A/N: Glee's version of season 2 had Artie get slushied by the whole football team, but my version in 'Lucy...' did not. Him having never been slushied gets a mention in the following chapter, so I thought I'd explain. Another big change - Blaine transferred January of sophomore year in my version. The events from 'The Purple Piano Project' are modified and adjusted to work with Artie as the narrator. And that's what you missed on Gigundoly Glee! Enjoy!
"Shalom blogosphere! Jacob Ben-Isreal here at McKinley High. Sudden death - big stakes senior year. Who will succeed and who will fail?"
"Oh, god, here we go," Tina muttered, slamming her locker and exchanging a look with both Mike and Artie.
Artie didn't mean to follow them around exactly, but with Sam gone, Quinn's whereabouts unknown, and Mercedes clinging to her new boyfriend, he suddenly felt like he had no one else. Thus, on the first day of school, he'd somehow become Mike and Tina's third... he refused to say wheel... but you get the idea.
They watched as Jacob cornered Finn with his amateur camera crew and his second annual campaign to annoy the hell out of anyone unfortunate enough to encounter him in the hall. Ever since Lauren Zizes had swiftly rejected his advances, he'd had a specific affinity for picking on the Glee kids.
"Finn Hudson. Mediocre quarterback. Mediocre Glee Club lead. What do you want to be when you grow up?"
"Me?" Finn just looked confused. "Uh. Yeah, I have plans. Umm..."
Jacob was bored already. He made a beeline for Artie, Tina, and Mike, motioning for his cameraman to follow.
"My mom still hasn't decided if I'm going to Harvard or Stanford yet," Mike informed him, as Tina lovingly turned town the collar on his shirt.
"And where are you applying?" Jacob turned the question on Tina.
"I'm not," she said. "I'm only a Junior. Senior, Junior, Junior." She pointed to Mike, herself, and Artie, respectively. As the camera panned down to Artie, he gave a shy wave and said hello.
"I thought you were a senior," Jacob puzzled.
"Optical illusion," Artie said, stiffly, annoyed to be the subject of this strange documentary he didn't sign on to be part of. A true professional would obtain written consent. "The chair adds a year."
Tina was giving him that pained look he knew all too well, and he knew why. It was kind of a sore subject for him. Even though he wasn't ready to graduate this year, he remembered that in another world, this would have been the year he would have graduated. Artie was rightfully a member of the class of 2012, not 2013. He was Mike's age, not Tina's. He didn't usually go around reminding people of that, though. Then it would lead to rehashing the whole story, including the specifics surrounding his accident, and random people didn't need to be privy to all that. It had taken him two years to even explain to Tina that he'd been in an accident. (And she'd had to ask him first.)
So, when he said that the chair added a year, the chair literally had done just that. It added a year to his educational career. But now that Glee Club was so important to him, he was grateful for that extra year. He wasn't ready to say goodbye it all just yet.
"Any of you seen Quinn Fabray?" Jacob asked, looking specifically at Artie, since it was common knowledge that she'd lived with his family for several months.
"M.I.A." Artie wished he knew where she was. He hadn't had time to check the back of the school to see if the Skanks still hung out there, undetected by everyone except Mr. Kidney the janitor, and smoked together before school.
As Artie, Tina, and Mike crowded around Mike's locker, they happened to get a front row seat to Finn's unfortunate encounter with several of his football teammates and the first slushie of the year.
"Taste the rainbow, glee-iatch!"
Mike opened his locker again with a huge sigh and pulled out a towel for Finn. Artie kept towels in his locker too, though he'd been fortunate enough never to have been slushied. As a general rule, people were afraid to touch him because of the chair. It worked in his favor. If he ever got hit with a slushie, his messed up body would react extremely poorly to the cold, and they'd all be sorry they ever did it.
"Here you go, dude," Mike said, approaching Finn as he wiped multi-colored slush out of his eyes. "Hope you remembered a change of clothes, too. Rough start to day one. That's what we get for being in Glee Club, I guess."
"Yeah, well... I'm not quitting," Finn said, graciously accepting the towel as Tina and Artie joined them, too. "And don't any of you quit. We're down a few members. Puck's begging Lauren but she won't come back."
"Not really a loss there," Tina said, glancing down and catching a dirty look from Artie. "What?"
"We'll take whoever we can get!"
Artie was kind of on edge, admittedly, because he missed Sam, was concerned about Quinn, and was baffled by Mercedes. Mercedes had already ignored him that morning when he'd tried to catch up with her in the parking lot. She was busy with her new football player boyfriend, Shane, and Artie wondered if she'd even bother to show up to Glee rehearsal that afternoon.
"Well, we have eleven for sure," Finn went on, continuing to nonchalantly wipe off the sticky syrup that was dripping down his neck. "Me, Rachel, you guys, Puck, Santana, Britt, Mercedes, Kurt, Blaine..."
"Provided Puck stays out of trouble, Brittany and Santana don't get sick of us, and we don't lose Mercedes." Artie wasn't typically such a pessimist but he felt like one today. He didn't even know where he belonged, now that everyone he cared about had someone else.
"Why would we lose Mercedes?" Finn asked.
"Because." Artie shifted nervously in his seat, as the other three eyed him. "Because she's, I don't know... distracted? By this new guy none of us even know. I'm just wondering if she'll be too busy for us now. Relationships do crazy things to people."
He didn't exactly mean to look at Tina when he said that, but it didn't matter because she pretended not to notice and Mike genuinely didn't notice.
"I do know Shane," Finn corrected him. "We met at football camp this summer. He's one of my best offensive linemen. He transferred from Belleville, actually, and he knows Matt Rutherford!"
"Well, there you go!" Tina exclaimed. "A Glee connection already. Let's have Mercedes recruit Shane!"
"Can he sing though?" Artie couldn't keep these skeptical statements from just flying out of his mouth.
"More importantly, can he dance?" added Mike.
"He's gotta be better than me," Finn said, as the rest shared a laugh over that. "I've seen his footwork on the field. I'm sure he can be taught, Mike, and you're a good teacher."
"Who are we talking about?" Rachel asked, stepping up to Finn, her head comically coming up to just his chest when they stood side by side. She craned her neck to gaze up at him, adoringly.
"Shane," Tina supplied, as Rachel looked dumbfounded. "Mercedes' new guy? We were talking about recruiting him for Glee Club. We're down to eleven."
"We are?" Rachel blinked. "I know you're excluding Quinn and Sam in that count. Who else?"
"Lauren," said Tina.
It should be fairly easy to get one more," Rachel reasoned, clearly not distraught over the loss of Lauren Zizes. "Let's be a little more selective. We should make sure we find someone talented."
"Not too talented, though, right?" Tina couldn't resist. "Wouldn't want someone else stealing your solos."
"Well, it is my senior year," Rachel reminded her, getting all puffed up now. "And I do need an edge if I want to get into NYADA. Did you know they only take twelve incoming freshmen each year? Twelve. But, they do a regular mixer for prospective students, and this year the Mid-West's top talent is rubbing elbows down at the Dayton Doubletree on Thursday night. Kurt and I are going so we can check out the competish."
"Still not reason enough for you to take all the solos," Tina argued. "At least give me Sectionals."
"Why should I give you anything?" Rachel fired back. "If you want a solo at Sectionals, just like anyone else, you have to earn it."
Finn quickly inserted himself between the girls, before a cat-fight broke out. Artie knew Tina was especially sensitive, when it came to Glee club solos. But as long as she got featured at Sectionals, she'd probably settle down enough to just let Rachel have the rest. But if she didn't get at least one moment in the spotlight? Then Artie had a feeling Tina was headed for a breakdown.
As for Artie, he wouldn't mind another Sectionals feature. Getting to perform 'Safety Dance' at last year's competition had been epic. But if he had to step aside and make way for new talent, then he would do it. Besides, as they'd pointed out to Jacob, Artie was just a Junior. He'd still have another year to shine. (Unless of course a crop of newbies came along and ruined that for him.)
"Whoa, what's going on here?" Puck joined the group then, noticing the way Finn was right in the middle of Tina and Rachel. His eyebrows went way up. "Careful now, Finn, I wouldn't advise that. That's a whole lot of crazy right there."
"Watch it," Mike warned him, scowling.
Before Finn could respond, they were interrupted by the grand entrance that just about everyone in the whole school had been waiting for.
The crowd in the hall parted like the Red Sea, making space for the once-missing-in-action Quinn Fabray. As far as Artie was concerned, he still didn't know where Quinn was and he had no idea who this was.
Her hair looked like what Brittany described the other day at the pool party – like a pink Jolly Rancher that fell in an ashtray. She wore a black crop top with lots of chains, a black studded belt, and a long tie-dyed black and white skirt. She'd had her nose pierced. And, as she passed, Artie found himself looking at a very strange tattooed face on her lower back that looked exactly like Ryan Seacrest.
"Quinn!" Artie blurted out her name, catching her attention just long enough to stop her in her tracks.
But before he could say anything else, Santana and Brittany pushed their way through the crowd and approached her first. They were just close enough for Artie to overhear the conversation.
"Quinn, look, this is our Senior year and frankly, being on the Cheerios isn't the same without you," Santana said.
"You guys are such suckers for going back to Coach Sylvester year after year," Quinn said, her raspy voice startling Artie a bit. He assumed all the smoking was doing that to her.
"Come on, screw her," Santana said, after looking over her shoulder, should Coach Sylvester be anywhere in earshot. "This is for us. We could win two Nationals championships this year. We joined the Cheerios together, we joined Glee Club together. We all slept with Puckerman the same year..." Brittany nodded vigorously in agreement. "We're like besties for life."
"Yeah, come on, Quinn," Brittany pleaded. "You know, we used to be like the Three Musketeers. And now Santana and I are like Almond Joy and you're like a Jolly Rancher that fell in the ash tray."
"You guys never understood the pressure I was under," Quinn said, indignantly. "It sucked. I'm not interested in the boys or the makeup or the polyester outfits."
"Look, I've got a bar of soap and a bottle of peroxide with your name on it in my locker," Santana huffed impatiently. "Come on, Quinn, you can't break up the Unholy Trinity."
"People grow apart," Quinn said, lowering a round pair of sunglasses, even though they were indoors. "Deal with it. I've got new friends now, and they accept me for who I am."
And she kept walking, not sparing Artie or anyone else another look. The rest of the Glee Club stood, dumbfounded as they watched her go.
"I'm going to talk to her after school today," Rachel said. "I think the, um, the Skanks still hang our under the bleachers after school..."
"I'll go with you," Artie said, quickly, thinking that he'd have a much better chance than Rachel of getting through to Quinn.
...
"Mr. Schue, why are all of our trophies in the middle of the room?" Tina asked, as the Glee kids made their way into the choir room for their first after-school rehearsal of the year.
"I was sure that our Nationals trophy would grow during the summer," Brittany commented, as she bent down to examine the tiny twelfth place trophy.
"I want this image burned into your mind. This is what the difference between first..." (Mr. Schue picked up their small trophy.) "... and twelfth place looks like. It's also what it feels like."
"Are you planning on bumming us out all year long?" Puck asked, as everyone took their usual seats and Artie turned his chair around in the space left for him on the front row.
"No," said Mr. Schuester. "I'm planning on pushing you harder than you've ever been pushed. We made it to Nationals last year. This year I'm not gonna let anything or anyone stop us from winning at all. No regrets."
"Yeah, you know what I regret?" Mercedes asked, appearing in the doorway as Artie breathed a sigh of relief, glad to see she hadn't abandoned them. "Being the laughingstock of the show-choir world."
"And that's saying something," Artie said, smiling as Mercedes took her seat beside him. It was the first time he'd seen her apart from Shane all day.
"Mercedes has a point," Kurt commented, from his usual place next to Blaine on the back row. "Finn and Rachel's 'the kiss that missed' already has twenty-thousand views on Youtube, and the comments section is just full of pithy banter like 'why is that T-Rex eating the Jew?'"
Finn looked over his shoulder as his stepbrother and scowled. "How many times do we have to apologize for that?"
"Yeah, no more apologizing," Rachel added, tucking her arm in Finn's and casting a dirty look over her shoulder at Kurt, too.
"The school hates us even more now," Mike couldn't resist pointing out.
"Which is why we have to work even harder this year to recruit new members," Mr. Schuester went on. "We're three men down."
"Yeah, only because Puckerman couldn't convince Zizes to stay," Santana commented.
"She's the one that got away," Puck said, wistfully. "Really, really slowly."
"No one's gonna join, Mr. Schue," Mercedes said, and Artie figured this meant they couldn't count on her asking Shane. If he were some kind of performer, he was sure Mercedes would have already asked him, seeing as they spent all their spare time together.
"They will," Mr. Schue countered. "All they need is a little inspiration… and I happen to have some, courtesy of Al Motta of Motta's Pianos. Bring them in, guys. You guys are gonna love this."
Three purple pianos were suddenly wheeled into the choir room by some of their unusually helpful band guys. As the Glee kids exchanged troubled looks, Artie wondered where Mr. Schue got stuff like this. Last time he'd had a big idea, he'd somehow scored eleven wheelchairs for a big wheelchair number, plus a bunch of ramps for the stage. Meanwhile, Artie had to ask the school to use their bake sale funds for an handicap ramp to make the school auditorium accessible and ADA-compliant.
"Whoah, wow, okay," said Blaine, grinning. "If there are purple pianos involved in this, I am on board."
Mr. Schuester hopped on top of one of the pianos and addressed them. "These pianos were repossessed from foreclosed homes," he explained, because of course they were. "They're cast-offs, just like all of us. Used, in need of repairs…"
"But they're still capable of making beautiful music," Tina said, her tone dreamy, as she too became inspired by the symbolism.
"Right." Mr. Schuester's eyes danced. "So Mr. Motta, as a lover of the arts, agreed to donate them to Glee. I fixed them up, painted them purple, and the Purple Piano Project was born. Now I'm going to be placing these grape-y uprights randomly throughout the school and whenever you see one, no matter what you're doing, I want you to sing a song. Now use this assignment to attract kids who are just like you. Kids who can't keep the music inside. Those are the kinds of additions that we need to win it all this year..."
Artie was struggling to feel excited. He didn't want a bunch of new recruits. He just wanted Sam and Quinn back. And since Sam was miles and miles away, he'd settle for just having Quinn. She'd make twelve. She was all they needed — pink hair, weird tattoo, and all.
"Now for many of you, this is your last year," Mr. Schuester continued, addressing Rachel, Finn, Mike, Puck, Mercedes, Santana, Brittany, and Kurt. "Let's make it special."
Artie couldn't imagine the year being special without Quinn, who was presently have a smoke with her newfound "friends." She'd abandoned her old friends and her old life without warning. What had happened to her over the summer? She'd been in a good place at the end of last year...
It wouldn't be the same without Quinn. Artie was determined to bring her back.