A/N: Thank you for the nice reviews everyone! They've been driving me towards the finish line. I've been working on this diligently the last couple days, and my family is starting to notice. They've made more than one comment about how I'm choosing to spend time at home and not trying to avoid the house. I think they're getting suspicious. Anyway, here's a little (and I mean little, unfortunately) something to get you by, but I promise the chapter after this is much more dense, in all the meanings of that word. Except for the "stupid" meaning.

Shelby didn't sleep very well. It had taken her hours to finally drift off and then she woke up an hour before her alarm was supposed to go off. Taking a three-mile run in the morning to clear her mind and energize her for the day didn't work, and it had a lot to do with the costume that she packed up after she was home and showered, as well as the person she was bringing it to.

Her classes were fine, but Shelby got the impression her students were still hissing about her personal life, trying to piece together the puzzle and waiting for her to drop some details. She was very professional, however, so she left them all quite disappointed. And, because she found satisfaction in the act, she smiled at them all, knowing that she was mystifying them just as much as she had the teachers the morning before.

When her last class was finishing, she caught a hold of one of the members of Vocal Adrenaline that was in there and told him to make sure everyone did their stretches and vocal warm-ups since she was going to be a few minutes late. She ran to her car, knowing she only had less than an hour before her absence from practice was unacceptable by her own standards as well as the students, their parents and Principal Lancaster: it was typically frowned upon to leave students unsupervised.

She had texted Rachel at her lunch and told her that she would meet her in the school's front office about 10 minutes after McKinley let out; McKinley's last class finished about 20 minutes after Carmel's did so it worked out in Shelby's favor. Near-criminal speeding allowed her to make great time, and she grabbed everything from the passenger seat and jogged up to the office.

Rachel was waiting inside in a chair, her hands folded up on her skirted lap and one of her penny loafers tapping in the air. When Shelby burst through the door, she leaped out of her seat beaming while the receptionist scowled at them.

"You're here!"

"Of course I am. I got here as fast as I could." Shelby handed Rachel the garment bag she carried, plus a small plastic shopping bag. "What do you think of these?"

Rachel reached into the shopping bag and pulled out the large sunglasses, and somehow her smile widened. "Oh, I love them!"

"You said you have shoes to match?"

"The ones from my cousin's bat mitzvah? Yes, they're in my locker."

"Good," Shelby said, her lips forming a tight smile. It became quiet, and she didn't know what else to say. "Well…I've got to run. I'm going to be late for Glee."

"Me too," Rachel replied with a modest chuckle. Shelby's brow furrowed as she thought about how much her baby was like her and how it was entirely coincidental. She wished she didn't find that thought so distressing.

Neither of them moved for a few seconds, but rather stared at each other in hesitation. Finally, Shelby gave her a parting nod and took off towards the exit without another word, all the while ignoring the questioning look the receptionist was giving them because of their odd behavior. She didn't need that lady's judgment; she was plenty capable of that by herself.

By the time she returned to Carmel High, Vocal Adrenaline was indeed vocally and physically limber, and the girls wasted no time complaining about how their metal brassieres were conducting heat from the powerful follow-spots. She resisted the temptation to snap at them to quit whining and simply turned the lights of the auditorium down so they would be more comfortable. She was too nice sometimes.

She knew they needed to work on the dance more, so she instructed them to run through it a few more times to work out the kinks, but she was becoming quite sick at watching the same moves over and over. Her usual tolerance was waning drastically, and despite the fact she arrived late she couldn't wait for practice to be over. Neither could her students, she deducted, as she watched many of them collapse exaggeratedly from exhaustion when she told them to hit the showers.

Shelby assumed her poor attitude had something to do with the fact that she had already decided that they wouldn't use the Lady Gaga number at Regionals in case New Directions picked theirs, making their continued practicing of it virtually pointless. But she couldn't tell her kids that she had been wasting their time for nothing, and it was good for them to continue expressing themselves theatrically, so she chose to let them to finish the assignment.

At the conclusion of rehearsal, the glass of water on the table that she rarely gave any conscious thought to caught her eye as she put her papers into her bag. She vaguely wondered if she would ever look at a glass the same way ever again or if she was destined to spend the rest of her life reminded of all the mistakes she had made and all of the things she would never share with her daughter. Now that she knew that Rachel's dads brought her water every time she was sad, would she be sad every time she had a glass of her own?

After she arrived home that evening, she picked up her cello for the first time in weeks. She thought it would help her express her melancholy and she played until her fingers felt raw. Then she ordered Chinese food, picked at the spread in silence, and put the excessive leftovers in the fridge where they remained a daunting task to be handled throughout the rest of the week. She stared at the paper cartons for a moment before shutting the door with a sigh, wishing that for once she could have had company to share it all with, and a fleeting, hopeful thought crossed her mind as she wondered whether her favorite Chinese place had any vegan dishes.

When she went to bed that night, her hazel eyes remained fixed on the blue elephant next to her bed until they finally closed from utter emotional and physical exhaustion.