Disclamier: Glee, and it's characters are property of Fox. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental
Constructive Criticism is appreciated, whinny babies will be ignored. This my first fan fiction that I'm using to work out my writers block so I can get back to writing the stuff that pays the bills.
Ocean's Twelve
Prologue
My name is Pamela Ocean. When my wife of six months was offered a job that was described as a wonderful opportunity, in the town of Lima, Ohio. She took it. Seeing as I'm a board certified English and Music teacher, she figured I could get a job anywhere. See April Munday, my wife was previously a sergeant with the Chicago PD and I was a piano and creative writing instructor at the Chicago High School for the Arts. Now I love April with all my heart but I could throttle her for moving us to this backwater, homophobic, arts hating hell hole just so she didn't have to get shot at every day.
Let me explain why after living here for a year my dear spouse is still in the doghouse. First would be the people. Exhibit A, Russell Fabray. President of the local branch of the bank that my family had been banking at for more than four decades. His self righteous, homophobic brand of Christianity was so loud that he kicked his pregnant daughter Quinn out, more on Quinn in a minute. He was then caught by my wife sneaking out of a no tell motel with some "tattooed freak". His wife's words which I heard while she was sharing at an AA meeting. Those of Russell's ilk are more the norm than the exception here. We thought we were in an accepting place when the first neighbors we met were Hiram and Leroy Berry, a very nice couple with a lovely daughter named Rachel, again more about Rachael later, but the Berry's started to regal us with all the senseless bigotry and homophobia they had put up with in this town. It made such an impact that April and I both decided that we would introduce each other as friends from college and we rolled our pride flag up and shoved it as far back in the closet as we could.
The second reason would be our jobs. April, even though she is now a Lieutenant and doesn't have to work the streets nearly as much as Chicago, a good portion of the force are either homophobic rednecks or as my wife puts it "Barney Fifes" who shouldn't even have guns. The school I work at isn't much better. I have the pleasure of teaching English classes at McKinley High School, home of the Titans who haven't won a football game in over a decade from what I have been told and the Cheerios, the fifteen time National Cheerleading Champions, whose coach is crazy with a capital C. McKinley is also the home to the most unchecked bullying in the nation in my estimation. There is a defined social order that is strictly enforced with slushies. I still don't know how the school gets away with having a four flavor Slushie machine in the cafeteria but they do and I haven't seen any of the students drinking them. Just throwing them. None of the teachers really try to stop it. In fact during my first few months at the school I tried several times to bring the bullying under control only to get lectures from other teachers and the principal, Mr. Figgins, about not interfering with the way things work there. The students didn't like it much either, so I got a first hand introduction to a slushie facial. Even though most of the teachers are just filling space and collecting a paycheck, there are a few that are just a little worse than others. Enter William Shuester, Spanish teacher and Glee club coach. I really want to know if he is certified to teach Spanish or if they just stuck him there to plug a hole. As far as glee club coach, I still want to know how he talked himself into that job. I got the previous coach, Ryerson, arrested and fired all in the same day because he was dealing and using marijuana, as well as having an inappropriate relationship with a student. I was going to ask to speak with Figgins about the job but Shuester beat me to it. In the year I've been here Shuester has proven to me that he has ulterior motives for wanting the job. He is about as involved and connected to his students as a blind man is connected to a silent movie. I would be remiss if I said all the teachers at McKinley High were horrible. Coach Sue Slyvester, even though she is crazy, is totally committed to not just her Cheerio's but to other students, even though she would completely deny it. Another positive is her absolute hate for Shuester, which maybe I can use this coming year as a way to build a friendship with her through our shared dislike of the man.
In a normal world, the teachers at Mckinley High would be enough for me to tell April to hell with our marriage and head back to Chicago. Well I guess the world isn't normal because as I got to know the students I found that I couldn't just walk away. First there is David Karofsky, a football player and with a case of gay panic so bad that to those paying attention there is a huge flashing neon sign over his head that says "I'm Gay!" To those not paying attention he is one of the biggest bullies in school. Next is Quinn Fabray, High Bitch in Charge, and head Cheerio, at least until she got not only thrown out of her home for being pregnant by her dad. You know that dick Russell Fabray, I've already mentioned, but off the Cheerios by Sue. She says that another student Noah "Puck" Puckerman got her drunk on wine coolers and they had sex. Noah confessed to me she only had two, and I believe him. Why because Quinn has the second worst case of gay panic I have ever seen. David being the worst. Brittany S. Pearce, cheerleader, dancer and next on my list of students I couldn't abandon. I had her as a sophomore and learned really quickly that she was a world class dancer already but had a learning disability so her grades were not great. I gave her an iq test and her math and science reasoning skills tested out in the top five percent of everyone ever tested. So I tutored her and she immediately saw improvement in her grades but she still played dumb for her friends, especially the Cheerio's. If I couldn't abandon Brittany then I couldn't abandon Santana Lopez either. They were almost like a set, where you saw one, you saw the other. Together with Quinn they were known as the Unholy Trinity. Santana intrigued me, because even though she claimed to be a badass from Lima Heights, one of the bad neighborhoods in the town, her mother was an attorney and her dad a surgeon and they lived in probably the priciest neighborhoods in Lima. She was also fiercely protective of Brittany and I won't be surprised when I get the invitation to their wedding. I could go on forever naming students who grabbed my heart and wouldn't let it go. There was Tina Cohen-Chang, with her fake stutter. Artie Abrams, who was in a wheelchair, Mike Chang who was living out the typical Asian teenage years with parents who already mapped out his life to the retirement home he would go to but was an amazing dancer. Then there were the students I couldn't stand like Mercedes Jones, who had an amazing voice but would have been shown the door her first week at a school like Chicago Arts due to her diva attitude. Kurt Hummell who made himself a target because he was out, proud, and didn't have an off switch. Then there was Finn Hudson, who was the golden boy quarterback who thought his on shit didn't stink, what he wanted he got and dumb enough to think that getting off in a hot tub with his girlfriend got her pregnant. When the truth came out a fight broke out in the choir room between him and Puck only for Shuester to sweep the whole thing under the rug just like the "F" he got in my class which magically turned into a "D" so he could still play football this coming year.
Finally, I come to the person who is going to provide me redemption for being a dick to all my students at Chicago Arts and joy even though I'm in this forsaken town. Rachel Barbara Berry, like I said earlier she is the daughter of our two gay neighbors and is probably the most insanely talented musician I have met since graduating from college with my Master's in Music Education. She is also the most bullied person I have ever met. Even those at the bottom of the social ladder at McKinley treat her like gum stuck to their shoe. I heard her on multiple occasions advocating for things like vocal warm-ups, picking their set list for competition so they could begin to practice, and worse yet using the vast knowledge of music that she had to help pick the best songs for others to sing. Granted she is a diva but in the numerous one on one conversations we have had since meeting, I can honestly say she deserved to be a diva.
So when I put together all the pieces and realized that Shuester was one of the biggest bullies in that school by playing favorites, allowing some students to bully others in class or glee meetings, while telling others he was going to send them to the office for being rude and disrespectful for politely but confidently disagreeing with him. That was it for me William Shuester had to go.
This is the story of how I, Pamela Ocean and twelve students and teachers got one over on Will Shuester and changed McKinley High for the better.
