Glee Fanfiction
I just don’t think any of us really understood how far we’d take it in the end.
-
The tile floor of the hallway is cold underneath my legs and I count along in my head to the ticking of my watch.
one, two, three, four…
My hand is resting on my abdomen. If I let myself think about it, I can still feel her kicking just under the skin. But I don’t think about it.
ten, eleven, twelve…
I’m staring at my feet, my legs stretched halfway out into the hallway, so I don’t notice he’s there until he rolls to a stop right next to my sandals.
fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen…
“Hey,” he says, throwing off my counting.
I don’t need to look up to know who he is. McKinley High is a small school, and of all the disabled kids, there’s only one permanently wheelchair bound.
“Abrams.”
“So I heard that you’re going to start meeting with Ms. Pillsbury during third period on Tuesdays and Thursdays.”
I look up sharply, glaring at him. “I don’t know how that’s any of your business.”
“You’re not the only person in this school who talks with our beloved counselor on a regular basis.” His mouth twists itself into a grimace as he runs his hands over the armrests of his chair. “There’s a group of us, actually. We hang out, on weekends mostly, sometimes after school. If you want to come, meet me by the gym on Friday after classes let out.”
I don’t say anything, so he wheels away, leaving me alone with the cold empty hallway and the ticking of my watch.
one, two, three…
-
I think that if I had the energy left to care, I wouldn’t go. But no one’s waiting for me to come home these days, so it’s not like I have anywhere else to be.
Artie meets me by the gym and with him is an Asian girl who seems tiny underneath the heavy dark clothing she’s wearing. She doesn’t say anything to me, just stares, eyes wide under heavily shadowed lids.
I’m in the back seat of her car before we’re really introduced.
“This is Tina,” he says, and she flinches, like hearing her own name is physically painful. “She’s after school, every other Thursday. We hang out in her garage, because her parents don’t…aren’t around much.”
Tina shrugs a little, but keeps her eyes focused on the road.
The rest of the car ride is silent enough for me to hear the tick of my watch, and I count three hundred twelve until we’re at Tina’s house.
We’re not the first ones there - in fact, we’re the last ones. When we arrive, Tina scurries off to a corner, settling herself in a wooden rocking chair and curling up, making herself look even smaller.
There are three people sitting on the ratty couch - an Asian guy at one end and a black guy at the other. Stretched between them is a small, delicate-looking boy who has his feet propped up in the Asian kid’s lap and his head is lying in the black boy’s.
I recognize them from the football team - they’re names are like Mark or Max or something else as generic and unspecific as to be unmemorable. The Asian one has his hands curled around the small boy’s ankles and the black guy has his fingers tangled in the kid’s hair. The picture they make just screams possessive.
Across a large wooden box that seems to be serving as some sort of coffee table, a large black girl is seated on a loveseat, making notes in a spiral notebook. Artie wheels himself over to her and she pauses in her writing to talk to him, but their conversation is soft enough that I can’t hear what they’re saying.
I go unnoticed (and I wonder if my emotional emptiness has finally made my physical body evaporate like air, how wonderful a dream that is) until a loud - and unfortunately familiar - voice shrieks, “What is SHE doing here?”
The black girl looks up at me, the three guys on the couch turn their heads in my direction, and I wonder if Tina ever stopped staring at me.
I used to make people’s heads turn every time I walked down the hall, but this feels like being put under a microscope and scrutinized, in a way that is extremely personal and almost violating.
Only Artie doesn’t look at me; instead he turns to face the person who yelled. “Chillax, Rachel. She’s one of us now.”
Rachel Berry, who, just seven months ago, was my own personal punching bag, is striding angrily across the concrete floor, arms folded across her chest. She looks pissed and I don’t blame her for hating me.
“I most certainly will not ‘chillax’ to use your crude terminology. She made my life a living hell, Artie. Surely you remember the sting of a slushie to the face? She was never nice to any of us, not once. She’ll never be ‘one of us’!”
Her words almost sting, but they’re true; I was a bitch. I probably still am a bitch. Instinctively, my hand curls up over my (empty) abdomen.
The black girl’s eyes shift towards where my hand in now resting and an odd look comes over her face.
“Let’s hear her out, Rache. We can always kick her out if she’s still that person.”
Berry doesn’t look mollified in the slightest, but she does shut up and drop into a fold-up chair with a huff.
With much more grace, I seat myself in another fold-up on the other side of the box-table-thing. I can feel the heat of the other girl’s glare along my skin.
Artie rolls up beside me. “I suppose introductions are in order, yeah? You already know Rachel; she’s lunch on Mondays. That’s Mercedes over there.”
The black girl cocks her head to the side, “I’ve got sixth on Tuesdays.”
“I’m Kurt,” the small boy rolls on his side, without removing himself from the two laps he’s occupying. “Second period, Fridays. And these two hunky boys are Mike” -the Asian boy nods - “and Matt.” The black guy does the same.
“They don’t actually meet with Ms. P; Kurt just drags them along to these things.” Artie’s smirking and I wonder who actually possesses whom in that relationship.
“And I’m before school on Wednesdays,” Artie finishes for the group. I notice he’s rubbing his palms against the grips on his chair.
Everyone is looking at me, waiting.
“I’m Quinn,” my voice is softer than it used to be, but I haven’t been talking much recently. “I’m during third period, Tuesdays and Thursdays.”
“Oh man, she’s got you twice a week? Bummer.” Mercedes is shaking her head and everyone is nodding in agreement, adding their own comments or memories from when they used to be ‘twice a week’ with Ms. Pillsbury.
The low hum of conversation drowns out my watch, so I look at them instead, wondering how they all got to be here.
-
These group meetings gradually become habit and I find myself spending weekends hiding away in Tina’s garage. Slowly I begin to learn their stories and I collect their words like precious bits of colored glass that I keep hidden away from the real world. I take them out when I’m by myself and look at the beauty that I’ve discovered (that discovered me). In turn, I share my story with them; awkwardly, haltingly, the words come out, bits and pieces of the life I used to have.
I had friends, before. But now those people feel like plastic dolls compared to how real the kids in this garage are. They each feel so many emotions, so loudly and so passionately, that sometimes I wonder if they could fill up the emptiness inside me (the emptiness that’s shaped like pink dresses and hair ribbons and all the things that I didn’t know I wanted in my life).
Santana, Brittany, all of Sue’s Cheerios, would never understand. This group of outcasts is as broken as I am. They make me feel like a real person again.
(I don’t let myself think about Finn and the way he always felt real.)
-
Kurt talks loudly about things that don’t matter, things that are inappropriate, and things that are meant to get a rise out of someone.
“Rachel, sweetheart, do you think you could avoid getting dressed in the dark so I won’t have the urge to push you into traffic every time I see that hideous sweater?”
“Don’t be jealous just because the two most well-hung boys in Lima would rather fuck me than you, Mercedes.”
“Really, Quinn? Empire waist dresses? It’s like you ran up and down the halls screaming ‘I’m pregnant!’ Way to be obvious.”
The things that really matter though, he doesn’t talk about very much. When he does, it’s quiet, contrasting everything else about his personality.
“My dad kind of went off the rails after my mom died. We don’t talk much.” Ever is what his eyes tell me.
We’re looking through each other’s make up bags on the love seat. Matt and Mike are on the couch, having some sort of strange conversation that doesn’t appear to involve words, but every now and then their heads will turn towards us. I wonder if they’re looking at Kurt or me, but I don’t ask.
“Being different in Lima is hard,” he says softly, “which I’m sure you’ve figured out by now. But I’ve been different my whole life.” He’s turning over a bottle of concealer, looking at the ingredients.
“Eventually I just went looking for an outlet.” His eyes flicker over at the bigger boys. “Most of the football players are bastards. Karofsky, Azimio, they made me feel like a cheap whore.”
He dabs a little lip-gloss on the back of his hand and I pretend not to look at the bruises on his wrists.
“Matt and Mike, though, they care, in their own weird way. And they’re just as screwed up as the rest of us, so we fit well together.”
He looks at me and the quiet softness is gone from his eyes as he leans forward, “Matt is huge, too. And Mike isn’t as big, but damn if the boy doesn’t know how to use what he’s got. When we fuck it is just the most delicious pain I’ve ever felt.”
Kurt is back to his usual mouthy self and I can tell he’s not going to be sharing anything more now, so I nod and ask to borrow some of his nail polish.
-
“Getting pregnant was never part of the plan. And now…I don’t even have a plan any more.”
-
Tina doesn’t speak, but she does sing sometimes.
When Rachel plugs her iPod into a ratty old pair of speakers and we listen to strange playlist mixes of Broadway classics and Top 40 hits and eighties’ pop (which definitely shouldn’t work, but somehow does), I can see her lips moving quietly across the room.
This weekend, though, Rachel isn’t here and so we’re drifting without her music. Tina is curled up on the floor, resting her back against the couch and I scoot over until I’m sitting behind her.
She starts when I place my hand on her head, looking warily at me over her shoulder for a long moment. She seems to decide that I’m harmless and leans back against the couch.
I card my fingers through her hair, which is thick and soft, a dark, gorgeous black streaked with red this week. I can feel her relax gradually, tilting her head back and sighing softly.
I’m absent-mindedly pulling strands of hair into loose braids, when I hear it - a bright, clear voice singing quietly and I realize that it’s Tina.
“What are you singing?” I ask softly, not pausing in my movements.
“Oh, I d-d-didn’t realize that y-you could-d hear m-me. I’ll s-s-stop.”
“It sounded beautiful. You should sing louder so we can all hear it.”
She pulls her head away so she can bury her face against her knees. “N-no one wants to hear m-me sing-g. That’s r-ridiculous.”
“I want to hear you sing.” I move off the couch so I’m sitting next to her on the floor. “I bet Artie wants to hear you sing too.” The tips of her ears burn a bright red.
“My own parents don’t want to hear me sing,” she whispers into her jeans, and I have to lean forward to hear her. “Why would any of you?”
I tug her arm away from where she’s hugging her knees and grab her hand, lacing our fingers together.
“Mercedes and Kurt and Mike and Matt want to hear you sing too. And if you don’t want to sing alone, I’ll sing with you. Just teach me the words.”
She’s staring at me, fear and hope battling in her eyes, when she squeezes my hand and takes a deep breath.
“If I am lost for a day try to find me, but if I don’t come back, then I won’t look behind me…”
The rest of room stills. Tina can’t see it because her eyes are clenched tightly shut, her hand tightly gripping mine now. I look around the room and I am sure that my expression is as amazed as everyone else’s.
I don’t recognize the song, but apparently Artie does, because he chimes in on the chorus, “Calendar girl, who’s in love with the world, stay alive.”
Tina freezes and her eyes snap open to stare at the boy. The silence stretches across a few long moments as they gaze at each other, before she relaxes, an almost smile curving the corners of her lips up.
“I dreamed I was dying, as I so often do, and when I awoke I was sure it was true…”
We spend the afternoon singing to and with each other instead of talking. It’s not quite happiness, not the way I remember happiness feeling, but there’s a connection there - creating, solidifying a bond between all of us.
-
“When they told me it was a girl, I was terrified. It wasn’t just a parasite or a little bit of extra weight anymore; I was really carrying a baby - a little girl, a daughter. Everything seemed so screwed up, and I didn’t know how to be a mom.
“Finn was so enthusiastic about the whole thing. He did more research than I think he’s ever done in his entire life, about daycares that would watch the baby while we were at school. And there’s even scholarship money available to college students with kids. It was all so overwhelming, but he would get the most beautiful smiles on his face when he talked about our baby and our future.
“He gave me this baby blanket. It was his when he was a baby. I feel selfish because I still have that blanket. I sleep with it under my pillow.”
-
Rachel doesn’t come around for a few weeks and her absence feels strange. True, she’s mouthy and annoying, but the room seems too quiet without her. She still hates me, which I probably deserve, but a tentative truce was in the works when she suddenly disappears.
The next time I see her it’s a Friday afternoon and she’s standing in the parking lot covered in raw egg.
“Rachel?” I ask quietly.
Her head whips up, eyes wide and scared like a frightened animal.
“He hates me,” she whispers.
“Rachel, what happened?”
“He used me and…and he hates me.” She’s staring at her hands, at the egg yolk that’s pooling there like bright yellow blood.
I take her to the only place I can think of - Tina’s garage. She lives only a minute or two from the school, but by the time I’m pulling Rachel out of the back seat of my car she’s shaking like a leaf in a hurricane (maybe it feels like a hurricane inside her head right now).
“I don’t know what happened,” I say immediately as the door opens; everyone freezes. “I just found her like this.”
Mercedes comes over to grab Rachel’s other arm and we lead her to the couch as Tina runs into the house to get wet washcloths. She’s still shaking, horribly, violently, as she sits between us, still staring at her hands.
Kurt kneels on the floor in front of her, reaching out to place his hand on her knee.
“Sweetheart, tell us what happened.”
“Jesse,” she whispers brokenly, “Jesse St. James. He did this to me.”
She turns her head so she can look at me with wide eyes; I can read fear and anger and pain written all over them.
“He said he loved me, but it was a lie. I thought he loved me, I thought he understood me, and I…I loved him.”
“I loved him,” she repeats, and something seems to snap inside of her. “I loved him and he hates me. He was using me and he hates me, just like everyone in this school, in every school, in the whole fucking world. He hates me and I loved him!”
She’s shrieking now, sobbing and screaming and doubling over as if the emotional pain has created a real wound in her chest. I’ve seen Rachel Berry angry and sad before, but this is a true emotional breakdown happening in my arms; I want to feel lost and overwhelmed, but this isn’t about me now, it’s about Rachel and her pain.
Before I know what’s going on she’s pulling at the sleeves of her sweater, yanking them up, screaming something about needing the release and for the first time I see the scars marring her wrists, neat little red rows, perfectly spaced like the lines on notebook paper.
She’s so out of it that she’s ready to attack her arms with her fingernails, wanting to claw off her skin and bleed out her pain and heartbreak, but we won’t let her do that. Not here where we have no gauze or band-aids or antiseptic to prevent infection. In her own space and time she can use her razor to make neat little lines, but her nails will rip her skin to shreds, which won’t heal nicely or be easy to hide.
It takes all of us - Kurt and Mercedes holding her hands, Matt and Mike holding her legs, and me just holding her - and we will all be bruised and scratched for our efforts, but eventually she’s screamed and cried and thrashed and sobbed out all of her energy. Tina’s there then with wet cloths and we do our best to wash off the physical reminders of this afternoon, while Rachel’s collapsed on the couch.
She looks small and broken lying there, crying almost silently, mouthing the words, “He hates me, everyone hates me…”
Gently, I tug on her knee-highs, pulling them down to her ankles and revealing even more lines of scars. She doesn’t flinch when I run my fingers over them.
In time with the ticking of my watch, I begin to count them: one, two, three, four…
(I don’t ask how many of them were caused by me, because deep down, I know.)
-
“I was supposed to go to the Chastity Ball with my dad, wearing one of those stupid white dresses. It was the dress that gave me away. I’d gained too much baby weight and my dad came in and took one look and he knew.
“He knew that I had made a huge mistake, that all of his religious propaganda and threats of hellfire and brimstone hadn’t done a thing. He knew that I needed my dad to hold me and help me and tell me that I wasn’t the sinner I felt like.
“He knew and he threw me out on the curb anyway. My mom didn’t even try to stop him.”
-
I don’t think Matt or Mike has ever spoken to me in the time we’ve known each other. I know they talk, simply because I’ve seen them murmuring to each other, whispering to Kurt. But everything I know about them I’ve been told by other people.
“M-Mike’s my c-cousin. Our m-moms’ are s-s-sisters,” Tina says when I ask about their shared last name.
“No offense, Tee, but his parents are messed up.” Artie is flipping through the music on his iPod.
But Tina just shrugs. “All of our p-parents are m-messed up.”
I nod in agreement, “What did you mean by that Artie?”
“Let’s just say that those bruises he has,” Artie looks up from his playlists, raising his eyebrows meaningfully, “Well, they’re not all from Kurt.”
The two football players also supply the group with our nicotine fixes and sometimes alcohol when the week has been particularly bad, because they’re the only ones who have decent fake ids and don’t look like eleven-year-old milkmaids. (I didn’t used to smoke, not when I was the perfect child and never when I was pregnant, but now it doesn’t seem to matter enough whether I do or don’t.)
“No, you’re right. They are always together,” Rachel says, matter-of-factly. “It’s a condition called codependency. I would bet money that they’ve never been apart for more than a few hours since they first met.”
She sighs and steals my lighter. “Must be nice, huh?”
Kurt arches a perfectly shaped brow at me. “They spend a lot of nights in my basement bedroom. Why? Did you want to hear details or something? Because you know I’m always willing to share those.”
He smirks and I shake my head.
“No, I was just wondering about Matt’s family. I mean, I heard about Mike’s and everything…”
“Oh,” Kurt says quietly and his face has gone strangely serious. “As far as I know, before we started fucking on a regular basis, Matt mostly slept at Mike’s house. He doesn’t talk about his family and I don’t ever ask.”
I wonder about him, about what could be so bad that he’d choose his best friend’s abusive parents over going home. But I don’t ever ask either.
Some things just shouldn’t be talked about.
-
“Living with the Hudsons was strange at first. I would wake up in the morning and briefly forget where I was and have a small freak out before everything would come rushing back. But Carole was so sweet to me. I think she was genuinely looking forward to becoming a grandmother.
“And Finn. What can I say about him? He was amazing. With me every step of the way. He bought this book of baby names and would spend hours looking through it.
“I loved him. So much, so much more than I’d ever loved anyone. He deserved so much better than me, because…I was lying to him. I really meant to tell him the truth. I was going to do it that night, after the game, his last game of the year. But then it was raining and some drunk teenagers ploughed into the side of our car and…everything was just gone.”
-
Surprisingly, of everyone in the group, I become closest with Mercedes. She is a diva, loud and opinionated and unafraid to tell anyone and everyone what she’s thinking. I love this about her - that I can say anything to her and I know she’ll be honest with me.
We bond over fashion, makeup, music, movies, and Kurt, the only boy we decide we need in our lives. We talk about religion and parents and the way we used to believe in both of those things. We share cigarettes and tequila (and I don’t think about the way it tastes like a secondhand kiss).
And on days that I’m feeling particularly listless, she puts my head in her lap and sings lullabies to me - how she knows I’m always about thinking my baby on those days, I’ll never know, but it’s like she can read my mind.
One day she shows me what she writes in that spiral notebook of hers. It’s just lists, pages and pages of lists of food - what kind of food, how many calories, and how much fat. The lists are broken up by date, some are marked by a bold “B” and some by a “P.”
I don’t say anything, just hold her hand and rest my head on her shoulder.
“Ms. P knows I have issues with my weight and self-image, but she doesn’t know about this. No one thinks that big girls can have eating disorders.” She shakes her head in disgust. “Everyone in that whole school - counselors, teachers, students - they’re all so fucking blind.”
I squeeze her hand tight. I hope she really can read my mind, can read everything that I don’t have the ability to say: that I think she’s beautiful, but I understand the need to do what she’s doing, the compulsion to count every calorie; that I remember the way it felt to hate your body and everything about it; that I don’t think any less of her - love her any less - for doing what she’s doing.
I curl up against her side. Her pulse is strong in my ear and I begin to count along with the powerful beats: one, two, three, four…
-
“I was in a coma for three weeks. When I woke up, they didn’t even need to tell me that I had lost her, I just knew. Because I was seven months along when the accident happened, they tried an emergency c-section, but there was too much trauma. They couldn’t save both me and the baby, so I got to live and she didn’t.
‘Then, they told me about Finn. They said that he went quickly, that at least he didn’t suffer. A part of me, a horribly selfish part, was glad that I never told him the truth. This way he died happy, thinking he was the father.
“After that, I didn’t have anything left anymore. I didn’t have a home, or a family, or friends, or love, or my little baby girl. I had…have nothing left but scars to remind me that it all really happened.”
-
On the surface, Artie looks sweet and gentle, and he is those things sometimes. But underneath, he’s got a lot of rage built up.
Most people underestimate him. Most people overlook him.
Some days it all becomes too much. All of his anger and rage comes spewing forth in a giant furious tirade that all we all are an audience too. He can yell and scream and rant for hours, and all of us will sit there and listen to every word, because we’re the only ones who will listen to him. Even Tina, who cries when teachers raise their voices, gives him every bit of her attention.
He usually starts with Ms. P or one of the teachers or students, someone who doesn’t get it and never will get it. Someone’s who insensitive, usually unintentionally, which just makes him madder, because, as he says, it just goes to show how much prejudice against disabled people is normalized in our culture.
Sometimes, his focus is broad. He rants about the hierarchy of high school, the public school system, the culture in general.
Most times, he narrows his focus in on himself. His parents won’t look at him anymore; his sister doesn’t speak to him. The school as a whole ignores him or bullies him.
“All because of this chair, this fucking chair that I’ll never be rid of. People don’t look at me and see Artie, they look and see a wheelchair-bound, disabled freak and I’ll never be anything more than that.” He’s pacing back and forth, angrily gripping at the wheels of his chair.
“Any dream I had before the accident is complete bullshit now. Look at me, I’ll never be a dancer or be taken seriously as a musician or an actor. I fucking hate it! I fucking hate everything! Some days I want to just end everything, put myself out of my fucking misery.”
“Why don’t you?” The words are out of my mouth before I can stop them, soft syllables breaking through the haze of smoke and anger.
Everyone freezes. Artie’s eyes are wide and trained on me.
I’m afraid for a minute that he’s going to yell at me, tell me I have no idea what I’m talking about, that I should keep my fucking mouth shut. Instead he runs a hand through his hair and looks down at his lap.
“I tried. Two years ago. I…wasn’t strong enough, though.”
“I t-tried t-too. I w-wasn’t able to g-go through with it,” Tina murmurs quietly from her corner of the couch, looking directly at Artie.
“We’ve all tried,” Mercedes says, “Some of us are just more passive about it than others.” She glances at me as she says that and I wonder if she somehow knows about the three days I refused to eat after I woke up in the hospital before the doctors threatened to put a feeding tube down my throat.
Rachel snorts. “Look at us, we’re all such losers that we can’t even kill ourselves properly.” She’s running her hands over her sweater-covered wrists.
Silence falls across the room like a heavy blanket, and we all awkwardly avoid eye contact. Rachel is right, in that annoying way of hers.
And then it dawns on me: she is right, for the most part.
“Wait a minute,” I sound breathless, excited almost. “You’re right - individually, we all failed at killing ourselves. But what if…what if we tried again? This time, we do it as a group. We do it together.”
I look around the room and I can see the idea planting itself in everyone’s mind, taking root in their psyches and blossoming behind their eyes. Everyone looks curious, interested; no one looks scared.
Kurt tilts his head questioningly. “Like a suicide pact?”
“Yeah,” I nod and smile. “Like a suicide pact.”
-
“Caroline. After Finn’s mom. Her name was Caroline.”
-
I think Ms. Pillsbury’s office is supposed to look warm and inviting.
Instead the perfectly arranged plastic flowers, harsh fluorescent lights, and constant lingering smell of cleaning solution just reminds me of the hospital. Ms. Pillsbury would like the hospital, I think. It’s very sterile.
I’m sure she means well, with her handy little pamphlets and trite pieces of advice. They might work, too, if I didn’t know for a fact that she says those things to all of her students.
It takes me two weeks before I figure out what she wants to hear and then slowly start feeding it to her. She’s so innocent and trusting that it doesn’t take much before she believes I’m on the road to healing.
She believes I’m over Finn and moving on. She believes that I don’t think about my baby every second of every day. She believes that I’ve filled up that emptiness inside my soul.
(I ask Kurt about her once and he laughs and pats my head and says, “She believes that we can all be saved.”)
Today, Ms. Pillsbury has broken out some decks of cards and we’re playing simultaneous games of solitaire. I think it’s supposed to facilitate conversation, but I’m not in the mood for talking.
“So,” she says, breaking the silence with an awkwardly cheerful smile, “I heard that you’ve become good friends with Mercedes recently.”
I freeze, my hand midway through flipping a card. My first thought is shit, she’s caught us, she’s not as naïve as she looks, she knows what we’re planning, but she just continues to look cheerfully at her cards.
“I think it’s a good thing that you’re making new friends, you know, branching out some. Not that I dislike the Cheerios or Ms. Sylvester, despite her oftentimes inappropriate demeanor, but this shows real initiative on your part, Quinn.”
She reaches over to take my hand. “I think you’re really healing here. Maybe it’s time we cut your sessions to just once a week for a while?”
She doesn’t know. I bet she doesn’t know anything about what really goes on at this school - the bullying, the backstabbing, the abuse, the shame, the hate, the fear, the deep sadness present in the hearts of all her students. I wonder if any of these teachers - the people who are supposed to care most about us - know anything at all about what really happens inside the walls of this school. I wonder if they knew, would they even care?
I look at her bright smile and wide trusting eyes. I can feel a surge of hysteria bubbling in my chest and I don’t know whether to laugh or cry, so I do neither. I just nod.
It’s not like it’ll make a difference.
-
Kurt brings some bottles of expensive wine. He says that if we’re going to do this, we’re going to be classy about it.
Matt and Mike bring the drugs. For a moment, I wonder vaguely where in the world they got such a variety of pills, but I don’t ask. I think part of me is afraid to know the answer.
We maneuver Artie out of his chair and onto a recliner we steal from the inside of the Cohen-Chang’s house. In his words, “I refuse to die in that fucking thing. It ruled my life, but it won’t rule my death.”
Tina squishes into the recliner next to him, while Kurt and his boys curl up together in the love seat. Rachel and I sit on either end of the couch, with Mercedes between us, and we link our arms together as we grab our wine glasses.
As a group, we drink through two and a half bottles of wine before anyone is brave enough to touch the bowl of pills sitting in the center of the table.
Surprisingly, Tina is the one who reaches out to grab the bowl.
“I n-need to do this b-before my b-buzz w-wears off,” she mumbles, digging her hand in and grabbing a handful. She passes the bowl to Artie, ducking her head when he smiles at her.
The bowl gets passed from person to person, each of us taking a handful until it’s empty.
The room goes quiet then, each of us staring into our hands. I think, I can’t believe we’re actually doing this, but just knowing that they’re here with me makes me feel brave.
Rachel clears her throat, tosses her hair back and holds up her hands - one with a wine glass and one filled with pills. “A toast,” she says, “To finally getting out of this fucking town.”
We all laugh and murmur in agreement, holding up our own glasses.
Mercedes looks at me, cautiously smiling, “You ready, girl?”
I smile back. “As I’ll ever be.”
Without another second of hesitation, I knock back my handful of pills and down the rest of my wine.
When my vision begins to go a little fuzzy around the edges, I let myself slump over against Mercedes.
The last thing I see is all of my - friends, I suppose you could call them that - in similar collapsed states - Mike, Matt, and Kurt tangled together in some complicated fashion, Tina and Artie gripping each other’s hands, Rachel curled up tightly in ball.
The last thing I remember thinking is, Caroline, sweetie, mommy’s coming.
-
I wake up.
This in and of itself is surprising.
And then I see my mother sitting in a tiny plastic chair. I wonder why she’s a part of my afterlife, considering she hasn’t spoken to me in over a year and as far as I knew she hated me and never wanted to see me again. Maybe I ended up in Hell after all.
Then I realize that this isn’t Hell; it’s just the hospital. I never wanted to see this place again with its cold sterility and faint smell of antiseptic - I’m forcefully reminded of Ms. Pillsbury’s office and suddenly I wonder about everyone else.
Something must’ve gone wrong and who else is here and how badly did we all fail this time and can I see them?
The heart monitor starts beeping rapidly and my mom is startled awake.
“Oh, Quinnie!” She’s immediately at my bedside, wrapping her arms around my neck, sobbing into the gown I’m wearing. “I thought you were dead! We’ve all been so worried about you!”
“Wha-?” I try to speak but just end up coughing. My throat is dry and it hurts to swallow.
My mom is pushing a glass of water into my hands, saying, “The doctor warned us that your throat would hurt for a few days because they had to pump your stomach. Why would you ever -?” She shakes her head and doesn’t finish the question, changing topics.
“All your friends have been so worried about you. They’ve been asking to see you for days.”
I blink confusedly. “My friends?”
She nods, petting my hair. “Santana, Brittany, and that Puckerman boy have been by almost every day. Even Ms. Sylvester stopped by yesterday.”
“Those aren’t - they’re not - what about Mercedes? And Tina and Artie and Kurt?”
I can feel her hands still. She comes around to sit next to me on the bed, taking my hands in hers, with tears in her eyes.
“Sweetheart, they didn’t make it. The paramedics, they brought everyone to the emergency room and…well, you’re the only who’s awake, and that big black girl is still in intensive care, but everyone else…they couldn’t save them. I’m sorry, Quinnie, baby.”
I can feel the tears slipping down my cheeks, but it takes my mom wrapping her arms around my shoulders for me to break down and start sobbing. I’m crying in relief that they finally did it, that they made it out; I’m crying in anger that I survived again; I’m crying in sadness and pain and fear and loneliness. I’m crying for our group, for Mercedes, for Caroline, for Finn, and mostly for myself.
I haven’t felt this much emotion in almost a year and I don’t know how to handle how overwhelmed I feel, so I just sob into my mother’s shirt until I’m too drained to do anything but sleep.
-
I’m standing in the doorway of her room.
I sweet-talked one of the nurses into telling me everything - her room number, what her condition was like, if anyone had visited her. And then I just walked out of my room tonight. I feel like it should’ve been harder, but no one stopped me.
I’ve been standing here for five minutes, watching her chest rise and fall with each faltering breath, listening to the heart monitor beep.
She looks washed out and small, surrounded by various monitors and equipment. She doesn’t look like the girl I know, sunken and lifeless and empty.
I was always the listless one. She had so much vibrancy to her.
Cautiously, I step inside. One step, and then another and then another, and then I’m rushing up to the bed, crawling in beside her, mindful of the tubes and wires they’ve stuck to her body. I need to feel close to her again and know I’m not alone this time around.
“Mercedes,” I half-whisper, half-sob into her shoulder. “Sweetie, wake up, please, I need you. It’s selfish, I know, but I can’t be the only survivor again. I’ve already lost someone else I loved and I can’t lose you too.”
I’m crying again, getting tears and snot all over her and the bed, but I can’t stop myself.
I must spend hours lying there next to her, holding her hand, talking to her, telling her everything I know about what happened, which admittedly isn’t much.
(Here’s what I don’t yet know: that we got a full front page write up in the local paper; that everyone in the school attended Tina and Artie and Rachel and Kurt and Mike and Matt’s funerals; that Ms. Pillsbury has been having full-blown panic attacks since she heard the news; that people suddenly seem to care now, now that they’re dead and she’s barely hanging on - why didn’t they care before, when we needed it, when it mattered?)
Every few minutes, though, I punctuate my story with, “Mercy, baby, I need you, I love you, please wake up.”
When my words run out, I sing to her instead, that song that Tina loved and would sing for us if I asked - “Calendar girl, who is lost to the world, stay alive…” - in retrospect it seems ironic and wrong, but I can’t remember any other song right now just “I dreamed I was dying, as I so often do, and when I awoke I was sure it was true; I ran to the window, threw my head to the sky and said, ‘whoever is up there, please don’t let me die’…”
I sing until my throat starts to hurt again and then my voice gives out. All I have left is the beeping of the heart monitor. Falling back on old habits, I start to count along, my lips barely moving against the skin of her arm: one, two, three…
I get to eighty-nine before my counting is interrupted by an unexpected movement.
It’s soft, but I can feel her hand squeeze mine for the briefest of moments.
For the first time in an extremely long time, I feel the faintest flicker of hope in my heart.
-
The tile floor of the hallway is cold underneath my legs and I count along in my head to the ticking of my watch.
one, two, three, four…
My hand is resting on my abdomen. If I let myself think about it, I can still feel her kicking just under the skin. But I don’t think about it.
ten, eleven, twelve…
I’m staring at my feet, my legs stretched halfway out into the hallway, so I don’t notice he’s there until he rolls to a stop right next to my sandals.
fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen…
“Hey,” he says, throwing off my counting.
I don’t need to look up to know who he is. McKinley High is a small school, and of all the disabled kids, there’s only one permanently wheelchair bound.
“Abrams.”
“So I heard that you’re going to start meeting with Ms. Pillsbury during third period on Tuesdays and Thursdays.”
I look up sharply, glaring at him. “I don’t know how that’s any of your business.”
“You’re not the only person in this school who talks with our beloved counselor on a regular basis.” His mouth twists itself into a grimace as he runs his hands over the armrests of his chair. “There’s a group of us, actually. We hang out, on weekends mostly, sometimes after school. If you want to come, meet me by the gym on Friday after classes let out.”
I don’t say anything, so he wheels away, leaving me alone with the cold empty hallway and the ticking of my watch.
one, two, three…
-
I think that if I had the energy left to care, I wouldn’t go. But no one’s waiting for me to come home these days, so it’s not like I have anywhere else to be.
Artie meets me by the gym and with him is an Asian girl who seems tiny underneath the heavy dark clothing she’s wearing. She doesn’t say anything to me, just stares, eyes wide under heavily shadowed lids.
I’m in the back seat of her car before we’re really introduced.
“This is Tina,” he says, and she flinches, like hearing her own name is physically painful. “She’s after school, every other Thursday. We hang out in her garage, because her parents don’t…aren’t around much.”
Tina shrugs a little, but keeps her eyes focused on the road.
The rest of the car ride is silent enough for me to hear the tick of my watch, and I count three hundred twelve until we’re at Tina’s house.
We’re not the first ones there - in fact, we’re the last ones. When we arrive, Tina scurries off to a corner, settling herself in a wooden rocking chair and curling up, making herself look even smaller.
There are three people sitting on the ratty couch - an Asian guy at one end and a black guy at the other. Stretched between them is a small, delicate-looking boy who has his feet propped up in the Asian kid’s lap and his head is lying in the black boy’s.
I recognize them from the football team - they’re names are like Mark or Max or something else as generic and unspecific as to be unmemorable. The Asian one has his hands curled around the small boy’s ankles and the black guy has his fingers tangled in the kid’s hair. The picture they make just screams possessive.
Across a large wooden box that seems to be serving as some sort of coffee table, a large black girl is seated on a loveseat, making notes in a spiral notebook. Artie wheels himself over to her and she pauses in her writing to talk to him, but their conversation is soft enough that I can’t hear what they’re saying.
I go unnoticed (and I wonder if my emotional emptiness has finally made my physical body evaporate like air, how wonderful a dream that is) until a loud - and unfortunately familiar - voice shrieks, “What is SHE doing here?”
The black girl looks up at me, the three guys on the couch turn their heads in my direction, and I wonder if Tina ever stopped staring at me.
I used to make people’s heads turn every time I walked down the hall, but this feels like being put under a microscope and scrutinized, in a way that is extremely personal and almost violating.
Only Artie doesn’t look at me; instead he turns to face the person who yelled. “Chillax, Rachel. She’s one of us now.”
Rachel Berry, who, just seven months ago, was my own personal punching bag, is striding angrily across the concrete floor, arms folded across her chest. She looks pissed and I don’t blame her for hating me.
“I most certainly will not ‘chillax’ to use your crude terminology. She made my life a living hell, Artie. Surely you remember the sting of a slushie to the face? She was never nice to any of us, not once. She’ll never be ‘one of us’!”
Her words almost sting, but they’re true; I was a bitch. I probably still am a bitch. Instinctively, my hand curls up over my (empty) abdomen.
The black girl’s eyes shift towards where my hand in now resting and an odd look comes over her face.
“Let’s hear her out, Rache. We can always kick her out if she’s still that person.”
Berry doesn’t look mollified in the slightest, but she does shut up and drop into a fold-up chair with a huff.
With much more grace, I seat myself in another fold-up on the other side of the box-table-thing. I can feel the heat of the other girl’s glare along my skin.
Artie rolls up beside me. “I suppose introductions are in order, yeah? You already know Rachel; she’s lunch on Mondays. That’s Mercedes over there.”
The black girl cocks her head to the side, “I’ve got sixth on Tuesdays.”
“I’m Kurt,” the small boy rolls on his side, without removing himself from the two laps he’s occupying. “Second period, Fridays. And these two hunky boys are Mike” -the Asian boy nods - “and Matt.” The black guy does the same.
“They don’t actually meet with Ms. P; Kurt just drags them along to these things.” Artie’s smirking and I wonder who actually possesses whom in that relationship.
“And I’m before school on Wednesdays,” Artie finishes for the group. I notice he’s rubbing his palms against the grips on his chair.
Everyone is looking at me, waiting.
“I’m Quinn,” my voice is softer than it used to be, but I haven’t been talking much recently. “I’m during third period, Tuesdays and Thursdays.”
“Oh man, she’s got you twice a week? Bummer.” Mercedes is shaking her head and everyone is nodding in agreement, adding their own comments or memories from when they used to be ‘twice a week’ with Ms. Pillsbury.
The low hum of conversation drowns out my watch, so I look at them instead, wondering how they all got to be here.
-
These group meetings gradually become habit and I find myself spending weekends hiding away in Tina’s garage. Slowly I begin to learn their stories and I collect their words like precious bits of colored glass that I keep hidden away from the real world. I take them out when I’m by myself and look at the beauty that I’ve discovered (that discovered me). In turn, I share my story with them; awkwardly, haltingly, the words come out, bits and pieces of the life I used to have.
I had friends, before. But now those people feel like plastic dolls compared to how real the kids in this garage are. They each feel so many emotions, so loudly and so passionately, that sometimes I wonder if they could fill up the emptiness inside me (the emptiness that’s shaped like pink dresses and hair ribbons and all the things that I didn’t know I wanted in my life).
Santana, Brittany, all of Sue’s Cheerios, would never understand. This group of outcasts is as broken as I am. They make me feel like a real person again.
(I don’t let myself think about Finn and the way he always felt real.)
-
Kurt talks loudly about things that don’t matter, things that are inappropriate, and things that are meant to get a rise out of someone.
“Rachel, sweetheart, do you think you could avoid getting dressed in the dark so I won’t have the urge to push you into traffic every time I see that hideous sweater?”
“Don’t be jealous just because the two most well-hung boys in Lima would rather fuck me than you, Mercedes.”
“Really, Quinn? Empire waist dresses? It’s like you ran up and down the halls screaming ‘I’m pregnant!’ Way to be obvious.”
The things that really matter though, he doesn’t talk about very much. When he does, it’s quiet, contrasting everything else about his personality.
“My dad kind of went off the rails after my mom died. We don’t talk much.” Ever is what his eyes tell me.
We’re looking through each other’s make up bags on the love seat. Matt and Mike are on the couch, having some sort of strange conversation that doesn’t appear to involve words, but every now and then their heads will turn towards us. I wonder if they’re looking at Kurt or me, but I don’t ask.
“Being different in Lima is hard,” he says softly, “which I’m sure you’ve figured out by now. But I’ve been different my whole life.” He’s turning over a bottle of concealer, looking at the ingredients.
“Eventually I just went looking for an outlet.” His eyes flicker over at the bigger boys. “Most of the football players are bastards. Karofsky, Azimio, they made me feel like a cheap whore.”
He dabs a little lip-gloss on the back of his hand and I pretend not to look at the bruises on his wrists.
“Matt and Mike, though, they care, in their own weird way. And they’re just as screwed up as the rest of us, so we fit well together.”
He looks at me and the quiet softness is gone from his eyes as he leans forward, “Matt is huge, too. And Mike isn’t as big, but damn if the boy doesn’t know how to use what he’s got. When we fuck it is just the most delicious pain I’ve ever felt.”
Kurt is back to his usual mouthy self and I can tell he’s not going to be sharing anything more now, so I nod and ask to borrow some of his nail polish.
-
“Getting pregnant was never part of the plan. And now…I don’t even have a plan any more.”
-
Tina doesn’t speak, but she does sing sometimes.
When Rachel plugs her iPod into a ratty old pair of speakers and we listen to strange playlist mixes of Broadway classics and Top 40 hits and eighties’ pop (which definitely shouldn’t work, but somehow does), I can see her lips moving quietly across the room.
This weekend, though, Rachel isn’t here and so we’re drifting without her music. Tina is curled up on the floor, resting her back against the couch and I scoot over until I’m sitting behind her.
She starts when I place my hand on her head, looking warily at me over her shoulder for a long moment. She seems to decide that I’m harmless and leans back against the couch.
I card my fingers through her hair, which is thick and soft, a dark, gorgeous black streaked with red this week. I can feel her relax gradually, tilting her head back and sighing softly.
I’m absent-mindedly pulling strands of hair into loose braids, when I hear it - a bright, clear voice singing quietly and I realize that it’s Tina.
“What are you singing?” I ask softly, not pausing in my movements.
“Oh, I d-d-didn’t realize that y-you could-d hear m-me. I’ll s-s-stop.”
“It sounded beautiful. You should sing louder so we can all hear it.”
She pulls her head away so she can bury her face against her knees. “N-no one wants to hear m-me sing-g. That’s r-ridiculous.”
“I want to hear you sing.” I move off the couch so I’m sitting next to her on the floor. “I bet Artie wants to hear you sing too.” The tips of her ears burn a bright red.
“My own parents don’t want to hear me sing,” she whispers into her jeans, and I have to lean forward to hear her. “Why would any of you?”
I tug her arm away from where she’s hugging her knees and grab her hand, lacing our fingers together.
“Mercedes and Kurt and Mike and Matt want to hear you sing too. And if you don’t want to sing alone, I’ll sing with you. Just teach me the words.”
She’s staring at me, fear and hope battling in her eyes, when she squeezes my hand and takes a deep breath.
“If I am lost for a day try to find me, but if I don’t come back, then I won’t look behind me…”
The rest of room stills. Tina can’t see it because her eyes are clenched tightly shut, her hand tightly gripping mine now. I look around the room and I am sure that my expression is as amazed as everyone else’s.
I don’t recognize the song, but apparently Artie does, because he chimes in on the chorus, “Calendar girl, who’s in love with the world, stay alive.”
Tina freezes and her eyes snap open to stare at the boy. The silence stretches across a few long moments as they gaze at each other, before she relaxes, an almost smile curving the corners of her lips up.
“I dreamed I was dying, as I so often do, and when I awoke I was sure it was true…”
We spend the afternoon singing to and with each other instead of talking. It’s not quite happiness, not the way I remember happiness feeling, but there’s a connection there - creating, solidifying a bond between all of us.
-
“When they told me it was a girl, I was terrified. It wasn’t just a parasite or a little bit of extra weight anymore; I was really carrying a baby - a little girl, a daughter. Everything seemed so screwed up, and I didn’t know how to be a mom.
“Finn was so enthusiastic about the whole thing. He did more research than I think he’s ever done in his entire life, about daycares that would watch the baby while we were at school. And there’s even scholarship money available to college students with kids. It was all so overwhelming, but he would get the most beautiful smiles on his face when he talked about our baby and our future.
“He gave me this baby blanket. It was his when he was a baby. I feel selfish because I still have that blanket. I sleep with it under my pillow.”
-
Rachel doesn’t come around for a few weeks and her absence feels strange. True, she’s mouthy and annoying, but the room seems too quiet without her. She still hates me, which I probably deserve, but a tentative truce was in the works when she suddenly disappears.
The next time I see her it’s a Friday afternoon and she’s standing in the parking lot covered in raw egg.
“Rachel?” I ask quietly.
Her head whips up, eyes wide and scared like a frightened animal.
“He hates me,” she whispers.
“Rachel, what happened?”
“He used me and…and he hates me.” She’s staring at her hands, at the egg yolk that’s pooling there like bright yellow blood.
I take her to the only place I can think of - Tina’s garage. She lives only a minute or two from the school, but by the time I’m pulling Rachel out of the back seat of my car she’s shaking like a leaf in a hurricane (maybe it feels like a hurricane inside her head right now).
“I don’t know what happened,” I say immediately as the door opens; everyone freezes. “I just found her like this.”
Mercedes comes over to grab Rachel’s other arm and we lead her to the couch as Tina runs into the house to get wet washcloths. She’s still shaking, horribly, violently, as she sits between us, still staring at her hands.
Kurt kneels on the floor in front of her, reaching out to place his hand on her knee.
“Sweetheart, tell us what happened.”
“Jesse,” she whispers brokenly, “Jesse St. James. He did this to me.”
She turns her head so she can look at me with wide eyes; I can read fear and anger and pain written all over them.
“He said he loved me, but it was a lie. I thought he loved me, I thought he understood me, and I…I loved him.”
“I loved him,” she repeats, and something seems to snap inside of her. “I loved him and he hates me. He was using me and he hates me, just like everyone in this school, in every school, in the whole fucking world. He hates me and I loved him!”
She’s shrieking now, sobbing and screaming and doubling over as if the emotional pain has created a real wound in her chest. I’ve seen Rachel Berry angry and sad before, but this is a true emotional breakdown happening in my arms; I want to feel lost and overwhelmed, but this isn’t about me now, it’s about Rachel and her pain.
Before I know what’s going on she’s pulling at the sleeves of her sweater, yanking them up, screaming something about needing the release and for the first time I see the scars marring her wrists, neat little red rows, perfectly spaced like the lines on notebook paper.
She’s so out of it that she’s ready to attack her arms with her fingernails, wanting to claw off her skin and bleed out her pain and heartbreak, but we won’t let her do that. Not here where we have no gauze or band-aids or antiseptic to prevent infection. In her own space and time she can use her razor to make neat little lines, but her nails will rip her skin to shreds, which won’t heal nicely or be easy to hide.
It takes all of us - Kurt and Mercedes holding her hands, Matt and Mike holding her legs, and me just holding her - and we will all be bruised and scratched for our efforts, but eventually she’s screamed and cried and thrashed and sobbed out all of her energy. Tina’s there then with wet cloths and we do our best to wash off the physical reminders of this afternoon, while Rachel’s collapsed on the couch.
She looks small and broken lying there, crying almost silently, mouthing the words, “He hates me, everyone hates me…”
Gently, I tug on her knee-highs, pulling them down to her ankles and revealing even more lines of scars. She doesn’t flinch when I run my fingers over them.
In time with the ticking of my watch, I begin to count them: one, two, three, four…
(I don’t ask how many of them were caused by me, because deep down, I know.)
-
“I was supposed to go to the Chastity Ball with my dad, wearing one of those stupid white dresses. It was the dress that gave me away. I’d gained too much baby weight and my dad came in and took one look and he knew.
“He knew that I had made a huge mistake, that all of his religious propaganda and threats of hellfire and brimstone hadn’t done a thing. He knew that I needed my dad to hold me and help me and tell me that I wasn’t the sinner I felt like.
“He knew and he threw me out on the curb anyway. My mom didn’t even try to stop him.”
-
I don’t think Matt or Mike has ever spoken to me in the time we’ve known each other. I know they talk, simply because I’ve seen them murmuring to each other, whispering to Kurt. But everything I know about them I’ve been told by other people.
“M-Mike’s my c-cousin. Our m-moms’ are s-s-sisters,” Tina says when I ask about their shared last name.
“No offense, Tee, but his parents are messed up.” Artie is flipping through the music on his iPod.
But Tina just shrugs. “All of our p-parents are m-messed up.”
I nod in agreement, “What did you mean by that Artie?”
“Let’s just say that those bruises he has,” Artie looks up from his playlists, raising his eyebrows meaningfully, “Well, they’re not all from Kurt.”
The two football players also supply the group with our nicotine fixes and sometimes alcohol when the week has been particularly bad, because they’re the only ones who have decent fake ids and don’t look like eleven-year-old milkmaids. (I didn’t used to smoke, not when I was the perfect child and never when I was pregnant, but now it doesn’t seem to matter enough whether I do or don’t.)
“No, you’re right. They are always together,” Rachel says, matter-of-factly. “It’s a condition called codependency. I would bet money that they’ve never been apart for more than a few hours since they first met.”
She sighs and steals my lighter. “Must be nice, huh?”
Kurt arches a perfectly shaped brow at me. “They spend a lot of nights in my basement bedroom. Why? Did you want to hear details or something? Because you know I’m always willing to share those.”
He smirks and I shake my head.
“No, I was just wondering about Matt’s family. I mean, I heard about Mike’s and everything…”
“Oh,” Kurt says quietly and his face has gone strangely serious. “As far as I know, before we started fucking on a regular basis, Matt mostly slept at Mike’s house. He doesn’t talk about his family and I don’t ever ask.”
I wonder about him, about what could be so bad that he’d choose his best friend’s abusive parents over going home. But I don’t ever ask either.
Some things just shouldn’t be talked about.
-
“Living with the Hudsons was strange at first. I would wake up in the morning and briefly forget where I was and have a small freak out before everything would come rushing back. But Carole was so sweet to me. I think she was genuinely looking forward to becoming a grandmother.
“And Finn. What can I say about him? He was amazing. With me every step of the way. He bought this book of baby names and would spend hours looking through it.
“I loved him. So much, so much more than I’d ever loved anyone. He deserved so much better than me, because…I was lying to him. I really meant to tell him the truth. I was going to do it that night, after the game, his last game of the year. But then it was raining and some drunk teenagers ploughed into the side of our car and…everything was just gone.”
-
Surprisingly, of everyone in the group, I become closest with Mercedes. She is a diva, loud and opinionated and unafraid to tell anyone and everyone what she’s thinking. I love this about her - that I can say anything to her and I know she’ll be honest with me.
We bond over fashion, makeup, music, movies, and Kurt, the only boy we decide we need in our lives. We talk about religion and parents and the way we used to believe in both of those things. We share cigarettes and tequila (and I don’t think about the way it tastes like a secondhand kiss).
And on days that I’m feeling particularly listless, she puts my head in her lap and sings lullabies to me - how she knows I’m always about thinking my baby on those days, I’ll never know, but it’s like she can read my mind.
One day she shows me what she writes in that spiral notebook of hers. It’s just lists, pages and pages of lists of food - what kind of food, how many calories, and how much fat. The lists are broken up by date, some are marked by a bold “B” and some by a “P.”
I don’t say anything, just hold her hand and rest my head on her shoulder.
“Ms. P knows I have issues with my weight and self-image, but she doesn’t know about this. No one thinks that big girls can have eating disorders.” She shakes her head in disgust. “Everyone in that whole school - counselors, teachers, students - they’re all so fucking blind.”
I squeeze her hand tight. I hope she really can read my mind, can read everything that I don’t have the ability to say: that I think she’s beautiful, but I understand the need to do what she’s doing, the compulsion to count every calorie; that I remember the way it felt to hate your body and everything about it; that I don’t think any less of her - love her any less - for doing what she’s doing.
I curl up against her side. Her pulse is strong in my ear and I begin to count along with the powerful beats: one, two, three, four…
-
“I was in a coma for three weeks. When I woke up, they didn’t even need to tell me that I had lost her, I just knew. Because I was seven months along when the accident happened, they tried an emergency c-section, but there was too much trauma. They couldn’t save both me and the baby, so I got to live and she didn’t.
‘Then, they told me about Finn. They said that he went quickly, that at least he didn’t suffer. A part of me, a horribly selfish part, was glad that I never told him the truth. This way he died happy, thinking he was the father.
“After that, I didn’t have anything left anymore. I didn’t have a home, or a family, or friends, or love, or my little baby girl. I had…have nothing left but scars to remind me that it all really happened.”
-
On the surface, Artie looks sweet and gentle, and he is those things sometimes. But underneath, he’s got a lot of rage built up.
Most people underestimate him. Most people overlook him.
Some days it all becomes too much. All of his anger and rage comes spewing forth in a giant furious tirade that all we all are an audience too. He can yell and scream and rant for hours, and all of us will sit there and listen to every word, because we’re the only ones who will listen to him. Even Tina, who cries when teachers raise their voices, gives him every bit of her attention.
He usually starts with Ms. P or one of the teachers or students, someone who doesn’t get it and never will get it. Someone’s who insensitive, usually unintentionally, which just makes him madder, because, as he says, it just goes to show how much prejudice against disabled people is normalized in our culture.
Sometimes, his focus is broad. He rants about the hierarchy of high school, the public school system, the culture in general.
Most times, he narrows his focus in on himself. His parents won’t look at him anymore; his sister doesn’t speak to him. The school as a whole ignores him or bullies him.
“All because of this chair, this fucking chair that I’ll never be rid of. People don’t look at me and see Artie, they look and see a wheelchair-bound, disabled freak and I’ll never be anything more than that.” He’s pacing back and forth, angrily gripping at the wheels of his chair.
“Any dream I had before the accident is complete bullshit now. Look at me, I’ll never be a dancer or be taken seriously as a musician or an actor. I fucking hate it! I fucking hate everything! Some days I want to just end everything, put myself out of my fucking misery.”
“Why don’t you?” The words are out of my mouth before I can stop them, soft syllables breaking through the haze of smoke and anger.
Everyone freezes. Artie’s eyes are wide and trained on me.
I’m afraid for a minute that he’s going to yell at me, tell me I have no idea what I’m talking about, that I should keep my fucking mouth shut. Instead he runs a hand through his hair and looks down at his lap.
“I tried. Two years ago. I…wasn’t strong enough, though.”
“I t-tried t-too. I w-wasn’t able to g-go through with it,” Tina murmurs quietly from her corner of the couch, looking directly at Artie.
“We’ve all tried,” Mercedes says, “Some of us are just more passive about it than others.” She glances at me as she says that and I wonder if she somehow knows about the three days I refused to eat after I woke up in the hospital before the doctors threatened to put a feeding tube down my throat.
Rachel snorts. “Look at us, we’re all such losers that we can’t even kill ourselves properly.” She’s running her hands over her sweater-covered wrists.
Silence falls across the room like a heavy blanket, and we all awkwardly avoid eye contact. Rachel is right, in that annoying way of hers.
And then it dawns on me: she is right, for the most part.
“Wait a minute,” I sound breathless, excited almost. “You’re right - individually, we all failed at killing ourselves. But what if…what if we tried again? This time, we do it as a group. We do it together.”
I look around the room and I can see the idea planting itself in everyone’s mind, taking root in their psyches and blossoming behind their eyes. Everyone looks curious, interested; no one looks scared.
Kurt tilts his head questioningly. “Like a suicide pact?”
“Yeah,” I nod and smile. “Like a suicide pact.”
-
“Caroline. After Finn’s mom. Her name was Caroline.”
-
I think Ms. Pillsbury’s office is supposed to look warm and inviting.
Instead the perfectly arranged plastic flowers, harsh fluorescent lights, and constant lingering smell of cleaning solution just reminds me of the hospital. Ms. Pillsbury would like the hospital, I think. It’s very sterile.
I’m sure she means well, with her handy little pamphlets and trite pieces of advice. They might work, too, if I didn’t know for a fact that she says those things to all of her students.
It takes me two weeks before I figure out what she wants to hear and then slowly start feeding it to her. She’s so innocent and trusting that it doesn’t take much before she believes I’m on the road to healing.
She believes I’m over Finn and moving on. She believes that I don’t think about my baby every second of every day. She believes that I’ve filled up that emptiness inside my soul.
(I ask Kurt about her once and he laughs and pats my head and says, “She believes that we can all be saved.”)
Today, Ms. Pillsbury has broken out some decks of cards and we’re playing simultaneous games of solitaire. I think it’s supposed to facilitate conversation, but I’m not in the mood for talking.
“So,” she says, breaking the silence with an awkwardly cheerful smile, “I heard that you’ve become good friends with Mercedes recently.”
I freeze, my hand midway through flipping a card. My first thought is shit, she’s caught us, she’s not as naïve as she looks, she knows what we’re planning, but she just continues to look cheerfully at her cards.
“I think it’s a good thing that you’re making new friends, you know, branching out some. Not that I dislike the Cheerios or Ms. Sylvester, despite her oftentimes inappropriate demeanor, but this shows real initiative on your part, Quinn.”
She reaches over to take my hand. “I think you’re really healing here. Maybe it’s time we cut your sessions to just once a week for a while?”
She doesn’t know. I bet she doesn’t know anything about what really goes on at this school - the bullying, the backstabbing, the abuse, the shame, the hate, the fear, the deep sadness present in the hearts of all her students. I wonder if any of these teachers - the people who are supposed to care most about us - know anything at all about what really happens inside the walls of this school. I wonder if they knew, would they even care?
I look at her bright smile and wide trusting eyes. I can feel a surge of hysteria bubbling in my chest and I don’t know whether to laugh or cry, so I do neither. I just nod.
It’s not like it’ll make a difference.
-
Kurt brings some bottles of expensive wine. He says that if we’re going to do this, we’re going to be classy about it.
Matt and Mike bring the drugs. For a moment, I wonder vaguely where in the world they got such a variety of pills, but I don’t ask. I think part of me is afraid to know the answer.
We maneuver Artie out of his chair and onto a recliner we steal from the inside of the Cohen-Chang’s house. In his words, “I refuse to die in that fucking thing. It ruled my life, but it won’t rule my death.”
Tina squishes into the recliner next to him, while Kurt and his boys curl up together in the love seat. Rachel and I sit on either end of the couch, with Mercedes between us, and we link our arms together as we grab our wine glasses.
As a group, we drink through two and a half bottles of wine before anyone is brave enough to touch the bowl of pills sitting in the center of the table.
Surprisingly, Tina is the one who reaches out to grab the bowl.
“I n-need to do this b-before my b-buzz w-wears off,” she mumbles, digging her hand in and grabbing a handful. She passes the bowl to Artie, ducking her head when he smiles at her.
The bowl gets passed from person to person, each of us taking a handful until it’s empty.
The room goes quiet then, each of us staring into our hands. I think, I can’t believe we’re actually doing this, but just knowing that they’re here with me makes me feel brave.
Rachel clears her throat, tosses her hair back and holds up her hands - one with a wine glass and one filled with pills. “A toast,” she says, “To finally getting out of this fucking town.”
We all laugh and murmur in agreement, holding up our own glasses.
Mercedes looks at me, cautiously smiling, “You ready, girl?”
I smile back. “As I’ll ever be.”
Without another second of hesitation, I knock back my handful of pills and down the rest of my wine.
When my vision begins to go a little fuzzy around the edges, I let myself slump over against Mercedes.
The last thing I see is all of my - friends, I suppose you could call them that - in similar collapsed states - Mike, Matt, and Kurt tangled together in some complicated fashion, Tina and Artie gripping each other’s hands, Rachel curled up tightly in ball.
The last thing I remember thinking is, Caroline, sweetie, mommy’s coming.
-
I wake up.
This in and of itself is surprising.
And then I see my mother sitting in a tiny plastic chair. I wonder why she’s a part of my afterlife, considering she hasn’t spoken to me in over a year and as far as I knew she hated me and never wanted to see me again. Maybe I ended up in Hell after all.
Then I realize that this isn’t Hell; it’s just the hospital. I never wanted to see this place again with its cold sterility and faint smell of antiseptic - I’m forcefully reminded of Ms. Pillsbury’s office and suddenly I wonder about everyone else.
Something must’ve gone wrong and who else is here and how badly did we all fail this time and can I see them?
The heart monitor starts beeping rapidly and my mom is startled awake.
“Oh, Quinnie!” She’s immediately at my bedside, wrapping her arms around my neck, sobbing into the gown I’m wearing. “I thought you were dead! We’ve all been so worried about you!”
“Wha-?” I try to speak but just end up coughing. My throat is dry and it hurts to swallow.
My mom is pushing a glass of water into my hands, saying, “The doctor warned us that your throat would hurt for a few days because they had to pump your stomach. Why would you ever -?” She shakes her head and doesn’t finish the question, changing topics.
“All your friends have been so worried about you. They’ve been asking to see you for days.”
I blink confusedly. “My friends?”
She nods, petting my hair. “Santana, Brittany, and that Puckerman boy have been by almost every day. Even Ms. Sylvester stopped by yesterday.”
“Those aren’t - they’re not - what about Mercedes? And Tina and Artie and Kurt?”
I can feel her hands still. She comes around to sit next to me on the bed, taking my hands in hers, with tears in her eyes.
“Sweetheart, they didn’t make it. The paramedics, they brought everyone to the emergency room and…well, you’re the only who’s awake, and that big black girl is still in intensive care, but everyone else…they couldn’t save them. I’m sorry, Quinnie, baby.”
I can feel the tears slipping down my cheeks, but it takes my mom wrapping her arms around my shoulders for me to break down and start sobbing. I’m crying in relief that they finally did it, that they made it out; I’m crying in anger that I survived again; I’m crying in sadness and pain and fear and loneliness. I’m crying for our group, for Mercedes, for Caroline, for Finn, and mostly for myself.
I haven’t felt this much emotion in almost a year and I don’t know how to handle how overwhelmed I feel, so I just sob into my mother’s shirt until I’m too drained to do anything but sleep.
-
I’m standing in the doorway of her room.
I sweet-talked one of the nurses into telling me everything - her room number, what her condition was like, if anyone had visited her. And then I just walked out of my room tonight. I feel like it should’ve been harder, but no one stopped me.
I’ve been standing here for five minutes, watching her chest rise and fall with each faltering breath, listening to the heart monitor beep.
She looks washed out and small, surrounded by various monitors and equipment. She doesn’t look like the girl I know, sunken and lifeless and empty.
I was always the listless one. She had so much vibrancy to her.
Cautiously, I step inside. One step, and then another and then another, and then I’m rushing up to the bed, crawling in beside her, mindful of the tubes and wires they’ve stuck to her body. I need to feel close to her again and know I’m not alone this time around.
“Mercedes,” I half-whisper, half-sob into her shoulder. “Sweetie, wake up, please, I need you. It’s selfish, I know, but I can’t be the only survivor again. I’ve already lost someone else I loved and I can’t lose you too.”
I’m crying again, getting tears and snot all over her and the bed, but I can’t stop myself.
I must spend hours lying there next to her, holding her hand, talking to her, telling her everything I know about what happened, which admittedly isn’t much.
(Here’s what I don’t yet know: that we got a full front page write up in the local paper; that everyone in the school attended Tina and Artie and Rachel and Kurt and Mike and Matt’s funerals; that Ms. Pillsbury has been having full-blown panic attacks since she heard the news; that people suddenly seem to care now, now that they’re dead and she’s barely hanging on - why didn’t they care before, when we needed it, when it mattered?)
Every few minutes, though, I punctuate my story with, “Mercy, baby, I need you, I love you, please wake up.”
When my words run out, I sing to her instead, that song that Tina loved and would sing for us if I asked - “Calendar girl, who is lost to the world, stay alive…” - in retrospect it seems ironic and wrong, but I can’t remember any other song right now just “I dreamed I was dying, as I so often do, and when I awoke I was sure it was true; I ran to the window, threw my head to the sky and said, ‘whoever is up there, please don’t let me die’…”
I sing until my throat starts to hurt again and then my voice gives out. All I have left is the beeping of the heart monitor. Falling back on old habits, I start to count along, my lips barely moving against the skin of her arm: one, two, three…
I get to eighty-nine before my counting is interrupted by an unexpected movement.
It’s soft, but I can feel her hand squeeze mine for the briefest of moments.
For the first time in an extremely long time, I feel the faintest flicker of hope in my heart.