The sound of my alarm clock wakes me up early in the morning. I crack open my window; the stuffiness of my bedroom is unbearable. The cool Monday air gives me relief, but I am shivering, so I wrap a warm, fuzzy blanket around myself. I change into the most fashionable outfit I can find without looking, which happens to be blue jeans and a v-neck shirt that has a very intricate flower on it. Perfect. Sort of.
I walk downstairs and prepare to chow down a very delicious bowl of cheerios, my all-time favorite breakfast. Not the coolest breakfast, I know, but it tastes good.
Blaine and Dad are already at the table when I get there. Sitting on opposite ends, of course. My brother and my Dad have never been very close since Blaine came out. They stopped talking all-together when he and Kurt started dating. Kurt was the first guy Blaine had told Dad about, the first guy, in fact, that Blaine had actually taken on a real date. Kurt was something special, that's for sure, in order to make Blaine actually want to tell Dad about his relationships.
I take a seat in an open chair and begin chewing my cheerios. Dad gives no response other than taking another sip of his coffee, but Blaine gives me a warm brotherly smile, with no indication that he has planned something mischievous. All weekend I tried to keep him distracted from Friday's "incident", and he was spending most of his time with Kurt, so his concerns were most likely put on hold for a while.
Blaine hums a little tune to a song that I assume he will be singing at Warbler's practice today. He straightens the collar on his jacket then gets up to wash his breakfast dishes off in the sink. I have always been jealous of that Warbler's blazer. I don't know, I guess the red piping was fascinating to me when I was younger. I have fond memories of stealing the jacket and running around the house with it, singing at the top of my lungs. Oh, the good old days.
I clean my dishes and brush my teeth, preparing for a day at school. I am checking the contents of my backpack, dillydallying as long as possible, when I hear the doorbell ring. I slowly get up to answer it, but before I even take my first step Blaine is already opening the door. "Hey!" I hear a familiar voice say, and Blaine's face lights up, even though I can tell he was expecting the visitor.
"Kurt!" I exclaim, and then run to meet him. He's so fun and easy to hang out with. I like him so much better than any guy Blaine has ever been interested in. Jeremiah included. He was nice enough, but the one time I met him, he looked at me like I was some lost puppy he didn't know what to do with. He kind of lost me after that.
Kurt's liking me might be greatly influenced by the fact that my name is all to similar to a favorite actress of his, but I can look past that.
"What are you doing here?" I ask Kurt, not caring if it's a cliché.
"Oh, that's what I wanted to tell you this morning!" exclaims Blaine as he facepalms himself. Honestly, I don't believe he ever forgot. "Yeah, Kurt's driving you to school." My eyes get wide at this. I glare at Blaine as hard as I ever have, but he doesn't pick up on it. The problem with my fellow Anderson spawn is that he's so hopelessly clueless.
"No. No way in any world that that is happening. We agreed. Dad is taking me."
"Well, with my extened time with Blaine this weekend, we agreed that it would be best to tell your ex-lover how we feel," Kurt jumps in. Great, he's even more stubborn than me. No chance I'm getting out of this.
"He's not my ex-lover," I mumble, because what else can I say?" "Kurt, don't take me to school. I don't want my classmates to take a look at your flamboyant personality and beat the living crap out of all three of us?" Because that's all I can come up with right now.
"So you are coming in my car, and I'm dropping you off at your school on my way to McKinley. Blaine is going in his car to Dalton, and I am going to give Nathan a piece of our combined minds, and yours, too, if you have any sanity at all." Kurt is being especially blunt right now. He's really serious about this, isn't he? Is he just protecting me from having a repeat of what went on at his school? What I want most is to just leave this whole thing alone, but before I can protest, I am being pushed out the door.
"Dad, I'm taking Julia to school!" Blaine yells before shutting the door. I look through the window and see Dad wave goodbye to me, but barley notices Blaine. Kurt pulls me into his Cadillac and tells me to wait while he talks to Blaine. I don't need telling, I'm already sitting here horrified at what my peers' reactions are going to be. I do not go to a gay-friendly school, which I think has to be made clear to these two.
But I lose all train of thought when I watch Kurt and Blaine exchange a few parting words then give each other a goodbye hug. I can see Blaine close his eyes as he holds Kurt. In my brother's world, every exchange with Kurt is to be cherished and savored.
Is it weird that this is seriously melting my heart right now?
Kurt turns away from Blaine and hops in the car. As we drive to school, he looks at my outfit and is clearly disappointed. "What?" I asked him defensively. If I know Kurt, he's thinking about how he would've shoved a thousand designer brands on me had he been given the time.
"Nothing. It's just, I need to teach you how to dress for an audience," he says.
"Audience?"
"Remember, the world is your stage."
"Well what if my character is fashionably challenged?"
"Sometimes you have to break character."
I laugh at the irony. It's funny that Kurt never breaks character, yet he's telling me to. Well, I guess life has it's complicities. "Maybe I'll take you up on that offer."
"Oh, Julie, no matter how you try to get out of it, you will end up in Bloomingdales with me trying on only the most flattering of outfits." It's true. I probably will. Wait, am I too young for Bloomingdales?
"Don't miss the turn," I point out.
"Yeah, I got it."
Kurt parks and we sit in the lot for a while. Pretty soon all of the students rush into the buildings, but hey, what do you know, Nathan and his friends are still out there, chatting. He looks so cute sitting on a picnic table with one leg on the seat and the other on the ground, tossing a rock and catching it again. But, not surprisingly, the only word I can think to describe him is asshole.
"You ready?" Kurt asks.
"As I'll ever be," I reply. We should make that our thing. It sounds kind of fun. Kurt and I then step out of the car.