Archive of Our Own ^beta

Santana decided, at the start of sophomore year, that Mr. Schue is a terrible educator, but she finds solace in sitting underneath his desk with an expired granola bar he offered her while she waits for the chaos of the after school rush to die down so she can slink out of here without getting her face bashed in by a 6’2 football player who’s angry about never having a chance in hell with her.

She feels she’s betraying Ms. Corcoran in some way by being in the choir room with the glee teacher who disbanded her at the beginning of the year, but she discovers comfort in the smell of the room—dusty trophies and Rachel’s perfume left lingering somewhere in the air. She would be practicing with the Troubletones right about now, if the time on her phone is any indicator of anything at all, but instead she’s stuffing her face with a blueberry granola bar that practically disintegrates in her hands.

She’s surprised to find out that New Directions aren’t practicing after school today, and her shoulders deflate the slightest bit when Mr. Schue informs her that he’s finishing up some last-minute paperwork and is going home as soon as he’s good and ready, and all Santana hears in that sentence is that she’ll be kicked out of here soon and will have to face the frigid temperature of the locker room to grab her and Brittany’s gym bags. She can only hope the hallway is cleared by then.

Mr. Schue is sitting at the side of the desk, because Santana has collectively taken up the space beneath it where his chair usually sits, and is scribbling this and that on several papers while Santana finishes the last of the granola bar. The crinkling of the empty foil wrapper startles the teacher out of his daze, and he absentmindedly reaches down to collect it from Santana. Her hand glides upwards to pass him the wrapper, and he throws it into the trash can before rolling back a bit to look at her while she’s wiping away granola from her face.

“There’s more if you’re still hungry,” says Mr. Schue.

“I’m good,” is all Santana murmurs from her comfortable place under the desk. A dust bunny rolls its way towards her, and her first reflex is to blow at it, because her brain will combust if it dares to touch her. “Thanks for letting me hide here, by the way. I don’t want Ms. Corcoran to find me. She’ll probably think I’m sabotaging the Troubletones. I’m not. I just. . .didn’t wanna be out there. In the hallway. And I could use some time away until I can find my loyalty, I guess. Like you said.”

She swallows back a bold truth and pulls her knees to her chest, the dust bunny flying away when the air conditioning kicks on. There’s a thought of Finn’s stupid face in the trenches of her mind, and she has to shake it away before she can lactate with intense rage. She’s done too much festering and pondering over him and his three man boobs for her liking, and she’s about to ignite with fury when she’s reminded that the only reason she can’t step foot into the hallway between periods without harassment is because of his stupid mouth.

The sound of Mr. Schue’s chair rolling back startles Santana, and she looks up to discover him bending down to her level. She curls further into herself and rests her chin on her knees.

“You know I had to ban you, right?” Mr. Schue asks. “You helped the other Cheerios set fire to the piano. Besides, I think your time away from us and time spent with Ms. Corcoran has been beneficial to you. You’ll find your voice somewhere along the way. And I’m not talking about singing.”

Santana ponders what the hell Mr. Schue is trying to insinuate by that, but there’s no time for giving a shit about anything glee-related when she’s reminded that she has to get the gym bags from the locker room before Coach Sylvester locks it for the day and Brittany will have to go without a clean uniform tomorrow, and her toes curl inwards inside her cheer shoes. She could vomit up an expired blueberry swirl all over Mr. Schue’s clothes. It would probably improve the sight of his vest.

“I have to go get mine and Britt’s gym bags,” Santana says, brushing off the pitiful look her former glee teacher is giving her. “She needs her uniform for practice tomorrow and it’s in her bag. Coach locks the locker room at four. I could steal the spare key she keeps in that fake plant by her door, but I’m really tired and don’t feel like walking that far.”

Mr. Schue nods and rises to his feet, offering a hand to her. Santana rejects it with a polite wave of her hand and crawls her way out from under the desk, finally standing upright for the first time in half an hour. She looks at the clock, finding it to be a quarter to four.

“Go ahead. I’ll be here until a little after four,” says Mr. Schue. “Want me to keep your backpack, or are you going home?”

“I have to wait for Brittany to be done with practice,” says Santana with a dignified shrug. “Someone’s gotta take her home. She got lost the last time she walked home. I really don’t know how. She lives two blocks away.”

As Santana brushes off her skirt and starts towards the door to easily slip out of here, Ms. Corcoran enters the room, rambling on about something probably directed at Mr. Schue, and Santana comes to a screeching halt, backing up a bit until her back presses against one of the purple pianos littering the empty choir room. Ms. Corcoran looks up from the stack of papers she’s carrying and raises what seems to be an angry eyebrow at both Santana and her rival.

“Santana,” Ms. Corcoran says curtly with a nod of her head. “Brittany told me you weren’t feeling well.”

“I’m not,” says Santana, allowing the sharp tone of her teacher to roll of her shoulders like water. “I have a headache.”

“Then home is the best place for you to be, isn’t it?” Ms. Corcoran challenges. She looks to Mr. Schue, who stands idly by his desk. “Will, why is Santana here? If this has anything to do with you trying sabotage my attempts at leading a successful glee club and mopping the floor with the New Directions, it’s downright disgusting to persuade one of my students to put herself between us like this. Santana, please go to practice. Brittany and Mercedes are practicing a new duet, and they’d love for you to hear it.”

“Shelby, Santana isn’t in the middle of anything,” assures Mr. Schue. “She needed some time away while she waits for Brittany to be done with practice, and I’m not going to kick a student out for needing quiet time. This has absolutely nothing to do with the feud you think exists between us. And I’m sure you didn’t come all the way over here to look for Santana, or you would’ve been here an hour ago when school let out. You knew where she would’ve gone if not home. So just tell me why you’re here so I can finish up what I’m doing and go home.”

Santana could feel guilty when she takes note of the overwhelming hurt on Ms. Corcoran’s face, but she’s too preoccupied with trying to unravel the ball of yarn that settles in the pit of her belly as her eyes travel to the clock again. She has ten minutes to get those gym bags and bolt, so she awkwardly slides between the two glaring teachers and makes a run for the door, abandoning her backpack that’s still sat under the desk.

She pops her head out from the choir room and takes one or two surveying glances up and down the hallway, finding it to be deserted save for an administrator rounding the corner. A satisfied breath leaves her lungs as she slinks out of the room, the squabbling of the two teachers muffling when the door closes behind her. Her stomach twists and turns like a tsunami about to break the sea wall as she wraps her arms around her torso and briskly walks towards the Cheerios’ locker room.

“One, two, one, two,” she murmurs to herself while counting the tiles on the floor as her feet glide over them. She counts thirty sets of them before finding herself standing at the locker room door, where she immediately takes refuge and slumps against the wall.

The locker room is eerily quiet at this time of day. She’s rarely here past three o’clock, but that’s only because Glee or Cheerios practice hold her up immediately after school and she prefers to shower at home whenever Coach decides she’s had her fill of torturing the cheerleaders for one day.

Breathing out a contented sigh, Santana lifts herself from the wall and opens her locker before grabbing her gym bag that’s hanging on the hook. She tosses it over one shoulder and moves to Brittany’s locker after securely locking her own, finding it to be a disaster of all sorts of things that don’t make sense. After brushing past the jackets and shoes and a hairbrush with a unicorn sticker haphazardly placed on the paddle side, she discovers Brittany’s gym bag crumpled at the back of the locker.

Santana’s fingers tremble around the bag strap as she understands what completing this task means for her. The warmth and familiarity of the locker room are comforting, and she could curl up beneath the bench and take a much-needed nap, but the clock strikes four, and then she’s rushing out of the room so she doesn’t get locked in, because she doubts that Coach Sylvester will do a walkthrough before deciding to lock the door. She feels safe here, but spending the night isn’t on her bucket list.

“One, two, one, two,” she mumbles as she makes her way down the hallway, one gym bag precariously resting on each shoulder. She vaguely sees Coach Sylvester approaching the locker room from her peripherals. “One, two. One—“

A pair of, what only Santana can gauge are, rugby shoes intercept her counting of the tiles. Her head immediately snaps up to find Josh Coleman flanked by another rugby player who looks like he’s had too many cosmetic surgeries to look like the baby on the package of Angel Soft toilet paper. A laugh bubbles up in her throat but is quickly smothered by what she assumes is fear when Josh steps closer to her and her back presses against the hardness of a cold locker.

“Going somewhere, dyke?” the other rugby boy says. He nudges Josh. “This is the one that tried to beat the shit out of Zizes last year? Not so tough now.”

Santana swallows thickly, her throat full of sand. She’s not been very acquainted with terror, because she’s spent the entirety of her high school life shielded by her own bravado, and she would be lying if she said she weren’t about to shit her Cheerios skirt right here. Her hands grip the gym bags tighter, until the fabric digs into the creases on her palms.

“Where’s your little girlfriends, huh?” Josh teases. The boy next to him moves closer, until he’s inches from Santana’s face. She can smell that he’s been chewing tobacco or smoking cigarettes. “You walk around here like you’re protected by them, but I’ve got news for you, dyke. Nothing will stop a man who would love to straighten you out.”

They’re both younger than her, and she can tell just by looking at how much baby fat is still left on them from middle school, but age means nothing when she takes into account how strong they have to be to be rugby players. Her left knee instinctively rises the slightest bit, and she only hopes it’s properly aligned with Josh’s balls.

“Piss off,” Santana finally says, elbowing Angel Soft in the gut. He grunts and reflexively backs away, but Josh only takes up his former space, placing one hand on either side of Santana’s head to encase her beneath him. “Fuck off!”

Josh leans close to her face, his lips almost touching hers, and her knee reflexively jerks upwards and makes contact with his crotch. He stumbles back just enough for Santana to duck and run as fast as she can move her trembling knees, her hands still wrapped around the straps on her shoulders. She doesn’t have enough time to count the tiles. It sort of fucks with her brain, and at one point she forgets how close or far she is to the choir room.

“Santana!” Mr. Schue’s voice stops her feet, and she looks up to find that her former glee teacher approaching her with his bag over one shoulder and her backpack in his hand. “I thought you’d forgotten about your backpack.”

There’s a single heartbeat that palpitates between them as Santana reaches a trembling hand outward to take hold of the backpack. The handle hooks around her fingers, but the teacher doesn’t let go. That familiar, angry crease in his brow presents itself with grief, and Santana wants to take a step back from him but remains firmly planted in place.

“You okay?” Mr. Schue inquires after Santana hasn’t said anything witty or hateful in response.

Santana is forced to find her voice as she shakes the ghostly feeling of Josh’s body hovering above hers. The stench of his cigarette-coated lips lingers in her nose hairs. “I’m fine. I’m just gonna go wait in my car for Britt.”

“Alright, well, I guess I’ll see you in Spanish tomorrow,” he says, beginning to walk past her and towards the exit.

She follows him and promises herself that it’s because the exit is in his direction and not because she’s just nearly shit herself after experiencing what would’ve been an assault if she hadn’t escaped from under the weight of a rugby player. Mr. Schue doesn’t seem bothered by her catching up to him, and he even offers her a familiar smile.

“Ms. Corcoran must be mad at me,” she says once her footsteps are aligned with her teacher’s. Briefly, she considers the possibility of actually caring about what Ms. Corcoran thinks of her. “It’s fine, I guess. I mean, I missed practice.”

“She isn’t mad at you, she just hates me,” says Mr. Schue. “Just show up to your next practice and I’m sure all will be okay.”

They’re walking past the lockers she was cornered against, and Josh and his minion are gone, which causes Santana to breathe a sigh of much-needed relief as she keeps her footsteps in time with Mr. Schuester’s.

She’s mentally counting the tiles when her former glee teacher opens his mouth to speak.

“Is something wrong?” Mr. Schue asks. “I think you’re not being entirely honest about why you missed practice. Not that I’m personally affected by it, but it’s interesting that you were very involved just last week, and today you seem withdrawn.”

Santana decides that her Spanish teacher is a walnut short of an entire box of nuts. She side-eyes him and shrugs, turning her attention to the chipped polish on her nails. She pretends that his gaze isn’t burning a crucifix into her forehead as she examines the damage of her fingernails from having them sat apprehensively between her teeth during class.

“If you need to talk, I’m sure we can arrange something with Ms. Pillsbury,” says Mr. Schue as he holds open the exit door for Santana.

Slipping through the doorway and into the autumn sunlight, Santana takes an anxious glance before deciding that the coast is clear. She looks indignantly at her teacher, and frowns at him. “No thanks. I don’t need to talk about anything. Especially to Ms. Pillsbury Dough Face.”

Mr. Schue brushes Santana’s abrasiveness off. He approaches his car while Santana awkwardly shuffles from one foot to the other. “Well, if you change your mind or need to talk, I’m here to help, and so is Ms. Pillsbury. I’ll see you in Spanish tomorrow. Get some sleep. You have bags under your eyes.”

Sucking in one cheek, Santana watches as Mr. Schuester gets in his car and throws his bag into the passenger seat. A sudden wind chill sweeping across her skin reminds her of her vulnerability, and she  sulks away from Mr. Schue in search for her car. It’s at the other end of the lot, among the very few student cars left. She keeps her head bobbing from over one shoulder to the other, wondering how much damage would be caused to a 6’0 jock’s skull if she were to swing Brittany’s gym bag at him. It’s decidedly not enough.

She locks herself in her 2006 Kia Spectra after tossing the bags into the backseat, her shoulders immediately deflating upon relaxing into the seat fabric. Her fingertips drum against her thigh, eyes trained directly on the back door that Brittany is sure to exit once she’s done with Ms. Corcoran.

After awhile of considering how much damage she could do to Finn with the dumbbells in her gym bag, Santana is abruptly snapped out of her gaze by her phone violently buzzing against her boob. She grabs it from her bra and finds that her mami has been texting her for the better half of her time spent waiting on Brittany.

Mami: Ms. Rodriguez asked if you could pick up Mateo on your way home

Mami: she got stuck at the office until 7 and daycare closes at 6

Mami: please, Santana? I’m busy helping Papi with the yard and don’t have his seat

Mami: do you have his car seat?

Santana blows an indignant breath of annoyance as she sends her mami a quick agreement and follows up with confirmation that she, in fact, does have the three-year-old’s crusty, crumby spare car seat installed in her backseat from the last time she did her neighbor a dire favor.

A knock at the window almost causes Santana to soil herself, and she’s quick to reach in the backseat for a dumbbell, but visibly relaxes once she sees Brittany eagerly waving at her from the passenger window. She unlocks the doors and invites Brittany in, and Brittany leans in for a kiss as soon as her butt hits the seat. Santana pulls back in rejection, eyes wandering to the empty parking lot, and then leans in, connecting her lips to Brittany’s.

“Practice was fun today,” says Brittany, as Santana pulls her seatbelt across herself and puts the car in drive. “Sugar was, like, really annoying, though. Ms. Corcoran had to tell her to take a chill pill.”

“Oh,” is all Santana can say, at first. “Am I taking you home?”

“I was thinking I could go home with you. My parents went on a date and left Melanie with my grandma. They’ll pick me up after they’re done having relations,” says Brittany with a telling grin. Santana nods in agreement, unable to find a disgusted remark or expression. “I wish you could’ve heard us practice.”

Santana brushes away the thought of her missed memories of glee club. “We have to pick up the neighbor’s kid from daycare before they leave him outside the building like last time.”

“Mateo? He’s really annoying,” says Brittany. Her nimble fingers reach across the cup holders to play against Santana’s thigh. “He always interrupts us when we try to fool around.”

The tension Santana feels in her muscles is foreign. She knows, without looking, that those are Brittany’s fingers touching her, and she knows, somewhere in the back of her mind, that she’s perfectly safe with her, but something prevents her from relaxing into the warmth. That ball of yarn sits heavy in her belly.

“What’s the matter?” Brittany asks. Santana winces at the pained inflection. “You never tense when I touch you. Are you constipated?”

“Yeah, that’s it. Constipated,” Santana murmurs. “I had the cheese pizza at lunch yesterday. You know what happens when I have cheese.”

Brittany unzips what Santana calls The Backpack Pharmacy. Santana attempts to focus on the road while her girlfriend rattles a bunch of pill bottles and lists several different medications Santana could take to clear herself out. Hoarding over-the-counter medications has been a recent staple for Brittany, but she doesn’t mind the extra weight on her back if it means Santana won’t be sick.

“I’m okay, Britt,” says Santana. “My stomach just hurts. That’s all.”

Approaching the small, run-down daycare on the corner of Chestnut Street and Monroe Road, Santana praises whatever higher power she thinks she believes in for not having to address the concerned frown on Brittany’s face. She squeezes Brittany’s hand as she exits the car and enters the building, the bell above her head jingling.

The place is littered with random toys and a pile of dirty or clean blankets in the corner of the room. Santana approaches the desk and attempts to force a smile at the elderly woman who she’s met twice before and has received zero sympathy from.

“Mateo Rodriguez. Do I need to show my ID again?” Santana asks.

The elderly woman, whose name Santana feels is fleeting from her mind but may also be Maria, looks up from her stack of papers on the desk. She raises a penciled brow.

“Mrs. Rodriguez put you on the pickup list,” says maybe-Maria. “Do you think you need to show ID?”

“Great. I’ll just go get him,” says Santana, beginning to walk to the room in the back of the building where she expects Mateo to be struggling to get his jacket on.

“I don’t think so,” Maria warns, struggling to stand. “I’ll go get him. You don’t need to be back there.”

“But I always go back there,” Santana reasons, kicking away a toy truck at her feet. “Really, you look like you’re one step away from turning to dust. Allow me.”

Maria huffs at Santana. “I said, I will do it. You wait here.”

Taken aback, the young woman frowns but obeys, awkwardly shuffling from one foot to the other as Maria glares indignantly at her and stalks to the back room. Santana chips away at her nail polish as she hears kids squeal with excitement and an adult woman’s voice tell them to settle down. Before long, Maria produces a bubbly Mateo from the back, his Bubble Guppies jacket halfway on his body and his sneakers on the wrong feet.

“Here,” says Maria, shoving a tiny Mickey Mouse backpack into Santana’s hands. “Tell his mother she needs to fully potty train him before bringing him in underwear. He had an accident all over his nap mat.”

“He’s literally three,” says Santana with a roll of her eyes. She grab’s Mateo’s hand and walks him towards the door. “Say bye-bye to the mean lady.”

“Bye-bye, mean lady,” Mateo says, aggressively waving at Maria.

As Santana prepares to leave with the kid in tow, the bell jingles and in walks an older man—probably a grandparent, because if not, Santana wonders how that’s even a possibility. His smile dissipates upon seeing Santana, and his shoulder roughly bristles against hers as he walks towards the back.

“Hey!” Santana growls. “I know I’m a kid with a kid, but he’s not mine! Don’t be a dick!”

Spinning around on his heel, the man glowers at Santana. “It’s not that. I hope you didn’t go back there with the children.”

Maria intervenes, shaking her head profusely. “Of course not, Mr. Salvatore. Your kids are safe. They’re in the last room on the left.”

It takes one or two heartbeats before Santana comes to an understanding. She stares at Maria, mouth agape, before tugging Mateo out the door. The little boy looks up at his babysitter as she opens the back door of her car and lifts him into his car seat.

“Santi, why’d they say that?” Mateo asks, producing a half-eaten cookie from his pocket.

Santana’s hands tremor with what could be anger or despair as she buckles him in and stuffs his forgotten jacket in his backpack. “I don’t know. People are mean.”

“Cookie? To feel better,” offers Mateo.

Santana brushes back the dark curls from his face. “You eat it. I’m okay.”

She slips into the drivers seat, and Brittany’s hand immediately finds hers. There’s something urgent in those baby blues of hers, but Santana just shakes her head and pulls her hand from Brittany’s. A pang of regret smacks her in the chest when Brittany’s eyes become sad, but the heaviness that she’s been dragging around for days weighs her hand down. It weighs too much to hold Brittany’s.

—

Sundays are typically for morning mass with Abuela, followed by a large lunch at the restaurant just down the road from the church, but Santana realizes it’s the first Sunday of her life in which her parents don’t wake her at the crack of dawn and force her to wear her nice Sunday clothes that now sit at the back of her closet along with her purity and innocence.

Santana rolls out of bed at a quarter to noon and steps into her cramped but comfortable bathroom to rinse the exhaustion off her face. Her eyes are swollen with leftover tears that never made it past her eyelids last night, and she would scream, but her voice is raw and sounds more like the creepy sound effect from The Grudge.

Her parents may be around somewhere, or maybe they chose to go to mass and lunch with Abuela. Either way, Santana brushes it off and removes the clip from her thick hair, allowing it to flow nicely against her shoulders. As she reaches for her hairbrush, her mami knocks on the ajar door before entering and reaching out to rub her daughter’s shoulders.

“You’re awake,” says Maribel with a bit of relief in her voice. “Papi has been waiting for you to get up. He wants to work on the car with you today.”

“You didn’t go to church?” Santana asks. She blinks away the tiredness. “You always go to church on Sunday. I know I said I didn’t wanna go because of Abuela, but I thought you would.”

Maribel hums and grabs the hairbrush from Santana’s hand, beginning to run the bristles through her child’s hair. Santana relaxes into the sensation and uses the sink for support as she leans forward.

“Mami? Why didn’t you go?” Santana pressures.

“She won’t miss us for a Sunday,” says Maribel. “I was more worried about you being home alone than facing her. Your Papi isn’t too happy with her, anyway.”

There’s been a rift in the Lopez family, and Santana considers her ultimate responsibility in it. If she weren’t this way, if she weren’t a lesbian, if it weren’t for Finn opening his mouth to the hallway of McKinley, perhaps she would be sitting next to Abuela, having her hair braided by her, at their favorite restaurant while her parents discuss their plans for the upcoming week.

“I’m sorry,” Santana says, more to her toothpaste than her mother. “I know they aren’t talking. It’s all my fault.”

“Santana,” says Maribel as she sets the brush down and spins Santana by the waist. “It’s not your fault. Your abuelita made her choice to say and do those things.”

“But I told her,” reasons Santana. “I mean, she was gonna find out regardless. But I told her. And I’m sorry that I have to be this way.”

She can’t read her mother’s expression. It’s a frightening mixture of pity, hurt, and remorse—something Santana rarely witnesses on her mother’s pretty face.

Maribel’s gentle hand strokes Santana’s face. “Mija, never say that. You know I love you just the way you are, and so does Papi, okay? Don’t worry about Abuela. She’ll come around.”

“No, she wont,” says Santana. She dips her head down and toes at the black bath mat beneath her feet. “She was very sure of herself. She doesn’t want me back, Mami.”

“Oh, honey.” The remorse in her mother’s tone triggers the first tears to release. Santana falls into her and wraps her trembling arms around her middle. “You’re going to be okay. I know you want her to love you, and I know she does, but she doesn’t know what to do. She’s the one who is lost, not you, okay? One day she will realize how empty she is without her granddaughter.”

“She has, like, a million other grandkids. She’s not gonna miss me,” Santana sobs into Maribel’s chest. “This is all Finn’s fault. I never wanted to tell anyone!”

“You didn’t have to tell me and your Papi,” says Maribel with a dignified chuckle as her fingernails run across Santana’s back. “We always knew. Ever since you were little. When you were four, we got you your first Barbie dream house for Christmas. I caught you making the two girl dolls kiss and you threw Ken in the garbage with the leftover Christmas tamales.”

A laugh hitches in Santana’s throat. She vaguely remembers the Barbies—funnily enough, one was blonde and the other was a brunette. She hardly remembers depositing the only male doll in the trash, but it only solidifies Santana’s speculation that she was, in fact, born like this. She could rub this in Abuela’s face, but the old woman has made certain that Santana’s access to her home has been permanently restricted.

“Do you think she’ll ever let me back in?” Santana murmurs as she pulls away from Maribel.

“Mija, I don’t know. Time will tell. But I do know that she’s going to regret it one day,” says Maribel, wiping away Santana’s tears with her thumb. “I made you some tortillas. Why don’t you go have some and then help your Papi with the car? He’s not as fresh as he used to be. The only hip he is, is when he pops one out of place.”

The laugh trapped in Santana’s throat finally catapults out of her mouth. Maribel fondly smiles and presses a kiss to her child’s nose before leaving her to get dressed in private. Santana wraps her arms around her middle to contain some of her body heat as she walks into her bedroom and rifles through her closet for her overalls.

After collecting her “Sundays with Papi” outfit consisting of faded overalls and a white shirt decorated with various paint and motor oil stains, Santana grabs her phone and responds to Brittany’s good morning text—three hours too late, but still meaningful—before she takes a heated moment to scroll through her various social media accounts. She leaves likes on a few Facebook posts from her friends—even one containing a picture Rachel side-hugging Puck in the choir room—and retweets Brittany’s tweet about Lord Tubbington plotting World War 3.

While she’s slipping into her overalls and pulls the shirt over her head, her phone buzzes, and she smiles in hopes it’s Brittany asking to come over for Sunday dinner tonight. She grabs her phone, one overall strap in her other hand, and finds a Facebook notification saying that she’s been tagged in a post. She quickly flocks to it, supposing it’s one of the Glee kids trying to push her last button. Her smile of anticipation fades as she discovers she’s been tagged by someone she vaguely thinks she knows from school, in a post containing a picture of herself, the picture used in the ad, surrounded in flames. The post is captioned with a bold, capitalized “GOD HATES HOMOS.”

The feeling in her chest isn’t anger or sadness; it’s something foreign and uncertain. It’s not her first rodeo with the trolls and the unwanted posts with her face plastered under something homophobic, but the familiarity isn’t enough to keep the emotions at bay.

She doesn’t entertain the post, and instead tosses her phone on the bed and finishes getting dressed. She ties her shoes and puts her hair in a high pony using the hair tie she’s had around her wrist since last night. It feels nice when she runs her finger along the indentation it left on her wrist.

Downstairs, Maribel cleans the kitchen and makes a bucket of hot mop water when Santana makes her way to the breakfast table to snatch a barely-warm tortilla from the tortilla warmer. It doesn’t go down easy and only makes the ball of yarn knot itself up in her belly. She throws the unfinished half in the trash and pushes open the door to the garage while Maribel gets to work on cleaning the floor, finding her father elbow-deep under the hood of the 1990 Toyota Camry she remembers bouncing around in without a car seat. It’s sitting on jacks, and Santana wonders how possible it would be for it to crush her.

“Papi,” Santana calls, “I’m ready to work on it with you.”

Victor Lopez drops the closed bottle of engine oil. “Oh, Santana! You scared me.” He picks up the bottle and gestures to the car. “I’ll let you do it. Oil change.”

She cracks her knuckles and immediately removes the dipstick, passing it back to her father before slipping her body under the car with a catch pan on her chest.

“Wrench, Papi,” Santana instructs, holding an expectant palm out. Victor settles a box-end wrench in her hand, and she gets to work on loosening the drain plug until the oil begins spilling out like an erupting volcano. “Yuck. It smells gross!”

“It’s been in there for six years,” Victor says as he watches his daughter fiddle around under the car. “Better to be safe and change it now. I don’t want you burning up in this car when you drive it.”

Santana scowls as she waits for the oil to stop gushing from the drain plug. “I’m not driving this death trap! I don’t know how I’m still alive! Two of the seatbelts don’t even work anymore!”

“Your mother promised Ms. Rodriguez that she would watch Mateo every Monday and Tuesday to cut down her daycare cost, and this car isn’t safe for him,” Victor explains. “She’ll be driving the Kia. His seat is already installed. Well, I hope it’s installed. You did install it, right?”

“Yes, Papi,” Santana sighs. “Almost lost my finger trying to figure it out, but I did. And why do you care about his seat? I was literally doing jumping jacks in the backseat when I was his age. I shouldn’t even be alive right now.”

“We didn’t have car seats back then.”

Scooting herself out from under the car, Santana stares indignantly at her father. “They had car seats in the late 1990s!”

“I didn’t say they didn’t have them, I said we didn’t have them.” Victor urges her back under the car. “Finish up so we can put new windshield wiper blades on. You won’t be able to see anything but Dios inviting you to the light if it rains.”

Santana rolls her eyes and reprises her position under the oil filter. She can’t see anything but gushes of oil while she’s preoccupied with cleaning the oil filter, but she hears a car lock from the end of the driveway, and then her Papi curses something under his breath.

“Victor,” the unmistakable sound of Abuela’s voice echoes through the garage, and the wrench plows right into Santana’s breasts.

“Mother,” Victor mumbles. “Are you here to apologize?”

“She’s not a boy. Why is she under the car? That’s a man’s job,” Alma says, effectively dismissing her son’s question. “This is why she’s like this. You have her doing masculine things. If you’d taught her to be a girl, we wouldn’t be having this problem.”

Santana finds herself at a floundering crossroads. She wants to bolt from the room and lock herself upstairs, but there’s also something intriguing about her grandmother’s thought process.

“Mami, if you aren’t here to apologize to Santana for what you said, you have to go,” Victor sternly says, and Santana can imagine him already ushering her towards her car. “You can’t stay here or be around Santana if you’re going to talk like that.”

The garage door squeaks open, and Santana hears her mother enter the room. She’s being waterboarded by oil as she holds her breath for a few seconds, anticipating a screaming match that Abuela is sure to lose.

“Ah, Maribel,” says Abuela. “Nice to see that you both missed church this morning. I expected it from Santana, considering she may just burst into flames upon entering, but I’m very disappointed to know the devil got to you, too. I was waiting for you. Don Pedro was very upset that you two didn’t show.”

Santana loses what’s left of her sanity with each drop of oil on her face. She pretends to keep working, avoiding having to come out of her sanctuary beneath this two-ton contraption that may slip off its jacks and kill her.

“Well, forgive us, Alma, but we just weren’t too excited for church when we were up all night with a crying teenager who’s just had her entire life wrecked, in some ways by you,” says Maribel.

“That’s her own sin. If she’s uncomfortable, now she knows how the rest of us feel when we hear about her scandalous ways.”

Santana presses the rubber heels of her sneakers into the cement of the garage floor and scoots her way out from under the car, a full pan of oil on her chest, which her Papi is quick to remove so it doesn’t spill over her.

“I’m right here, for fuck’s sake!” Santana says, throwing her arms in the air.

“¿Que acabas de decir?” Abuela glares at her granddaughter. “What did you just say to me?”

“I said, I’m right here, for fuck’s sake,” Santana repeats slowly, her eyes locked tightly onto her Abuela’s. She wipes the oil from her face with dirty rag on the floor.

Alma gives her son the side-eye. “You let her talk to me like this? A child stays in a child’s place. That would’ve earned you a good whipping with my chancla.”

Maribel is quick to intervene, stepping in front of Santana to create a barrier between her and the brewing tension. “We don’t hit our child, we threaten to send her to your house. Now, unless you’re ready to apologize, I suggest you pack up your broom and flying monkeys and ride off into the night.”

“I have nothing to apologize for. I came by to tell you that I spoke with Don Pedro and his wife after mass and told him about Santana’s ways. He doesn’t watch television, so he missed the ad, gracias a Dios, but I filled him in. He gave me some information on this. . .place for people like Santana,” says Alma as she’s procuring a stack of folded papers from her purse—the same purse Santana snuck candy from during church while Abuela was busy praying with her eyes closed.

“I’m not sending my baby to a conversion camp,” says Maribel, tearing the papers in half. “There’s nothing wrong with her. So you can apologize, or leave and don’t come back until you’re ready for that.”

Santana’s mouth runs dry. The glare from her grandmother burning a hole into her soul pains her, and those crumpled papers in her Mami’s hands sting like a fresh sunburn. Tears gather in her eyes, her bottom lip trembling between her teeth.

“At least consider it,” Alma says as she pats Maribel’s arm. “Don Pedro said it best; if she didn’t want the consequences of this, she should’ve kept it to herself. Some things aren’t meant to be said aloud. This whole Pride thing every June makes me ill. That’s not something to be celebrated. If she wants to live her life like that, that’s her sin and eternal damnation, but she can’t subject others to it and expect us to be okay with it.”

Maribel points towards the driveway. “Get out. Don’t come back or call until you’re ready to apologize. Santana is not going anywhere, nothing is wrong with her, and we won’t be visiting you or the church anytime soon.”

Victor puts one hand on Alma’s shoulder and begins ushering her to her car. Santana keeps her eyes glued to the purse tucked under Alma’s arm as the old woman is being escorted away like a petulant child leaving a candy store.

“Mija, do you want to come inside?” Maribel asks as she lowers herself to Santana’s level and uses her index finger to wipe away a lonesome tear. “I’ll make you some hot chocolate.”

“I have to finish this,” mumbles Santana as she pushes herself up and grabs the bottle of motor oil.

Victor and Alma argue over whatever it is mothers and sons argue over—or maybe over Santana’s desire and admiration of other girls—and Santana sighs as she unscrews the oil cap and funnels the motor oil in. How fast would it kill her if she were to drink the whole bottle? Or even a taste?

After blindly floundering in her morbidity for a decent stretch of time, Santana realizes that her abuela has left, by choice or by force, and her parents have flanked her, with her Papi resting a hand on her back and her Mami fussing over the silent tears dripping down her cheeks.

“We’ll finish this later, Santana,” says Victor.

“No. I’ll finish it now. It’s not a big deal,” says Santana with a halfhearted shrug. She slides the dipstick back into place. “The oil is done. We can change the wipers now, Papi.”

Victor shares a concerned glance with his wife as Santana moves about the garage in a large circle as if she’s lost something. Victor wants to tell her that the replacement blades are right in front of her, but he knows she’s not looking for anything in particular—maybe her mind, but that’s about it.

Santana roams in angry circles until she’s almost dizzy with rage and anguish. She’s supposed to change the blades and detail the inside of the car today because her Mami needs the Kia to take Mateo to the park or wherever it is toddlers go, and she’s determined to not be another disappointment to her parents by foiling the plans they’ve created.

“Where’s the stupid fucking blades?!” Santana screams into her palms.

Maribel’s arms extend outwards and catch Santana when she finally crumbles to the ground. She brings her baby to her chest and rocks her slowly, the same way she did when Santana was small enough to fit inside her shirt.

“That’s enough for today,” murmurs Maribel, into Santana’s ear as she trembles against her mother’s chest. “Let’s go inside and make some hot chocolate. I’ll put on SpongeBob for you. How does that sound?”

Santana can’t speak, the words and screams jumbling up in her throat. She manages to release a pained squeak as Maribel helps her stand up, and it’s then that the mother realizes that her daughter has surpassed her in height and she can’t carry her anymore.

“She’s never coming around,” Santana sobs. “She’s gonna hate me forever. She won’t love me the way she did.”

Maribel offers another hug, which Santana forces herself to melt into. Her eyes flutter closed against her Mami’s chest, her hand curling into a relaxed fist near her mouth.

It’s a terrible Sunday to be gay, Santana decides.

—

Monday begins with a good-morning text from Brittany. It starts with a smiley face and ends with a heart emoji, and Santana reciprocates the greeting and tells Brittany how much she loves her. She doesn’t bother with social media or her full Facebook inbox, rather immediately getting out of bed to pull her Cheerios uniform over herself. She buttons her Cheerios coat and ties her hair in a tight high ponytail before brushing her teeth so hard she thinks her enamel has been ripped off.

She’s on a mission today, and if she has to be positive about one thing, she’s positive that today is going to be a disaster for someone within her close circle. There’s a definitive smirk on her face as she’s applying the lightest of makeup to her cheeks and under her eyes to disguise the fact that she hasn’t slept more than an hour at a time since she saw her face flashing on TV. The bags under her eyes have produced their own luggage, and it’s quite astounding how someone can live with this little sleep.

It’s close to seven by the time Santana ties her shoes and grabs her backpack from the bottom of the stairs. She discovers that her mother has begun her babysitting duty and sleepy Mateo is perched on one hip while she flips a few pancakes on the griddle.

“Santana, come eat something before you go,” says Maribel as Santana is brushing past her to snatch the Toyota keys off the hook by the garage door.

“I’m fine, Mami,” assures Santana. The sight of the mountain of food on the table squeezes Santana’s growling stomach. “I’m gonna be late. I overslept.”

Maribel flips a pancake and turns to her daughter while Mateo yawns and lays his head on her shoulder. “Santi, you can stay home and get some rest today. You haven’t slept decently in a week. I’ll write a note if I have to. You look exhausted.”

“Mami, I have to go to school. I have Cheerios practice,” Santana insists.

“You need food, before you die on the field.” The mother single-handedly stuffs sliced bananas and strawberries in a ziplock bag before forcing it into the outer pocket of Santana’s backpack. “Call me if you want to go home. I’ll make something up.”

“I love you, Mami. I’ll be okay, I promise.” Santana leaves a kiss to Maribel’s cheek and ruffles Mateo’s bed head before leaving through the garage door. She retrieves the wrench she tucked away in a toolbox last night. “But he won’t.”

After successfully tucking the wrench away in her backpack where it wouldn’t ever be suspected by nosy teachers, Santana closes the garage and gets into the driver’s seat of the Toyota, finding that her Papi left her a ten dollar bill to fill the gas tank. She has plenty to get her to and from school, so she pockets the bill and promises to buy herself and Brittany a pint of ice cream to share on the way home.

She spends the entirety of the drive on the edge of shitting herself. She isn’t sure how she managed to survive this death trap, and she thinks that if she drives faster than forty miles an hour, the engine may just give out altogether. The seatbelt barely restrains her like it should, and there’s a moment where she prays to the Virgin Mary figurine attached to her dashboard for death to be instantaneous if she were to get into a crash.

After nearly soiling her skirt, Santana arrives at school just in time to get to Finn’s locker without much of a struggle. She spins the lock—19 first, then 10, and finally 20—and pries open the door. Throwing cautious glances over both shoulders, she digs the wrench out of her backpack and sets it precariously against the door as she closes it, effectively creating a loud and painful booby trap. She spins the lock and, satisfied with herself, scoops up her backpack and gym bag from the floor before moving across the hall to her own locker.

There’s a few minutes of comfortable silence while Santana is sorting her books and composition notebooks for the day, and then she hears the orgasmic clamor of metal crashing to the floor followed by a loud yelp of distinguished pain.

“Finn! Oh my god! Are you okay?!” Rachel’s voice carries like nails scraping a chalkboard. “Why do you keep a wrench in your locker?!”

“I don’t!” Finn hisses.

Santana spins around to discover the uncoordinated quarterback hopping on one foot like he’s on a pogo stick, the wrench laid abandoned on the floor. By the time Santana acknowledges that Finn is hurt by her beloved wrench, a small crowd has formed around Finn and Rachel. Some people are shoving their cellphones into Finn’s face and mocking his cries of pain, until Mr. Schuester approaches and disbands the crowd by pushing his way through them to assess the damage.

“What happened?” Mr. Schue asks, intaking the sight of the wrench and a fussing Rachel. “Why is there a wrench here?”

“It fell out of his locker,” says Rachel as she’s pawing at Finn to stabilize him. “It wasn’t there yesterday. Someone obviously planted it, Mr. Schuester! Someone intended to hurt him!”

“Let’s get you to the nurse,” says the teacher, stepping over the tool and guiding Finn to the nurse’s office with Rachel quickly following behind like she’s attached to Finn by an umbilical cord.

In the midst of the chaos, Santana isn’t aware that Brittany has been obediently at her side. She turns and is met with her face pressing into the softness of Brittany, who immediately wraps her arms around Santana and brings her close. Santana could float away with the sound of Brittany’s heart beating in her ear.

“Nice trick. But that was kinda harsh, don’t you think?” Brittany asks with a pout.

“He ruined my life. I ruined his toes,” says Santana, shrugging. “Those things aren’t equal at all. He had it coming.”

“You’re hot when you’re mad,” says Brittany, earning the smallest of smiles. “You should pick that wrench up. It’s your special wrench.”

Once the bell has rung and the majority of the crowd clears, Santana retrieves her wrench and slips it back into her backpack. Brittany kisses her goodbye with a quick peck to the cheek, and they drift away from each other, Santana heading towards English and Brittany towards algebra.

She has to keep her head high as she’s walking to the end of the empty hallway. She can’t afford to be caught off guard this time. The muscles in her back reflexively tense while she counts the steps to English; five more and she’ll be there, albeit a minute late. She enters the room and makes a beeline for her seat without acknowledging the stares and murmurs as she passes by a few Cheerios at the back of the room, and Ms. Baxter glares at her over her Miss Honey glasses.

“Late again,” the teacher declares. “I’ve been nice to you and allowed the tardiness, but you need to get a tardy slip today. Unacceptable behavior, Ms. Lopez.”

“There was traffic,” says Santana with a shrug. “In the hallway.”

“I don’t care if there was a flying monkey. Go get a tardy slip from the office,” says Ms. Baxter as she points to the door.

“No thanks,” Santana replies. “I’m fine right here.”

“Now. Or you can spend your cheer practice in detention with Ms. Pillsbury. I’m sure she would love to discuss some things with you.”

Santana blinks a few times, intaking the sight of the entire class turning in their seats to expectantly stare at her like they’re dead fish out of water. There’s something about the raw vulnerability of being so exposed to them that forces her to stand up and grab her backpack. She leaves the room, avoiding responding to the whispers and comments made behind her back as she does so.

The front office smells like the inside of a grandma’s purse. Mrs. What’s-Her-Face writes Santana a tardy slip, citing “traffic in the hallway” on the bottom of the paper, and passes it to her with the grace of an elephant stumbling about a circus.

“Santana,” Mr. Schuester calls as he’s exiting to the nurse’s office. “Come here please.”

“I’m already tardy. Ms. Baxter is gonna have my head if I don’t go now,” says Santana, preparing to make a run for it. “I’ll make Finn a get well card in art class, okay?”

The teacher intercepts her path out the door. Those stupid curls of his hang loosely over his forehead, and Santana briefly considers her punishment if she were to snip them off with a pair of safety scissors.

“Santana, we need to talk. Come with me,” Mr. Schue instructs, gesturing to Ms. Pillsbury’s office. “Go on. She’s waiting for you.”

Mumbling a few Spanish swear words under her breath, Santana enters Ms. Pillsbury’s office and takes a seat in front of her, followed by Mr. Schue, who sits just a little too close to her. She scoots her chair a few inches to the right and pours indignantly at the redhead who’s viciously wiping a pen with a Lysol wipe.

“Santana,” says Ms. Pillsbury, doing her best impression of a happy woman and not someone who’s completely falling apart at the seams. “It’s so nice to see you. I’ve called you in here regarding some. . .behavioral issues.”

“I wasn’t the one who broke Finn’s gigantic toes,” says Santana with a nod. “Sometimes karma comes back without my help.”

“We’ll find out what happened to his foot later, but we’re more concerned with you right now,” says Ms. Pillsbury. Her stupid bracelets clink as she scrubs between the numbers on the corded phone on the desk. Santana could break her fingers off.

Mr. Schue twists himself to look at Santana. “We’ve heard from all your teachers that you’ve been tardy every single day for a week straight. You rarely show up to glee practice with Ms. Corcoran. The only thing you show up for is Cheerios practice, and I’m pretty sure that’s only because you’re afraid of Coach Sylvester.”

Ms. Pillsbury finally rests her hands on the desk and takes a moment to look pitifully at Santana. “We know this past week hasn’t been easy for you, with the campaign ad and—“

“—Could we not talk about this right now?” Santana mumbles. “I have enough to deal with as it is.”

“What is it that you’re dealing with, besides the obvious?” Ms. Corcoran begins rifling through pamphlets and packets on PTSD.

Santana stands up and digs her palms into her eyes. “I don’t need to talk about anything! If I need to talk to you, I’ll come to you! But I don’t wanna talk about this monkey on my back that I have to live with because of Finn’s stupid mouth! He deserved that wrench on his foot!”

Mr. Schue is quick to stand up. “Santana—“

“—Just leave me alone! Goddamnit!”

The door slams as loudly as it can being a self-closing door, and then Mr. Schue and Ms. Pillsbury are glancing at each other. The glee teacher stands up and runs a hand through his poodle-like hair.

“That went well.”

—

Santana unintentionally discovers that Quinn spends her lunch period in the courtyard with a copy of a Stephen King novel in her hands. She’s never been one to mingle with the former Skank since Quinn’s good-girl-gone-bad phase, but the cafeteria was decidedly full of people, and people are not what Santana wants to see right now. Brittany promised to meet her here for some quiet time, and Santana wants to kick Quinn in the shin for being here.

“You’re such a nerd,” says Santana as she sits in front of Quinn, who jumps and puts her book down. “Seriously, nobody reads Stephen King anymore.”

“It’s for AP English,” says Quinn with a defensive glare. “It’s not bad, actually. You should read it.”

“Yeah, and maybe we can start a book club!” Santana rolls her eyes to the back of her head and picks at the limp baked potato in front of her with a fork. “Nerd.”

Quinn goes to retort, but Brittany plops herself next to Santana with a tray of random snacks she bought in the cafeteria. She offers Santana a half-melted ice cream sandwich and whispers something of urgency into her ear.

“Eat, babe. Please,” Brittany urges. “That baked potato isn’t gonna keep you full until after practice.”

“I’m fine with this, Britt,” Santana murmurs. “You eat your ice cream.”

With a pout, Brittany opens the ice cream sandwich and sinks her teeth into it. Santana watches her with longing and leans in for a quick kiss, effectively licking some of the calories of Brittany’s lips. It’s the only food of caloric substance she’s consumed in days, and it goes down sour.

Kurt’s entrance is smooth as he glides into the seat next to Quinn. “Hello, ladies. Satan.”

“Lady Hummel, don’t you have anything of more importance to do, like paint your nails or color-code your locker?” Santana remarks with a scrunch of her nose.

“I know you put the wrench in Finn’s locker,” says Kurt as he removes the lid to his ice cream cup. “My dad took him to urgent care. Slight fracture, but he’ll be fine in a few days. I didn’t mention that we all know it was you, because then he might not allow me to invite you for a sleepover this weekend.”

Brittany’s eyes light up like a Christmas tree. “Sleepover? When? I wanna go!” Her excitement deflates as she looks towards Santana, who has violently stabbed her fork into the middle of her baked potato. “But I’ll go only if you do.”

Kurt waves Brittany off. “This Saturday. You’re all invited. Mercedes and Tina are coming. Rachel rejected me because she’s going to watch a musical with her dads in Columbus, so we’ll be down one diva when we play truth or dare.”

“What a pity,” says Santana. She cracks open her plastic water bottle. “Count me out if Finn is gonna be there.”

“Well, Satan, he lives there, but don’t worry, Finn will be a good boy and stay in his room. As long as you don’t drop a wrench on him again.”

Quinn’s book slips from her hands and clatters on the table. “You dropped a wrench on Finn?”

After a moment of hesitation, Santana glares at Kurt and rams the tip of her cheer shoe into his shin, causing him to choke on what little ice cream he had in his mouth. Reflexively, Quinn pats his back and reaches across the table to smack Santana’s hand in reprimand.

“Dammit, Satan,” says Kurt as he struggles to regain composure from the blinding pain in his leg. “Completely unacceptable! I’m sure he’ll forgive you if you just come clean about it! No need to be so defensive.”

“I didn’t do anything,” replies Santana while she pretends the spud in front of her is Finn’s eyeball as she stabs it several times. “Karma just has a funny way of finding people who do bad things. Same reason Coach Sylvester’s hair won’t grow past her pinkie and Figgins stopped growing in third grade.”

“Alright, fine, you didn’t do it,” Kurt sighs. “Are you coming to the sleepover? It wouldn’t be the same without someone making fun of my dad’s wall art and drawing permanent mustaches on me while I sleep.”

“I’m in,” declares Quinn, cradling her book to her chest. “I could use a break from my mom. Lately she’s been scouting for a new husband and bringing home weird men to interview for my potential stepdad. I can only hope I graduate before they can start making babies in my bed.”

“That’s gross,” says Brittany, before turning to Kurt. “I’m in, too. Lord T might not be happy being away from me, but it’ll give him time to finish plotting world domination. He’s been hiding his diary from me lately.”

“I guess I’ll go,” says Santana. “But if I so much as hear Fraken-teen breathe near me or smell that cheap Wal-Mart cologne that makes my breasts lactate in anger, I’m going all Lima Heights. Are we understood?”

“Great. We have snacks at home, but you can bring anything you like,” says Kurt. Santana opens her mouth with a brilliant suggestion at the tip of her tongue. “No alcohol.”

“That’s no fun,” mumbles Santana. “Fine, I’ll bring juice boxes and we can watch Barney and put chalk in our hair like we did in preschool.”

“Dad and Carole have strict rules,” says Kurt. “Don’t blow this, Santana. I mean it. No alcohol.”

Rolling her eyes towards the sky, Santana throws her hands in the air. “Whatever, Hummel.”

Brittany offers the rest of her melted ice cream sandwich, to which Santana accepts by sinking her teeth into the sugary goodness that tastes a bit like Brittany. Brittany murmurs something akin to “good job” in Santana’s ear, and Santana shivers in the warmth of the sunlight stroking her face.

—

Santana’s daily agenda did not include a collapse from the bottom of the pyramid and a subsequent landing on her head with a bunch of cheerleaders on top of her. On a good day, that type of predicament may be favorable, but upon waking up in the nurse’s office with a blinding pain in her head and her ribs practically inside her throat, she realizes just how heavy seven teenaged girls are when collectively collapsed on top of her 115-pound frame.

“Oh, good. Boobs McGoo is awake.”

Santana recognizes the voice as none other than Coach Sylvester, and she screws her eyes shut so she doesn’t have to see the painful, disappointed sneer on her coach’s face. She slaps her hands over her eyes to block out the prison-like lighting of the nurse’s office.

“That was quite the fall, Sandbags,” says Coach Sylvester. “I hope the twins are okay. We may need them to break your fall again if you choose not to drink your protein shake for a second day in a row.”

Santana’s eyes open to find Mr. Schuester a foot away from her side. He looks at the older woman with a telltale warning in his eyes. His voice is quiet as to not disturb Santana’s alter-ego. “Sue, not now. She just fell. She could’ve been seriously injured. Maybe show a little sympathy.”

“Don’t lose your temper, William,” says Sue as she waves him off and steps closer to Santana. “You’re alive only by the grace of the built-in airbags sitting on your chest. You wouldn’t have survived that fall without them. So I’m going to apologize to them for being so harsh and unkind about their appearance.”

Mr. Schue runs a hand through his curls. “Sue, please. We don’t have time for your terrible comedic relief right now.” Moving closer to Santana, he pushes Sue away from Santana’s bedside. “It’s good to see you awake. We called your mother. She should be here soon. Do you remember anything?”

Paper crinkles beneath Santana’s weight. Her hand comes up to cradle the side of her head as she attempts to push herself into a sitting position, at which point Sue reflexively swats Will’s hand away and presses her palm into Santana’s back to support her.

If she were none the wiser, Santana would assume that she broke all her ribs on the way down to the ground. She lightly groans and clenches her eyes shut, flinching at the burning sensation in her abdomen. “I just felt weird, like the inside of my head was shaking. And then everything was really blurry and I lost my balance. I swear I saw the Virgin Mary.”

“That was just Brittany with a towel over her neck,” says Coach Sylvester. “You’ve been out for a few minutes. I couldn’t afford to break a sweat in my new tracksuit, so I had Brittany drag you off the field. Actually, my specific instructions were to grab both hands and pull, but she thought it was better to carry you, and she threw her back out.”

“Sue, she didn’t throw her back out. You tripped her and she fell with Santana on top of her,” Mr. Schuester corrects, his eyes meeting the ceiling. “If it weren’t for me picking Santana up, neither one of them would’ve made it in here.”

Santana flinches at the idea of falling on top of Brittany. Maybe that was the angel she thinks she saw before passing out completely. “Where is she? Brittany? Is she hurt?”

“She’s fine. A bump on the head is nothing to her,” says Coach Sylvester, waving Santana off. She pulls back a curtain dividing two beds, revealing Brittany sat atop the examining table with a penguin-shaped ice pack pressed to the side of her head. “Tell Boobs McGoo that you’re fine.”

“At least my head broke the fall,” says Brittany, a pout forming on her face. “That rock came out of nowhere.”

Dismissing Brittany’s incorrect assumption about what actually tripped her, Mr. Schue looks towards Santana and helps her lean forward a bit. Her ribs contract like a crushed soda can, and she assumes she punctured a lung somewhere between the pyramid and Brittany’s arms.

The nurse’s office door swings open and in walks Maribel with sleeping Mateo wrapped around her the same way Santana used to hold onto her at that age. Santana winces and braces herself.

“What happened, Santana?” Maribel asks. She raises Santana’s chin with her index finger. “Did you eat today?”

A lie sits at the tip of Santana’s tongue, tasting sour and bitter. After a moment of silence from her daughter, Maribel uses one free hand to unzip the front pocket of Santana’s abandoned backpack. Her face falls upon discovering the ziplock bag of smashed and spoiling fruit.

“Santanita, I told you to eat your fruit,” sighs Maribel as she rests her palm against the warmth of Santana’s cheek. “Why didn’t you eat?”

“I wasn’t hungry for fruit,” says Santana with a pained shrug. “I ate at lunch.”

“She’s lying,” Brittany suddenly says, bringing the ice pack to her lap so she can fiddle with it. “I ate her lunch. I would’ve eaten her fruit, too, but I kinda hate bananas. They make me cross-eyed.”

“Brittany!” Santana glares. “You promised me!”

“Don’t yell at Brittany, Santana,” scolds Maribel. “I’m glad she’s being honest, because you haven’t been. She’s looking out for you. You’re lucky you weren’t seriously hurt. I’m taking you home. If she doesn’t mind, Brittany can drive your car home and I’ll take her home from there.”

Sulking, Santana leans against the wall and closes her eyes. She listens to the three adults in the room have a heated discussion about whatever it is adults talk about in this kind of situation. Her ears perk up only when Coach Sylvester tells Maribel that Santana has been benched for the remainder of the school week and will have to find other endeavors to occupy herself until she’s ready to return to practice.

“That’s not fair!” Santana exclaims, forcing herself to jump off the exam table. She stumbles forward and is immediately stabilized by Mr. Schue, who seems to have better reflexes than her cheer coach. “You can’t kick me off the team! I need cheer!”

“I’m not kicking you off,” says Coach Sylvester. “You’re going to sit this week out. If you die out there before competition, we’ll have no shot at winning. I’ll just have to force Becky to replace you until then. She can handle being at the bottom. You can come back next week, if you stop upchucking your food in the toilet like a sorority girl the day before homecoming.”

“I’m not making myself throw up!” Santana defends, her eyes narrowing. “I’m just not hungry, okay?”

Maribel holds up one hand, effectively stopping Santana from defending herself into a punishment. “Give Brittany your keys. We’re gonna go home and I’m keeping you home tomorrow. Go get your stuff from your locker.”

There’s no more room for arguing with any of the adults staring at her with pity laced into their features. Santana grabs her car keys from her backpack and deposits them into Brittany’s waiting palm before slipping her backpack over her shoulders and immediately brushing past Mr. Schuester and Coach Sylvester, leaving her mother and Mateo behind. She can’t afford to allow her temper to get the best of her when she’s already floundering in scalding water, so she treks down the empty hallway and slams her locker open, and a folded piece of paper glides to the floor. She picks it up and unfolds it, anticipating seeing Brittany’s scrawled handwriting.

“Fucking bastards,” she curses at the paper trembling in her hands.

Call me when you decide to let me straighten you out

Santana crumples the paper just in time to see Brittany jogging towards her with her keys hooked around her finger. She casts her head downwards and continues grabbing her textbooks and overdue assignments from her locker.

“Santana, babe,” says Brittany. “Are you mad at me? You know, for telling your mom I ate your lunch?”

Santana shrugs and closes her locker. “She was gonna find out even if you hadn’t. I’m not mad at you, okay?”

“Okay. . .hey, what’s that?” Brittany points to the mutilated paper in Santana’s hand. “Did someone leave you a note?”

“It’s nothing,” says Santana. “Just trash. I don’t like my locker to be messy.”

“But it’s always messy,” says Brittany, frowning. “I once found a dead lizard in there.”

“I’m turning over a new leaf,” Santana replies. She tries to prevent her nose from twitching as the lies profusely spill from her mouth. “I have to learn to be cleaner.”

Brittany continues to frown, her eyes studying every inch of Santana as if she’s trying to take a mental image of this moment. She eventually nods and leans in to plant a kiss to Santana’s cheek.

“I love you, Santana, and I hate seeing you sad,” says Brittany. “And I don’t think you’re being honest with me. But it’s okay. I’ll be here when you’re ready to tell me. But I’m kinda scared.”

“Don’t be,” Santana assures, her fingertips grazing Brittany’s forearm. “I’m okay, Britt. Really. I’ve gotta go. I’ll see you later today, okay?”

Brittany nods in defeat as Santana brushes past her with the piece of paper crushed in her palm.

—

Santana spends the majority of her day off sprawled out on her unmade bed while scrolling through Twitter and Facebook. It’s an addiction she can’t escape, and she wonders how many hours today that she’s spent trolling Rachel and Finn using her alternate accounts. She’s about nine trolling comments in when she realizes that it’s past three and she should be at glee practice with the other girls but instead she’s cooped up in this bedroom, in her pajamas and her hair tied in a knotted bun atop her head.

Twitter becomes boring, so she switches over to Facebook and scrolls through her feed for awhile. Quinn recently posted a photo of herself and Mike in the choir room with a set list in her hands. She’s smiling goofily as Mike tousles her hair into a bird’s nest. Santana likes it and moves onto the next post, which is from Brittany, posted six minutes ago, of herself and Becky on the field in their Cheerios uniforms. Brittany glows like sunlight over a field of flowers. A frown presses into Santana’s face when she remembers that Becky is her placeholder.

“What a fuck nugget,” Santana curses, about no one in particular. It just feels good leaving her mouth.

As she’s mindlessly scrolling through her friends’ digital lives, Santana receives a notification that someone has messaged her on Facebook. Out of a mixture of both boredom and curiosity, she opens it. She’s not necessarily shocked to find that it’s from Josh Coleman.

Josh Coleman: like my note?? ;) I could teach you a few things.

She ignores it and continues scrolling through posts from the few family members remaining as friends with her on Facebook after her life’s most recent turn of events. Her inbox signals another notification.

Josh Coleman: don’t ignore me. Nobody wants a faggot kid

Josh Coleman: you can’t hide forever

Slamming her laptop lid closed, Santana pushes herself into a sitting position and protectively wraps her arms around her middle. She eyes the food sitting on her desk and shivers in remembrance that she’s not had anything solid to eat for days, and she considers the possibility of her parents serving her ass to her on a silver platter.

Her Mami has been busy looking after Mateo, most of the day, and has only visited Santana’s bedroom to deposit a tray of homemade soup and tortillas, which have gone untouched for a couple of hours. Santana isn’t pleased when her mother enters the room and frowns at the full tray on the desk. She immediately moves to sit next to her daughter on the bed, placing a protective hand on the small of her back.

“Mija, please,” Maribel sighs. “What is it? Hm? You’re not eating, and I know you didn’t sleep well last night. I could hear you tossing and turning.”

“It’s nothing,” insists Santana. “I’m fine, Mami. I promise.”

“I don’t think so, honey,” Maribel says with a shake of her head. “Is it your weight? Do you not like the way you look?”

“I like the way I look. It’s not that. It’s not anything, actually,” Santana attempts to assure, her hand grabbing Maribel’s.

There’s an indecipherable emotion on Maribel’s face. Santana considers the possibility of her Mami reading her mind, and she visibly winces at that. There are plenty of sins in this world, but lying to her mother is one she never thought she would commit.

Maribel moves Santana so the girl is sitting in front of her with her back pressed into her own chest. She begins braiding Santana’s hair while humming a Spanish lullaby that Santana vaguely remembers hearing before.

“I know you’re going through something,” says Maribel, after awhile of braiding. “Because of what happened at school with Finn. And the ad. I don’t know what you’re going through, because I’ve never had something like this happen to me, but I can see how much it’s hurting you, and now you’re hurting yourself to cope with it. That’s not very healthy for you.”

Santana wants to throw her hands up and surrender to the insistence that she’s hiding something valuable from her mother. The only reason she keeps still is because her hair might rip from her scalp if she moves, and her hair is one of the only redeemable qualities about herself that hasn’t been mocked or tainted.

“I love you, Mami, and I promise to tell you if something is wrong,” says Santana, as she twists her body to look at her mother. “What happened is stressing me out. Abuela doesn’t want me anymore.”

Maribel frowns, pulling Santana close to her body. “Is that what’s been upsetting you the most?”

“Sort of,” says Santana, on the brink of tears. “And I’m afraid that she’ll convince you to get rid of me and send me to that place.”

Santana doesn’t open her eyes when she feels herself being lifted into Maribel’s lap like a baby. Those familiar arms wind tightly around her body and her mother’s hand presses against the side of her head, effectively bringing it to her chest so Santana can hear the steady rhythm of her heart. She smells so lovely and soft, like clothing detergent with a hint of nutmeg, and Santana begins to drift away in the comfort of her mother’s presence.

“I would never do something like that,” promises Maribel. “There is nothing wrong with you, Santanita. You were born as you are, and I wouldn’t change any of that for the world. Who am I to say that God’s creation for me is imperfect?”

“What if she never loves me again?” Santana sniffles. “I was always her baby. Even when she was mean to me. Like all those times she hit me with the chancla because I interrupted her stories.”

“Give her some time. If she really loves you, she’ll come back and accept that this is who you are,” assures Maribel.

Santana sobs against her Mami and wraps her hands around the soft material of her mother’s sweater. Maribel leaves a trail of kisses along the crown of Santana’s head until the tears abate sometime later. Their moment of clarity is quickly severed by the sound of something crashing to the ground downstairs.

“He’s awake,” says Maribel with a shudder. “I’ll go see what he broke this time. I’ll be back with your dinner.”

Santana wipes the rest of her tears and tugs at Maribel’s sweater as she’s walking away from her daughter. “Can I go to Kurt’s house for a sleepover this Saturday? All the girls will be there. Brittany’s going. Burt and Carole will be home.”

“I don’t see why not,” says Maribel with a shrug. “I know you’re still angry at Finn. Will you be able to control your anger if you see him?”

Santana hasn’t decided what kind of behavior she’s going to pack inside her overnight bag, but to console her mother’s fears of her child being kicked out of a classmate’s house for a third time, she nods and offers her Mami a smile. Despite all suspicions, Maribel nods and closes the door to venture off to find what Mateo has done to her house.

—

Brittany is supposed to drive Santana home after school so they can work on a science project together, but Santana neglected to remember that she’s been unhelpfully benched by Coach Sylvester and has to sit out on Cheerios practice after school while waiting for Brittany to be done pulling her hamstrings.

She spends the initial five minutes of practice with her butt firmly planted to the bleachers in the gym while Coach Sylvester goes on a rampage about their uniforms beginning to not fit anymore. Santana isn’t wearing hers—it’s in Brittany’s gym bag and won’t see the light of day for a few more days—but she finds herself wrapping her arms around her torso to keep the fat in.

Coach Sylvester is screeching through the megaphone while Becky provides backup expressions. “If you can’t fit into your uniform, you don’t get to wear it! You can sit your big butts on the sideline with Sandbags over there until you can fit into it! Are we clear?!”

Santana sucks in one cheek, watching the cheerleaders poke at their bellies and tug their skirts down to their knees; except for Brittany, who continues jumping rope with her eyes fixated on Santana.

Coach Sylvester shouts a few more obscenities at the cheerleaders, calling them a few more names that will surely result in a chronic eating disorder, before Santana has heard enough. She leaves the bleachers and pushes the gym door open, poking her head through before looking left and right and slipping out of the room. The door clicks loudly as it closes, and she realizes she’s alone in the hallway.

She only half expects to be jumped and assaulted this time. It’s become a daily ritual, the intaking of her surroundings and surveying of boys surrounding her, and she doubts any other girl at McKinley has to do these things to avoid being touched against her will. She considers it to be Finn’s fault, but it’s also Sue’s fault, and she’s at a loss when pointing the blame doesn’t fulfill her the way it used to when she was younger. Blaming them doesn’t expunge this filthy feeling from her reputation; it only provides a five-minute outlet to circumvent her anger.

The anger floats through her veins the entire time her feet are carrying her somewhere familiar. She counts the tiles—one, two, one, two—on her way to the choir room, where Mr. Schuester is sat at his desk with a stack of papers in front of him. Santana briefly stands at the door and taps her knuckle against the glass, gaining her teacher’s attention.

Mr. Schuester seems spooked by Santana staring him down like he’s done something to wrong her. She’s standing idle like a sim character anticipating its next move, awkwardly shuffling from foot to foot. He waves at her and invites her to enter, to which she accepts and idles near his desk, her fingernails clicking against the wood.

“Not that I mind you being here, Santana, but is there a particular reason you’re here?” Mr. Schue inquires after a minute of the tapping beginning to tickle his brain.

“I was benched, remember?”

“Right. And you’re waiting for Brittany,” says the teacher with a nod. “Is there something you need from me?”

Santana blinks expectantly. Without so much as a moment of thought, Mr. Schue rolls away from the desk and offers up the space beneath it. Santana ducks into the small, rectangular space and sits crisscrossed, the top of her high pony bumping against the underside of the desk. Mr. Schue rattles around in a drawer before depositing an expired Little Debbie strawberry shortcake in her hand. If Santana is going to reject her lunch and force Brittany to cover for her, he’s okay with this being the only thing she eats today.

“Thanks,” says Santana, unwrapping the cake. She sinks her teeth into it and shrieks when she finds that her teacher is eye-level with her. “Jesus, Mr. Schue. Don’t do that.”

“I think it’s time we had a talk,” says Mr. Schue. “I’m sure you really worried your parents on Monday. I know I was worried when I found out you fell. Even Coach Sylvester was worried, although she has a unique way of showing it.”

“Where’s this going, Mr. Schue?” Santana asks between bites of high fructose corn syrup. “Are you gonna lecture me about not eating? Because I do eat, just not here. Nobody wants to eat cardboard for lunch.”

“I’ve seen this before, Santana, and it’s usually more than just food. When people stop eating, there’s a reason behind it. They don’t like the way they look, they feel fat, they want to punish themselves for something, or they’re scared of something,” says Mr. Schue. “I’m going to be honest and say that I did go to Ms. Pillsbury for advice.”

“Not Ms. Pillsbury Dough Lady,” Santana groans, tipping her head back as much as the confined space will allow. “She’s the worst. She probably gave you pamphlets on throwing up or something.”

“She did, but that’s besides the point,” Mr. Schue says as he scratches the back of his neck. “Scoot over.”

“I literally can’t,” Santana deadpans.

It becomes abundantly clear that her teacher isn’t leaving. Regardless of the minimal amount of space she can move, she tucks her legs to her chest to allow for Mr. Schuester to sit next to her. While she’s busying herself with licking the filling from the cake, Mr. Schue attempts to find the right wording.

“What’s going on with you, Santana?” Mr. Schuester inquires. “I know what you’ve gone through the last couple of weeks can’t be fun. It can be kinda scary for a kid like you; being forced to come out, not having a real chance to do it on your own time, living in a conservative town.”

“I don’t need a play-by-play, Mr. Schue,” Santana mutters against the red dye on her lips. “And anything I tell you will just get back to Ms. Pillsbury Dough Lady and my parents. So I’m good not saying anything.”

“Sounds serious,” Mr. Schuester says with a nod. “I’ve noticed you withdrawing a lot more recently. And I’ve also noticed you rarely go from class to class without someone escorting you. And no one—Brittany, Quinn, Mercedes, Kurt, Puck—has told me why they walk with you. I’ve taken notice of that myself. Is there a particular reason?”

She looks sideways at Mr. Schue. There has never been a finer moment to come clean, and she thinks he already knows, even if she doesn’t tell him the truth. The truth must be written on her forehead in permanent marker, because why else would he be staring directly into her soul? She doesn’t trust the ambiguity palpating between them, and she even fears that he’s already made several interpretations of her life.

“They’re just being supportive,” she finally says with a shrug. “I mean, what Finn did just about ruined my life, and him singing a stupid song to me only made my nipples chafe in rage. They’re just making sure they don’t find me bleeding out on the choir room floor.” She grins and nudges him, but he remains stoic.

“Not funny, Santana. Your life is nothing to joke about,” he scolds. She frowns around her snack cake. “If there’s something you need to talk about, you’ll always have space under this desk, okay?”

Without lifting her head to look him in the eye, Santana nods and crumples the plastic packaging of the cake she’s finished. “Okay, Mr. Schue.”

“Would you like another snack?”

She contemplates it for a moment. “Sure. I still fit in my Cheerios uniform.”

Mr. Schuester decides that’s a problem that can wait for another time and day. He grabs a zebra cake from the drawer and offers it to Santana, who happily unwraps it and eats quietly while he returns to the papers on his desk.

Santana chews silently and patiently awaits Brittany’s dismissal from cheer practice, but until then, she’s content with her snack cake and space underneath Mr. Schue’s desk.

—

Saturday night begins as a fever dream for Santana when she finds herself standing at the Hummels’ front door with her overnight bag and sleeping bag over one shoulder and Brittany at her side, their pinkies locked tightly together, as if they’ll slip away from each other any moment now. Brittany rings the doorbell as Santana shifts from one foot to the other.

Mr. Hummel is a nice man, and Santana knows this, but she’s a bit intimidated by him when he answers the door and a flash of confusion crosses his face. There’s a moment of clarity, and he allows the girls to enter his home. Brittany takes note of the array of shoes by the front door and immediately toes out of her sneakers. Santana absentmindedly steps onto the pretty area rug in her muddy sneakers as she intakes her surroundings.

“Santana!” Brittany scolds quietly. “You’re supposed to take your shoes off!”

Santana looks down at her feet and back up at Brittany. “Oh. How was I supposed to know that? Kurt didn’t say anything about that.”

Mr. Hummel chuckles and waves off Brittany’s immediate panic. “It’s fine, girls. You don’t have to take your shoes off. We don’t mind if things get a little messy around here.”

As Mr. Hummel goes to call Kurt from upstairs, the boy himself appears in a powder blue silk pajama set and a pair of slippers that would gag a drag queen. Santana slaps a hand over her mouth to stifle the laughter threatening to erupt from her mouth. Brittany quickly nudges her in the side to placate her girlfriend’s visible amusement.

“Ladies,” says Kurt as he’s running a hand up and down the stair railing. “Welcome. My room is upstairs on the left. I hope you brought your sleeping bags.”

Santana ascends the stairs. “Of course, but it’s not like I’m dying to share a bed with you.”

Brittany remedies the offense on Kurt’s face by running a hand through his hair on her way up the stairs. Kurt looks at his father, who’s fixated on whatever sports game is airing on television. Mr. Hummel shrugs and kicks back in his chair with a beer in his hand, though the comfort is short-lived and quickly interrupted by the doorbell ringing.

“I’ll get it, Dad,” says Kurt as he rushes to get the door. He finds Quinn, Mercedes, and Tina on his doorstep. “I’m so happy you made it! Santana and Brittany just got here.”

Mercedes enters the home first, followed by Quinn and Tina, who are already in their pajamas. “We saw that death trap of Santana’s out front. Your property values are gonna go all the way down.”

“I heard that,” says Santana, at the bottom of the stairs. She’s finally taken her shoes off somewhere—and Kurt wonders how much filth she tracked before deciding it would be best not to wear them. “I gotta piss, Hummel. I didn’t wanna christen your bathroom without asking first.”

Quinn’s eyes widen. “Santana. Language. You’re in someone else’s house.”

“Quiet, Skank,” Santana quips back, hands meeting her hips. “So can I go or not? It’s dripping down my leg like when Quinn’s water broke.”

“Yeah, go ahead. Just don’t let the toilet paper touch the ground. That’s how we get infections,” says Kurt.

“Wouldn’t dream of it.”

Santana turns and makes her way upstairs again, this time squeezing her legs together to avoid Niagara Falls leaking through her pajama shorts, and at that, Mr. Hummel increases the TV volume by several notches, a telltale sign for Kurt to pick up his posse and get moving, so he invites them upstairs, taking note of all the dirty footprints leading to his bedroom.

Brittany has been occupied with rolling out Santana’s and her sleeping bags next to each other on Kurt’s bedroom floor. She unrolls Santana’s more on the fluffy area rug and hers on the hardwood floor, and then begins setting up her two stuffed animals at the head of hers.

“Hey, Brittany,” Quinn says as the group of girls—and Kurt—enters the room.

Brittany’s eyes light up with a newfound excitement as she stands up and trips over the sleeping bags in her adventure to get to them. Quinn catches her and throws her head back laughing.

Santana enters the room from the bathroom, drying her hands on her shorts—because she actually washed them rather than being feral and just allowing the water to run to fool people into thinking she did. She cocks her head to one side, watching the girls chatter in excitement, a gaping wound in her chest.

“What’d I miss?” Santana asks.

“This is gonna be so much fun!” Tina exclaims, moving to Santana and wrapping her arms around her.

“Totally,” agrees Mercedes. “I brought Monopoly.”

Brittany and Quinn exclaim a harsh, “NO!” in unison, and Mercedes takes a personal offense to their objection.

“What’s wrong with Monopoly? Do you not know how to play?” she asks.

“It’s not that,” says Quinn, swallowing her fear. “It’s just that. . .that little devil next to Tina is scarily good at it, and it’s like a competitive sport when we play with her. She’ll flip the board if you land on her property and short her a dollar in rent. And if she gets mad for any reason, at any point in the game, she’ll still flip the board.”

“I once got a Monopoly piece in my eye. It scratched my cornea,” says Brittany with a nod of confirmation. “I thought I was blind for, like, three days.”

Kurt clears his throat. “Well, we can play, but Satan, if you flip the board, you get a half-hour penalty in the corner while the rest of us have fun.”

“Yeah, whatever. Set the board up. I’m about to mop the floor with all you hoes,” says Santana as she makes space on the floor for the board and game pieces. “I say we let Mercedes be the banker. She’s the most honest and won’t short me when I pass Go.” She glares at Quinn, who flips her off in return.

“This is a bad idea,” Kurt murmurs to Quinn as the girls are getting the board and game pieces set up on the floor. “She’s still upset over Finn. I mean, she doesn’t have to forgive him, and I honestly wouldn’t forgive him after that performance, either, but I’m just worried about them being under the same roof. If she crosses paths with him, we might have to call animal control.”

“Where’s Finn now?” Quinn questions. “The house was really quiet when we got here.”

“Carole took him out to a movie or something, but he’ll be back soon. He knows he’s not supposed to be up here with us, but if she sees him, she’s gonna flip—and not just the board,” Kurt agonizes. “I’m gonna need your help with her. Brittany knows how to control her, but I’m afraid she might let Santana run loose if she sees Finn. I need you to be the mediator and restrain her.”

“Only if I want my uterus outside my body,” says Quinn with a shudder. Kurt looks pointedly at her. “Good thing I don’t want any more kids.”

“Hummel! Quinn!” Santana calls, waving a stack of Monopoly money in the air. “We’re starting with or without you!”

Quickly saying a prayer for herself and asking God for forgiveness for everything she’s done in her short life, Quinn sits between Mercedes and Santana, who have respectively chosen the dog and battleship tokens, while Tina holds the top hat and Brittany fiddles with the cannon. Kurt decides he’s better off being the wheelbarrow, and Quinn is left with with the sad thimble.

“I’m gonna be so rich,” Santana chuckles to herself. “Who goes first?”

“I say we go in order of age,” says Quinn. “Youngest goes first.”

“That’s not fair. That means Tina gets to go first!” Santana argues. “We should do it in the order of best at this game, to worst at it. That means I go first and Quinn goes last.”

Kurt throws a concerned glance at Quinn, who waves him off and mouths a statement of reassurance that she’s capable of calming Santana’s shenanigans down if she does decide to flip the board.

Ultimately, they decide to play in order of youngest to oldest—and Santana sulks the entire time Tina is rolling the dice. Once they’ve all rounded the board once and can buy property, Santana swoops in like a hawk and buys Park Place as soon as she lands on it.

“Ha! It’s over for you hoes!” Santana cheers as she hands Mercedes a stack of bills in exchange for her property card. “Just wait till I land on Boardwalk! All you bitches are going bankrupt!”

“It’s just a game, Santana,” Quinn gently reminds.

“And you’re just a Christian. It’s just a title, isn’t it?” Santana quips as she counts the rest of her money. “Britt-Britt’s turn.”

Kurt’s eyes flick to Quinn, who shrugs and focuses her eyes on the board as Brittany rolls the dice and moves her token three spaces. Mercedes goes next and lands in jail, to which Santana offers up her Get Out of Jail Free card—it’s not like Mercedes is beating her by a long shot—but is politely rejected, because Mercedes knows that the board will be in pieces if Santana lands in jail without an outlet.

“My turn,” says Quinn as she picks up the dice. Much to Santana’s horror, the pretty blonde ventures her token eight spaces ahead and lands on Boardwalk, and the feared words come tumbling out of her mouth. “I’ll buy it.”

“Oh, hell no,” Santana curses, beginning to reach over to snatch Quinn by the front of her frog pajama top. “You leave it alone and find something else to buy.”

“You’re not gonna bully me out of this game,” Quinn challenges. “It’s a game of chance. Chances are, you didn’t land on it and I did. So I’ll buy it. Please let go or you can sit out the rest of the game.”

Brittany quickly stands up and crouches down next to Santana, placing one hand on her back. “Babe. Please don’t flip the board. You’re really tense right now, and this is supposed to help you relax. Just relax. And stop choking Quinn. I don’t think she’s into that.”

Santana releases Quinn, who’s grasped onto Mercedes for dear life, and returns her attention to the board. Brittany hums in appreciation and kisses the side of Santana’s head before reprising her place next to her and Tina. Quinn hurriedly pays for her property and tucks it safely into her bra before offering the dice to Kurt.

As Kurt is warming up the dice in his hands, the door squeaks open, and in walks Mr. Hummel with his arms full of various snacks in bowls and bags. He deposits the pile of junk food on the bed before standing over the game board with a hint of amusement in his eyes.

“Monopoly, huh?” Mr. Hummel says, nodding his head. “This tears families apart. Who’s winning?”

“Quinn,” Santana bitterly spits.

“Well, you kids have fun,” says Mr. Hummel. “Carole and I are gonna hit the hay. Kurt, F—uh, your brother—is home. He’s getting ready for bed. Try to keep it down a little. I’ve gotta get up early and start some yard work.”

“Thanks, Dad,” Kurt says.

“Lights out at eleven,” Mr. Hummel reminds as he lingers in the doorway. The stares of surprise he receives in response mortify him. “Alright, twelve.” Nobody budges, and Santana even pouts in the way that she does to her parents when she wants a new pair of shoes. “Fine. Whenever you want, but keep it down after eleven. You know how Carole is when she doesn’t get her eight hours of sleep.”

He leaves the door ajar and retreats to his bedroom, and when the hallway light turns off, the room erupts into a fit of giggles. Santana forgets that she’s losing to Quinn, and for a moment, she even forgets that she’s under the same roof as the boy who outed her in front of the entire school and caused her life to catapult into chaos.

“Your dad is a dork,” Tina laughs. “It’s hard to believe he raised you.”

“Carole is scarier than him,” says Kurt with a shrug. “And she’s really nice. She gentle parents Finn, or whatever that means.”

“It means she doesn’t parent him at all,” Santana mutters. “That’s why he doesn’t think before he speaks. And that’s why I don’t forgive him.”

A silence blankets the room. Mercedes lays a careful hand on Santana’s back and doesn’t miss the way Santana’s muscles tense beneath her palm.

“You wanna take a timeout?” Mercedes asks. “We can pause the game.”

“I’m fine. Sorry. Rage,” says Santana, offering Mercedes a warm smile. “We can keep playing.”

The kids aren’t so certain of that, but they don’t push Santana any further over the edge. They make it three times around the board before Santana has bought every property she lands on and Quinn has claimed all the railroads as hers. Kurt is only mildly interested in the boxing match that’s about to happen right here in his bedroom.

“Fabray, pay up. You landed on my shit again,” Santana urges, pointing a finger into Quinn’s chest.

“Hold your panties,” Quinn hisses as she counts a few bills in her lap.

“It’s a thong, and I won’t hold it. Pay me or forfeit.”

“I don’t have enough,” says Quinn.

Santana sits on her feet and snatches the bills from Quinn’s hands, effectively giving the poor girl a paper cut that burns the hell out of her. “Give me my money!”

“Ladies, ladies,” Kurt warns. “Let’s not fight over it. It’s just a game, it’s not—Santana, stop biting Quinn! Brittany! She’s absolutely feral!”

Brittany abandons her money and token in favor of pulling Santana off Quinn, whose arm in tucked between Santana’s teeth. Brittany coaxes Santana’s mouth off of Quinn and pulls her into her lap, tumbling backwards and landing on the carpet with a muffled thud, Santana on top of her.

“I feel like I’ve been here before,” Brittany murmurs to the pretty colors floating above her.

Kurt stands up and brushes his clothes off. “Let’s have a snack break and give Satan some time to cool off.”

Mercedes lifts Santana off Brittany and helps the tall blonde to her feet. Quinn nurses the bite on her arm and admires how Santana managed to break the skin in so little time.

“I’m bleeding,” says Quinn. “She literally bit my skin off.”

“Santana, apologize to Quinn. And I think you should help clean her wounds,” Kurt demands. “I have a first aid kit in my bathroom.”

Santana folds her arms and pops a hip out. “Fine. I’m sorry for biting you, Quinn. But you taste terrible. My callous skin tastes way better.”

“Gee, thanks.” Quinn rolls her eyes. “Help me clean this off before I get rabies.”

“I’ll help, too,” offers Mercedes, following the cheerleaders into the adjoined bathroom and leaving Kurt and Tina to tend to a dazed and confused Brittany. Mercedes helps Quinn onto the bathroom counter. “God, that’s a bad bite. You’ve really got a mouth on you, Satan.”

“Brittany loves it,” Santana quips as she fumbles around in the drawers before finding a travel-sized first aid kit. “Hold still before I smack you.”

The searing pain in Quinn’s arm as Santana is cleaning the wound with an alcohol wipe brings her back to the present. She would kick at Santana for not using the upmost caution, but she’s too blinded by the pain to even consider moving her legs. Mercedes coaches Santana on what to do next, which is alarming to Quinn, because this means that Santana has lived seventeen years without knowing how to treat a wound.

“I know something fun we can do after Lady Hummel, Brittany, and Tina fall asleep,” Santana sings.

“You have a girlfriend, and I’m not really too into that,” Quinn immediately says.

The deep frown that presses into Santana’s face masks the sudden influx of hurt. “Not that, idiot. Besides Brittany, you two are the only ones willing to stand up for me. Always have been. Quinn, remember the one time in third grade when that boy tried to kiss you on the slide and I beat him up? And you said you’d repay me whenever I needed help?”

“Yeah, but I was also eight,” says Quinn.

Santana places a bandaid over her teethmarks littering Quinn’s forearm. “Well, I’m cashing in that favor. I need a favor from you. And you, too, Mercedes.”

“If it involves murder, I’m out,” says Mercedes.

“Just trust me.”

Quinn throws her head back and heartily laughs. “Last time someone said that to me, I ended up pregnant.”

Santana nudges both of them in the ribs. “Trust me. After they fall asleep, okay?”

Sharing a glance of worry, Quinn and Mercedes nod in agreement. Santana smiles and leaves them to ponder alone in the bathroom.

“She’s totally gonna kill Finn,” says Mercedes, to no one in particular.

Quinn shrugs and fiddles with the gold cross on her chest. “It would be justified.”

—

Santana finds it difficult to keep her eyelids peeled while she waits for Kurt to shut his big mouth and fall asleep in his bed. She’s curled in her sleeping bag with Brittany snoozing on her left side and Mercedes struggling to stay awake on her right. Quinn and Tina are on the floor on the opposite side of the bed, where they had been playing monopoly until Santana lost and decided to flip the board.

It’s half past midnight and Santana has been texting Quinn back and forth to ensure that the blonde bitch keeps her eyes open. Santana’s phone buzzes, startling her out of the slumber threatening to kidnap her.

Quinn Fab-gay: Tina fell asleep

She quickly pushes herself up on the heels of her hands and takes a peek at Kurt, who’s finally quieted down in the past few minutes. He has his pillow embraced in his arms, his head at an uncomfortable angle near the headboard. Santana breathes a sigh of relief and urges Mercedes to get up, followed by Quinn, who has to practically be lifted out of her sleeping bag by them both.

“Quiet,” Santana warns, tucking her phone in the pocket of her shorts. “To the kitchen.”

Quinn could shit herself while trying to navigate the Hummel household in the darkness. She links arms with Santana and Mercedes in case she takes a tumble down the stairs.

“This better be worth it, Santana,” whispers Mercedes as the trio enters the dark kitchen. “What are you doing?”

Pressing a finger to her lips, Santana grabs an empty cup from the cupboard and fills it with warm water, using the light pouring in from the outside as her guide. Quinn fidgets with the cross on her chest and asks God for forgiveness for whatever sin she’s about to commit under the guise of defending Santana.

“Let’s go to Finn’s room,” Santana instructs, moving past a confused Mercedes and Quinn. “Hurry!”

They’re reluctant to follow her orders, but they eventually comply and follow Santana to Finn’s bedroom. He keeps his door ajar, for whatever reason that is, and Santana thanks Dios that she doesn’t have to pick a lock tonight. Finn is, thankfully, sprawled out on his back with the blankets kicked all the way off. Santana refrains from gagging at the smell of boy the room has been adorned with.

“Okay, Mercedes, when I say go, you take a picture with the flash on. Quinn, if he starts waking up, you convince him it’s a dream,” Santana whispers, hovering the cup above a sleeping Finn. “We gotta be quick before Fetus Face wakes up.”

“I don’t know about this, Santana,” says Mercedes.

“Please? It’ll be quick,” promises Santana. “Nobody messes with Snixx and gets away with it. And get his face in the frame.”

“Fine,” sighs Mercedes, positioning Santana’s phone camera towards Finn. “Just do what you’re gonna do. I’m ready.”

Using the upmost caution, Santana drips the warm water over Finn’s clothed body until it soaks the crotch area of his pajama pants. The boy begins to twitch nervously in his sleep, and Quinn is immediately humming in his ear to placate him. Once his pants are soaked beyond recognition, Santana makes a gesture towards Mercedes and pushes Quinn out of the frame. The room illuminates with a bright flash and then all three girls are ducking out of the room with their hands over their mouths, both in amusement and shock.

“Really, Santana?” Quinn hisses once they’re back in Kurt’s bedroom. “What are you gonna do with that picture?”

“You’ll see,” Santana cheekily replies, sliding into her sleeping bag. “Goodnight, Quinn. Night, Mercedes. I owe you one.”

Santana admires the photo and tucks her phone to her chest as her eyes flutter closed. Mercedes looks at a befuddled Quinn.

“That was totally against my religion,” says Mercedes to an uncertain Quinn.

“It’s gonna take twenty Hail Marys to get the filth off my body,” Quinn whispers with a shudder. “She’s gonna regret what she’s about to do.”

Or maybe she won’t; Santana is about as predictable as the weather in the south during hurricane season.

—

Santana saved the obscene photo until Sunday night, when she was busy scrolling through social media and dodging homophobic slurs and threats of violence against her. She was supposed to be asleep hours ago, and her Mami and Papi would have been be disappointed to know that her eyelids were peeled at half past one in the morning on a school night, but she had more important business to tend to at the moment, like posting the heinous photo of a soiled Finn to Facebook and tagging anyone who would get a kick out of it. She made the post public for the sole purpose of it being shared like Quinn’s mono last year.

On Monday morning, the day begins with a catastrophic flurry of laughter and pointing at Finn, who roams the hallways in search of the Latina who he can identify by her ponytail alone. Santana finds herself pinned against a locker, and her knee immediately jerks upwards but completely misses the trajectory and instead hits Finn’s shin.

“What the hell, Santana?” Finn growls, his face a bright cherry red. “Where the hell did you get that picture? Huh?”

“What picture?” Santana muses, shrugging a shoulder. “Oh, the one of you wetting yourself like a baby? Yeah, I took that on Saturday after everyone fell asleep. You really should get yourself some big boy Pull-Ups. They have trucks on them. Big trucks for a big boy like you.”

His fist slams into the locker just beside her head, causing her to flinch just once before regaining composure and straightening her back to look him in the eye. There’s that vulnerability she’s been chasing for weeks on end, and it’s almost euphoric to have it looking her directly in her eyes.

“I don’t wet the bed!” Finn insists.

“That picture says otherwise,” Santana quips. “How does it feel? How does it feel, Finn? How does it feel to be so vulnerable and fragile in front of the whole goddamn world? How does it feel to know that the whole world is watching you? To know that a secret you were trying to hide is suddenly out in the open? And that people make fun of you for it?”

“That’s not fair and you know it!” he shouts.

Santana disregards the crowd forming an alliance around them, some taking pictures and some staring at Finn as if anticipating his next move. She sinks into the coldness of the lockers and waits for action.

“What you did to me wasn’t fair and you know it,” she challenges.

The pressure of the crowd begins to fluster Finn even more than looking at Santana flusters him. “I tried to make it up to you, Santana! In glee club!”

“You can’t sing me some song about a girl ‘just having fun’ after you outed me and expect me to just forgive you!” She presses her heels into the soles of her cheer shoes and grips her textbooks tightly to her chest. “You wanted to play dirty, you got played dirty!”

“Dammit, Santana! I told you that I was sorry! What more do you want? And who cares if you’re gay? Nobody cares!”

“Everybody cares, you fucking idiot!” Santana shouts. “I can’t go one single day without being harassed about my sexuality! I get called a lesbo, a dyke, a faggot! My parents get dirty looks in public! My own grandmother disowned me and has been trying to send me to conversion therapy to pray or rape the gay out of me! Every fucking day, I get messages from boys saying they can cure me and threatening to hurt me! And you wanna fucking tell me that it’s not a big deal?! I was almost raped on my way to class, and you think nobody cares about what I am? If you’re really that dense, I have nothing more to say to you!”

Santana’s clenched fist prepares to swing to finish him off, but suddenly the weight of Finn is alleviated from her body, and she finds that Mr. Schuester has intervened and the crowd has mostly dispersed.

“Finn, go to class. I’ll deal with you later,” says Mr. Schue, preventing the boy from clocking Santana in the face. “Go. Now.”

Santana doesn’t realize she’s shaking until her books fall to the ground at her feet. Mr. Schue quickly picks them up and puts a careful hand on her shoulder, steadying her just enough to prevent her from collapsing to the floor.

“Come on. Let’s go have a talk before we talk to Figgins,” he offers. She trembles with fear or rage, or a mixture of both—it’s all too much to intake all at once. “Santana? Did you hear me?”

“Yeah,” she sniffles, briefly aware of the tears on her cheeks. “Okay. Talk. I’ll. . .I’ll talk. Talk.”

“My office. Come on.”

Mr. Schue’s office is the familiarity Santana has been seeking since the moment she stepped through the doors of McKinley this morning. She immediately takes cover under his desk and brings her knees to her chest, her arms winding around them and her body rocking back and forth to soothe itself into something that can speak without quivering.

“Hey, Santana,” Mr. Schue attempts to remedy, crouching down in front of Santana. “Are you ready to talk? Do you need a minute? A snack?”

“No snack,” sobs Santana. “No talk. Minute.”

Will doesn’t know how long he paces around the office for. He’s vaguely aware of the sobbing and sniffling from beneath the desk but doesn’t interrupt Santana’s methods of self-soothing until the sobs have abated and he assumes she’s calmed herself enough. There’s a moment of concern in the teacher as he rounds his desk and finds himself face-to-face with a quivering Santana, who’s curled herself so tightly into a ball that Will can’t see anything but hair falling out of its high pony and red fabric of the uniform she’s been allowed to wear again.

“Santana? We need to talk about this,” says Mr. Schuester. “I’ll give you some time, but we need to talk about what you said in the hallway. Those are very serious things that need to be addressed.”

“It’s all Finn’s fault,” Santana whimpers. “If he just would’ve just shut up, nobody would’ve ever known! And my abuela would still love me, and I wouldn’t be almost raped in between classes. And I wouldn’t get messages from boys and religious people saying they can fuck the gay out of me or that I’m going to hell because God hates fags or whatever. My family’s reputation is ruined, Mr. Schue!”

“Wait, wait, Santana,” says Mr. Schue. “Back up a little bit. Did someone try to assault you? Is that why everyone has been walking you to class?”

A lie sits uncomfortably on Santana’s tongue. She wants to be honest and scream from the rooftops until her lungs give out, and she would love to bury this feeling down and never exhume it, but all she’s done is bury and hope nothing comes bubbling to the surface. She’s covered in dirt and soil from suffocating beneath the surface for so long, and if it were up to her, she would remain laid in her grave, but her sudden exhumation has bared a naked side of her that’s too ugly to look at.

“Yeah, sort of. I always come in here and hide under your desk when I ditch Glee practice or can’t go to cheer practice because the last time I was alone, that stupid rugby boy pinned me against the lockers and told me he would straighten me out. He brought a friend with him to make it easier for him, but I was able to get him off and run. So now I just wait here until Brittany comes, or it’s safe for me to leave,” Santana breathes. She fidgets with a ring on her finger that Brittany gave her to play with when focusing is too difficult.

“This is very serious, Santana. Why didn’t you come to me or someone sooner?” Mr. Schuester inquires.

“Are you mad at me?” she asks in response. “You know, for keeping this a secret?”

“I’m not mad at you. But I think it’s important for your parents to know,” says the teacher. “We’re gonna give them a call and have them meet us here for a talk. And you have to be honest with them about these things, okay? We’re gonna do our best to help you deal with this. Do you have any threatening messages or something you can show your parents?”

“I don’t need to save any of them. I get them so often,” Santana murmurs with a shrug. She spins the too-large ring around her finger. “Am I wrong? For not forgiving Finn?”

“I don’t think you’re wrong for that. Maybe the picture, but he had to have known you were going to retaliate someday,” says Mr. Schue, lightly chuckling before composing himself with the realization that none of this is at all funny. “It may not have been the most orthodox way of going about it, but you were angry and probably weren’t thinking about what could’ve happened.”

“Oh, I thought plenty. That’s why I did it. Anger gets no credit.”

Will isn’t certain why he expected anything else from Santana, but she certainly doesn’t expect him to the laugh the way he does. She’s taken aback at the sudden shift in mood. It’s not enough to have her laughing, too, but she’s content in knowing that she won’t be getting detention today.

“Is there anything else I need to know before we go to Figgins’ office?” Mr. Schue asks. “Any questions?”

“Yeah, just one. Even if things turn out okay for me, am I still allowed to sit under here?” Santana asks. “It’s really warm and dark.”

“Of course. This desk is as much yours as it is mine,” he replies, standing up and offering her a helping hand. “Come on. Let’s go fix this.”

Santana knows there’s no fixing what’s been damaged beyond repair, but she’s okay with her teacher’s effort. She finds herself sat in the principal’s office for the better part of hour until both of her parents arrive, and suddenly she’s six years old and being reprimanded for throwing a boy off the swing set because he stole Brittany’s security marker.

Maribel takes like a duck to water to the situation, having been sat here one too many times, and flames red when Mr. Schuester informs her of the hateful messages and threatening posts. Santana melts into the comfort of her mother and father, her eyes traversing to the ceiling to avoid tears spilling over the edge as Figgins goes through a myriad of options for her, including but not limited to, therapy—of the non-conversion kind, the kind where you lay on a couch and tell a stranger how you feel—and the option to do her assignments at home until she feels she’s ready to face the rest of the school as who she is—but Santana Lopez is no fool, and she doesn’t go for it.

“I would just like to come to school and not be raped, really,” she admits. “So you’re gonna let him stay? After all the times he’s threatened me? And even tried to assault me?”

“I want him expelled,” says Maribel. “Even if Santana stays home or transfers, he’s still a danger to the other kids. If something happens to my child or any other child here, and you knew he was a danger, you could be held accountable and sued.”

Figgins drinks in the sight of the angry mother, the vengeful father, the annoyed teacher, and the young lady who’s looking more like a scorned woman each day. He about wets himself at the thought of a lawsuit, and shakes his head.

“I will expel the boy effective immediately. He can appeal to the school board if he doesn’t like it,” says Figgins. “I am so sorry for the trouble he’s caused your daughter. Please don’t sue me. My insurance premiums are through the roof as it is.”

Maribel smiles in brief satisfaction. Santana looks up from her ring to find that a clear decision has been made. Her brows furrow. “Wait, what?”

—

She removes the post of Finn in his homemade waterbed on Tuesday, and by Saturday, everything has calmed down. She receives her morning hate messages that have become as custom as washing her face is, and she promptly deletes them before rolling over to face Brittany, who’s already awake and scrolling through Instagram and Twitter.

“Good morning,” Brittany coos into Santana’s ear, turning to bring Santana into her chest. “You slept really good last night. You didn’t wake up.” She abandons her phone to busy her hands through Santana’s bed head.

“Mm. Yeah, I felt really comfortable last night, ‘cause you were holding me,” Santana hums. “You want breakfast? My mom is probably cooking.”

“I’m fine right here.” Brittany’s embrace tightens tenfold and reminds Santana how comfortable she is like this. The Latina nuzzles into Brittany’s chest and begins to drift away in the presence of her girlfriend. Brittany’s eyes meet the ceiling and fall back down to Santana, who’s curled up on her belly like Lord Tubbington after a full meal. “Hey, San?”

“Yeah, Britt?” Santana mumbles, her hands traveling beneath Brittany’s oversized shirt.

“You don’t have to forgive Finn if you don’t want to,” says Brittany. “He hurt you really badly, and you don’t have to forgive him, even if you deleted the picture of him wetting the bed. Which is really weird. He doesn’t look like a bed-wetter.”

Santana readjusts herself to look pointedly at Brittany, her eyes then roaming around the room. They haven’t discussed Finn since the hallway incident, and she’s ended up seeking comfort in Brittany more times than she can possibly count because Finn is the world’s most giant doofus.

“Mami taught me to forgive but never forget,” says Santana. “But I’m not ready for either of those yet. Sure, things have calmed down at school, but it still hurts that he took my coming out away from me.”

“I know. That wasn’t fair to you,” replies Brittany. “Puck and Kurt told him to stay away from you and let you cool off on your own. You don’t have to forgive him. I don’t think I would.”

Humming in contemplation, Santana rests her chin on Brittany’s chest and rubs her hand over the smooth warmth of Brittany’s belly. Her eyes flutter closed, her other hand curling near her face as she dozes off. Finn can wait for another day and time; today she’s content with being herself in the bright, sunny aura of Brittany. The judgement and fear subside when she smells the floral scent that Brittany carries with her and wears like a second skin, and she thinks all might be okay for her.

The future smells like flowers and sunshine, and it’s exciting.

—

Returning to New Directions means Santana has to face Finn and his Cabbage-Patch-like features every day of her waking life. She sits far enough away from him, but the silence is palpable. She discovers enough inner maturity to not trip him every chance she gets when they’re dancing around the choir room—because it’s a safety hazard to the other glee kids to have a 6’3 jock tumbling around without balance.

Christmas is a week away, and Abuela hasn’t called or invited herself to Noche Buena. Maribel breaks the devastating to news to Santana on a cold Wednesday morning that Abuela will be forgoing the holiday altogether this year—or until Santana “comes to her senses.”

That afternoon, when she’s supposed to be in the gym throwing her back out for Coach Sylvester, Santana crawls under Mr. Schue’s desk and holds her hand out expectantly. Working on grading a few overdue Spanish assignments, the teacher deposits a Rice Krispie Treat into her hand.

“Need to talk, or waiting for Brittany?” Mr. Schue asks.

Santana shovels the snack into her mouth. “Both, I guess. My abuela isn’t coming for Christmas this year. Or ever. Because of me.”

“It’s not because of you, Santana,” assures Mr. Schue. “Some people just never understand that people like you are very normal and a healthy part of society.”

“But she’s not some people. She’s my abuela,” says Santana, her shoulders deflating. “I’ve been eating again. Now that most of the harassment has stopped. But I just feel like a lot of me was lost because I couldn’t come out on my own time, you know?”

And Will doesn’t know, because he’s never had to come out, but he appreciates Santana’s sentiment, and hums in agreement. Santana finishes her snack and offers the wrapper to Mr. Schue, who throws it away for her and rolls his way over to face her. Her face is covered in crisped rice and marshmallow remnants, but he dismisses it without bringing it to her attention.

“You’re a really tough kid,” says Mr. Schue. “Tougher than a kid should have to be at your age. No kid should have to go through what you’ve gone through in the past month or so.”

“I’ve learned a lot from Kurt,” says Santana. “His dad is a big dork, but he’s helped my parents come to some sort of understanding of how to help me when my life is falling apart. It’s kinda funny; I didn’t think I’d be so close to Kurt just a year ago, but now I spend almost every weekend in his gay haven, listening to his terrible vinyls and talking about weird girl things. Fun fact: he knows more about periods than Quinn does. But then again, almost everyone knows more about periods than Quinn.”

“So it seems you two have been hitting it off,” says Mr. Schue. “How is it with Finn being there, too?”

“It’s okay, I guess. I treat him there the same way I treat him here; very annoyed but tolerating. Mr. and Mrs. Hummel both told me what I did with the picture wasn’t okay but they understood why I was angry,” Santana sighs. “I apologized to him, but I wasn’t happy about it. I still don’t forgive him, but my mom said, as long as I treat him like a person and don’t do something like that again, I can be mad all I want. So that’s what I’m doing. I’m mad, but I’m not hurting the stupid Cabbage Patch baby anymore.”

“You’re handling it well in glee club. No outbursts and Finn has all his teeth intact.”

Santana chuckles. “I figure him being left out when Kurt and I play Uno is punishment enough. He sits all alone in his room and whines like a baby because he can hear us having fun without him. Too bad, so sad. And I think Mr. Hummel likes me more than him. I get first choice of dessert when I have dinner at their house. Finn has to eat my leftovers.”

The prospect of being more well-liked than someone’s own son causes Santana to grin like she’s just won a Grammy award. The teacher gets a little chuckle out of that and offers Santana another snack, which she gladly accepts and nibbles on while waiting for Brittany to fill her evening with a burst of sunshine.

Santana’s three snacks and a stale apple juice box in when Brittany enters the room, gym bag slung over one shoulder and one arm extended to hold Santana as soon as the latter scrambles out from underneath the desk, bumping her head on the way out. Brittany wraps both arms around her slender waist and lifts her up so their noses brush.

“You smell like a candy factory. And your face is a mess,” Brittany giggles. “How many snacks did you get out of Mr. Schuester today?”

“Plenty. I’m so bloated,” Santana says, nuzzling her face against Brittany’s shoulder.

Brittany lowers Santana to her feet and grabs her hand, throwing an appreciative look towards Mr. Schuester for tolerating Santana’s need for quiet time, before leading Santana out of the room and down the empty hallway.

“One, two, one, two,” Santana recites as the tiles pass under her feet.

The amount of confidence that radiates off of Santana when the world isn’t watching makes Brittany’s heart do that thing where it jitters like a butterfly taking flight. Santana is in her element with Brittany, not on the brink of insanity or facing consequences of being herself; she’s Santana Lopez, and she’s spinning through the empty hallways of McKinley High with Brittany tagging along and shaking her head in absolute delight that this quirky, stumbling cheerleader belongs to her.

The world isn’t watching today, and Santana wonders why she wishes it were. This is simply too good of a life to miss.