It was a lot easier for Rachel to pretend to be confident than it was for her to actually be confident, especially under the glare of a certain Latina. Immediately after Rachel's demand, the other girl had leaned back in her chair and crossed her arms over her chest.
The "Oh, yeah?" Santana had returned, quirking her brow, had Rachel clearing her throat and attempting to maintain her hold of the situation. She refused to let the cheerleader intimidate her out of her line of questioning.
The thing was, there was more to the Cheerio than a variety of horrifying—though successful—intimidation techniques.
Santana, with her glares and smirks and narrowing eyes, had the smaller girl off topic before Rachel even knew what had happened. The discussion had drifted to whom Rachel was going to homecoming with when it finally hit her that she'd been manipulated. In fact, Santana had learned all about Rachel's dress and the fiasco Quinn had gone through to get her to buy the dress, and the latter had learned absolutely nothing.
By the time Rachel came to the conclusion that Santana was much better at the game of deceit than she was, the bell was ringing and she watched as the other girl paraded out of the room.
Rachel may not have taken no as an answer, but that was probably because she had never received one in the first place.
As she headed to Glee, Rachel was practically racing to get to the classroom. She hadn't seen Quinn even once since the morning, and she was already upset over the whole Santana ordeal, so she decided to go right to the source. At the very least, Quinn wouldn't be able to intimidate her out of her line of questioning. The blonde could ignore her, yes, but that wouldn't be Rachel's fault.
She hastened her pace, hoping to beat Shuester there so she would have time to force a statement or two out of her friend. She was running late after discussing a grade with her chemistry teacher and, though Rachel really didn't want to confront Quinn in front of the whole team, she would if she had to.
The room was only a few feet away when Rachel heard Brittany's voice echo from somewhere behind her.
"But she's so sad, San." The bathroom door down the hall was halfway open when Brittany started to leave and Rachel barely caught a glimpse of the blonde before she practically jumped into the choir room.
Immediately, a plan formulated in her head and she decided that today was the perfect day to straighten up the frame hanging on the wall to the left of the door. Of course, that was what she was prepared to tell the duo in the hallway should they question why she was so conveniently located.
However, Rachel caught something out of the corner of her eye and Brittany and Santana were momentarily forgotten. The singer did a double-take, eyeing her chair in confusion. It was in the same place as always, but there was something new in the form of a tiny little stuffed bear with a heart clutched between his paws. The plush was seated dead center, obviously intended for Rachel—if the location wasn't telling enough, the white lettering of "Rachel" over the heart was.
Drawn to the object, Rachel made her way over to it and picked it up. Even though she was late to the meeting, there was no one else in the room and Rachel felt annoyed. Not only did no one put forth enough effort into the club to even show up on time, but that meant she had no witnesses or primary suspects; she had no one to seek answers from. At the thought, she looked down at the animal in her hands, frowning at the thing as if it was his fault.
The bear had soft, dark brown fur, and the heart was clutched tightly to his torso. As the brunette examined the heart, she swallowed when she found a piece of paper hidden underneath it. It was stuffed between the silky red material and the bear's chest and, wasting no time, Rachel unfolded it and read the words.
#8 Her heart is big enough to forgive almost anyone (even me)
That very heart seized in Rachel's chest and her throat felt thick at the words.
Everything around her today was turning out to be frustrating and she really didn't want to have to deal with even more stress. The bear was adorable, really he was, but the note was too much. Not only was it that last thing she needed at the moment, but it was too personal.
As she thought back to her list, Rachel wondered who on the list had done something that required forgiveness. The even me was not lost on her, but the brunette didn't understand what it meant. Her immediate thoughts went to her biggest fear—the guy being Karofsky—but she shook them off quickly; she had never voluntarily touched the boy, let alone graced him with a hug.
Staring down at the bear was only increasing the diva's anxiety. Someone out there loved her enough to go out of his way to show her. Quinn was ignoring her. Santana was taunting her. Her grade in chemistry was suffering, and she wasn't sure if that was ironic or not. All of these things made Rachel vaguely wonder if her mystery man had been paying even the slightest attention to her of late. Had he even noticed that she was freaking out? Could he not sense the fraying level of comfort with the whole situation?
Someone out there was playing with her feelings and she was no longer okay with it, as if she ever had been. Whoever was leaving the notes was sweet, but he couldn't have had worse timing in Rachel's opinion.
First, Quinn had been extremely excited about homecoming and had managed to trick Rachel into going. Then, just hours later, the blonde had shut down. To top it all off, Quinn apparently drank her weekend away and was ignoring—to the point of avoiding—her.
Rachel felt her grip on the bear tightening and she looked down at it with blurry eyes. She hadn't even realized the anger building up inside of her until she felt the warm brim of tears. She was just so frustrated.
She hated surprises, and yet everywhere she looked she found a new one. All she really wanted was for Quinn to start talking to her.
And she wanted the other girl to really talk to her. To tell her why Frannie leaving had such a huge impact, and why Quinn always tried to avoid having Rachel over her own house. It was so rare that the blonde just took a moment to talk about herself, and it hit Rachel that maybe the hangover had something to do with that. It didn't take long for the singer to wonder how she had failed her friend so badly and, when she did, the misery she had already been feeling doubled.
With the bear still in her grip, Rachel tucked the note back into the spot it had previously been placed and sat in her chair. Looking at the ceiling, the singer blinked back the tears, refusing to let her emotions get the best of her. The notes were stupid, a petty high school crush, and she was willing to put them on the back burner until everything was fixed with her friend.
As if they had timed it, Santana and Brittany entered the room not a moment later, completely ignoring the girl sitting and staring at a bear in her hands. The rest of the group seemed to file in shortly after, Quinn pulling up the rear. Once the blonde took her seat next to Rachel, the brunette noticed a major improvement in her friend's appearance. Quinn's eyes were no longer bloodshot and she looked a lot less likely to projectile vomit everywhere.
A selfish part of Rachel found that she was highly unhappy knowing that Quinn could recover just fine without her. It only meant that the cheerleader didn't really need her, not that Quinn ever really needed her, per se, but Rachel liked knowing that sometimes she was the only one that could help her friend. Her greatest unspoken fear was that, one day, Quinn would realize the fact and decide the singer's friendship was no longer worth the hassle. Of course, she knew it was a ridiculous fear, but it haunted her nonetheless.
Only seconds had passed since everyone had arrived, and Rachel failed to notice the noise going on around her until Quinn waved her hand in front of her face to get her attention. The brunette was pulled out of her wayward thoughts, gaze now aimed at her friend's perplexed expression.
"What's that for?" Quinn asked, flicking her hand toward the bear still resting in Rachel's hands.
"What was the drinking for?" Rachel shot back, determined to get some semblance of an answer before the meeting was done. She was banking on Quinn's curiosity being stronger than her stubbornness.
The blonde's jaw set and she pointedly looked forward. Rachel prepared herself to be ignored for the rest of Glee, but it wasn't a few seconds later that Quinn's shoulders slumped and she looked back over.
"I had a bad weekend. Now, what's the bear for?"
The diva hummed a response, figuring she could play the quid pro quo game that the blonde seemed partial to.
"I found it on my chair. What made your weekend so terrible that you found it necessary to drink your feelings away?"
"It was just sitting on your chair?" The blonde looked skeptical as she waited for an answer that wouldn't come until she answered her part. She sighed, resting her face in her hands, and Rachel watched as her friend clearly fought some internal battle over what to say. "I had a lot on my mind and it wasn't just something I could talk to you about, okay?"
"Quinn, you can talk to me about anyth—"
"I answered yours, now answer mine, Rachel." The diva sat back in her seat, in shock over a few things. Quinn had interrupted her, yes, but that was the lesser problem. Rachel had not failed to miss the inflection in the use of her whole first name. Quinn called her Rach most of the time, and occasionally Rae, but the hard way she'd said Rachel…well, the way she'd said it just then had been short, abrupt. The brunette frowned, looking back at her friend.
"Yes, it was just sitting in my spot. The heart even has my name on it." The blonde's head was still resting in her hands until that last part. It startled Rachel when Quinn's head popped up at her last few words and the other girl eyed her.
"It has your name on it?" Rachel couldn't read the expression on her friend's face, but it didn't look happy, and she temporarily forgot everything she'd been worrying about for the last week or so. No one was that good of an actress, not even Quinn, and Rachel had no doubt about the sincerity of the line of questioning.
"Why couldn't you talk to me about it?" the brunette asked, and hazel eyes looked away again. Even though she found it easy to lose herself in conversation, Rachel was determined not to let Quinn get the upper hand.
"Because I didn't want to talk to you about it," Quinn stated, and Rachel tried to ignore the hurt she felt at the words. "Does it have anything else written on it?" Her eyes met Rachel's and the smaller girl knew she wouldn't be able to lie, not that she really wanted to in the first place.
"No, but it came with a note," she admitted, hoping her coach would choose just then to walk in so she would be spared elaboration. "Why didn't you want to talk to me? Did I…did I do something wrong?" Rachel knew she was reaching Quinn's limit, but she had already endured a day of being ignored so it wasn't as if it could get worse.
"Why do you always think it was you who did something wrong?" her friend asked, and Rachel was struck by the disbelief in her voice. Any hurt she had felt at the blonde's previous words disappeared as Quinn took the singer's right hand in her own and continued. "Rach, it's never anything you do wrong, I can promise you that. Sometimes I just can't talk to you about certain things."
There was a small smile on Quinn's face as she finished, but Rachel couldn't help but notice that it seemed sad in nature. She turned her hand in Quinn's own, interlocking their fingers and giving the cheerleader's hand a squeeze.
Mr. Shuester walked in right as Rachel was about to respond, so the brunette just returned Quinn's smile and moved her arm so that instead of holding hands they were hooked at the elbows. She then rested her head on the other girl's shoulder, content just to be on her good side again.
With the bear out of sight and out of mind, Rachel felt just a little bit of her stress fade away and she relaxed for the first time in days. Quinn's own body seemed tense to her at first, but eventually the blonde melted into her chair and rested her own head on Rachel's.
Rachel really shouldn't have been surprised that Quinn wasted no time in bringing up the bear again the second Glee ended.
"So, you have no idea who gave you the bear?" For all her paranoia, the brunette simply couldn't bring herself to believe that her friend was actually involved in anything, so she stuck with the truth.
"I made a mental list of everyone who is a possibility and my goal is to eventually narrow it down."
Rachel held open the door as Quinn trailed behind her and they continued to walk toward the blonde's locker. Despite the weather, there was still Cheerio's practice, so Rachel had to make due with whatever time they had until they reached the gym. Looking over at her friend for a response, Rachel noticed Quinn seemed to be considering something. Her bottom lip was tugged between her teeth and her mind didn't look as if it was focused on what was in front of her. Namely, Rachel.
So distracted by the blonde—who was too distracted by her own thoughts—Rachel failed to notice the jock walking down the nearly empty hallway. He was headed straight for her and, had she noticed, she might not have recognized his intent for what it was anyway. After all, she hadn't been slushied in over a year.
"Berry," he stated, a foot in front of them and purple slushie in hand. Both girls blinked, neither fast enough to process what was happening until the icy beverage had already been dumped over the girl's head.
Frozen, both in shock and actual body temperature, Rachel didn't move at first. An outraged cry and a loud smacking sound were what broke the brunette out of her trance and she immediately headed for the nearest bathroom.
Not really caring about the fact that people might walk in—school was over, after all—she ripped off her t-shirt and threw it in the sink to her left. She had the hot water running in both sinks and had already started on her hair when she heard the door open.
"Rachel, I—" she heard Quinn's voice cut off but she couldn't look over to see what the problem was, seeing as she had a mop of wet hair hindering her vision.
"Did you bring a towel?" Rachel asked, accepting her hair for as good as it would get. Whatever Quinn's problem was, Rachel knew she had more than enough time to figure it out later. Right now, she just wanted to get some clothes on.
"No, but I'll go get one," the blonde replied, and Rachel heard the door open and close again at her friend's departure. She groaned into the sink, exasperated at the fact that she hadn't brought any extra clothes. Having had a long break between slushies, she had decided to save some locker space.
Rachel stood up, turning off the sink, and began to wring her hair out. As much as she loved having long hair, she remembered how awful it was to get the sugary drink out of it—not to mention the itch it left on her scalp. The singer was about to give her hair one last twist when she looked into the mirror and noticed something she had missed when she first walked in.
Taped to the mirror was another note.
#9 She doesn't judge others based on first impressions (luckily for me)
The words sent shockwaves of thoughts through the girl, and she wondered what they meant. Had the person made a bad impression, or was he trying to say that he wasn't the most attractive guy? She wondered if he maybe wore weird clothes and prayed—not for the first time—that it wasn't Joe.
Panicked that Quinn could walk in at any moment, Rachel ripped the note off of the mirror and shoved it in her pants pocket. She really hoped that the blonde hadn't been silent over seeing the words. Then again, Rachel realized that Quinn would have no idea that the note was intended for her if her friend was as clueless as she played out to be.
Thinking of Quinn seeing the note, Rachel realized that other people might have seen the paper as well. It wasn't exactly as private as the previous one had been, after all. Her eyes widened as she turned around, suspicious of anyone who might be hiding in the stalls. She bent over and looked for feet under the stalls, disappointed when she found none.
Looking back at the mirror, Rachel was reminded of just how shirtless she was and she quickly moved to the other sink to turn off the water there as well. She wrung out her shirt as best as she could, though it was still pitifully wet. Just thinking about wearing it outside raised goosebumps on her arms, and Rachel noticed the patches of dried slushie that left her skin stiff at the reaction.
She grabbed some paper towels from the bin and dampened them, attempting to get as much slushie off of her as she could. The brunette acutely regretted the lack of her emergency slushie kit.
Just as she got the last of the slushie off her arms, Quinn was back in the room with a sweater and a towel handy and Rachel had never been more thankful to see a piece of clothing in her life. She grabbed the towel first, thanking the blonde, and rubbed her head almost raw with it before running it over every part of her exposed body. When she finally felt dry enough, she swapped the towel for the sweater and pulled it over her head.
"Are you okay?" Quinn asked in the silence, eyes aimed at the ground.
"Of course I am, Quinn," Rachel stated, running her hands through her hair in an attempt to de-tangle the worst of it. "It may have been over a year since last I found myself victim of that horrid portrayal of teenage hierarchy, but it's nothing new. Just mildly unpleasant." The brunette gave her friend a wry smile before returning to the sink to grab her shirt. Luckily, her jeans hadn't gotten hit by more than a few wayward splashes, so there was at least that.
"I'm so sorry, Rach. I have no idea why he did that, he wouldn't tell me." Quinn was just standing there looking helpless and the singer hated that her friend would never understand that she had never blamed her for any slushie attack she'd ever received. "I should have seen it coming."
Rachel sighed, her hand falling from her head as she resigned to the mess it probably looked like. "Quinn, unless you planned for him to slushie me for some reason or another, you have no reason to be sorry. Lets just go to your locker so Sylvester doesn't have an even greater reason to torture you, okay?"
The Cheerio nodded, though Rachel didn't think she looked too convinced. She wanted to tell Quinn how a slushie was nothing compared to everything else she was dealing with, but she still had this weird feeling about keeping her friend in the dark about the notes.
As they left the bathroom, Rachel hadn't planned on making further comment about the situation, but she noticed the spill-area had weird patterns. It looked as if someone had half-mopped the area. Curious, she looked over to the blonde.
"Quinn, what did you do to the Neanderthal who slushied me? Because you know I don't condone violence."
In response, Quinn only shrugged and said, "He deserved it, Rach."
The brunette was about to accept that as a final answer—she thought maybe she was better off not knowing—when she was reminded of the note in her back pocket. "Why do you think they do it?" she asked.
"Do what? Deserve it?" her friend inquired, stopping at her locker.
"No. I meant why do you think they slushie people? Everyone knows they're at the top, thus they really have no reason to continually, and literally, toss rank into the faces of our peers. What does it do for them?"
Quinn stopped on the last number and pulled the lock down, the sound echoing in the now empty hallway. She looked over at Rachel, curiosity evident on her face. "Why does it matter?"
"I could ask them the same thing." The you was almost unspoken, but not quite, seeing as the Cheerio in front of her had never personally thrown a slushie.
Quinn rolled her eyes at the other girl's stubbornness and heaved her cheerleading bag from her locker. "I guess because it makes an impression, Rach. I couldn't say for sure."
Rachel bit her lip, the words close enough for her to slip in the question without drawing too much suspicion from her friend. Santana may have been able to run circles around the girl, but Rachel was more than capable of steering Quinn in the right direction.
"But what kind of impression, Quinn? A first impression or a lasting one, given the opinion that they're even different in the first place?"
Had she not been looking for it, the singer would never have caught it, but she had been and so she caught the minute pause in the blonde's actions. She saw the flick of hazel eyes in her direction before they flittered back to her locker, and the slight rise and fall of a pale throat.
Her last hopes that Quinn knew nothing of the notes were dashed at the reaction and Rachel's chest suddenly ached more than it had been all week.
"I don't…I don't know," Quinn admitted, closing her locker and slinging her bag over her shoulder. "Why do you even care?"
Ignoring her friend, Rachel felt her emotions get the best of her. "What was your first impression of me?" she asked, suddenly interested. She couldn't explain why she was so irrationally wounded that Quinn had been lying to her, but part of her of her knew the answer. If Quinn was a part of the note-finding process, and that slushie facial had led her to a note, then it meant that the blonde had likely ordered the hit.
And that hurt more than the lying because, as her best friend, Quinn knew how much she absolutely detested that form of bullying over any other. And, really, how on Earth had the blonde or her admirer decided that getting an iced drink to the face was in any way romantic?
Throughout her mental ranting, Rachel failed to notice the look Quinn was giving her. She was reminded of the question she had asked when she finally came to and saw the other girl eyeing her warily.
"Why do you want to know?" Quinn asked, and Rachel couldn't help but notice how tight her throat sounded. She figured the cheerleader felt guilty, knowing she had been caught.
"Because first impressions are important, Quinn."
The blonde seemingly flinched at the words, and Rachel didn't understand; those words had no basis behind them as had her other ones.
"I thought you had a really nice smile," Quinn answered, albeit quietly. "And it reached your eyes, unlike anyone I had talked to that day."
Rachel could only stand there, silent, having not expected that answer. A joke, maybe about her clothes or her loud voice, she had expected. Something so softly spoken, though? It was as if the blonde in front of her was embarrassed to admit it. She realized then that she didn't actually know when Quinn had first gotten an impression of her.
There was a blush before she continued, "And then I heard you sing."
The silence remained for a long moment and Rachel could tell the other girl was uncomfortable, waiting for a response. But she couldn't think, trying to remember how she had met the Cheerio. Her gaze was aimed at the lockers, but unfocused as she tried to clear her thoughts.
"When was this?" she asked to distract herself, hoping to get a clue from her friend.
Quinn didn't answer right away, turning to look over her shoulder and down the hallway. "Uh, the third day of freshman year." Her grip tightened on the strap of her bag, and the singer wondered why she was so tense. "You were standing outside of the choir room with Kurt."
Ah, Rachel remembered that day. Kurt, her then best friend, had told her about his near miss with the dumpster earlier that morning and she had patted him sympathetically on the arm. Then, he had made a joke about the jock's wardrobe and she couldn't help but laugh at it.
Throughout the fond memory, Rachel had no recollection of the blonde being anywhere close. She tried to think about what had happened after that, but all she could remember was Kurt being shoved against the lockers by Karofsky and herself yelling at the burly football player for being an oversized oaf.
Rachel opened her mouth to say something, anything, to her friend, but nothing came out. Quinn shrugged at her as if to tell her that she hadn't expected the brunette to remember anyway.
"I have to go to practice, now. I'll talk to you later, Rach."
As she watched the blonde walk away from her for the second time that day, Rachel frowned. She could not, for the life of her, remember the first time she had met Quinn.
The drive home was a blank in Rachel's mind, and she was opening the door before she could even remember having stepped away from Quinn's locker. She had the door less than halfway open when she noticed that she hadn't needed to unlock it, and the thought struck her as odd—her fathers always locked the door.
Sure enough, stepping into the house, she saw a figure standing in her living room and, just as she was about to scream bloody murder and make a bolt for her car, she recognized the slim figure.
"Kurt?" she half-questioned, half-exclaimed, running forward to hug the boy. "How'd you get in here?"
"It's nice to see you, too, you know," he teased, and Rachel took a step back, giggling as her previous conversation with Quinn faded from her mind. She jumped forward again, unable to keep her enthusiasm at bay; she hadn't seen Kurt in what felt like years. "You really should hide that spare key in a better place," he admonished, not hesitating to wrap his arms around the girl for a second time.
"So, what are you doing here?" she asked, practically bouncing with excitement.
"Well, as of yesterday, I have officially transferred back to McKinley," he answered, a mile-wide smile on his face.