When I got back home that evening, she was sitting there on my sofa, dressed to the nines and reading a magazine.
“Your landlady let me in,” she said with a mischievous smirk. “I told her I was your sister.”
Before I could say anything, she was standing, turning to present me with the zipper of her gown like a gift, making me forget all my anger and indignation.
And then I was following her to the bedroom, all my questions long forgotten. (x)
(Source: faberry, via itsagronbitch)
And it was hard to feel badly about not having crowds of audiences cheering my name once I’d known what it felt like to hear it in Quinn Fabray’s sandpapery whisper. Quinn Fabray, who I’d come to crave in all her incarnations: from the smirking debutante who made devious, unscheduled cameo appearances in my bedroom, to the broken little girl with bandaged wrists and bruised thighs who would sometimes tug at my arms and curl into my side. (x)
(Source: bellespanties, via itsagronbitch)
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Except now I know that we were the ones who were doomed. All of the rest of us, running around trying to make something of our sad little lives. Meanwhile, Quinn, who’d already had more lifetimes by the age of sixteen than most of us could even comprehend, was content just sit back and smile, knowing what fools we all were. (x)
(Source: liquidnight, via 2headedsnake)
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They say, “Men plan; God laughs.” Well, Quinn laughed, too.
In fact, I can still see her now, kneeling in her underwear on my unmade bed, running a hand through her short blonde hair and laughing darkly.
“It’s as simple as this, my dear: you’re what I require,” she’d say, mocking him.
And then I’d laugh too, not stopping to wonder if she did the same thing in bed with him, about me.
It was just one of the many things I didn’t let myself dwell on until after everything had come to an end.
When I was honest with myself, I knew she was still sleeping with Jesse all throughout our affair, and not out of some perverse sense of obligation.
But because she liked it.
And I also knew he wasn’t the only one.
But there wasn’t room for that kind of stark honesty where she and I were concerned, not in conversation, and certainly not in bed. Could I have stomached it, really, if I’d let myself think about him pressing into her in the same place where my fingers were pressing? Could I have tasted her while, at the same time, thinking of her as tainted goods?
More than once in our staggered romance, I came across the evidence of strange fingerprints on her body and panicked, my adrenaline spiking as if I’d walked in on an intruder. Only I didn’t really belong there either; I never had. (x)
(via corcordium)
At the moment of impact she’d been looking away. It wasn’t really meant to be a metaphor (Quinn honestly didn’t have the patience for metaphors; it was hard enough for things to just be what they actually were). But the truth was that she’d “taken her eyes off the road,” so to speak, in other ways as well, and the accident had just confirmed what she should have already known: that every distraction came at a cost.
She’d let herself get distracted two years before then, too. She’d let herself take a breath, and suddenly all of Lucy’s old insecurities and vulnerabilities had come flooding in, and the next thing she had known, Puck was groaning on top of her, and it was fine, she’d thought, because she couldn’t feel anything anyway, which meant everything was as it should be.
Both times she’d wound up in the hospital, but the second time, at least, the drugs were better.
When they’d told her about her spinal cord, she’d listened, but only vaguely. The nurses seemed hell-bent on getting her to cry about it, but the impulse just honestly hadn’t come. Maybe there’d been a time when not being able to walk would have been the worst thing she could have imagined, but not anymore. Not after having had a part of herself torn out from the inside and given away to a complete stranger. Not after Beth. (x)
(Source: quinnfabrai, via itsagronbitch)
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It wasn’t the first time she’d done this, run out on him for a few days, just to get her bearings back. Just to see who she could be without him and the mess they’d made together shackled around her ankles. But it was the first time she’d ever truly considered not going back.
The day before, she’d been on her way home from Albuquerque with the cd case in her lap, the plastic wrapping rustling with every bounce of her knees. They’d agreed to do it this way, to forego iTunes and get the real deal. They needed something tangible, some little piece of something they could touch and possess, however trivial it may be.
Years ago, she’d memorized the route to New York, the roads she might one day take up and out of her self-imposed New Mexican exile. She’d imagine herself driving into the sunrise, wailing along with the radio to some old country tune about “goin’ home to your darlin’.”
It was all just a fantasy though, and she knew it. There was no home—no one—to go home to. Rachel had probably stopped waiting for Finn to come back long ago, and she’d never been waiting for Quinn.
And who was Lucas to Rachel? Nobody. A stranger dressed in familiar flesh. That was all.
Nevertheless, on that December afternoon, with Rachel’s face staring up at her from her lap, the list of roads came back to her in a whisper, and she’d driven right past her exit for La Cienega and crossed the border into Colorado. (x)
“Why are you even trying to help me, Rachel? I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I’ve been kind of a bitch to you.”
“But not in Glee Club,” Rachel says quietly, her shy eyes fixed on the floor.
Quinn’s mouth opens, then closes again. It’s true; she’s always reserved Glee Club as place where she can just let herself feel whatever it is she really feels about Rachel. But how does Rachel know that?
“I know we’ve had our fair share of…difficult…interactions,” Rachel continues, her expression both timid and sincere. “Maybe more than our fair share. But Glee Club is different; it’s special. That choir room has given us all the freedom to be who we really are, and when we’re in there-” she pauses, swallowing hard. “You’re so different in Glee Club, Quinn; I don’t know what it is. But sometimes I think…maybe if we never had to leave that room…you and I could be…friends.”
Quinn’s taken enough hard falls to know what having the wind knocked out of you feels like, and this isn’t it. This is like a tiny valve being opened somewhere, a slow leak. All the oxygen just slipping away.
(Source: mclennons, via nostalgicpatter)
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One morning, after a particularly grueling Cheerios practice, Jacob Ben-Israel, a geeky kid with glasses and frizzy hair, accidentally bumps into her in the hallway, and she falls, her backside hitting the floor with an embarrassing thud. She panics and immediately draws her knees into her chest, hiding her face with her hands. She waits for the jeering to start, the choruses of “Lucy Caboosey.” But instead, the corridor is stone silent.
At last, she hears Jacob squeak out an “I’m sorry,” but she’s confused by the frightened tone in his voice. She lifts her head and sees that everyone is looking at her, but not with contempt, or even pity. It’s anticipation. They’re all waiting to see what she’s going to do to him.
Bewildered, she gets to her feet, lifts her bag to her shoulder, and walks away.
That afternoon, she watches from a distance as half the football team launches a slushy attack on Jacob Ben-Israel. All she’d had to do was mention the incident from that morning to Finn, and the other boys had lined up, practically begging to get in on a chance to “defend her honor.”
“You better watch where you’re going next time, Jewfro! And stay away from Quinn, got it?” she hears Finn shout at him as the boys disperse.
She knows she should feel sorry for Jacob, but she doesn’t. What she feels instead is relief. She’s relieved that it’s him and not her standing there in that pathetic, technicolor corn syrup puddle. Lucy’s gone for good, and she knows it for sure now.
(via goneawayawhile)
Despite everything, she knows there are people who, when looking back on high school, will still remember the three of them as some indomitable force, some trifecta of terror, cruising smoothly through the halls of McKinley with her at the helm. And maybe that had been true, once, for an instant. But it’s not at all the way Quinn remembers it.
Finally was able to get Chapter Four posted.
Here’s the accompanying track.
