The return to school was nothing of the subdued affair Quinn had hoped for. By the end of second period, the whole school was aware of the fact that the fallen-from-grace former head cheerleader was no longer pregnant; by lunch, they knew that it was the fault of Dave Karofsky and the Puck had beaten him within an inch of his life. Quinn had gone from a pariah to a martyr over the course of spring break.
The first day was the hardest. People she had never met, people who had shunned her, people who had laughed at her, were coming up to her in the hallways and offering uncomfortable apologies and condolences. One horribly awkward occurrence after another with her teachers came and went.
"I think I liked it more when they were making fun of me," Quinn mumbled as she took a seat between Rachel and Puck at lunch on the second Monday back after break.
"Me too," Puck grumbled. He shot a glare at a gaggle of freshmen girls who were staring openly from two tables away, whispering to one another and pointing at Quinn's stomach. They squeaked in unison and turned back around, and Quinn offered him a half-hearted smile of thanks, carefully avoiding looking into his eyes.
Rachel remained silent, focused on her lunch and the notes in front of her. Looking up for only a brief second, she smiled reassuringly at Quinn and reached out to cover her hand, squeezing gently before picking up her pencil once more.
Brittany and Santana, fashionably late as always, joined them; Santana complained loudly about people stopping her constantly in the halls to ask what had happened and announced her intention to cut the next person who did so. Her voice, as always, floated above the din of the cafeteria, and Quinn smiled at her gratefully, knowing that between Santana and Puck, people would learn quickly to leave her alone. She watched in silence as Brittany and Santana swapped around their lunches, as they had every day since the sixth grade, and found comfort in observing their simple ritual.
Rachel grumbled under her breath, erasing an answer from her homework. Quinn peered at the problem out of the corner of her eye, nibbling on a pretzel. "You've got it," she said after a few more seconds of watching. "You just skipped a step." She pointed at Rachel's paper with her pretzel rod, a few crumbs falling off of it and landing scattered atop Rachel's homework.
"I what?"
"Here," Quinn said. She tapped the spot on the paper where Rachel had skipped a step, and more crumbs fell off. "Sorry," Quinn said, flashing a half of a grin at Rachel and brushing the crumbs away. "But yeah, see here? You just skipped a step."
Rachel stared at her paper, looking back and forth from it to her notes and back again. "Oh," she said eventually. Her ears flushed. "Well, that makes things simpler." She set to erasing her work, brow creased in frustration; before starting to rework the problem, she paused and looked up to offer Quinn a grateful half-smile.
Mercedes and Kurt half-sprinted into the cafeteria, dodging passersby and ignoring the looks everyone was shooting the table that the glee club sat at. Kurt slid athletically into a seat next to Puck, eyes wide and bright.
"Mr. Scheu," he said breathlessly. "Is totally having a nooner with Miss Pillsbury in the supply closet across from the band room."
"What?" Brittany's brow was furrowed in confusion. Santana smirked triumphantly and leaned over to whisper something in her ear; Brittany's expression slid smoothly from bafflement to realization to cheer. Santana shot a look at Puck and held out her hand.
"Pay up, Puckerman," she said.
"Dude," he said disgustedly. He glared at Kurt and Mercedes. "Tell me you're lying."
"Not a chance, white boy," Mercedes said dismissively. "Saw them go in there when they thought no one was looking. There was giggling and hand holding."
"She let him touch her?" Rachel said, not looking up from her math. "I thought she was a complete germaphobe."
"Apparently she doesn't have a problem with his germs," Kurt said regally, his expression far too serious. Quinn snorted, one hand rising to cover her mouth. Kurt glanced at her and smiled, his chin a little lower than it normally was, before his haughty expression and gossip-monger eyes returned.
Puck groaned and dug a twenty out of his wallet, slapping it into Santana's hand. Quinn shook her head, a smile still ghosting across her lips. She stayed quiet, half-listening as the others started hashing out the perceived details of Mr. Scheu's new relationship and what it might mean for glee, and without meaning too glanced over every few seconds at Rachel's homework, eyes skimming over it quickly each time to make sure that she brunette was doing okay.
Rachel finished the problem and dropped her pencil, sighing tiredly and stretching. She slid the paper over towards Quinn, a silent request in her eyes. Quinn raised an eyebrow and glanced down at the paper she had been inspecting out of the corner of her eye the entire time.
"You're good," she said, her voice quite. She unconsciously leaned a little towards Rachel, keeping her voice low enough to stay under the din of the cafeteria and the conversation of their friends. "Just take your time, okay? You know how to do it, you just try to jump ahead."
"I like jumping ahead," Rachel grumbled; she was leaning slightly towards Quinn as well. "Makes things go faster."
"Therein lies the problem," Quinn said good-naturedly. "You may be able to jump ahead of everyone when you're singing and rock it, but you can't do that with math."
Rachel rolled her eyes, snatching her paper back. "Yes, ma'am," she said, and stuck her tongue out at Quinn.
"That's mature," Quinn shot back. She pushed the remainder of her bag of pretzels over to Rachel, reaching across the brunette to grab the apple sitting next to Rachel's textbooks. "Did you bring peanut butter?"
"In my bag," Rachel said distractedly. She reached blindly to hand her backpack to Quinn, not taking her eyes from where she was meticulously organizing the pages of her math homework and checking to make sure she had done all of the assigned problems. Quinn sifted through Rachel's bag expertly, locating the small Tupperware container of peanut butter.
As Quinn grabbed the plastic knife off of Puck's tray—he was far too engrossed in making Artie and Tina squirm with discomfort as he talked about how many times he'd had a nooner of his own in the very same closet that Mr. Scheu was currently in to notice—Rachel immediately reached out and snatched it out of her hand.
"Hey!" Quinn said indignantly.
"No way," Rachel said. She picked up Quinn's apple and started slicing it into pieces expertly. "No knives for you. Remember the carrots?"
"That was one time and my thumb is perfectly fine," Quinn said. She crossed her arms over her chest, staring at Rachel.
"The kitchen counter isn't," Rachel said mildly. "And it's a principle thing. You and knives just don't get along." She finished cutting up the apple and offered the slices back to Quinn with a bright smile. "There you go. No blood, no gouged countertops."
Quinn rolled her eyes and snatched up one of the apple slices, dipping it delicately in the peanut butter. She slapped Rachel's hand away when the brunette reached for one of the slices as well.
"You two are like the most adorable married couple," Kurt said, appearing suddenly on Rachel's other side. "Splitting lunches, trading food, she cuts up your apple for you." He propped his chin in his hand, looking back and forth between the two of them dreamily.
"We are not," Rachel said. "Quinn is spastic with cutlery and my fathers' kitchen counter will never recover from her last foray into using a knife." She ignored Quinn's noise of protest and the elbow the blonde shoved into her ribs. "And trading lunches doesn't mean anything. I mean, Brittany and Santana switch food every day."
"Exactly," Kurt said. His gaze zeroed in on Rachel, looking at her expectantly.
"What?" Rachel squeaked out. "Don't be ridiculous. They aren't—"
"Actually," Quinn said quietly, smirking the slightest bit. "Yeah."
"Really?" Rachel's eyes widened impossibly, and she stared none-too-subtly at the cheerleaders. Brittany was standing behind Santana, who was seated and tossing in her own commentary on Puck's nooner stories, fingers probing through her dark ponytail almost absentmindedly.
"Really," Quinn confirmed. "Since, like…forever."
"Wow," Rachel said. Kurt slapped her arm lightly.
"Stop staring," he admonished. "It's not remotely subtle." He glanced surreptitiously over at Brittany and Santana. "You need to work on your acts of subterfuge, Miss Argyle."
The bell rang, drowning out Rachel's indignant response. Quinn gathered her things silently, following Rachel and Kurt out of the cafeteria. In the hallway, Kurt suddenly grabbed Rachel's elbow and yanked her to one side, whispering something in her ear. Quinn watched, perplexed, as Rachel gaped at Kurt, and a dark flush spread across her cheeks and down her neck. Kurt smirked in his infuriatingly calm manner, fluttered a wave at Quinn, and strode off down the hallway.
"What was that about?" Quinn said, looping her arm through Rachel's and steering them towards their history class.
"Nothing," Rachel half-stammered.
"That was convincing," Quinn deadpanned. She shot Rachel a disapproving look out of the corner of her eye. "Come on, Elphaba. Cough it up."
"Brittany!" Rachel all but yelled. She disentangled her arm from Quinn's, waving exaggeratedly at Brittany, who turned and returned the wave brightly. The blonde all but skipped up to join them, full of cheer and bright eyes as always.
Quinn frowned, watching as Rachel obviously forced herself to act casual and talk with the usually animated Brittany. Both blondes were aware of Rachel's discomfort—Brittany, Quinn was wont to forget, was far more perceptive than people ever gave her credit for—and Quinn watched curiously as Rachel tried desperately to cover it up.
In the classroom, Quinn took her usual seat beside Rachel, still perplexed by Rachel's odd behavior. As usual, Rachel kept rapt attention on the lesson, raising her hand for every question. Not as usual—or what had become usual in over the course of the semester—she didn't glance over at Quinn every so often to roll her eyes at an entertaining part of the lesson, or lean over to check her notes against Quinn's, or look over at her in an undisguised effort to make sure she was neither about to vomit nor go into labor. Rachel's eyes remained locked on either the teacher or her notes, and Quinn barely wrote down a single thing the entire class.
When the bell rang, Rachel mumbled something about a meeting and all but sprinted out of the room. Quinn stared after her, making her way slowly out into the hallway. Brittany, coming out of the classroom across the hall, was watching as Rachel power-walked down the hallway, the tension in her shoulders visible even through the material of her sweater.
"What's up with Rachel?" Brittany asked quietly, clutching her books to her chest. Her good-hearted concern was undisguised, as things always were with Brittany, and for a painful moment Quinn wished that everyone in the world could be like Brittany.
"I have no idea," she murmured. An uncomfortable feeling spread in her chest when Rachel paused at the end of the hall and glanced back over her shoulder, her eyes immediately locking on Quinn's even through the mass of students, before a pained look passed over Rachel's features and she hurried off on her way. Quinn stood dumbly in the hallway, and for the first time in two weeks, Sarah Noelle Puckerman occupied not even the farthest corner of her mind as she wondered what in the world had gotten into Rachel.