New Directions

It was always a tough job, picking up Sarah to take her to his house for the weekend. Even though she had her own bed and supplies at the Puckerman home, there was always a boatload of extra stuff that the kid needed, like some newfangled organic stuff that her Grandma Fabray thought she should try, and a bunch of new favorite toys that of course had to be brought over along with her old favorite toys. Puck was always preoccupied with figuring out how to cram it all in the truck, and bundle up Sarah properly, and remember Mrs. Fabray's latest instructions.

He was pretty sure he managed to remember it all this time, even though he had a niggling feeling that he had forgotten something.

Puck finally remembered what it was after he and Sarah had arrived. While his mom and Becky fussed over the baby and got her settled in, he picked up the phone to call Quinn and let her know that they got home safely.

"Hey," he said when she answered. "We're here."

The Titans' first game was that weekend, and Coaches Black and Beiste had been working hard whipping the new lineup into shape.

This year, of course, they had lost a couple of key players to graduation, and Matt Rutherford and the Brunelli brothers had moved away. However, the Titans still had the core of last year's lineup, whatever that was worth; and a couple of new players like Sam Evans, who was probably one of the best conditioned on the team, and Noah Puckerman, who was returning to the lineup mostly as an enforcer, after sitting out last year.

"I don't know how well we're going to do this year," Coach Black murmured to his new assistant, "but I hope this season will at least be better than the last one."

"We'll do our best to make sure that happens," Coach Beiste replied.

The head coach nodded briefly and blew his whistle, signaling the start of practice. The players quickly came together to warm up, and soon the gym came alive with the sound of squeaking sneakers and the thump of basketballs.

( carefully set inside her locker, with a few roses and a note... )

( Sam didn't have any real intentions of transferring to Dalton... )

Emma is sitting in her office, at her computer typing up a case file for her next therapy session when she hears a knock at the door . Without looking up, she says, "Come in, door's open."

A cast list is taped to the door of the Drama room with a sticky note stuck to the bottom reading "See Mr. Brookes for schedule and scripts. Congrats!"

Sam was in a good mood by the time he got out of his last class and when he caught sight of Theo in the hallway, he had to resist the urge to jump on his back or clamp his hands down over his eyes and sing out 'Guess whoooo?!'

Instead he settled for leaning against the locker next to him.

"Hi stranger," he said with a grin, kissing his cheek. "How was your day?"

The stage was bare but for a few chairs , a couple of microphones, and some instruments (a piano, some drums, electric guitars, that sort of thing) and Fenton was perched on the edge. As the kids filtered in, he gave them a little wave and waited until everyone was settled into the auditorium seats.
( Once everyone was seated, he cleared his throat and spoke. )

Eliza was not fond of cold. Not fond at all. And her guitar didn't like it much either; she was going to have to tune it when she got to Blake's. She had her mother drop her off because she was heading out to the store anyway, plus, it didn't make much sense to drive by herself. The car would hardly get warmed up before she'd have to stop it.

She hurried up to the door of Blake's house and knocked, bouncing on her toes to keep warm.

The one good thing about cold weather...was having Blake warm her up when she came inside.

That was worth a little cold.

A flyer is posted on the bulletin board, in the library, in windows, wherever young people might see it and respond.

( This is gonna be a loud one, kids... )

The holidays were finally over, Artie told himself. There was no longer any excuse to put this off any longer.

Besides, it wasn't like he and Tina had come to any official understanding, right? They just knew that they liked each other - and that wasn't going to change, at least not on Artie's end. It's just that it really wasn't fair to Tina. He was doing this for her.

On a night that he knew Tina was online, he called her on Skype. (Part of him thought that a "Dear Tina" email or text message would do, but that was totally low. Girls like Tina deserved better, and since he had to be at school, Skype was the closest he could come to face-to-face.)

"Hey, Tina," he said when her face came on his screen.

It turned out that Quinn knew her way around the Fabrays' kitchen pretty well, because as she had said, all they really needed was chocolate chips. On the way to see her and Sarah, Puck had stopped by the store to pick some up, as well as some chopped walnuts in case she felt like adding those (his mom always had to have nuts in her cookies).

He couldn't help smiling as he got out of his truck and made his way to the front door. OK, maybe he had rediscovered his badassery while he and Quinn were apart and he was in juvie, but doing stuff like this with Quinn and the baby was nice, too.

Shifting the grocery bag to his other hand, he reached out and rang the doorbell.

Edie should probably be studying other things.

She should probably be studying Spanish, or studying for her Trig quiz.

Anything, really.

But what she is doing is reading Return of the King. In fact, she was reading about Pelennor Fields, because Éowyn was her favorite character and Edie did love reading about how she took down the Witch-King.

Which is why she's smiling. She rarely does, these days.

They didn't have Glee rehearsals that day (although with Sectionals coming up, Sunshine thought they should be meeting every day), but Sunshine believed in keeping her vocal chords in shape, so after school she went to the choir room to practice on her own.

For her first song, she picked an acoustic version of the classic "Manila sound" song "Bongga Ka 'Day," which she liked because it was upbeat and fun. Sunshine picked up an acoustic guitar and strummed it as she sang:

Lahat ay nagulat nang buksan ang pinto
Sayaw ng mga tao’y biglang nahinto
Buhok mo’y Budji, talampaka’y Gucci
Suot mo’y gawa ni Pitoy
Di nanggaling kay Eloy....

*Translations are here

Edie walked into the school with no small amount of trepidation. Not only was she not happy here, but she was also scared. She was scared that she wouldn't make any friends, no one would like her, and that she wouldn't get on the cheer squad. If she didn't have cheer, this was going to be a long, two-year suckfest.

Thankfully, no one seemed to notice her, and she proceeded to the office to pick up her schedule and then she proceeded to get herself lost. She needed to be in English. But this looked like the physical education portion of the school. Mostly because that's where the gym was.

Crap. Crapcrapcrap...

"Shit," she muttered aloud.

"Hey there, Peaches."

Startled, Edie turned to see Dave Karofsky come down the hall. She relaxed visibly.

"Nice mouth," he said, grinning at her.

Edie blushed. "Sorry. What'd you call me?"

"Peaches. You just seem like a...Peaches. Plus, you smell like 'em." His grin faded to a little bit of confusion, as if he was unsure of a line he read.

Edie laughed a little and then sighed. "Okay, well, you're the only one who can call me that, then. No one else is allowed." It was sort of stupid, but cute. "I'm trying to find my English class. Can you help me?"

After he'd shown her to her English class, they'd checked their lunch schedules and they made plans to eat lunch together. At least it was a friendly face in a sea of question marks.

But, all in all, the school day didn't go too badly, her meeting with Ms. Sylvester (who, Edie was sure, was certifiably insane) went excellently, and she was going to be in practice tomorrow, and now she was just at her locker, putting away her books and putting her cheerleading uniform in her bag.

And she had an actual date for Friday night. Would wonders never cease?

Blake was tired. Very tired. It was past midnight so far as his mind and body was concerned, but he had to go see Eliza. He'd considered going over first thing but he'd promised his parents he would help with the laundry, as a lot of it was his, and he'd wanted to make sure he wasn't too mangy looking or smelly. Showers were wonderful things, after all.

So he'd put on his coat and trekked over there, knowing the walk through the cold January air would wake him up a little more. He knocked on the front door, bouncing from foot to foot a little, waiting.

Edie had enough of unpacking, she'd had enough of a new house that was too darn big for her, she'd had enough of missing her friends. Which was why she was walking down her street, just looking around. It was a hella long drive from Massachusetts to here, and her ass hurt from sitting.

( Ugh. Suburbia. )


Well, at least people were friendly here in Lima...

Sam didn't have any real intentions of transferring to Dalton. It was more just a fantasy he entertained because he was terrified that someone at McKinley would find out his secret. Not that he'd ever told anyone at all or hinted that he was into guys just as much as he was into girls, but the whole drama with Kurt had him a little scared. Not physically because he could stand up for himself, but he didn't want to go through the rest of his junior year being laughed at and ridiculed. At least he knew he had some place to go if things really did get that bad, though. Sure, it was cowardly to be scoping out his possible place of refuge already, but entertaining the thought of going somewhere where he would be accepted calmed his nerves a little.

The only problem was he was supposed to have a tour guide, wasn't he? Dalton was giving tours for any new students transferring there the following semester, and even though Sam technically wasn't one of those students, he could pretend, couldn't he? He waited in the hallway with a few of the other students, hands in his pockets as he listened to one particularly annoying boy talk about what a wonderful addition he'd make to Dalton and The Warblers. Sam found himself rolling his eyes and turning his attention elsewhere only to find a male figure coming down the hall towards them.

The former strip club has changed a lot since the production of RENT. The stripper poles were gone, for one, and for another, there's a proper stage now. And regular theater seats, and nice stage curtains.

The set is decorated in generic winter holiday colors, red, green, blue, white. There's a few snowmen on the stage, and some trees, and some fake snow scattered on the stage.

It looks terribly festive. Mr. Schuester has enlisted some of the other more sympathetic teachers to help out with ushering people to seats and he's terribly excited to see what the kids put on.

Eliza had changed her clothes at least five times while getting ready to go to Blake's house. She'd never been this nervous before about seeing Blake but she'd never done this before, not really.

Which, in retrospect, was sad, because she was with John for two freakin' years.

But Blake was different. She'd never felt for anyone the way she felt for him. It was good, and solid, and real and she never had to worry about making him upset by doing some idiotic Eliza-thing. And generally, she wasn't nervous around him. He made things more comfortable. He made things right.

But still...tonight, she was nervous. She put her guitar in her car and drove over to Blake's house, hoping that she wasn't going to completely freak him out by saying what she needed to say.

(Somehow, she didn't think so, but she was still worried about it anyway.)

She headed up to the door of Blake's house and knocked, bouncing on her toes a little bit.