Hey everyone. This summer chapter was so much harder to write than the others because I missed writing Finchel having fun together in the summer :( To be honest, I don't know what the writers were thinking. I don't know much about the army, but I tried my best. I also did my best with Rachel adjusting. Enjoy and review if I should keep going!

Chapter 70: Summer 2012

"You look like him."

Finn turned and saw his mom standing in his bedroom door. Finn had just sent Rachel off to New York and was now trying on his dad's old uniform, seeing if it fit.

"You think so?" Finn asked.

"Yeah," Carole said. "Finn, are you sure you want to do this though? I told you about what happened to him after he got back..."

"Mom, I won't let that happen to me," Finn said.

"Your dad said he wouldn't let that happen to him either!" Carole protested. "I'm going to be worried sick about you."

"It's just boot camp," Finn reminded his mom. "It's not like they're sending me overseas."

"I know," Carole said. "But this is all so sudden."

"I didn't expect them to have room for me so soon," Finn said. When he'd called, it turned out there was an opening in boot camp in Georgia next week, so he'd taken it. Finally he said what he'd been thinking. "I didn't expect it to end up like this."

"None of us did," Carole said. "Burt and I were already planning our first visit to see the three of you in New York."

"This feels so wrong," Finn admitted.

"You didn't have to do it this way, you know," Carole said.

"She said she was going to turn down her spot at NYADA for me and Kurt," Finn reminded his mom. "I couldn't let her do that."

"Did you talk to anyone about that?" Carole asked. "You didn't talk to me, but did you talk to Burt, or Kurt, or one of your other friends?"

"Well, no," Finn admitted. "But what if she spent that year thinking about what could have been and grew to resent me for that?"

"There's no way of knowing now," Carole told Finn.

"I just want things to be the way they were last summer," Finn admitted. "When she and I were together, and everyone wasn't about to go off in various places..."

"Things are different now," Carole said.

"Too different," Finn agreed.

"I just wish you didn't have to leave so soon," Carole said. "With Kurt on vacation with the Andersons, we can't have one last week with the two of you."
"What do you think he's going to do in the fall?" Finn asked his mom.

"I don't know," Carole admitted. "We were so sure he would get into NYADA, we didn't encourage him to apply to some backup schools."

"He should have gotten in," Finn grumbled.

"We don't know who else applied," Carole said.

x

Rachel didn't want to be here.

She knew she should be happy. She'd fought for a place at NYADA and gone to great lengths to get one. But that was when she'd been sure Kurt would have gotten in as well and that Finn would get into Pace. She didn't want to come to New York single and be here by herself.

She knew Finn had meant well, but she couldn't help but be a little mad. Why hadn't Finn talked this over with her if he felt uncomfortable about her not going to New York? Why had he broken up with her? Why couldn't they try a long distance relationship?

Rachel sat in the waiting room in the NYADA dorm while her dads talked with the resident life specialists. Then her dads came out. "Good news!" Hiram said.

"What?" Rachel asked.

"You can stay here for the summer," LeRoy said. "What do you say? It'll help you get used to the campus and the city..."

Rachel thought for a moment. Either way, she was going to be alone. Why not be alone in New York, where she was being forced to spend the next four years of her life, than in Lima, where reminders of him were everywhere? "Okay."

"Okay," Hiram said. "We'll go talk to them."

"This is so exciting," LeRoy said. "You're finally in New York, doing what you were always destined to do."

"Yeah," Rachel said. She did have an idea of why Finn might have done this. She knew that her dads wanted nothing more than for her to become a big Broadway star. And the thought had crossed her mind more than once - was this really what she wanted? Or was it that she wanted to please them, and that they'd had her in singing and acting and dancing classes for so long that she couldn't even imagine doing anything else?

Right now she wasn't really sure what she wanted but she knew what she didn't want: this. She felt like the girl from her freshman year of high school all over again.

x

Finn took one last look around his bedroom. He didn't know when he'd be back. It could be a few weeks, a few months, or a few years. It depended on how things went in the army.

"You're really leaving, huh?" a voice said in the doorway.

Finn turned to see Kurt. "Yeah. I'm gonna miss you."
"I don't understand," Kurt said. "Why?"

"Why what?" Finn asked.

"You know what I'm talking about," Kurt said. "It doesn't have to be like this."

"Well, they had space for me, so I figured why not take the spot?" Finn reasoned. "I need to redeem my dad." He didn't want a lecture from Kurt. "Have you given any thought to what you'll do in the fall?"

"Well, the week with Blaine in LA was a nice distraction, but now I have to face the painful reality again," Kurt said. "I guess I'll take some classes at the community college and work toward getting into NYADA for next year. I picked up a Lima Bean application today, so maybe I could earn some money."

"You could work at the tire shop," Finn teased Kurt.

"And have to send all my clothes to the dry cleaner all the time?" Kurt said as they both laughed.

"I'm going to miss having someone around all the time to talk to," Finn admitted. "I can talk to you about anything and I won't have that in the army."

"Well, if you can talk to me about anything, then why didn't you talk to me about the whole army thing before you made those calls?" Kurt snapped. "Or ANYONE, for that matter."

"I didn't want to give you any more stuff," Finn said. "We were all sure that you'd gotten into NYADA and then you got that letter... you had enough on your mind."

"Then why didn't you talk to Dad?" Kurt asked. "Or your mom? Or Mr. Schue? Or even Puck, or Sam, or Artie, or Blaine, or one of the other guys?"

"I don't know," Finn admitted.

"I don't want you to go," Kurt said. "And I know our parents don't either. When I got home last night, your mom was telling my dad how worried she is about you."

"I'll be fine," Finn said. "Have you talked to her?" Rachel had been calling and texting him all week, but he'd been too ashamed to answer. He could tell how upset she was, and it was all his fault.

"Well, not much while I was on vacation," Kurt said. "But I did talk to her on the phone last night. She's not happy."

"What's wrong?" Finn asked.

"Other than the fact that the guy she loved forced her onto a train against her will and she's alone in a new city?" Kurt asked.

Finn groaned. He thought Rachel would be happy. "I thought this was what she wanted. Maybe she'll feel better once classes start and the other people get there."

"Maybe," Kurt said. "She asked me how you look in a uniform."

"Well, you haven't seen my uniform yet," Finn said.

"I'm going to do her the favor of not sending her any photos until your hair's grown back though," Kurt said.

"Oh yeah," Finn said. He knew that the army would be cutting his hair very short. He'd never had it very short in the past few years because Rachel liked playing with it, and he liked when she played with it.

"I just wish you weren't going to be gone all summer," Kurt told Finn. "There's all the graduation parties and everything."

"I'll miss everyone," Finn said. "I wish everyone wasn't going all over the place. I just wish we could all stay here and things could be like they were before graduation, forever."

"Yeah, me too," Kurt admitted.

x

Rachel sat in the audience at Les Mis, listening to the actress playing Eponine sing On My Own. That had been her audition song for glee club, and it had so much meaning for her back then. Now it had even more meaning.

Her dads had just gone back to Lima, but they'd bought her a ticket to a Broadway show for every weekend between now and the beginning of the school year in an attempt to help her feel better about everything.

Watching the show, Rachel couldn't help but notice how talented these people were. Reading the program, she noticed many of them were NYADA students or graduates. She'd been special at McKinley, but she wasn't going to be special at NYADA. She was going to be mediocre at best.

She was also shocked by how expensive New York was. Maybe she hadn't given it much thought when she'd been here for Nationals or on vacation with her dads, but everything was so much more than what it was back in Ohio. Water bottles back home were about a dollar and fifty cents. Here, she was lucky when she found one for three dollars.

At the end of the show, Rachel started to leave the theatre, reaching into her purse for her map of the city. Oh no, where was her map. She pulled out her wallet, iPod and phone, only to realize that she'd left her map in the dorm.

She was going to have to find her way back on her own.

Rachel looked around the street, seeing people leaving other theatres. She knew the bus she'd taken here didn't run at this hour, so she just looked around, trying to remember what buildings she passed on the way to the theatre. When she saw a familiar building in the distance, she took a deep breath and began to walk.

On the way, Rachel passed a bar. There were a lot of men in their 20s and 30s watching a Yankees game on an outdoor patio, and they appeared to be very drunk.

"Oh shit!" Rachel heard one of the men shout. "The Indians got another run!"

"It's 15-0 now!" another man shouted as he tossed his beer over the edge of the patio. The beer landed on Rachel, spilling all over her hair and clothes.

"Sir, you got your drink all over me!" Rachel snapped, stopping at the edge of the bar.

The man stood on his chair. "WAITER! I WANT ANOTHER BEER!"

Rachel felt grosser than she felt in the days of slushies. The beer drops that were landing in her mouth were disgusting. Not wanting to put up with this anymore, Rachel motioned for a taxi.

It turned out the taxi cost 35 dollars.

x

It had only been one day in the army, and Finn was already exhausted.

He'd thought that conditioning for his sports teams had been tough, but this was much tougher.

He'd been on his feet all day, and even when he was exhausted, he had to keep going. Handling the gun made him uncomfortable, but so far things had gone okay.

Finn couldn't help but miss home. He couldn't stop thinking about what could have been. Even though he was just at boot camp now, the worries that his mom had were beginning to sink in for him. If the exercises they did at boot camp were this strenuous, he could get much more hurt when the army really sprang into action.

Bedtime couldn't have come sooner. Finn looked at himself in the mirror, wondering what Rachel would think of him in a uniform. His mom was right: he did look like the photos of his dad in the uniform. His hair was completely gone, and he knew that Rachel probably wouldn't be too happy about that.

Rachel. Even though she wasn't here, Finn couldn't stop thinking about her. Where was she now? What was she doing? Was she happy?

He hoped she was happy, wherever she was. He'd call her - when he felt like he could.

x

Tonight would have been Rachel's graduation party.

She and her dads had spent a while planning it, only for them to need to cancel the reservations. She'd been in New York for a few weeks now and things didn't feel any better. Any time she tried talking to her dads, they told her that things would get better once classes started. She didn't want to let her friends from high school know that she was unhappy because she had a feeling they'd just act like her dads were acting. She felt some sort of longing when she saw photos of the various graduation parties online, wishing she could be there with them. Kurt was always telling Rachel about how lucky she was to have gotten a spot at NYADA, but Rachel thought that Kurt was the lucky one. He still had Blaine and he wasn't alone.

Tonight, Rachel decided to go to the bar down the street, Callbacks. She'd heard some of the NYADA upperclassmen talk about how it was fun to go to that bar on weekends, so she decided to give it a try. As she sat at the counter eating a salad and drinking some juice, she listened to the other students perform karaoke. They were good. Better than she was. The next four years weren't going to be anything like the previous four.

The waiter brought Rachel a refill of her drink. "Here you go, Miss Berry."

"Thank you," Rachel said.

"You're a NYADA student, right?" the waiter asked.

"I will be in the fall," Rachel said.

The waiter handed a list of songs to Rachel. "Here's the songs on the karaoke menu. You should get up there and sing. All the students do."

Rachel looked over the list, scanning for songs to talk about how she was feeling now. She did think that singing helped her express her feelings. After going through the list, she found one that she thought would be a good one to sing now. She went up to the karaoke podium once the current singer was done, trying to get the nerve to speak.

"Hi, I'm Rachel Berry," Rachel said. "I'm going to be a freshman this fall and this is my first time performing at Callbacks. This song is for someone special back home in Ohio, someone I love and miss very much."

Rachel: These clouds aren't going nowhere, baby
Rain keeps coming down
I just thought I'd try to call you, baby
For you got too far outta town
And I hope that you get this message that I'm leaving for you
'Cause I hate that you left without hearing the words that I needed you to
And I hope you find it,
What you're looking for
And I hope it's everything you dreamed your life could be
And so much more
And I hope you're happy, wherever you are
I wanted you to know that
And nothing's gonna change that
And I hope you find it
Am I supposed to hang around and wait forever?
Last words that I said
But that was nothing but a broken heart talkin', baby
You know that wasn't what I meant
Call me up, let me know that you got this message that I'm leaving for you
'Cause I hate that you left without hearing the words that I needed you to
And I hope you find it,
What you're looking for
And I hope it's everything you dreamed your life could be
And so much more
And I hope you're happy, wherever you are
I wanted you to know that
And nothing's gonna change that
And I hope you find it
Whatever it is out there that you were missing here
And I hope you find it,
What you're looking for
And I hope it's everything you dreamed your life could be
And so much more
And I hope you're happy wherever you are
I wanted you to know that
And nothing's gonna change that
No, no, no
And I hope you find it
I hope you find it
Mmm, Ooh.

At the end of Rachel's song, one of the older NYADA girls looked at her as she headed back to the counter. "So, you want to be on Broadway, huh?"

"Yeah," Rachel said.

"Two words," the girl said. "Nose job."

x

Finn was cleaning his gun. It had been a few weeks, and even if this break was just for cleaning, it was nice to get a break and relax. Then he heard a loud bang and an excruciating pain in his thigh.

He'd just shot himself.

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