For the next three days, not much changed. I went about my routine like usual- keep up appearances at school, go to Cheerios practice, and Glee practice. The only thing that was different was I stopped spending my spare time thinking about how to torture Rachel. In fact, I hadn't done a single thing to her in three days. I hadn't had slushies thrown at her, I hadn't made any demeaning comments, and I hadn't so much as said a word to her.
By the fourth day of this new routine of ignorance, Santana was catching on.
"You haven't caused the midget any misery, like, all week," she pointed out.
"That's not true. I ordered Karofsky to slushie her on Monday," I countered. Santana gave me a look, "that" look. The one where she narrowed her eyes at me, but not in a glare. Odd as it may sound, I was probably the only person in the school that would rather have Santana glaring at me than receive that look, because I knew what that look meant. It meant she was trying to get a good read on me.
I always knew that I would ruin everything I'd worked so hard for. I knew I'd get to the top, and just when I started enjoying the view, I'd come cascading down to the bottom. I thought I'd already been through that, with teenage pregnancy, but who knows? There's always farther to fall.
I knew I'd fall because it's always your biggest fear- not your biggest hope- that inevitably becomes reality. You psyche yourself out, bring your biggest fears into being. My biggest fear was instilled in me from a young age- failure. Failure to be everything I'd been trained to be. My biggest hope… well, that's as far from achievable as possible.
Thank God Santana can't read minds (yet). She'd beat me if she knew the kind of deep thoughts I was having. Then again, I'd be able to say that she's no different from me.
"Whatever, Fabray," Santana resigned to saying. From her resignation I drew that she had no idea what was going on with me yet, but that she hadn't given up. She would find out. I only hoped when she would that I would have the proper blackmail to keep her mouth shut.
As the bell rang signaling the end of the school day, I opened my locker, silently making plans in my head for how I could distract Santana over the weekend from trying to peer into my soul.
I was so lost in thought that I didn't even notice Rachel approaching me until I felt her tap me on the shoulder. I jumped about a hundred feet in the air.
"Holy shit!" I yelped. Rachel took a step back, obviously just as frightened as I was.
"Sorry!" she squeaked. I stared at her, mentally trying to lower my heart rate. It wasn't cooperating, and I knew that wasn't just because I'd been surprised. "I just wanted to say…" she trailed off.
"Yes?" I pushed, trying to sound aggravated.
"I wanted to point out that you haven't gone out of your way to do anything to harass me in four days, and that's actually a record for you," she said, her words tumbling out quickly.
Shit.
That's twice in one day that someone's pointed it out to me. I had planned on making this a slow adjustment, not quitting my favorite victim cold turkey. I tried to think fast about how I could possibly pull this off.
"Why, you miss me?" I cooed sarcastically. Rachel's eyebrows furrowed- success.
"Well, I just thought you should know that I noticed," she replied, turning heel and walking away from me.
Watching her retreating form, I realized that what I'd said had been much less caustic than I'd intended. It sounded much more like flirting.
Shit.
Over the weekend, surprisingly, Santana pretty much left me alone. Every so often I'd catch her staring at me, studying me to see if something was different, but that was it. What I need is to find a way to keep Santana off my heels. What I need is to find new ways to torture Rachel. Those words were familiar, and they'd never rung more true.
What I didn't need was to keep wondering what it was that could possibly make Finn break up with Rachel. Because, seriously, he was giving up on the best thing that had ever happened to him. I'd always known he wasn't the smartest, I even enjoyed that, but he was really pressing the envelope of stupidity on this one.
Santana and Brittany were in the "off" part of their on-again off-again relationship. The tension between them was enough to distract Santana from relentlessly picking at me for details on why I was acting differently. See, we have a sort of interesting relationship. She's a bitch, I'm a bitch, and neither one of us likes to open up, so for the most part, we just accept each other as is. But because we're so similar in that respect, we also know when something is bothering the other one. The friendship has always just worked for us.
The weekend was over before I could even blink, or so it felt like. All too soon, I was walking to my locker on Monday morning, trying to avoid the thoughts in my own head.
I saw Santana approaching, so I quickly veered off course, spinning around so fast that I slammed into someone walking the other direction.
"Whoa!" came the squeak from the person I'd run into. With a grunt, I heard them hit the ground.
"Sorry," I mumbled, reaching out my hand automatically to help up the person I'd plowed into, only to realize that I was looking down at none other than Rachel Berry.
I couldn't exactly retract my hand now, especially considering the smaller girl had already taken my proffered hand, so I pulled her up to a standing position. I was hyperaware with my senses- I could feel Rachel's hand in mine, her fingers gripping tightly to the back of my knuckles. I could also practically feel Santana's eyes boring into the back of my head.
"Thank you, Quinn," Rachel murmured, giving me the faintest of smiles. I didn't get it. I had thrown a slushie at her last week, followed by an awkward conversation on Friday, and this morning I'd plowed into her, but she still had the manners to thank me.
I cleared my throat, trying to relieve some of the tension I felt. "Sure," I replied with a shrug. I realized that I should snarl at her for not watching where she was going.
"I'll see you in math class," Rachel said before I could get my bitch on. I was left standing there nodding dumbly as she waltzed away to her first class. I knew I should move, but I was in a bit of a daze, so I stood frozen to the spot.
"Dios mio, chica," I heard from behind me, waking me up to reality. That was quickly followed by the bell ringing, warning the student body to hurry to their first period. I'd never been so happy to go to science class, even if it meant getting glared at by Santana the whole time and having to ignore her.
The moment I took one step into the lunchroom, my arm was grabbed by Santana. She started literally dragging me out of the lunchroom and to an empty classroom. Brittany was walking beside her, grinning.
"Are we kidnapping Q?" Brittany asked.
"Sh, not now, Britts," Santana hushed her. "Alright, Fabray, today's the day when I hold my breath and attempt to pull that enormous stick out of your ass," Santana said to me, shutting the classroom door behind the three of them.
"Shouldn't you be, like, a doctor to do that?" Brittany inquired, a look of puzzlement on her face.
"My dad's a doctor," Santana assured the other blonde.
"Oh, alright then," Brittany said absently.
"What the hell is going on?" I growled, my eyes drilling holes into Santana. The Latina girl ignored that, used to my glaring by now.
"Look, it's been an entire week since you've slushied the munchkin. You haven't even so much as drawn an insulting picture of her in that time either. You haven't outright insulted her, tried to take Finn just to spite her since he's single again, or come up with a conniving plan to humiliate her," Santana explained.
"So?" I asked defensively. "It's not like my life revolves around Berry." Such a lie.
"Yeah, and bacon's not your favorite food," Santana shot back sarcastically.
"But it is, San, I make it every time she sleeps over," Brittany corrected unnecessarily.
Santana was undeterred. "When you're bored or need to feel better about yourself, you just throw some embarrassing moments at the hobbit. You haven't done that in a week. Something's wrong."
"Is this an invention?" Brittany asked with excitement.
"Intervention," Santana corrected.
I looked between the two of them, trying desperately to come up with a way out of this. Lying was a must, of course, because I couldn't exactly break down and tell them that I was trying to be nicer to Rachel because I had been attracted to her since freshman year and the feelings had only started getting stronger.
"Look, I don't know what the big deal is. So I've grown tired of harassing Berry. So what? She'd getting kinda boring, anyway. Like, did you know she has a spare set of clothes in her locker just in case she gets slushied? She's expecting it," I said with a shrug.
Santana pursed her lips and put one hand on her hip. "So, what? Your new angle is to lull her into a false sense of security and then hit her with something big once she thinks her fine little ass is safe?"
Perfect. I didn't even need to come up with a sensible solution- Santana did it for me.
"Does this mean that I can start hugging Rachel?" Brittany asked.
"Sure, B. We all can be nicer to her," I responded. That was the plan. Being nicer to Rachel for a while would be nice, and it gave me time to think of another solution. One that preferably didn't end with Rachel in tears via humiliation by the Unholy Trinity.
"Hey now, just because Tubbers here decided to go all Mother Theresa on Manhands doesn't mean I'm up for that nice shit," Santana balked.
"Is this intervention done? Because I'd really like to go back to the cafeteria and indulge in cafeteria slop and pretend it's the carbs I've been craving," I said impatiently.
I sat across from Santana, pretending to be interested in her future plans for Rachel while really staring just over her shoulder at the diva herself.
My life is so screwed.
A/N: So I've been going through a bout of writer's block when it comes to my other two ongoing fics as well as the other one I've promised to post... Argh, they will be up, sometime, I swear.
I do have a bit of a plan for where this is heading, but if anyone has any suggestions, I'd take them into consideration. Reviews? I love comments, questions, criticisms, anything.