“I could certainly look into performing arts schools for you, do a little digging around. But are you sure you’ve exhausted the creative outlets McKinley has to offer? There’s jazz band, and the school musical coming up this fall. Oh, and Glee Club.” Looking over Rachel’s shoulder, Miss Pillsbury spotted a thumbprint on the glass wall. Her hands itched to grab her bottle of Windex. “I hear they’re looking for new members.”
Rachel sank back in her chair. “I know about Glee Club. They specially requested that I join and give them help, so I did it.” She shrugged. Her crisp pale pink polo shirt with the puff sleeves was still unsullied by slushies today, and she was hoping to keep it up. “But they just don’t take it seriously. Plus, Mr. Ryerson hardly counts as a trained vocal coach. He isn’t even there for practices.”
“How long have you been a member?”
Rachel stiffened. “Since Monday.” Her voice was defensive.
Miss Pillsbury nodded, as if this were a somewhat reasonable amount of time. “Well, maybe what they need is someone like you to help them take it seriously.” Miss Pillsbury caught a glimpse of Will Schuester out in the hallway, handing a paper back to a student who had a scowl on her face. “Why don’t you give it a couple more weeks with Glee and see how it goes? It seems awfully early in the school year to be making such large life decisions.”
“I just feel like the clock is ticking on me…. I won’t be this young and trainable forever.”
“I know.” Mr. Schuester was still talking to the girl, and Miss Pillsbury hoped that if she timed it right, she could leave her office right when he was finished and they could walk to the teachers’ lunchroom together. She grabbed the Tupperware container of triple-washed chopped carrots and lettuce on the corner of her desk and stood up. “But there’s a lot to offer here, and a student with your talent can really make a difference and stand out.”
“I guess you’re right.” Rachel got to her feet. Her one reservation about attending a specialty performing arts school was that she would just be one of many, many talented students. Maybe she wanted to stay in the small pond, where she could pretty much be the biggest fish imaginable. “I’ll stick with Glee for a while, at least. Maybe I can turn the group around. Thank you for the encouragement.”
“Anytime, Rachel.” Miss Pillsbury hoped the girl wouldn’t take that literally. She got the feeling that Rachel would use her as a therapist if she could. She walked Rachel to the door and grabbed her purse from the coat tree in the corner. “Good luck with Glee.”
Rachel felt better as she walked out of the office. That was, until she saw that the giant banner that stretched over the main trophy case announcing the Fall in Love with Music recital on Friday had been completely desecrated. MUSIC had been crossed out, and A PILE OF POOP had been written above it. Students were nudging each other and laughing as they passed it, and Rachel felt her cheeks flush with anger. Maybe she could be good for McKinley High, but it clearly wasn’t good enough for her.
“On second thought, Miss Pillsbury, I would still like the information on the performing arts schools. Just tlingool/p>
“What was that all about?” Mr. Schuester stared down the hall after the pouting girl, who looked vaguely familiar to him. He’d been trying to explain to a sophomore why she had failed his Spanish exam, but just as she walked away he managed to overhear the end of Miss Pillsbury’s conversation. “Is someone looking into performing arts schools?”
Miss Pillsbury locked the door to her office. Even though she was anywhere from well liked to easily ignored by the students, she had a paralyzing fear that some of them would sneak into her office when she wasn’t there and do something vile on her carpet. “Yes. Do you know Rachel Berry?” she whispered to Will. Although she generally didn’t discuss students with other teachers, Will didn’t count, as he was her lunch buddy.
“Sure, she was in my class last year,” he said. “Now she’s singing on the morning announcements, right?”
“Exactly.” She shook her head as she caught sight of the desecrated banner. “I’m going to have to call a janitor to take that down.” She couldn’t even look at it.
“Rachel is really looking to transfer to another school, with better music programs?” Mr. Schuester slung his leather messenger bag across his shoulder. “That’s such a shame. She can really sing.”
The two of them walked through the quiet hallways to the faculty lunchroom. “It is a shame.” Miss Pillsbury paused in front of the trophy case. “I know McKinley has a rich Glee history.”
“Exactly. See those trophies? When I went here, we won sectionals every year, and we even won regionals. Once.” He stared at the shiny brass statuette of a figure singing into a microphone. “We had so many kids trying out for Glee that we had alternates, and second alternates.” He glanced at Miss Pillsbury. “We ruled the school. You should have seen us.”
“I would have liked to,” Miss Pillsbury said softly, wondering what Will looked like as a teenager. Probably just skinnier, with the same mop of curly hair.
Mr. Schuester turned his head, and his eyes rested on a...
It kind of broke his heart.
eleven
McKinley High hallway, Thursday morning
Can I copy your English homework? I forgot to do it.” Brittany pulled her long blond hair back into a high ponytail as she walked down the hallway with Santana and Quinn. Her Cheerios uniform showed off her long, slender legs.
“Brit, the assignment was an essay on ‘How I Spent My Summer Vacation.’ ” Santana pulled a lip gloss from her hobo purse and smeared some on her lips. “I think Mr. Horn would know that you didn’t go to Nicaragua to visit your granny Maria.”
“Shoot.” Brittany’s face fell. “What did you do this summer, Quinn?”
Quinn rolled her eyes. Although Brittany and Santana were allegedly her best friends, she was always surprised that Brittany managed to function as well as she did, considering her nearly nonexistent IQ. Quinn would much rather just enjoy the walks from class to class with her friends than listen to Brittany’s inane questions. Everyone knew who they were. And everyone always stared at them, in the good, envious way, not the broccoli-in-your-teeth way.
As she was formulating a clever response to Brittany, she felt her backpack vibrate. Quickly, she dug through it for her iPhone, a back-to-school present from her doting father. It was a text. She didn’t recognize the number, but when she clicked on it, she knew right away who it was from. She could practically hear the challenge in Puck’s flirtatious voice. Bail on yr girlfriends and meet me in the janitor’s closet by the libe. It’s not under the bleachers, but gotta see u.
Quinn’s heart thumped so loudly she was sure Brittany and Santana could hear it. Although the two of them were her closest friends, they couldn’t, under any circumstances, find out about her and Puck. Santana for obvious reasons—she was jealous enough of Quinn as it was, but if she found out that Quinn was hooking up with the guy she was after, there would be serious trouble. And Brittany was simply too dumb to be relied on to keep any secret. She meant well, but her brain cells were seriously defective. “It’s from Finn,” Quinn lied. “He is such a sweetheart.”
“Awww,” Brittany and Santana cried in unison. A group of freshman girls jumped out of their way. One of the advantages of being a Cheerio was that you could walk straight down the middle of the hallway, and people would move to accommodate you. “That is so cute.”
“You guys really are the perfect couple.” Santana held out her hand to high-five a fellow Cheerio as she passed. “I can’t believe it took so long for you to get together.”
“Like Cinderella and Prince… Prince… William.” Brittany smiled.
“Prince Charming,” Santana corrected her.
Quinn fought the urge to roll her eyes again. (Her mother always reminded her that eye-rolling caused crow’s-feet later in life.) Everyone kept saying the exact same thing to her, as if she and Finn had been made only for each other. She wasn’t s
ure she believed that. Besides, it sucked all the romance out of it.
It wasn’t like with Puck, whom she clearly wasn’t supposed to be with. He was totally wrong for her. Everyone knew that he’d slept with all kinds of MILFs through his joke of a pool-cleaning business over the summer, and although he’d gone to the last meeting of the Celibacy Club, she seriously doubted his commitment.
Which made him all the more exciting.
“There is a serious lack of eligible guyovereliidth="guys of quality in this godforsaken high school. I don’t know why it took me so long to find him, either.” Quinn tried to put away her phone without answering it.
“Puck’s hot,” Brittany said. “And that guy in math class who always sits at the front of the room and wears sweaters.”
“That’s Mr. DeWitt.” Santana scowled at her. “The teacher? Remember?”
Quinn gave up. She stared at Puck’s text one more time before writing back. I can’t meet you. I have to go to class. Her thumb paused. And this thing between us cannot go on. The girls passed a classroom with an open window, and the smell of freshly cut grass wafted through the halls, bringing Quinn back to the other afternoon, under the bleachers. It had to end with Puck just so she could stop this craziness.
Almost immediately, her phone vibrated again. I just want to talk. Please.
It was the please that did it for her. It made Puck’s request sound so simple, and she felt that she would be unreasonable to say no. He just wanted to talk. That was only fair. They would stand there in the dark janitor’s closet and mutually agree that while there was some level of physical attraction between the two of them, it didn’t make sense for them to pursue it. Quinn would admit to herself that she had only submitted to the attraction in a period of moral weakness during which she had briefly forgotten her way, and she would ask God to forgive her brief indiscretion.
Fine, she texted back before throwing her phone into her bag.
“I just remembered—I’ve got to return a book to the library.” The words sounded like a blatant lie coming out of Quinn’s mouth—but Santana and Brittany were arguing about which had more calories, a carrot or a celery stick, and they just nodded their heads at Quinn. “And I’ve got to go to the restroom, too, so don’t wait for me.”
“’Kay. See you in class.” Santana waved over her shoulder as Quinn turned to go up the stairwell to the library.
As Quinn climbed the stairs, she tried to compose her thoughts. She was just going to be honest with Puck—or sort of honest with him. She would tell him that she liked him but they didn’t have a future. She wouldn’t mention the fact that her knees got weak when she thought about the way he touched the back of her neck as he kissed her, or that the smell of grass was now something she associated only with him.
The upstairs hallway was nearly empty as students hurried...
She opened the door.
twelvetwelve< ^font>
Janitor’s closet, Thursday morning
Puck was leaning against the wall of the janitor’s closet in the dark, waiting for Quinn. He flipped open his phone to check the time. A tiny part of him worried she wouldn’t come. What if she’d just said she would come to get him to leave her alone, and now she was sitting in her stupid English class, giggling with Santana and Brittany, probably laughing about how Puck was such a fake for pretending to be such a player when he was getting all soft on a girl like Quinn. Here he was, waiting for her in a dark janitor’s closet he’d only discovered because he and his buddies had locked some freshman loser in there once. Puck’s face burned.
Then a magical thing happened. The door opened, and Quinn Fabray scooted inside. “Why are you standing here with the light off?” She fumbled around looking for a light switch by the door.
Immediately, Puck’s confidence returned. If Quinn Fabray, founder and president of the Celibacy Club, had agreed to meet him in a dark janitor’s closet, he was seriously doing something right. “You don’t want anyone to see us, do you?” He grabbed for Quinn’s hand and held it in his.
Quinn was quiet as her eyes adjusted to the dark. This was already off to the wrong start. Her church—the Kingdom of His Faith Fellowship—had once sponsored a haunted house and hayride out at Old Miller’s Farm. The haunted house consisted of a long tunnel whose walls were made of a black plastic that buckled in the wind. Each person had to go through the tunnel alone, in complete darkness, while creepy music played. Occasionally someone in a sheet would jump out at you. It had been the scariest feeling in the world—not being able to see anything in front of you, even when you knew it was there. Quinn had almost wet her pants the first time someone jumped out at her.
This, somehow, was scarier. She shook Puck’s warm hand off hers. The janitor’s closet smelled like Lysol and like Puck. Unlike Finn, he didn’t wear any cologne, and so his smell, instead, was a mixture of deodorant and some musky scent that could only be his own.
“I knew you’d show up,” Puck said cockily, stepping closer to Quinn. She took a few steps backward until her back was pressed against the closed door. She could barely see his face in the darkness, but she could sense that he was just inches from her. Oh, crap. All her plans flew out the window as her heart thudded against her rib cage.
“And how did you know that?” Quinn started to ask, but before she could finish, Puck’s lips were touching hers, gently at first, then with more pressure. And she couldn’t help but kiss back. His mouth tasted like chocolate. Quinn was reminded of the double chocolate fudge brownies she used to buy at Auntie Amy’s at the mall—melt-in-your-mouth warm and delicious, and completely terrible for you. Puck, in a nutshell.
“You taste so good,” Puck said as his mouth moved to Quinn’s neck. “Like some kind of really delicious citrus fruit.”
“My lip gloss.” Quinn closed her eyes at the feel of his lips at the base of her neck. “It’s mango.”
“Mango,” Puck repeated, his lips mouthing the word against her skifontinst the skin. She shuddered.
Outside, the bell rang, shattering the spell Quinn had fallen under. Quickly, while she could still think, she ran her hands against the wall and found the light switch. She flicked it on, flooding the room with light.
“What did you do that for?” Puck held his hand over his eyes to shield them from the sudden light. Quinn looked so out of place in the dingy janitor’s closet, in her perky Cheerios uniform.
“I came here to talk.” Quinn crossed her arms over her chest, blinking to get used to the light. What had she been thinking, coming to a filthy janitor’s closet to make out with Puck? She hadn’t been thinking, that was the thing. At least not with her brain. In the light, the room was much less exotic and thrilling. A giant metal shelving unit lined one wall, chock full of cans of Lysol, bottles of Windex, and other cleaning materials of various shapes and sizes. In the corner was a giant metal bucket on wheels and a mop that looked as if it had been wiping up filth for fifty years. “You said you wanted to talk.”
Puck hung his head. “I know. But just when you walked through that door…” He trailed off, looking up at Quinn with a puppy-dog look that somehow came off as extra devious. “I couldn’t help myself.”
Quinn patted her hair in place. “Well? What did you want to talk about?” Her eyes landed on a big white bucket with a label that read VOMIT ABSORBENT AND DEODORIZER POWDER. It must be a year’s supply of that orangey-pink sawdust the janitor threw on the floor whenever some poor kid upchucked. Not romantic.
“I don’t know.” Puck was suddenly shy. “I thought, maybe, since there’s clearly something between us, you’d want to go to the homecoming dance together.”
“What?” She felt a rush of triumph that he wanted to go with her, not Santana. Not anyone else. With her. “That’s really sweet, Puck. But there’s no way that could happen.”
Puck stepped back. Was she saying he wasn’t good enough for her? He’d raised almost four thousand dollars cleaning pools that summer, and he still had a couple hundred
dollars left after all the six-packs and video games he’d bought. Plenty left to buy tickets to the dance, a corsage, and a six-pack of wine coolers for afterward. “Why not?”
“Get real, Puck.” She shook her head sadly and tried not to think about dancing with him. She’d bet he knew how to move. His body seemed to know how to do a lot of things. “There’s no way we could ever go public as a couple. I have my reputation to think about.”
Puck ran his hand over his Mohawk. “What the hell does that mean? I’ve got my reputation to live up to, too.”
“Exactly.” Quinn sighed. “Your reputation for getting into the pants of every single girl who so much as smiles at you.”
“Hey, don’t get mad at me just because the ladies like me.”
Quinn stared at the vomit-absorbent bucket. Puck’s cockiness was infuriating but also incredibly sexy. Puck was famous for going through girls like they were Kleenex, and he left each one a little dirtier than he’d found her. Quinn tried to imagine what her father would say if he opened abof h was fed the door to his house and saw Puck, with his look-at-me Mohawk and his sexy smirk. He’d throw Quinn into a chastity belt. “Besides, I’m dating Finn now.”
Puck leaned against the opposite wall. His jeans hung on his lean hips, and his long-sleeved thermal shirt hugged his pectorals. Quinn tried not to think of him showering off after football practice. “That’s official?”
Quinn nodded. “Pretty much.” She took a deep breath, feeling the need to lash out at Puck in some way. She needed to end this crazy, insane thing between them, and she’d already proved that she couldn’t be trusted with him. “We’re probably even going to win homecoming king and queen. Everyone keeps telling me so, at least.”
Puck waved his hand in front of him and gave a brief, sarcastic bow. “Well, I wouldn’t want to stand between you and your crown, if that’s what gets you all hot and bothered.”
Glee_ The Beginning_ An Original Novel (Glee Original Novels) - Sophia Lowell.mobi Page 7
