169Chapter 1: Way too soon
Chapter song: "On the street where you live" – Nat King Cole
Time: August
"…People stop and stare. They don't bother me.
For there's nowhere else on earth that I'd rather be.
Let the time go by, I won't care if I
Can be here on the street where you live."
As the last chord swam out of the speakers, Quinn turned off her car radio. She looked out of the windshield at the cloudless sky. It was August and the summer break had ended. Way too soon, she thought to herself. She was wearing a light green baby doll dress with a pattern of tiny dark green flowers and black ballet flats. As she straightened her dress, she noticed all the bruises on her knees. How do I manage to hurt myself so badly? She wondered in her mind. I was head cheerleader. Why do I not have more grace?
She slowly opened the car door and stepped out. Although it was early in the morning, the sun had already risen pretty high and was now prickling at her arms. She whimpered slightly, but then reminded herself that sunshine was a good thing. It made her skin darker and her hair lighter. Good thing I remembered the sun screen this morning though, she thought as she crossed the burning hot parking lot.
As she got closer to the school, she suddenly felt very exposed. She was completely sure that everybody was staring at her. But why would they? She was not anything special any longer. She was not the head cheerleader. She was not dating the school quarterback. She was not even prom queen. She was just that glee club loser who had gotten pregnant as a freshman. As those thoughts went through her head, she almost turned around and went home, but immediately got a hold of herself. Okay, so you're not an interesting person anymore… but you're still Quinn Fabray and Quinn Fabray does not give up. Especially not on the first day of senior year. She shook her head slightly before lifting her chin upwards and then she entered the doors of McKinley High.
The halls were buzzing of the small talk from all the students. Quinn recognized most of them and it was easy to spot the freshmen. Those were the ones looking scared to death as they were desperately trying to locate their lockers. She remembered her first day two years ago; after five minutes three different boys had offered to help her find a locker including another freshmen, who hadn't even found his own yet. She remembered thinking that the next three years were going to be paradise with the amount of attention she was going to get.
Oh well, that was back then, she thought. Before everything had happened. Puck, Finn, Beth, Sam, Finn again, Rachel, Zizes, Lucy Caboosey, Sam and Mercedes . Now she'd do anything just to blend in, but she knew that wasn't easy. Not with her history and not with her looks. Even when she tried toning down her make-up and wearing boring clothes she still got admiring looks from various boys who didn't seem to care about her history, her attitude or her mood swings. So she might as well look her best, even though she was only interested in the admiring looks from one specific guy, but he was looking at someone else now, a friend of Quinn's, so she had given up on that.
As she turned a corner, something cold hit her arm. She looked to her right, where a nerdy looking freshmen had just been slushied by a jock, who (though a feet taller than the victim) also was a freshmen. Way too soon, Quinn thought to herself for the second time that morning as she wiped off the slush ice sprays that had hit her arm.
She walked to her usual locker and opened it, slightly depressed at its emptiness. She then opened her purse and began to unload. She was still placing useful things in her locker when a set of brown arms draped her chest.
"Hey Q," a teasing voice whispered in her ear. "Enjoyed your summer, did ya?"
Quinn smiled and took a small perfume flacon from her purse and placed it in her locker
"We missed you, you know." Another voice said behind her. "Lord Tubbington too."
Quinn turned around facing her two favorite former cheerleaders. "I missed you too. How was lake Erie?"
"Oh, we never went. We just stayed in my backyard all summer making out by the pool." Brittany said.
As the shorter blonde raised her eyebrows in surprise (although not really surprised), Santana scoffed. "What Brittany means is…" she paused for a moment "that we didn't want to spend our summer with some losers down by a loser lake."
"You didn't think Lake Erie was a loser lake before I left," Quinn stated slowly.
"Maybe not, but then we discovered that Puck and his loser girlfriend were going too. Now, Erie is officially a loser lake..." At the beginning of summer Zizes had dumped Puckerman for a girl on her wrestling team but Puck being Puck, he had quickly found another girlfriend, Maya, who'd be a junior this year. She was friendly and pretty good looking which resulted in an instant dislike from Santana's side. "…and we's be not going to a loser lake!" Santana smiled triumphantly and Brittany nodded in agreement.
Quinn grinned and drew both girls in for a tight hug. "I really have missed you guys," she laughed and the two other girls laughed with her.
"So, how was Paris?" Santana asked as they pulled away from each other.
"It was…" Quinn closed her eyes imagining she was still strolling down the Champs-Élysées "…magical." She had visited France with her mother. They had just been planning on staying there for a week, but ended up extending their vacation as they were having so much fun and since neither of them had other plans for the summer.
"Did you go shopping? Meet any cute French boys?" the Latina asked licking her lips.
"French boys can't French kiss. That's why they call it French." Brittany said looking deadly serious.
Quinn smiled and said no, when her eye caught the one thing she had dreaded to see the entire summer. Sam and Mercedes were standing close at the other end of the hall, both of them smiling and talking intimately. Way too soon, Quinn mused for the third time that day. Her smile faded and she sighed lightly, she thought, but Santana quickly picked up and turned around, trying to determine what had made her friend's face drop.
"Oh. That's why you didn't meet any cute French boy. You're still caught up in that dorky southern boy," she snorted.
"No I'm not!" Quinn said a little too fast. "It's just never pleasant seeing your ex being happy." Oh God, do I always sound so selfish? She thought absentmindedly.
"Right, and if that was Finn and Rachel Berry standing over there, you'd have the same uptight look on your face."
"Yes, of course… well no, but they aren't… Finn isn't… I don't…" Quinn turned around, searching in her purse for a box of tissues, which she placed in the back of her locker.
"Let it go, Q. I just don't get why you're still obsessing over him. I've slept with that nerd" Santana pointed towards the blonde boy "and he ain't nothing special."
"Not really what I need to hear right now, San."
"Whatevs. Our classes are about to begin. We'll see you at lunch. Come on, Brit." The two of them twirled their pinkies and started walking down the hall.
Quinn sighed, heavily this time, and headed towards her own class.
Thank you for reading!
After seeing the numerous previews and teasers for the third season of Glee, I'm afraid I'll be a bit disappointed given I'm a major Quinn-fan. So today I imagined how I'd like the third season to be and thus I wrote this. I'm not exactly sure where it's going, though I have basically already written the second chapter. I'll upload it later tonight after I've spell checked it thorough fully. However, English is (as you've probably figured out by now) not my native language, so there might still be some errors - as there probably is in this chapter.
Alors, I hope you'll stay tuned and... have a nice day :-)