Quinn Fabray is a freak. Well, that's what the other kids say.
Quinn doesn't like wool: it's scratchy and rough. She likes soft, smooth fabrics, and she won't wear things if they're not warm, even in the summer. Denim is also a big no-no.
Loud noise hurts. It hurts like wool; scratchy and rough and not at all like the warm, soothing cotton and silk voices she's used to. She has to go to a private school, with special attention, because public schools are loud and coarse and her mother can pay St. Mary's and her classes will be blissfully quiet.
Quinn can't stand social interactions. They make her nervous. She's a smart little girl, and remarkably rich, so she has access to as many books and websites as she wants. She can read and research how to act, but it all flies out the window when she's around people. She gets on well with her mothers' friends, and is good with older people; it's other children that terrify her.
When she's frustrated, she often reacts violently, smacking or hitting or kicking the object of her troubles with a grunt and some muffled curses. (Unsupervised internet access allows one to look up a remarkable amount of words and definitions.)
Quinn can't eat something if it doesn't feel right. Pizza would be okay if it didn't feel greasy and chewy and make her stomach churn. Apples and other crunchy foods are good, but chewy and rough foods aren't.
People think it's weird when she spaces out. She can stare at a wall, dreaming up her own story, her own world, all of her characters and plot and backstory for said characters and also for where they are and the rules of the realm for hours on end, her eyes blank and unforgiving as she glares into the wall, her resting face a mixture of annoyance and pissed off that seriously scares people.
And the standards she holds herself to would make a perfectionist wince. Quinn knows she has autism. She's known since she was six. She knows that her mom know, too, and didn't tell her, but that's okay, because Quinn just Googled it. She sees this as something to make up for, something to correct. When she lost, or did less than perfect, she often cried when she was younger. Even now, her chest constricts painfully and her eyes begin to sting as she plasters a smile on her face and says, "Good game."
One year, she met a new girl in her class. Rachel is a shy, mute kid with brown hair and a limp. She is small and tiny. (four feet, three inches, she signs, once) Rachel is a nice girl, and she and Quinn hit it off. Rachel is quiet because she doesn't talk, and Quinn doesn't chatter incessantly to fill the silence. They can sit amicably together without going mad, and for the first time in her life, Quinn has made a friend.
She knows that people think she's a freak. There are people who say it when they know she can hear and people who say it when they think she can't. She always can. She hears them called her a retard and make fun of her for having only her mom and no dad, but she ignores them. Still, she wishes they didn't.
Rachel doesn't. For that, she is grateful.
When Quinn is nearing thirteen, a nasty man with one large eye in the center of his forehead attacks Rachel and another kid named Santana, who has dark bronw hair and braces. Quinn is confused when no one else can see him. Rachel "talks" (signs) to her and Santana. She is the daughter of a Greek god or goddess. Quinn is just a mortal who can see them - "clear-sighted", she called it. She says she thinks it may be because of her neural diversity; she thinks differently, sees the world differently, almost with a child-like open-mindedness, and this helps her see the truth in front of her.
Rachel brings Santana and Quinn back to the safety with her. Normally it'd just be Santana, but Quinn is at risk, too, because she stands out so much that he mistook her for the half-blood he was tracking in the beginning. Quinn doesn't want to leave her mother and her sister, but she decides to go so no monsters make the same mistake that he did.
People are always going to think Quinn Fabray and people like her are freaks. They have for centuries, and gods forbid humans change
But there always have been and will be people who don't care, who can love and live with people who think differently than them.
And for every person who ever called Quinn a freak, there will be someone who calls her beautiful.