A/N: Enjoy! And remember - reviews are love!
"Okay, guys, warm-ups," Mr. Schuester said as Sam and Puck slid into the room seconds after the bell rang. "I know we don't do them often but scales and triads are going to be the bedrock of our performance on the song without words. Stand up, everybody – we're going to stop at the bottom!"
The glee club kids groaned, but got to their feet, stretching and laughing as Brad played a few starting pitches on the piano.
Mr. Schuester looked over at Skyler as the group went through the opening exercises – "La-la-la-LA-la-la-la…". She had positioned her chair next to Artie's in the front, just before the risers. There was a serious look he hadn't seen on her face in a while; she appeared to be focusing extremely hard on something just above his head. He resisted the urge to turn around and see what it was.
"La-la-la-LA-la-la-la," the glee club members warbled. Rachel was singing loudest of all. In the back row, Mike Chang was attempting to go unnoticed.
Mr. Schuester smiled – just another ordinary day.
When the kids finished their warm-ups, Mr. Schuester took his place at the front again. "All right, guys, let's take the song without words from the beginning. Skyler, any tips before we get started?"
Skyler looked startled, as though she hadn't expected him to call on her. Then a small smile appeared on her face, and she flicked her eyes towards her computer screen. "No. Please just proceed. I'm sure I'll have some notes after you finish," she typed.
"Sounds good. Our pitches, maestro?"
Brad – who for some reason looked actually pleasant – gave the pitches. Following a second of silence, there was an intake of air and the kids were singing.
Mr. Schuester scanned the group. Finn looked confused, but that was nothing new. Mike Chang was trying a new technique – taking huge breaths before each note. Tina had the giggles, possibly from Mike's new singing technique. Lauren and Puck were sending each other eye messages that Mr. Schuester was sure were R-rated. Rachel's attention was focused on the middle of the piano; she sang lustily and happily. Artie was looking at Brittany. Brittany was looking at Sam. Sam was looking at Quinn. Quinn was looking at Finn. Santana was looking at Brittany. Kurt and Mercedes were hip-bumping in time to the song.
And Skyler had that distant look on her face again, as though she was somewhere else. She was usually so serious and focused that it was a bit off-putting. Compared to the Skyler of half an hour ago, the one who had spun around the choir room to the tune of Pink's "Raise Your Glass," she was drastically different.
Will Schuester had known the Howards for several years. He admired Dave Howard; in fact, he wanted to teach like Dave Howard. Dave inspired his students through music and was genuinely liked and respected by his students. Grove University musicians looked up to Dave – they sought his approval, and year after year, more of them were choosing music to fulfill various requirements. Some had stayed on with Dave for five or six years, continuing to take music classes even through grad school. One of Dave's most successful students was playing first chair in some orchestra in New York. It was a track record Will admired.
And Will liked the rest of the family. Susan was hard-working, dedicated to her many jobs, and a great cook. Liz had been a cute kid when Will was first introduced to the family, and though she had taken an unexpected detour into Goth Land, with an attitude to meet, Liz was still family-oriented, almost a straight-A student, and one of Langford High's most popular students – a soprano in the Langford Lovelies, she worked harder than anyone else in the show choir. Liz had gone from a background chorus role to a front-row singer and had taken on some of the choreography, at least before Rand Philippe had returned from California to shake things up.
And Skyler. At first Skyler had frightened Will. She was so obviously dependent. When Will had first met the Howards, Skyler had just returned from a three-month stay in a pediatric intensive care unit in Cleveland. As Susan told Will, Skyler had "coded" three times. Once, for seven minutes, she had been clinically dead.
It had changed Skyler. Or, at least, Will thought it had. He hadn't known the Howards very well before Skyler's long inpatient stay, but he had seen enough movies and read enough existential non-fiction to know that near-death experiences changed people. And though Skyler was now just sixteen years old, there was something in her eyes that was much, much older. Something wise. Something patient. Something talented.
Skyler was an improbability, that was what Will liked the most about her. She was supposed to be dead, at least four times over. Shortly after her birth, medical science had given her a year, at most. Thirteen years later, three times she'd coded in a hospital in Cleveland. In between, Will knew, Skyler had undergone hundreds of medical procedures designed to extend her life, including many, many daily treatments that often involved her going without air for minutes at a time while her mother worked to clear her airway of mucus.
She was supposed to be dead, but she wasn't. Instead, she was sitting in a choir room in suburban Ohio; she was composing music that somehow made sense without any pesky lyrics to get in the way and bog things down.
All of a sudden Will realized the kids had stopped singing. Worse, they were looking at him.
"Mr. Shu?" Mercedes asked. "Is something wrong?"
"Nope, nope, that was awesome," Will said, giving the group a smile. "Just caught up in some reverie."
"How did it sound?" Tina asked.
"Truthfully, I liked the overall effect," Will said. "The chords are really starting to sound nice. Let's ask our maestra. Skyler, what'd you think?"
Skyler snapped back to the conversation, and Will knew that she, too, had been millions of miles away. Again, there was only a moment or two of silence, and then her eyes were moving, focused on the computer screen in front of her. A few moments later, the computer spoke: "It's good for a first effort. But it still needs a lot of work. There are some complex harmonies that I'm pretty sure you guys can hit. It'll just take some focus. Can we start at measure seven?"
Will pulled up the sheet music on the overhead projector, and circled the measure Skyler had indicated with a dry-erase marker. "See here, folks?" he said. "Skyler, are you referring to the men's chord?"
Skyler typed, "Yes."
"Okay. Finn, you have the lowest note," Will said. "Can you hit that?"
"It's pretty low," Finn said, looking nervous.
"You've got it, Finn," Rachel said. "Your range is amazing."
She beamed at him. Finn looked back at Mr. Schuester. "Umm… I guess so."
He sang a note. It was low, all right, but not the note written on the music.
"A little bit lower," Mr. Schuester said. "Brad, could you play it?"
The piano's note rang out in the room, and Finn did his best to hit it.
"Okay, great," Mr. Schuester said. "Now, Sam, you've got the next note up…"
Brad played that one without being asked, and Sam gave it his all.
"Now, Artie and Kurt!" Mr. Schuester said, waving his hands to encourage the singers.
Artie sang the note, looking over at the rest of the group a little warily. Kurt raised his hand. "Mr. Schuester, this chord is impossible. Even for a group of guys that has the range that we do. And it's a pretty impressive range."
"Just try it," Mr. Schuester coaxed.
"It's a diminished minor chord," Kurt went on, obviously not agreeing with his teacher's viewpoint. "It's a chord that lasts for a tenth of a second and, to be honest, I don't think it goes there. What's it supposed to represent?"
Mr. Schuester looked over at Skyler. The tiny girl looked a bit distant again, but within a second she focused on her computer screen. "Think of this song as a prayer," she typed. "It was based on a prayer, actually – something I heard at my cousin Eli's bar mitzvah."
"Oh!" Rachel exclaimed. "Suddenly it all makes sense!"
"Easy there, Barbra," Santana said. "Could you maybe translate for those of us not blessed with Hebraic heritage?"
Skyler's lips twitched into her version of a smile. "It's about being grateful. It's praise. It's saying…" and here she paused, searching for the right phrase, "… it's saying, I am so grateful that I woke up this morning. I am so grateful to be here right now. Thank you for this day. Thank you for this life, because it is a life worth living."
More than a few faces turned towards Skyler.
"What?" she typed, looking slightly more amused.
Santana, of course, had no problem telling Skyler exactly what everyone was thinking. "Why'd you write a song about being grateful to be alive?"
Mr. Schuester stood up, still holding the dry-erase marker. He was ready to leap to Skyler's defense.
But she didn't need it. "You think that people like me don't want to be alive?"
"I'm just saying…" Santana started.
"We want to be alive," Artie said.
"Artie, it's not the same thing," Santana said. "You've just got legs that don't work… I mean, she's got…"
"I wasn't always like this," Artie offered, a bit shyly.
"And I wasn't always like this," Skyler typed. "Strange as it may sound, I was born completely normal. I wasn't born attached to machines. Strange as it may sound, I sat. I ate by mouth. I breathed on my own. And I talked."
Santana looked a bit ashamed at this, but not enough. Mr. Schuester said, "Santana… life is about being who you are despite the odds. I think glee club's taught us that."
"And so my odds are bigger than yours," Skyler typed. "Who gives a damn? I'm still alive, and that's what matters. So I breathe different, so I walk different, so I talk different, so I eat different. I might not be a cheerleader but I'm a kickass composer and a musician and a Harry Potter freak. There's so much more to me than my body, and if you have a problem with that, get a therapist, because we don't have enough time to sort out your issues before we need to kick the pants off the Langford Lovelies at sectionals."
Santana's mouth dropped open.
"She already has a therapist," Brittany pointed out.
"Well said, Skyler," Mr. Schuester said quietly.
"You can all stick up for her," Santana said, recovering, "but it still doesn't excuse the fact that she's in glee club and she can't even talk."
"Artie's in here and he can't dance," Rachel said.
"And so's Finn," Mike Chang offered.
"Brittany can't do math," Kurt said.
"It's true," Brittany said, nodding.
"Rachel can't quit being annoying," Mercedes added.
"Sam's got huge lips," Puck said.
"None of us can do everything," Mr. Schuester said. "But each of us can do something."
Santana started to speak, but Mr. Schuester cut her off. "That's our assignment for today, guys."
He crossed to the white board and wrote a phrase there: "Team Player."
"I want you each to come up with a song that expresses what you do for this group," Mr. Schuester said. "Present it this week. Give it some thought – there are lots of different choices."
The bell rang, and, grabbing up their books and backpacks, the kids rushed out of the room. Will thought Skyler would stay behind to say something to him, but she left as quickly as everyone else, leaving her song from only an hour before ringing in his head:
"So raise your glass if you are wrong / in all the right ways / all my underdogs…"
They were his underdogs, and all he wanted was a chance to show them that there were so many different ways to fit in, to be team players. With only a few weeks left until sectionals, he couldn't bear to have the kids at each other's throats.
The warning bell rang and Mr. Schuester grabbed his Spanish textbooks and high-tailed it, late for his own fiesta.