."
"And why not?" Kitty asked, curiously, as he pushed through the door, heading out to the parking lot.
"I'm good with the nomination," he said. "But I don't want the win. Number one, you've got people like Bree Westbrook who will want to turn me winning into a story about overcoming adversity..." Artie punctuated that thought by pretending to vomit. "And number two, if I win and you don't, I have to give up one of my dances with you, to dance with the Prom Queen."
Kitty grinned, as she followed him out to the car. Those were good enough reasons, she supposed. She kind of liked the fact that he didn't want to win.
"Here, can you please take this to your dad and Hunter?" Artie asked, handing her the cake as he set his break in preparation to transfer into the driver's seat. He patted his stomach. "I don't need any more of that. Gotta look good in my tux for you at prom."
Kitty laughed, as she accepted what was left of the cake. "In that case, want to skip the extra calories at Breadstix tonight?" she asked. "A more creative date comes to mind, it's pretty wheel-friendly, and the place won't be crowded at all on a Monday night..."
"Sure," he said, good-naturedly, as he moved himself from chair to driver's seat. "So, should I pick you up at 7:00?"
"Let's make it more like 5:00," she suggested. "The place we're going is an hour away. We can eat on the way there. Dress is casual."
"Sounds good."
She gave him a quick kiss before hurrying to find Marley's embarrassingly broken down piece of junk she called a car.
Marley Rose had started giving Kitty rides every now and then, after she'd gotten her license and after Kitty had given up making fun of Marley's mom, altering Marley's costumes, and the many other discretions she'd been guilty of before she'd had a change of heart.
Kitty was so caught up in thinking through her plan for an awesome surprise birthday date for Artie, that she'd almost walked right past Bree Westbrook, who approached her with Aimee Ryan and Jordan Stern trailing behind. (Oddly, these two were seniors, yet they followed Bree, a junior, around like she was in charge.)
"I know who I'm voting for, for prom King and Queen," she said, in a sing-song voice, as both Aimee and Jordan looked pretty annoyed that she wasn't referring to either of them.
"Did you fake nominate me?" Kitty wanted to know. It made a lot of sense, now that she thought about it. "I don't know what you're trying to do to me, Bree, but you're wasting your time. I have no intentions of campaigning for myself. My full support is going to Tina Cohen-Chang for Queen."
"Punch yourself in the face so I don't have to," Bree said, dropping the sweetness act altogether now. "You will not support the Asian girl from glee club. You will support the Cheerios. I do not give a flying fart about how much you love your sisters from glee club. You have 51 weeks out of the year to love your sisters from glee club, and this week is not — I repeat, not — one of them. This week is about winning prom queen for the Cheerios! Do you know that not even the great Quinn Fabray could pull that off? Are you an idiot, Kitty? That's not a rhetorical question. I literally want to know now, so I can make sure you're not nominated for future prom courts."
With a sickening smile and a bounce of her ponytail, Bree turned on her heels and headed off in the opposite direction, her pair of senior nitwits trailing mindlessly behind her.
"Whoa," said a voice behind her. Kitty turned to see Marley, who was gaping at Bree as she left. "What did you do to make her so vengeful?"
Kitty rolled her eyes. "I dared to date someone a little different and the whole world lost its mind," she muttered. "C'mon, I need to hurry home, Artie and I have a date for his birthday tonight."
"Where are you going?" Marley wanted to know, as she unlocked her door manually. She didn't even have keyless entry. Kitty waited for her to lean over and unlock the passenger door from the inside.
"I'm taking him to Fast Track racing in Fort Wayne," she said, as she climbed into Marley's car. "He liked when we did bumper cars at the carnival, so I figured this would be fun, too."
"Are you sure about that?" Marley asked, innocently. "Sam told me he was in a car crash as a little kid. Don't you think that would be sort of, I don't know, traumatic?"
Kitty gave her an exasperated sigh and eye roll at that stupid notion.
"Marley, it's not like I'm going to wreck it," she said. "He's just a regular guy who likes to do regular guy stuff, okay? He doesn't dwell on what happened in the past either. You worry too much. You need to stop, or it'll affect your face. You're starting to get permanent frown lines."
As Marley checked in the rearview mirror for her frown lines, Kitty sat back with a satisfied smirk on her face. She couldn't resist still being a little mean to Marley, even if she'd decided that certain topics, like Marley's mom, were now off-limits. Still, the other girl was still sort of weak and pathetic, and she'd continue to need Kitty's help.
"I'll see you later, Kitty," Marley said, as she dropped Kitty off in front of her house. "Have a fun date."
Kitty thanked Marley for the ride, then sprinted inside, plucking the cake box on the kitchen counter, to be found and devoured by her dad and brother. After that, she hurried upstairs to change out of the restrictive Cheerios uniform she got so tired of wearing every day and to free her hair from its ugly high pony. She put it into a loose braid instead and threw on jeans and a t-shirt. Much better.
It was time for her to take Artie on the best eighteenth (nineteenth) birthday date ever.