Hey everybody! So sorry for the delay on this chapter. I was suffering from a serious case of writer's block which hopefully is behind me.
I just wanted to quickly respond to a couple of the questions/concerns some of you left. First off, there will be no Puck/Shelby relationship story line in this story because ew. There will certainly be more moments between Rachel and Shelby coming up (including a few in this chapter). There relationship will become an important part of Rachel navigating through this new world she's found herself in. Lastly, the plot with Quinn trying to get Beth back will not be a major part of this story nor will it be the same as it was on the show because I agree that it was done terribly strictly to make Quinn look like an awful person. In this story, it will revolve more around Quinn trying to figure both herself out as well as her relationship with Rachel, Shelby and Beth.
That's all I've got for now. Thanks everybody for being patient with me. If you have any more questions/concerns/whatevers feel free to leave them behind. Thanks again!
Chapter 5:
Rachel gets cornered by Finn in the senior hallway after school on Friday while she is looking for Shelby.
"Hey, what are you doing this weekend?"
He sneaks up behind her to ask the question. His voice sounds almost desperate. Rachel has been ignoring him for almost two straight weeks now. Rachel feels bad about this. It isn't Finn's fault, she just hasn't had time to consider social calls when all the answers about her existence are floating around out there somewhere, waiting for her to find them.
"I… um… My dads are out of town this weekend," Rachel tells Finn. This part is the truth. Her fathers had called out sick from their respective jobs this morning, packed their bags, and set off to spend their anniversary weekend two hours away in Reno Beach.
"They don't really want me hanging out anywhere with them not home." That part is the lie. Rachel isn't exactly confined to her house with them gone, but this might be her only opportunity to do some snooping, searching for clues regarding her lineage without them catching her.
"You've never had to stay home while they were away before," Finn accuses, his voice dripping. He sounds pained by his girlfriend's sudden distance. Rachel is only vaguely aware that this is probably not a good sign for the future of their relationship.
Before Rachel has to make an excuse, she spots Shelby moving swiftly through the sea of students at the other end of the hallway.
"I have to go, Finn!" Rachel ignores him. Finn does not even have time to protest. He blinks and Rachel is gone.
Rachel pushes through the crowded hallway, trying to get to Shelby before the woman can disappear like they all know she has a tendency to do.
Utilizing Shelby in her quest for answers had been Quinn's idea.
Rachel wasn't so sure at first, but Quinn had insisted, and the more Rachel thought about it the more she realized that the blonde has a point. Shelby is probably the only key to the answers that she is looking for.
Rachel's fathers would not budge, Rachel and Quinn had agreed on that. This is a secret that they have been lying to Rachel's face about for nearly eighteen years. For them, it would remain a fortress and Rachel would be much better off leaving them in the dark.
But Shelby…
Shelby is already emotionally vulnerable when it comes to Rachel. Quinn seems confident that the woman would crack with minimal pressure. Besides, after the debacle that had happened their sophomore year, Shelby owed Rachel big time.
The catch is that using Shelby as a resource means that Rachel will have to keep wearing her show face for the time being. She has to continue to pretend that everything is okay. She has to pretend that she is still willing to try to salvage her relationship with Shelby.
This, Rachel knows, will be the hard part.
"Ms. Corcoran, wait!"
Rachel catches Shelby just before the woman can slip out of the west entrance towards the teacher's parking lot. When she turns around and sees that it is Rachel actively seeking her for a change, her entire face glows. She looks relieved. As far as Shelby knows, the two of them are still in good-standing. For the time being, Rachel knows she has to keep pretending.
"Are you okay, Rachel?" Shelby asks.
Rachel swallows and flattens her clammy palms against her dress, buying herself some time.
She wants to tell Shelby that she is not okay. She wants to scream, to bombard Shelby, to tell her what she knows and demand answers in return.
But she knows she can't do that. Shelby is a smart woman. That meant that Rachel would have to be smart, too.
"I was wondering if I could uh… talk to you for a minute," the young brunette finally manages.
"Of course," Shelby nods, providing Rachel her full attention, waiting.
Rachel's eyes dart back and forth as multitudes of students shuttle out of the school for the weekend, weaving around the duo like they are stones in a river. Rachel knows that they are probably not paying attention to the likes of her, but at the same time she can't help but to feel paranoid. She is new to this whole deceit game, after all.
"Can we go somewhere private?" Rachel asks shyly. "It's kind of personal."
"Of course," Shelby breathes with a nod. She looks curious, if not a little bit nervous about what Rachel has to say.
Quickly, the woman shuttles the younger girl into a nearby classroom. She flips the light switch, shrouding the room with light before turning towards Rachel with a look of concern on her face.
"What's going on? Is everything alright?"
"Everything is fine…" Rachel tells Shelby but pauses in the reminder that everything is not fine. This conversation is already going all wrong and Rachel knows she is going to have to screw her head back on fast or else risk ruining her plan before she can even get started. "I just… I'm applying to the New York Academy of Fine Arts this year. I recently got started on my application."
This is another lie. The truth is that all of Rachel's college applications have been on the backburner recently.
Despite the color-coded timeline that she had meticulously worked on all summer, detailing where she should be in her application process on a day-by-day basis, she has barely even glanced at her applications. She knows that she is placing her future in a precarious position with her procrastination, she just can't bring herself to care.
"That's an incredibly school, Rachel. You're a remarkably talented girl. I'm sure you'll have no problem getting into NYADA." Shelby nods her head with an air of approval. There is a sense of pride inside her voice that makes Rachel falter for a moment, just like she always does when any sort of a personal connection is made between her and her estranged mother.
"Me too," Rachel nods, pulling herself together. Her confidence makes Shelby laugh like her personality never ceases to amaze her. The older woman feels like she is staring into a crystal ball every time she looks at Rachel, catching tiny glimpses of her past.
Rachel tries to ignore it. She has been struggling not to humanize this woman, but Shelby seems to know exactly how to get inside of her head whether she is trying to or not.
"I still have to be sure though," Rachel forces herself to get to the point. "I want you to coach me privately."
"Me?" the woman raises a shocked eyebrow. She even goes so far as to look over her shoulder to see if there is somebody else in the room who Rachel might be asking.
"You were the best glee coach in the country for years," Rachel shrugs, downplaying her request. "Who else?"
"I don't know, Rachel…" Shelby shakes her head uncertainly.
"Please, Shelby! There's nobody else!" Rachel's lips fold inwards desperately. She needs this to work, and Shelby has no idea how badly.
Shelby pauses and Rachel can tell she is considering her. Rachel's heart seizes expectantly.
"Do your dads know that you're asking me this?" Shelby finally asks after a long moment.
"Should they?" Rachel frowns.
"I would feel a lot better about it if they did," Shelby nods. She has already explained this to Rachel once.
"I'll talk to them tonight," Rachel lies. Her fathers would not be home until Sunday night. Even if they were home, Rachel would never tell them about this. It would be like trying to put out a fire with gasoline. It would ruin everything.
"I want a permission slip," Shelby tells her, crossing her arms over her chest. Rachel's eyebrows shoot into her hairline.
"Seriously?" the girl groans. Shelby's persistence is proving to make her life even more difficult. Why did she care so much all of a sudden?
"Look who you're talking to, Rachel," Shelby offers a small laugh. "You're literally me. I know all the tricks."
Rachel has to bite her tongue against telling Shelby that she doesn't know all of Rachel's tricks.
"Fine," she forces herself to agree. What other choice does she have? Now, on top of trying to find out who her real father is, she is going to have to type up some phony permission slip and forge one of her father's signatures. "But if they sign something will you help me?"
Shelby nods her head definitively. "I would be honored."
"Thanks," Rachel forces a smile. "I'll meet you on Monday after school in the auditorium."
"I'll meet you on Monday," Shelby agrees with a nod.
Rachel ducks out of the classroom before she can ruin all the progress she just made. This conversation had gone much better than even she thought it would. There's no reason for her to risk anything further.
Rachel slips back into the hallway with a broad smile on her face. She feels invincible now and knows that she owes that to Quinn.
The blonde was right. Shelby had fallen easily to her guilt and with her as Rachel's unwitting accomplice, Rachel knows that it is only a matter of time before the secrets start pouring in.
Rachel has to wait until Saturday for the results of her DNA test to arrive in the mail.
It comes in an envelope with her name on it and no return address, wedged between a stack of bills and catalogs.
She waits until she is alone inside of her living room to rip open the envelope. Her eyes scan the paper quickly. The answer that she has known all along is written in bold lettering right across the top.
Her fathers are not who they say they are. They never have been.
The information burns a hole inside of her chest. Rachel uses this for motivation. She spends the entire weekend ignoring everybody and turning her home inside out for answers.
It is a gorgeous weekend, sunny and unseasonably warm, but Rachel doesn't so much as step outside. Instead, she searches her fathers' bedroom, the basement, the attic, her Daddy Hiram's home office…
They all prove to be dead ends.
The closest thing to worthwhile information she finds is her birth certificate, which is buried at the bottom of a filing cabinet in her basement.
The document lists Shelby as her mother, but Hiram as her father and Rachel can't help but to wonder just how deep this conspiracy stretches.
Rachel wants to skip school on Monday and continue searching, but both of her fathers are working from home after returning late Sunday night from their anniversary trip.
Rachel doesn't want to go to school, but she certainly doesn't want to hang out with her fathers all day either, so reluctantly, she slips out of the house early and makes her way towards William McKinley.
After dropping the forged permission slip for private singing rehearsals off in Shelby's mailbox, Rachel makes her way towards her locker in order to gather her books for first period biology class.
She just manages to get a hand on them when somebody in a varsity jacket rushes past her and knocks them all to the floor.
The hallways are packed as the first bell looms nearer and the culprit slips into the crowd easily before Rachel can even think to identify him.
With a groan of frustration, Rachel bends over to retrieve her belongings. She is not in the mood for this today.
Actually, she is not in the mood for this any day. The difference is that on any other day, she could just hold her head up and remind herself that in just a few months, she will be past these juvenile antics and on her way to New York.
Lately, she is not so sure even about that.
Her biology text is face down on the floor, wide-open with the pages crinkled underneath one other. Loose papers have flown out of her notebook, including her homework which she had hastily completed last night only after she heard her fathers come home and knew she could no longer buy her time searching her house.
She is almost finished collecting her belongings when she feels somebody come up behind her and shove her hard.
A shriek escapes Rachel's mouth and she feels her normally perfect balance falter, unprepared for the blow. She falls forward, her forehead bouncing hard off the linoleum. She drops the books she had only just picked up. They go flying for the second time in as many minutes.
The laughter starts just as Rachel is pulling herself back to her feet. She is fully expecting to see a group of varsity jackets pointing and laughing and taking credit for her humiliation, but it is not the jocks staring back at her.
It is the Skanks.
Rachel's eyes narrow in on the small group. She does not see Quinn among them and can't help but wonder if the blonde knows or even cares that her new friends seem to have made the decision to start targeting her.
With that thought in mind, Rachel feels that final thread inside of her snap.
"What the hell?" she shouts angrily towards The Skanks.
None of them had been expecting a retaliation. They had just wanted their moment of fun, just like they had in the cafeteria that day when Rachel had ended up wearing her lunch. They would laugh and jeer for a moment, and then they would move on to the next, unfortunate soul.
People are normally not so bold when it comes to The Skanks. Nobody in their right mind would ever think to do what Rachel had done. But Rachel is not in her right mind. She is teeming for revenge and she doesn't care who she gets it against. Or if it ends up killing her in the process.
Even as the Skanks start to circle around her menacingly, silently promising that she is now going to walk away from this with much more than a bruised forehead, she regrets nothing.
"Rachel Berry, right?" one of the Skanks finally asks after sizing her up for a moment.
"Yeah," Rachel swallows, but is very proud of how steady her voice remains.
"Yeah, I know you," the girl nods with a malicious smirk. "You're friends with Quinn."
"Not really…" Rachel mumbles. She isn't entirely sure what she would call her relationship with Quinn, but she is not about to explain herself to the Skanks. "We're just lab partners. And speaking of, I'm late for class."
Rachel attempts to shoulder past the girl, but she does not budge. Instead, she snaps her fingers and the gang circles tighter around Rachel, boxing her in. The young brunette looks up at their leader, suspicious of her intentions and just a little bit terrified.
"You have some spunk, who would of thought?" Rachel knows immediately that she should not take this as a compliment. It is nothing less than a threat. "Just remember that that can get you into trouble if you're not too careful."
"I'm not afraid of you," Rachel tells the girl before she can remind herself that she would be in a better position to keep her mouth shut.
The tiny brunette is used to be being bold, but this is an entirely different kind of brazenness. This completely defies personal safety. The part that frightens Rachel the most is how little she cares.
"Well, you should be," the girl reminds her. Her voice is quiet yet punctuated. "If you see your little girlfriend running around, tell her that we're looking for her. By the way, you're bleeding."
She nods up to Rachel's forehead where the girl had hit the ground.
Rachel doesn't make a move to investigate this claim. She is afraid that if she so much as blinks with this Skank so close, she will be blindsided.
But the attack never comes. Instead, their leader backs away from Rachel. The rest of the group follows, sauntering away from her like over-sized ducklings.
It is only after they're gone that Rachel lifts her hand to prod at her throbbing forehead. When she looks, the pads of her fingers are wet with blood. Rachel stares at the sticky, red substance shining against her fingertips and allows the frustration to seep inside of her.
Somehow, instead of wanting to run away and cry like she normally would, Rachel only finds her rage fueled.
How is it possible that these are the opening weeks of what was supposed to be the best year of her life?
While everybody else rushes off to class, Rachel retreats to the bathroom to splash some water over her face and clean off the blood.
The cut is not bad, but there is already a goose egg forming at her hairline and Rachel knows it will not be long before it starts to bruise. She does what she can to cover it up for the time being, but by the time she leaves the girl's bathroom, it is so far into first period that she knows it would be a waste of time to try to make it to class.
Rachel has never skipped in her life. She has no idea what to do with all this extra time but makes her way outside. She doesn't want to get caught by a teacher who might question why she is aimlessly wandering the halls when she should be in biology.
Apparently, she is not the only student with this idea. Rachel spots Quinn outside the west entrance, sitting on top of an empty lunch table overlooking the athletic fields, a cigarette dangling from her mouth.
The two girls seem to be the only people out here. For a moment, it creates the illusion that they are the only two people left in the entire world.
Rachel swallows. Her and Quinn seems to have formed an attraction for one another lately akin to the world's most powerful magnet. Somehow, they always managed to find themselves in one another's company.
Rachel takes advantage of Quinn not noticing her right away to carefully observe the blonde. Under the guise of solitude, Quinn is letting her emotions shine inside of the hazel eyes that normally put up such a high wall.
"You're skipping too?" Rachel finally calls out to Quinn. She approaches the blonde slowly, but when Quinn turns to face her, she finds that she has already allowed her eyes to harden over again. Rachel knows she will never be able to get back that same level of honesty that Quinn can only ever seem to display when she thinks nobody is looking.
"I saw you weren't there," Quinn answers. "I figured there's no point staying if you weren't around to give me all the answers."
"I never give you the answers," Rachel reminds Quinn, climbing on top of the lunch table to sit next to her.
Quinn only shrugs and the duo settles into silence.
"What happened to you?" Quinn asks after a moment, trying to sound indifferent as she nods up towards Rachel's disheveled appearance and bruised forehead.
"Your new friends is what happened to me," Rachel grumbles. "The Skanks attacked me in the hallway today. They threatened me, too."
"They wouldn't do that," Quinn insists, relentless in her need to defend her decisions.
Rachel frowns at Quinn. On the very first day of school, Quinn had told her to stop acting so naïve around Shelby. Now, Rachel feels an obligation to do the same for Quinn when it came to the Skanks.
"Open your eyes, Quinn," Rachel sighs. Her exasperation is clear. She is stunned by Quinn's lack of a grip on her reality.
Then again, Rachel can't help but feel that that is a bold claim coming from her given her current position.
"The Skanks are bullies," Rachel continues when Quinn says nothing. "What else do you think they would want with an ex-cheerleader in a vulnerable position with brains, a nice car, and a daddy with a fat alimony payment? They're using you, and you're too smart to keep falling for it."
Rachel glares at the blonde for the moment, trying to hammer her point home. The brunette's eyes are emotional but committed. She looks the same way that she used to whenever she was talking about glee or Broadway or NYADA. Lately, all that energy is being used up on stopping Quinn from self-destructing or finding out who her real father is. There's no room for anything else.
Quinn's face shrinks, falling away from the extra attention. Rachel is right. She is too smart for this. She is too smart for a lot of the things that she is doing; hanging around The Skanks, refusing to listen to her conscience, manipulating Shelby, Puck, and now Rachel for her own selfish means...
Quinn has nothing to say to Rachel that can provide a decent explanation. She cannot even explain any of this to herself. Rachel looks disappointed by the silence.
"Whatever," the brunette breathes, shaking her head. She pulls herself off the lunch table, prepared to walk away from Quinn and all her problems. She is having a hard enough time coping with her own problems. She doesn't have the energy to watch Quinn fall down that same destructive path.
Quinn feels her heart speed up watching Rachel walk away from her.
She doesn't know why she is always trying so hard to put on that same front in front of Rachel that she wears for everybody else. Rachel is hardly like everybody else. Quinn knows that now.
"Rachel, wait!"
Quinn fumbles over an excuse to make Rachel stay. Whenever she is talking to the brunette lately, she feels like she is learning how to speak for the first time all over again. She can never seem to find the right words when it counts.
Rachel has become a complete maze to her, complex in its navigation. Unfortunately for Quinn, she is still getting used to the idea that it might be worth the effort to find the prize at the end of this puzzle.
"I don't have time for this Quinn," Rachel sighs.
The truth is that she has plenty of time. Both girls know that there is still twenty minutes until next period. What Rachel means is that she doesn't have the patience. She is constantly giving Quinn last chances when she wouldn't be giving other people the time of day.
There is just something about the blonde that she just cannot seem to stay away from.
"I just… are you sure that you're okay?" Quinn finally asks, swallowing around her discomfort. It is a loaded question. Both Quinn and Rachel know that Rachel is in fact not okay. Neither of them are.
"Why do you want to know?" Rachel sighs, crossing her arms over her chest. "Clearly you don't care."
The blonde hesitates. The silence that hovers inside of the space between their conversation is deafening and Rachel doesn't know how to interpret that.
"You've just been… I don't know… not you," Quinn tells the girl. "It's weird being around you without you acting like a Nazi all the time. I think you've given me Stockholm Syndrome."
Rachel smirks. The more sarcastic Quinn is with her, the more Rachel believes her. The blonde's defensiveness is a hallmark of her personality. Rachel doesn't know why the blonde is so afraid of people finding out that she is actually capable of having feelings.
"Maybe we can go to therapy together," Rachel suggests. She is only half joking.
"Ugh, no thanks. I'm already traumatized enough without having to listen to any more of your issues."
"Suit yourself," Rachel shrugs before turning away towards the school again.
"Rachel!" Quinn calls back to the brunette again.
Rachel takes a deep breath and turns back around to stare at Quinn expectantly.
Her dark eyes bear into Quinn's much lighter ones, searching for an explanation. She watches Quinn take a deep breath, searching for the right thing to say. She doesn't need Rachel giving up on her just like everybody else has.
"I do care, alright?" the blonde finally admits. "I just… I guess I just never really had anybody to show me how to express that. I've never really had anybody to express that to. I'm working on it."
Rachel nods slowly, placing her hands on her hips.
"I'm working on it too," the brunette reciprocates.
Quinn looks up at the girl who she had once considered her biggest enemy.
That was in a different time. That world, the one that Quinn had once lorded over, is now gone. Instead, it belongs to another blonde-haired, doe-eyed girl who too will one day realize that being on the top of a cheerleading pyramid and dating the right football boy still isn't enough to counter the tendency of the world to turn on you.
"I have to go, Quinn," Rachel sighs after a long moment. "I can't miss another class."
"I'm surprised you even missed one," Quinn offers the brunette a small smirk, which she graciously returns.
"Are you coming?" she asks Quinn, unsurprised when the blonde only gives her a sad smile and a shake of her head.
"Not yet," Quinn tells Rachel. "Maybe in a little bit."
Rachel stares at the blonde for a long moment. For a while, Quinn is afraid that she is about to get a classic Rachel Berry lecture for continuing to skip class, but Rachel doesn't seem to have it in her. Instead, she nods her head like she understands exactly how it feels to have to be alone with your own thoughts for a while.
"Just don't waste away out here, okay?" Rachel tells her. It is the only warning that she gives Quinn and the blonde feels an even further appreciation for Rachel Berry swell inside of her chest.
"I'll try," Quinn answers with the smallest hint of a smile. It is the best that she can promise. "You don't waste away in there."
"I'll try," the brunette counters. Then, without another word, she turns away from Quinn, making her way back towards the school.
Rachel is more than nervous when she walks into the auditorium for her first rehearsal with Shelby.
She tries to tell herself not to be. She tries to tell herself that Shelby is probably just as nervous as she is, but when she walks into the darkened room, Shelby is already sitting at the piano, messing around with a string of chords that Rachel doesn't recognize.
The woman seems indifferent towards this arrangement. She looks like she is taking it just as Rachel had presented it - a business deal - and Rachel wonders if she should have tried to make it more personal when she'd made the offer.
When she finally spots Rachel, she looks at the girl with a note of anger on her face.
"You're late," she tells Rachel sharply.
The young brunette flushes and turns her eyes to the floor, embarrassed. She should have known that Shelby wouldn't put away that infamous Coach Corcoran persona just because it was her.
"Yeah… I'm sorry." Rachel doesn't even bother trying to come up with an excuse. Instead, she stares at the woman hard and tries to pretend like nothing is different between them.
She watches Shelby stand from the piano and walk to the edge of the stage where she hovers above Rachel and frowns at her.
For a moment, Rachel thinks that Shelby is going to lecture her for her tardiness, but the woman falters before a single word can escape.
Rachel senses her mother's discomfort. She feels it too. They are both learning each other, having basically been strangers before this. They're interactions are infused with tension that Rachel once hoped would go away with time, but now is not so sure.
Instead of yelling at her for being late, Shelby studies her daughter very carefully.
Shelby accepts that she doesn't know Rachel nearly as much as she would like to, but she knows her enough to understand that today, Rachel looks different.
She still looks like her, so much so that it takes Shelby's breath away every time she looks at her, but the light that makes Rachel, Rachel simply is no longer there.
The girl's chin is tucked deep inside of her chest, eyes trained to the ground. Dull brown hair falls in front of her face like a veil. Her shoulders are hunched so far forward that Shelby wonders how she is even keeping her balance.
The maternal instinct that she has been struggling to ignore every time Rachel is in her vicinity is reaching up and strangling her.
"Are you okay, Rachel?" Shelby swallows, hoping she is not over-stepping her boundaries.
When Rachel finally does look up at her mother, the first thing that Shelby notices is the large bruise circling the top of her forehead. It is a fresh mark, Shelby can tell, because it is such an angry shade of purple that it almost looks black.
"What happened?" Shelby gasps, jumping down from the stage to get a closer look.
"It's nothing," Rachel sighs. "Some stupid girls ganged up on me. I'm used to it. Don't worry about it."
"A group of girls did this to you? At school?" Shelby presses.
Rachel frowns at her. She wishes that Shelby would just drop this like she has dropped everything else that has to do with her over the years.
"It's not a big deal," Rachel insists. "Besides, this school doesn't care about things like that. If you're gonna work here, you should probably learn not to waste your breath. Can we start our rehearsal now?"
Rachel knows that she has to move past this topic. She can feel that coil inside of her start to tighten again and while every conversation with Shelby felt like a battle, the girl now knows that if she is going to win this war, she is going to have to start winning a few of the skirmishes too.
That meant keeping her cool. It meant forcing Shelby to see her as a much stronger woman with a much stronger back than she had been a year and a half ago.
"Fine," Shelby concedes. Rachel knew that she would never press her. That is what she is relying on once the time finally does come to start asking the hard questions. "What do you want to work on?"
"How much do you know about dance?" Rachel asks the woman whose eyebrows fly high into her hairline.
"Dance?"
"I'm good in comparison to most of the New Directions, but I still think that it's the thing holding me back the most," Rachel admits, forcing herself back into character, just like she had practiced. "I'm borderline flat-footed."
"You get that from my mother's side of the family, I'm afraid." Shelby lets out a choked laugh, but Rachel just stares at her.
Shelby's face falls. She watches Rachel's reaction and realizes, with a burst of terror, the mistake she had just made.
"I am so sorry, Rachel," Shelby apologizes profusely.
Rachel feels her face fall. Shelby has always been the wave that she could never conquer, but she doesn't know why something so seemingly simple as a reference to her maternal relatives feels like a hot knife to her gut.
But she can't let Shelby see that. Instead, she has to plant her feet in the sand and take her opening. Her entire existence might depend on it.
"Does perfect pitch run in your family, too?" Rachel swallows and asks on a whim, letting Shelby off the hook. "It's just… I read somewhere that it was genetic. I thought that maybe…"
"Rachel," Shelby nods at her, smiling proudly. She looks relieved that she hadn't just inadvertently pushed her daughter further away. She has no idea. "Every woman in my family has had perfect pitch since the Revolution."
The two of them rehearse for hours.
Rachel knows that she would be foolish to press for answers this early into her relationship with Shelby, so she figures she might as well get some practical use out of their rehearsal time.
Besides, she can't pretend like it doesn't feel nice to finally be able to share something with her mother aside from genetics.
"Here."
Rachel is stretching against the piano after Shelby finally gives her reprieve from several exhaustive dance exercises when her mother tosses a water bottle at her.
Rachel smiles shyly at her mother and uncaps the bottle, taking a tentative sip.
"You okay?" Shelby asks after a moment.
Rachel looks up at the woman, forcing herself to straighten up.
"Why wouldn't I be?" she asks, and Shelby's entire face changes in a way that tells Rachel that she is not simply talking about their rehearsal.
"I heard a few teachers talking in the lounge at lunch," Shelby admits. Rachel can tell that she has been waiting to bring this up. "Apparently, you weren't in your biology class this morning. Neither was Quinn."
"Did you invite me here just to lecture me about my class attendance?" Rachel accuses defensively.
"I'm just worried," Shelby shakes her head. "And if I remember correctly, you're the one who invited me."
Rachel swallows any possible retort. Inside of this dark auditorium, she is starting to feel all of her carefully constructed plans slowly tunnel around the desperate desire to have a normal relationship with her mother.
She was supposed to be the one taking charge of this conversation, but she had backed out early and now Shelby had all but overrun it.
Rachel realizes that she was stupid for even thinking that today would have gone any differently.
"Listen Rachel, I know that you're excited about your senior year and your NYADA applications… I remember feeling the same way at your age. High school didn't matter to me anymore. I was going to New York. I was going to be on Broadway. That's all I cared about... But you still have to get through your senior year. I wish I could have told my eighteen-year-old self that."
Rachel's frown deepens. Shelby thinks she knows exactly what is distracting her. She thinks that she knows Rachel at all. But she doesn't.
"Do you really think that's why you never made it on Broadway?" Rachel asks her mother. She doesn't mean for it to sound as rude as it does. "Because you skipped one biology class?"
"Of course not," Shelby lets out a little laugh. "But it started somewhere. I thought I was better than everybody else. William McKinley was the same back then as it is now. They didn't care about the arts or catering to their student's needs. They just cared about churning out a new class. I wanted to prove them wrong."
"You went to William McKinley?" Rachel looks up at her mother, her interest sparking. She hadn't known this about Shelby.
"Yup," Shelby nods.
"And it really hasn't changed?"
"People don't leave Lima, Rachel," Shelby reminds her with a sad smile like she is still thinking about everything that could have been for her. Everything that almost was. "Which is why I plan on working you to the bone in these rehearsals. You need to be the one to break the cycle. Are you ready to keep going?"
With her lips sealed tight, Rachel manages a nod.
"Okay," Shelby nods at her firmly. "Then let's get moving."
Rachel is so tired after rehearsal that she almost forgoes exploring the lead Shelby had inadvertently given her about attending William McKinley for a shower and her bed.
But in the end, it is too good to let up on and she forces herself to the library anyway.
At this time of night, the school is almost completely empty. Rachel considers this lucky because she is going to need all the privacy she can get.
She slips past the small handful of students still lingering in the library for late tutoring sessions or to finish up the last of their homework before going home for the day. In the back of the room is a row of shelves that houses a collection of every yearbook produced since William McKinley High School opened in the 1950s.
She scans the yearbooks lining the shelves, year after year and finds it fascinating how many of them there are. They are a mark of time, a mark that life goes on, even in moments where it feels like it is standing still.
Of course, Rachel knows that there is no universal law granting immunity to the turning clock just because your own life is falling apart. The hours still turn into days. The late bells still ring over her head and teachers still expect perfect attendance and completed assignments. Colleges admissions offices still accept and reject applications even if hers sits, incomplete and collecting dust on top of her desk…
Rachel has no idea how old Shelby is. She doesn't know what years she would have attended this school and curses herself for not thinking to ask what year she'd graduated when she had the opportunity.
It is a roadblock that she hadn't considered as she scans over the years and years of this high school's sordid past, frowning deeply at the thought that this search might take much longer than she either expected or wanted.
Rachel takes her best guess and pulls out the yearbook from the 1982-1983 school year. She flips through each grade, scanning through the C's for the name Corcoran, but finds nothing.
Year after year, Rachel follows the same procedure only to be disappointed. She is just starting to worry that Shelby Corcoran isn't even her mother's real name and that she would now have to look through each, individual photo in search of the familiar face when she spots it: Shelby's freshman photo in the 1989-1990 yearbook.
Rachel's brows knit together as she studies the photo. If Shelby had been a freshman in 1990, that meant that she would have graduated in 1994. Rachel had been born in 1994, only a few months after Shelby's would-be graduation date…
Rachel's heart starts to speed up. If her mother had gotten pregnant in high school, that meant that there was a good chance that any boyfriend she'd had at the time - likely to be Rachel's biological father - attended William McKinley High School as well.
Rachel finds the yearbook from Shelby's senior year and pulls it down from the shelf. She has to blow off a thick layer of dust from the front cover. The book that had meant so much to the students inside of its pages at one time looks like it hasn't been touched in years. Rachel has to stop herself from considering that there will be a time when what is now the center of her universe will be relegated to a back shelf in the library, never to be touched again.
The cover is plain grey and unrevealing, but the book feels heavy like any burden. Despite everything, it has become a part of who she is. In a way, Rachel realizes that it always has been.
She opens the book where her family thought they could permanently bury there lies and immediately works to dig them back up.
Rachel thinks about bypassing all the class photos and senior portraits but in the end, her curiosity gets the better of her and she turns immediately to the senior class, searching for her mother.
When she does find the picture, easily right at the beginning of the alphabet, Rachel feels like she is looking at a picture of herself. When Shelby was her age, the two of them were even more identical than they are now. The subtle differences were less apparent in the absence of an age difference and the burden of life's hardships that outline Shelby's face today.
Rachel stares at the picture for a long time, longer than she'd intended on.
The girl staring back at her looks so hopeful for the future. Rachel is certain that her senior photo will look the same. She had taken it a week before school started, a week before her entire life fell apart.
She wonders what that picture would have looked like if she had taken it today.
Rachel feels a choking sob bubble towards the surface of her throat and flips away from Shelby's class picture before it can escape. She is still not ready to feel any of these emotions, especially not here, in her high school library.
She finds a segment of the yearbook that is filled with group pictures from clubs and sports.
Shelby had been her class treasurer all four years she attended William McKinley. She was – unsurprisingly – a member of the theater club as well as the select choir. She even ran the 5k for the school's cross-country team.
Still, none of this information holds any significant meaning for what Rachel is really looking for.
The last several pages of the yearbook contains collages of candid photographs taken throughout the school year.
Shelby had been so involved in school activities that there is a picture of her on practically every page. Rachel's heart speeds up when she recognizes that in almost every single picture, her mother is pressed tight into the same boy, caught in time staring up adoringly at him.
It is hard to distinguish his features in the aged, black and white photos, but Rachel can tell that he has Rachel's dark skin and big, round eyes.
There is a caption under one of their pictures in the superlative section: Most Successful Couple: Shelby Corcoran and Peter Gabbanelli.
The picture above the caption shows the couple at some sort of a school dance in the school gymnasium, which looked exactly the same then as it does now.
This picture is in color, and Rachel gets a much better look at this boy, this Peter Gabbanelli.
He is wearing a frumpy, dark blue tuxedo which clashes horribly with Shelby's emerald green dress. His arms are around her waist even though he is shorter than Shelby by a couple of inches.
His hair is dark and gelled tight to his head. Him and Shelby are looking at the camera, beaming brightly. Rachel realizes that his eyes aren't only the exact same shape as Rachel's, but they are the exact same color as well.
This is her father. Rachel just knows it.
She wonders if Shelby was already pregnant with her when this picture was taken. It didn't seem likely. Shelby still looks like she has her entire life ahead of her in this photo. She looks like she would never guess that, in just over seventeen years' time, her own daughter would be staring at this picture, realizing that there is no reason to try to hide the truth because it seems to have a way of memorializing itself, exposing its secrets in time forever.