Disclaimer: Glee is like nicotine and even though I know it's bad for me, I keep coming back for more. Sadly, I don't own this nicotine... or any nicotine for that matter. Don't smoke, kids.

"Mar-Mar… are you okay?"

She whipped her head around to the direction of the call and found herself looking curiously at Bree, Kitty and the other Cheerios. "Huh?"

"You seemed a little… crazy, last week. When you bitch-slapped that blonde girl…"

"Whatever… she was just making me uncomfortable." Marley shrugged off as she began to walk away, however the girls caught up with her and cornered her.

"But from our point of view, it kind of looked like you were sticking up for Bieber, and that makes us feel icky and gross. Plus, if that's the case, you pretty much violated everything we've stood for since those Glee freaks began." Bree said as she sported a look of repulse; Marley felt her palms begin to sweat as she thought of another lie to please the girls in front of her. Marley was a clever girl, and she quickly came up with a retort.

"That blonde chick was totally trying to sabotage my brownie points from Coach Sue," Marley groaned in fury, but seeing her fellow cheerleaders fashioning confused expressions, she elaborated more, gesturing for them to move closer as she lowered her voice in the hallway so only they could hear. "I used that Four-Eyes to get closer to the Glee Club; to find their secrets so I can humiliate them and then embarrass them all later on at their most stressful state: Nationals. They'll completely mess up their set list, leaving them championship-less and letting us soak up the glory for our Nationals championship for the Cheerios. That blonde was totally onto him, and therefore, she's onto me. She totally knows my game with him and she'll completely screw it up for me, ok? I needed her to stop. He's my lab rat. He's my test subject." The listeners nodded.

"Got it, hun. But… you better hurry up about getting that information out into the open – Nationals is only in a few months, and Sue is already going crazy on all of us." Kitty informed the brunette and all of the Cheerios, once again, nodded in agreement.

Marley felt her blood go cold. Her brain began to play memories to her, all in a flash: Ryder comforting her, kissing her – like he meant it; like he meant every single movement that he did towards her. He was undeniably sweet, and a part of Marley wanted him not to fall for it, not to give in so easily to her games. He loved her. She could tell every time he looked into her eyes (as cliché as that sounds) with that immense stare that she had somehow grown fond of. She didn't care for his glasses or his geeky personality anymore. He loved her and every word, every touch portrayed that.

And Marley had spent the entirety of their secret relationship trying to convince herself that she didn't love him too.

But she had to lose him, because there was already too much to lose – she could lose everything if she carried on. People would get suspicious; they would somehow find out. And then what was written on the cards for Marley Rose? Failure. Loneliness. Pain. Loss. Suffering. For that reason purely, she found herself struggling with her next words, yet eventually pulling them out of her mouth, unwillingly plastering on a smirk: "Girls, get me a computer, pins, tape and a lot of paper. Stat."

Marley fumbled with a pin on the notice board and stuck the last of her creations atop the boarding. Bree and Kitty had been working the lockers and the doors and the brunette's sidekicks came over; Marley had her back to them as she frantically rubbed clammy hands on her immaculate cheerleading uniform before closing her eyes and sucking in a few sharp breaths. She was about to do this – in a few minutes the boy who had spent all these months trusting her and loving her would feel his heart shatter into a million pieces, as if a thousand earthquakes had all happened inside of him at once, all courtesy of one miss Marley Rose.

'Why have I let myself do this?' the girl thought as she tried to calm herself down. 'Why have I let myself get hurt? It was inevitable that I would get hurt. Why couldn't I just have dodged the bullet and tried to get to them another way?' Marley didn't need to answer – she didn't have to. She plastered another smirk across her face as if she was etching it painfully across her mouth with a knife. She crossed her arms over her chest and spun around to face her two friends.

"Alright, girls. Let's just take a look around at our work before the students and Glee nerds come flooding in, shall we?" the girls chuckled somewhat darkly as nods accompanied their turning heads, admiring Marley's posters and flyers. She had made them herself, each one featuring a generous scoop of unspoken secrets and gossip about the Glee club; each flyer was supplemented by a picture of the person whom the dirt was referring to. Marley had to make a few of the secrets up, but each one was realistic enough and she was pleased with the accuracy of her work. She heard the bell ring and echo around the school and a singe of pain stung through her, but she faked an excited smile and awaited her fellow students. "Ladies, it's show time."

The three Cheerios leaned their backs against the lockers and nonchalantly inspected their nails as they heard the doors of classrooms open. As the students began to flood the corridors (like Marley had rightfully predicted), the students all fell quiet as they inspected the flyers covering the walls and lockers around the school. Soon the high-schoolers began to laugh at the dirty secrets Marley had discovered or concocted, and this caused the head-cheerleader's smirk to grow. She had forgotten what it was like to be responsible for some real, true backstabbing, and she kind of missed it. These feelings of accomplishment continued to flow persistently through her veins as the Glee kids filed out of the choir room and looked disgusted at the flyers around them.

The blue-eyed girl heard Wade 'Unique' pull several of the posters off a wall in the distance, exclaiming that "none of it was true" or that it was "completely false", causing Marley to shake her head and chuckle. Sam pulled a true statement off his locker which several jocks were laughing at, and Marley remembered that one had read 'When Sam Evans worked as a stripper, his main audience would often be middle-aged to 50-something men and women.' Marley soon heard a blood-curdling shriek coming from another locker, and she turned her head to see Tina Cohen-Something on the verge of tears as she made loud objections to her flyer – 'Tina Cohen-Chang had dated former student Mike Chang for years, however test results have revealed that he was her long-lost cousin.' One of Marley's best lies.

Marley was sniggering at these sworn enemies of hers crashing and crumbling before her feet as they read each of their flyers and fanned away the amused students. She had forgotten how much of a rush this gave her, of how powerful she felt. Of course, this expression fell as she witnessed a figure out of the corner of her eye; someone who she had grown very close to.

He read the flyers that were addressed to him as students laughed, the many insults and teasing jokes being directed at him slurring together. Only then did he begin to take in the story behind it. She had used him – this was all a part of another insane, ludicrous game. He was merely another puzzle piece, and he had evaluated an authority that should never have been trusted in the first place. She had hurt him, and everything around him went silent; to him, the only thing to be heard was the sound of his own heartbeat, begging for oxygen, beating louder and faster through his ears. He had been cheated again - fooled again. He had lost her to the sick hierarchy of the school. Again.

I should probably start this Author's Note apologising, shouldn't I?

1) I'm sorry for not updating as soon as I would have liked to. 2) I'm sorry for any grammar or punctuation mistakes. 3) I'm sorry if this was super cheesy or cliché – I had writer's block on how to write this, even though I had this idea in my head pretty much from the start. 4) I'm sorry if my chapters are often short – I'm conscious of the fact that I would usually drabble on about meaningless things in the past, so I try to make these fanfics I write a bit shorter for that matter. 5) I'm sorry for putting your Ryley hearts into cardiac arrest. 6) I'm sorry for the inevitable angstiness that will follow this chapter. There.

Also, please REVIEW! Some of your predictions were pretty close on what this shocker might have been, so kudos. I'd love to hear your reactions on this chapter :-) and please follow/favourite this story if you are enjoying and have not done so yet! When I get the little notifications in my email, my heart does somersaults of joy. No joke.

Also, I chose my GCSE options today, and anyone in the UK knows that it's a pretty big deal, so yes. Wish me luck for the agonising years to come.

Until next time (hopefully in the near future)!

-Beth :P