Day 6: The Story – Brandi Carlile

Hair combed. Tie straight. Pants pressed. Shoes shined.

In other words? Armor on.

Blaine followed his usual routine of preparing for the day. Since coming to Dalton Academy, he found comfort in the sameness of it all. It helped him to maintain the façade he had adopted. Blaine Anderson: lead singer of the Warblers, star student, all-around favorite guy. Nobody wanted to hurt him. Nobody wanted to call him names or make him anxious every time he turned a corner. Sure, Dalton had a no tolerance policy for bullying, and he had never seen anyone try to break that rule…but it didn't hurt to be careful. His confidence was his shield.

So many stories of where I've been
And how I got to where I am
But these stories don't mean anything
When you've got no one to tell them to

The Dalton students may have been well-behaved, but they were also just as prone to gossip as any other group of teenagers. There were furtive looks and bits of whispers in passing – why the new guy transferred mid-semester ("I heard he got beaten up at a dance"), why he had a medical excuse for gym the first few weeks ("I heard he had three cracked ribs that hadn't healed yet"), and so on, and so on. Some of it was true; most of it was not.

It would have been nice to have someone he could trust with the truth.

The day passed like so many others. He hurried out of his last class to get to the common room. Wes had called an impromptu performance of Katy Perry's "Teenage Dream" with the Warblers for the afternoon (Jeff had seen it on Wes' calendar three weeks earlier), and Blaine was scheduled to sing lead, of course. It was time to put on his show face and be the guy everyone expected him to be. He raced towards the stairs, not noticing the stranger until he heard a soft, "Excuse me."

You see the smile that's on my mouth
It's hiding the words that don't come out
And all of my friends who think that I'm blessed
They don't know my head is a mess

Blaine zipped the suitcase shut, checking once more to be sure he hadn't left anything behind. The closet and dresser drawers were all empty. The posters were down from the walls, and the desktop was bare. Tomorrow, he'd walk into McKinley as its newest student, never to be a Dalton Academy man again. He was sad in some ways, but he knew it was the right thing to do.

Walking slowly out the door, he realized that maybe he was leaving something behind, but it wasn't something he needed anymore.

His strides down the McKinley hallway the next day were certain and sure. He wasn't the frightened boy who hid behind a blazer and tie here. That was how life worked – in a few years, he wouldn't be the boy walking down this hall in a bow tie and yellow sunglasses, either. But for now, he was here, and he was moving towards the person who had made him feel like himself for the first time in his life.

And they don't know what I've been through like you do
And I was made for you