After his weekend with Sam, there was only three weeks until the beginning of a much needed Christmas break. Some days were better than others. Most he spent silently working through his classes, using his lunches and free periods to shake down underclassmen with the Skanks. Tendencies toward misdemeanor aside, they weren't awful friends to have around.
He began wearing jeans every day, skinny jeans, but pants nonetheless, and baggy black shirts from Urban Outfitters and Forever 21 that hid his unbound chest relatively well. It was weird at first. Even after his summer makeover, the short denim skirts and and weird black dresses he sometimes wore kept him tied to the last three years of his life, and they were oddly comforting. They acted as another barrier between him and the rest of the world that still wanted to take bits and pieces of his body. They had made him feel normal, even though it was always a false sense, because after all even when he ruled the school he was barely keeping it together. He got pregnant because he wanted to prove to himself that he was normal. But jeans and t-shirts and slouchy knit hats began to feel more normal than anything else had in a long time, even if it had Coach Sylvester making snide comments at him every week (although it was pretty impressive she could think up so many unique insults) and his former teammates, on the Cheerios and in the glee club, looking at him like he had finally gone insane.
He took solace in the fact that he had never felt this together, even if it was still tenuous, and actually thinking about what he was still terrified him most nights when he was alone and restless. But he could finally look at himself in the mirror with his contacts in and see someone he almost liked, someone who wasn't Quinn Fabray.
Two days after Christmas his mother had sent him out to return a horrendous sweater she had gotten from her sister who lived in Denver, and in theory spend some of the money he had gotten from her, even though he had every intention of just putting it away in his savings account. He did it anyways, because the past couple of months had been the closest to normal that the two of them had ever gotten. They still didn't talk much, and he was lucky if he saw her five days in a given week, but there was a mutual understanding that wasn't there before. Or his father had gotten in the way of it. They spent the holiday together, just the two of them. Judy made a turkey breast for Christmas Eve dinner, and in the morning they exchanged a couple of gifts and watched Rudolph, because somehow, she had remembered it was his favorite as a kid. They were something approaching okay, and so he did things like return ugly Christmas sweaters because his mom asked him to.
He walked through the mall on his way to Macy's, stopping at a few stores to window shop. A men's pea coat in J. Crew caught his attention, and while looking at it an employee came up behind him and asked him if he needed any help, "sir," before quickly correcting himself and apologizing once he had turned around.
It was the first time he had ever been called sir, and a small part of him wanted to jump on the guy and hug him, but mostly he just felt weirdly okay with it. It was a bizarre feeling, but having someone else validate his identity, who he didn't know, made it feel right, that he was right about all of the confusion and panic and desperation he had experienced over the past three years. Of all the things in the world, this is what made him feel a little less crazy. He wanted the J. Crew guy and the Macy's cashier and whoever else to see him as a guy. He definitely wanted that, and had never felt so sure of it. Nothing had ever really felt that right before.
Politely, he excused himself, and made his way over to Macy's. He pulled his oversized bomber jacket closed in an attempt to better conceal his chest and tugged his black knit hat further down to hide faded pink hair that he really had no interest in re-dying. Mack thought the jacket made him look like Patches, the homeless Vietnam veteran who lived by the library, but it was large enough to really hide his body without being comical, so he could deal with her jabs at it.
The store was crowded and the line for the return counter was long, so he went to browse in hopes that it would die down. A table of ties caught his attention, and he thought absently about how he hadn't gotten his father anything for Christmas (although he hadn't gotten him anything either), and how, hopefully, he never would have to again.
"Quinn!" Mercedes shouted from a few racks over.
He snapped out of his haze and froze, hoping that Mercedes would think she was mistaken. But she had gotten a full glimpse and had already started heading over. She pulled him into a strong hug that he attempted to return in earnest.
"Girl, I haven't seen you in forever. How are you?" She was being polite, and seemed genuinely interested in how his life was going. It was as if months of silence, him quitting glee had never really happened.
"I've been alright," he said, shrugging to try and hide his panic.
His mind raced while he tried to engage in meaningless small talk. The club had won sectionals, obviously, and were starting to prepare for regionals. He nodded and interjected vaguely while Mercedes rambled on about everyone. But he had been transported back two years to when he knew there was something wrong with him, that he wasn't right at all. The rush he had gotten being called "sir" vanished immediately, and was replaced by a frustration and fear that made his eyes feel like welling up.
He gave some half-assed excuse about needing to get home to help his mother with something, and left with vague promises to hang out sometime soon to catch up properly. Practically running out of the store, he rushed back to his car and cried. There was no way in hell he was ever going to be the person that got called sir, not when there were people out there who knew him when he was homeless and pregnant and scared out of his mind. He smashed his hand against the steering wheel in frustration and felt so fucking lost.
When he got home he rushed immediately to his room, throwing off his jacket and shirt. He grabbed the Ace bandage under the mattress and wrapped his chest so tight he could barely breathe. The constriction gave him something focus on, and once he managed calmed down a bit, he loosened the binding and took deep, shuddering breaths. He put his shirt back on and laid back on his bed for hours, trying to get back that brief memory of feeling like something was finally going to be all right.
The sweater sat in his backseat for months, unreturned. His mother never asked about it.
The third week of January Mack and the Skanks scrounged up ten bucks to give him for his birthday. Even though it had been the week before, he was surprised they even remembered at all. Mack told him to use it to buy his first legal pack of cigarettes, which was a sweet and bizarre gesture that reminded him that other than Sam, they were the only friends he had left.
After school they piled in his car and drove to the 7-11. They only hassled the clerk a bit, and he bought his first pack of Marlboro's with his own ID, which, in the back of his mind, he knew was an awful idea, that he should trash them and quit sooner rather than later. But Sheila lent him her lighter, and they hung out in his car in the back of the parking lot listening to classic rock. Sure, they weren't all that smart, and more often than not made choices that at the very least were questionable, but they distracted him. Ronnie was hilarious. Sheila had an encyclopedic knowledge of horror movies. Mack was like Santana in a lot of ways, not necessarily book smart like her, but a badass incredibly quick with a good insult. Plus she was actually from Lima Heights Adjacent.
They didn't want or expect anything from him, and it was just such a relief. Sometimes he felt like he could tell them, and they just wouldn't care, just treat him as they always had. He had elaborate daydreams of Mack jokingly hitting on him and Ronnie giving him shit for the fake Ryan Seacrest tattoo he put on that first week of school and some of the awful skirts he wore when he first started hanging out with them. They would be okay with it, with him. Or with the idea of him being him.
The buzz of his phone snapped him out of his daydream.
dude, finally beat the last golden sun game. Just thought you should know what an awesome boss slayer i am. We still skyping tonight? Sam texted him.
He snorted to himself and typed out a reply. Great. You can tell me all about it.
He slid his phone shut and turned to face the backseat as best he could. Realistically, he knew he could never tell them. They were pretty much the only things left in Lima that kept him sane and grounded in reality. Without them he'd be drifting, helplessly, and after the past three years of feeling so alone and lost, even when he had "friends" or a boyfriend, he probably couldn't make it again. Sam was great, he was his best friend, but he was four hours away. Ironically, he had become too soft hanging out with the Skanks. He got used to the company, and having people around just to talk to or have a little human interaction with. He couldn't deal with the possibility of them telling anyone or just absolutely rejecting him.
He switched the radio over to a jazz station from a few towns away that came in faint, but without too much static. Mack protested and moved to change it back, but he told her it was his car and his radio and his birthday (a week late), so she backed off.
Pushing the seat back, he stared at the curls of smoke gathering at the roof of the car, paying half attention while Sheila told a funny story about her uncle's parrot.
He got his letter from Boston College exactly on April 1st. Waitlisted. Over the next two weeks, the rest of them came in. Northeastern flat out rejected him, which was mildly disappointing, but he really only applied to see if he could get in. The rest of them, Suffolk, Clark, and the University of Massachusetts, all sent fat acceptance envelopes. The one from Clark had come in first, and the day he got it, he sat in his room and cried for an hour.
He was getting out. He was finally getting out of Lima and all of its toxic memories. He was going to be where no one knew who he was, a former cheerleader and pregnant, homeless disappointment. He could finally be no one. All he had to do was hold out until August, which immediately seemed closer than it did a day ago.
Sam had gotten into The University of the Arts in Philly, along with, as he had put it, an "awesome" financial aid package. The Kentucky schools had accepted him too, but for now, money wasn't an issue, and he wasn't going to get stuck there.
Once he had gotten all his letters, Judy finally let him know how much money was in that savings account, because while he'd done his part of the FAFSA form, she'd been pretty secretive about all the stuff surrounding her and Russell's finances. It was a lot. More than he expected anyways, based on what his mother had said to him earlier in the year. Enough that he didn't get any need-based aid from any of the schools he applied to, but Suffolk and UMass had offered some moderate academic scholarships. He'd have to take out loans, but to him, the debt would be more than worth it.
After many late-night Skype calls to Sam and a few awkward, jilted conversations with his mother, he decided on UMass. He had no idea what he wanted to do with his life, but the school was big enough that it had a few dozen of majors and a ton of classes to choose from. But most appealing was that it was a big school, with over 15,000 undergrads. No one would have to know who he was unless he wanted them to.
Come August, he would be able to breathe again, like he hadn't done since he was a kid.
The second week of May Miss Pillsbury hung a banner by the choir room congratulating New Directions on their second place finish at nationals. He was surprised they had managed to pull it together, but legitimately glad they did well. It was the first nice thought he had had about the glee club in a long time.
He skipped statistics since all they had been doing for the past two weeks was review for the AP test, and he really was not worried about it at all. Instead, he went outside to smoke, only remembering once he was out the door that Mack was actually trying to pass chemistry so she could finally graduate and Ronnie and Sheila had in school suspension because Mrs. Hagberg caught them smoking in one of the bathrooms.
But he got to the bleachers and saw Santana smoking on their ratty couch (procured off the side of the road and hauled by Mack's crappy Ford Ranger) and staring off at nothing. She jumped slightly at hearing his Chucks slap against the concrete. He smirked, but pretended not to notice.
"I guess I should say congratulations. For nationals and all," he said.
"Thanks. We probably would've won it if we'd ever actually tried practicing for more than a week before these fucking things."
"I'm surprised you practiced that much."
She chuckled. "Yeah, well. Schuester's still got his head up his ass, and Rachel hasn't had much of a reason to care since she found out she was going to NYADA, or whatever the fuck it's called."
"Good for her."
"I mean, I'm all for looking out for number one, but she could write a fucking book about it."
"Can't say I blame her, after all the shit we all put her through."
He shrugged and lit his own cigarette, offering one to Santana after noticing she had finished hers. They sat quietly on the disgusting couch, watching one of Beiste's gym classes on the football field through the bleachers, laughing at the freshman girls tripping over each other playing field hockey.
Santana took a long drag and turned to him. "We ran into Jesse in New York. Or, he ran into us anyways. He's trying the whole Broadway thing or whatever. But then again, we saw him at the flagship Olive Garden in Times Square. He was our fucking waiter. But even then, he was still trying to mack on Rachel. Finn was so pissed. It was beautiful."
He laughed. Jesse was such an asshole, but maybe in another life they could've been friends; he seemed like a lot of fun, at the very least.
"What's Finn going to be doing next year? You know?" he asked.
"Community college, I think. And working at Mr. Hummel's shop."
"Not going to New York, then?"
"Nope. Consider yourself lucky you've missed out on all this shit. It's been ridiculous."
"I can imagine." He flicked his ashes towards the ground. "What about you, San?"
"Northeastern. Lima can suck my dick."
He knew this already. The school liked to put the names and future schools of the seniors on the board out front, and Santana's was up a few weeks ago. She was also probably why he didn't get in there. At first, he panicked at the thought of them both being in the same city, and the idea still made him tense, but Boston was big, there was a minuscule chance of them ever running into each other.
"And Britt?" he asked to quell a bit of panic he hoped didn't show on his face.
"Purchase. It's, like, a New York state school, but it's super arty and filled with hippies who major in shit like basket weaving. They have a good dance program, though."
He nodded. "Cool. That's awesome." He was genuinely happy for Brittany, even if he hadn't spoken to her in over seven months.
"Where are you going?" she asked.
He paused, but he knew he couldn't avoid her question. "UMass. Boston."
"Well, no shit. You ever going to tell me?"
"Just did," he said, stubbing out his cigarette on the wood arm rest.
"Don't be a smartass, Q. It doesn't work on you." She was quiet for a moment, like she wanted to say something else, but instead she sighed and dropped the rest of her cigarette to the ground, putting it out with the toe of her sneaker.
They weren't friends anymore, and they hadn't been in a long time. And they both knew it.
"Maybe we can hang out in Boston, away from all this crap," she said, like she could sense what he was thinking, or maybe he wasn't as good at hiding the fear in his eyes as he thought.
She got up and dusted her Cheerio's skirt off. "See you at graduation."
As she turned to head back inside, he laid back down on the couch and stared up at the bleachers, feeling a lot shittier than he thought he would.
A/N: Sorry this took so long to get up, I had a major case of writer's block. The next one shouldn't take nearly long, and it'll wrap up part one of this story. Thanks for the patience.