She sat on the edge of her bed, the New York light leaking in around the edges of her curtains. Lightly tracing her fingers over the edge of the wooden box she held, painted a pastel blue, the colour of robins' eggs, and sanded back to allow patches of wood to peek through, she sighed. Sleep was far away, hiding in the cornices between her floor and the next, as unreachable as the stars. The ridges in her fingertips caught in the shallow grain of the wood, whispering as they danced along the surface. The tip of her index finger met the clasp. Hesitating, she flipped it open and gently lifted the lid; it groaned, but yielded. Inside was an assortment of papers and photographs, and small clothbound journal, half the size of a postcard. Rachel picked up the topmost paper, folded into a neat square and held closed by a length of string. She tugged and the string unravelled easily, as though it were well practiced at the manoeuvre.
Dear Rachel,
Thus was written on the paper, the beginning of a letter Rachel had read many times since she had received it. Yet, her eyes lingered on those opening words, tracing the script, imagining the hand which had written it all those years before. The paper was wearing thin where she had stroked her finger across it, but, like an unconscious action, as impossible to stop as a reflex, she stroked it again in that same place.
You're furious with the way I treated you, and you are right to feel that way. I'm begging for a chance to explain things to you, and I sincerely hope that you read this letter, although, I would understand if you immediately discarded it as a thousand scraps to the wind. But I hope you have enough patience in your heart to read it at least once before sacrificing it to the streets of New York.
As I write, it is the night before graduation. No, in actual fact, it is Graduation Day, as the clock has ticked over to unceremoniously tell me with its constant beat that it is two minutes past twelve on the day of the graduation I never made it to. It's an odd feeling to know that I shall not be walking the stage with the rest of you; I feel…lonely.
I write by candle light; it's almost romantic. I hadn't intended to write you, the feeling just seemed to appear, springing upon me from the depths of my soul which I must have been ignoring. Yet, as I lit each candle, their small wicks catching alight, so too did my soul ignite, and I was compelled to scramble for a paper and pen and put in ink the words which are streaming through my mind - words addressed to you, as though they come from some secret place, specifically crafted for you, and I am but the instrument to make them communicable.
And yes, I am aware that this is all precursory rambling, but I am nervous, and hardly know where to start. I fear that you will not read this letter. I fear that I shall not be able to say the things I need to say. Most of all, I fear that it is too late; I fear that I have lost you forever. Can relationships truly be broken beyond repair? I need to know the truth, because I cling to the hope that nothing is irreparable.
You're ignoring me, and it breaks my heart, but I understand. Clean breaks can be easier; I hope it's working for you, because it's slowly killing me. Or so it feels, but I'm enough of a realist to realise that I'm being incredibly melodramatic. No one has ever died of a broken heart. You see, I love you. It's a heavy phrase, is it not? For three such small words, it is indeed heavy. Or perhaps it's the gravitas in my mind with which I say them that makes them seem such. But that does not make them any less true.
My heart has been yours for a long time; before we dated, before my ruthless attempt to re-climb the social ladder, before I fell pregnant, even. I think it was yours the moment I walked past the choir room in freshman year and heard you singing. You were alone in there, and everyone was filing past, eager to get home. But I heard you singing, and I paused at the door, clutching my books to my chest and peering through the pane of glass in the door. You were so impassioned; it stirred something within me - admiration, slightly tinged with jealousy. You were doing what I'd always wanted to do, but never had much talent for, and I couldn't help it, I was a little bit jealous. But there was something else; from that moment, I wanted to know you, I wanted to befriend you, I wanted to talk about musicals with you, and laugh with you, and go the cinema with you, and, oddly, I wanted to kiss you. You turned around as you finished that song you were singing, and I was afraid that you might see me, so I quickly bustled on, disappearing in the crush of students who were leaving. I tried to convince myself as I walked home that day to talk to you. I was afraid though, firstly that you'd seen me watching you, and secondly, that you might not want to be my friend. Thirdly, I was afraid of the things I was feeling for you.
And then I joined the Cheerios. I must confess to you that it was at once, both a blessing and a mistake. A blessing because it helped me make something in a school which would easily and willingly beat your self esteem into within an inch of its life, and a mistake because it led me to become one of those who did the beating. It was an even worse mistake that my fellow Cheerios had singled out this new Jewish girl with two dads who was obsessed with musical theatre as their target; you. To this day I still curse myself for not having enough of a spine to stand up for you and tell them to pick on somebody else. But I didn't, and in punishment to myself, I became your biggest persecutor, the girl you would almost cower in fear from when you saw me walking down the hall. I would sneer and order some jock to throw a slushie into your face, keeping down the disappointment in myself, and trying to obliterate the fact that my heart was crumbling even as the crushed ice slid down your face and dripped onto your horrible, yet endearing argyle sweaters.
Finn came along, and together we ruled the school, the golden couple whom everybody looked up to. It feels like an entirely different life, like an entirely different person, because so much has happened since then, but it is all important, because there was nothing that happened which wasn't related to you, which didn't help to shape me into who I am now as I write this letter to you. I hid in my relationship with Finn, from the things I felt for you, from the guilt of the things I was doing to you. But I didn't want things to progress very far; there is a reason I always stopped to pray when things were getting in danger of going further than I would have liked.
Here Rachel paused. She placed the letter down on the duvet, and buried her face in her hands. She knew what was next in the letter and needed a moment to steel herself against it. A long time ago as high school might have been, and as far as she had come, the memories never stopped hurting or humiliating. She swallowed, letting her saliva coat her oesophagus, helping her breath better. Gingerly reaching out, she picked the letter up again. It settled in her lap, the paper fluttering slightly from the movement. She took a deep breath, and the continued reading.
However, as you know, I did have another major lapse in judgement, and it resulted in my falling pregnant. One day in sophomore year, I slept with Puck. The story you know is that it was because I felt fat that day and let him get me drunk on wine coolers. But there was something else significant from that day, other than the loss of my virginity and the conception of my daughter. It was the day I watched you finally break down and cry. Rachel Berry, the bullied girl who never showed a crack in her self esteem finally broke. We hadn't done anything worse than usual that day, I recall; the usual name calling, the teasing, and a slushie shower - raspberry that day, I remember - yet it was too much that particular day. I'm sorry, I'm so, so, so fucking sorry. How I could have been so cruel to you, I can never understand, and I will never forgive. Making your life into a living hell was one of the worst things I could ever have done to you, and as bad as your life was because of us, you can believe that I shared some of that pain. I will never understand how I managed to pretend that I liked myself when each day I grew to hate myself more and more because of what I did to you, or what I led others to do. In an act of self loathing, I slept with Puck, because I thought giving myself to a boy who didn't respect me was an adequate form of punishment. Well, my punishment followed in my spectacular fall from grace as everyone found out that I was pregnant; I was thrown out of home, and moved from house to house until someone was kind enough to take me in. I will never be able to repay Mercedes that debt, and though we don't talk about it, I've not forgotten.
She wasn't the only one who was there for me. You were too. Despite everything, you had enough kindness in your heart to forgive me and offer your support. It is no wonder that I am in love with you. You saw the good in me where I only saw the bad.
Rachel paused again, her breath coming out in a shuddering effort. She clenched her teeth to fight the tears which were prickling her eyes. She pulled her feet onto the bed, and rested her chin on her knees. She rubbed away the water which began leaking out at the corner of her left eye, and read on.
You taught me the goodness I was afraid of showing. You are the reason I am no longer that insecure Cheerio, torturing the people she would rather love. You and Glee gave me a reason to feel safe, even if it meant giving up social status. But I would rather being the bottom rung if it at least meant that I could be honest and true to myself. Oh Rachel, I love you. I love you so much.
When I began writing as Errant, I never thought that you would fall in love with the words. But of course, when everyone else wanted to laugh, or didn't understand, you were there, falling in love. And I fell more in love with you as you fell in love with Errant. But I was afraid that you would expect Errant, the owner of those poems to be someone magnificent, someone artistic; not the girl you spent four years with, being bullied for the majority of that time by her, and were only just starting to get along with. That's why I hid it from you for so long.
Then came our second date. I told you I loved you, and you didn't turn your back and run down the highway in response, so I took it as a good sign. In fact, I rather fell in love with you more; I was giddy with the idea that you felt the same way, even if you couldn't articulate it. Your eyes don't lie, Rachel, and I saw the reciprocated feeling there. Made bolder by the display, I wrote you another poem, painting it onto the floor of the McKinley corridor, certain that you would see it, that everyone would see it. I thought that you would be flattered, excited, and that perhaps you would run into my arms, elated that I was Errant. I didn't realise that by not telling you, by making it such a public display of revelation, I was crushing your trust. And I'm sorry. It took me months to realise what I had done wrong, but I see it now. It was just another in a long line of mistakes concerning you - mistakes I could have prevented. If I could alter it, I would leap at the opportunity, I would sacrifice limbs, I would sacrifice all dignity, anything, but that isn't the way life works, is it? What's done is done, and some things are permanent. As much as I fear that this isn't one of those things, I believe it might be. For all I know, you've not even read this far, abandoning me long ago, but I hope you've stayed. I suspect that you will have, because you're Rachel Berry, the kindest woman I've ever known, with the biggest heart and deepest well of forgiveness of anyone. So if you have, I apologise again. I'm sorry. I'm sorry ten thousand times over, ten million times. And even if we are to never speak again, then at least I shall have on my conscience the knowledge that it was you who made that decision. And I respect that.
If Puck did what I asked him to, then you are probably in New York, or on the way, at the very least. This box once belonged to my grandmother, a gift from her childhood, granted to me when I was young, and now I pass it to you, filled with memories of us. Just so you don't forget. I can bear the thought of it ending between us on a personal level, though the pain burns in me all the time, but I cannot fathom a life where you have forgotten. It might actually kill me to know that you didn't care enough to remember; and I say that without melodrama and in all seriousness. So please, treasure it and its contents even as I treasure my memory of you.
Good luck Rachel Berry. Maybe I'll come see you on Broadway someday.
With all my love, sincerity, and every last ounce of apology within my being,
Q.
Rachel sat there for a long time, cradling the letter in her hands. She held it away from her so the tears falling on her face would not splatter and mar the ink on the paper. She tried wiping them away on her shoulder, but there were too many for her shoulder to absorb, so she gave up, tired and lonely and with the first tendrils of depression creeping into her soul.
She was willing to sit there for the rest of her life if need be; at least the thought flitted through her mind, before her strong self commanded it away. It scampered like a child chastened by a stern parent. She folded the letter, carefully, ever so carefully, and placed it where it was before, atop the other papers and photographs. She gripped the two sides of the old box, and they groaned as they met, hitting each other with a thud. Swiftly, Rachel flicked the clasp, and the box locked with a click. She then returned it to its home beneath her bed.
Despite all her years of having the box in her possession, she had never once looked through its contents, other than the topmost letter. Every time she opened it with the intention to finally look through them, her resolve would melt into oblivion the moment she saw that letter. Guilt weighed on her chest, and loneliness wrapped itself around her heart like a suffocating blanket every time she saw it. And she would miss Quinn more than she imagined she could; each time felt worse than the last. But maybe next time, she thought to herself, maybe next time she would look through the contents of that box. It wasn't that she was afraid of forgetting, it was that she was afraid of remembering. For all the years which had passed, she still didn't forgive herself for the way she left Quinn standing there after graduation. Rachel was afraid of looking into that box and facing the worst mistake she had ever made.
She curled up, lying on her side and pulled the opposite side of the duvet over self so that she was wrapped, cocoon-like between the two sides. She tried to rest, but her mind would not sleep. It was consumed by Quinn, by the honest, heartfelt letter, and the box of still mysterious content. She lay there for hours, dazed and lost in thoughts of the other girl. With the screeching of the alarm clock at 6am, came, unbidden, startled into existence by the sound, was the thought she had been desperately avoiding all night: Quinn was in New York!
She dragged herself out of bed and began her day, throwing herself into her activities without mercy, hoping they would purge Quinn from her mind. It worked, temporarily. Until she took herself down to the theatre to prepare for that night's performance and found a single red rose lying on her dresser. And then suddenly the presence of Quinn couldn't feel more real.