And Here's What You Missed on...GLEE

“So now, your assignment for the week,” Mr. Schue started, “is to find a song done by black artists. In the dawn of music, lots of black artists’ songs were stolen by white artists and made for commercial purposes. It’s time to pay them back.”

“True that!” Mercedes chimed in. We all laughed a little bit. Leave it to Mercedes.

I knew immediately what song I was going to do. Finally, my 80’s was going to get its time to shine. I acted like it had been forever, and I couldn’t do an 80’s song, but it had been about ten minutes.

“Are we doing partners?” Puck asked. It didn’t go unnoticed by me that he glanced in my direction from the corner of his eye after his question was asked, though the rest of the club remained oblivious.

“No, this is an individual one. Next assignment will be duets though, so you won’t have to wait long.” Mr. Schue glanced at the clock and saw that there was still twenty-five minutes until the club had to close shop.

“Mr. Schue,” Rachel spoke up, unable to keep her mouth shut for five seconds, “I love the assignment that you gave us, truly, I do. But I was just wondering about the duets? How will we pick our partners?”

“Rachel,” he sighed in response, “that’s next week. I appreciate you trying to get ahead, but it’s just going to have to wait for now. Focus on this week.”

I heard Kurt’s voice in the background of my hearing going, “Diana Ross, here I come!”

A smile played on the corner of my lips. This was going to be a fun assignment.

* * *

“Ellie,” Kurt approached me at my locker at the end of school the next day. We didn’t have a Glee Club meeting because Mr. Schue was sick and needed to stay home. “You know that you’re gorgeous, right?”

“Um, no,” I laughed, “but thanks. Point to that?” I shut my locker, and the two of us started to walk down the hallway.

“One thing you must know about me is that I’m a sucker for makeovers. What I really want to do is give you one. The goth look is totally not working for you.”

I looked down at my clothes. Sure, I had black nail polish and dark makeup around my eyes, and my clothes were never bright, but that didn’t mean that I was goth…

“I am not-“ I started, but Kurt just stuck a hand up to silence me.

“Of course you don’t think you are, but everyone else can see it. You’re going to come home with me, and I’m going to give you a completely new look. Are you ready for the challenge?”

Without too much hesitation, I nodded. Who said change was bad?

“Ah, Ladyface!” Coach Sylvester called down the hallway. It took me a second to realize that she was talking to Kurt. How offensive.

Coach Sylvester was a cold-hearted bitch who had a reputation of beating people verbally within an inch of the death of their self-esteem. She was tall, towering over most people, with short blonde hair and had daggers hidden within her blue eyes. They could kill a person upon contact. Well, only figuratively, as far as I knew.

“I see you have a new friend. Turning over a new leaf? Good.” She turned to me before continuing with, “Now who are you, Carrot Top?”

After wincing inwardly at the reference, I replied, “I’m Ellie.”

“And I’m still gay,” he informed Coach Sylvester.

She shook her head, making a little negative sound. “Remember what I told you? I tell you what you are, and frankly, you don’t know enough to root for either team. It’s actually just kind of sad.”

“He knows what he likes,” I voiced to defend Kurt. Why did she have to be so horrible? I knew this wasn’t even the worst of what she could do, but still… “But we really should be going, so you can just go drink one of your power shakes.”

There was a look of shock on her face, and for the first time in her life, she didn’t make a remark. Though that was probably because of the fact that I grabbed Kurt’s arm and pulled him along down the hallway before her brain could even pick up that I half-way insulted her.

“I have to say,” Kurt stated as we walked out of the school and made our way down the front steps, “that was impressive. You didn’t even seem fazed by her.”

“Then I’m a good actress,” I chuckled. “She scares the crap out of me.”

“She scares all of us,” he sympathized. “Well, there’s my dad. Ready for your makeover?”

“I hope so,” I responded before biting my bottom lip.

“Stop doing that. You’re making it chap and you’re ripping the skin.”

Immediately, I made a normal face, still feeling the urge to bite my lip. It was a nervous habit that I had been doing since before I could remember.

“Hi,” Kurt’s dad greeted as we climbed into the car. I felt kind of badly, hitching a ride from them when I’d never met them before in my life, but I hoped that Mr. Hummel wouldn’t mind.

Instead of answering like a normal person would, I just sat in the back seat with my hands folded together, hoping that Kurt would say something. It was all awkward.

“Hi, Dad. This is Ellie.”

Mr. Hummel turned to face me. He had a baseball cap, covering what looked like a bald head, and really light eyes. He was kind of overweight, and he was wearing a red and white flannel shirt. I saw a better subject for Kurt’s makeover skills, but I figured that Mr. Hummel probably wouldn’t be up for it.

“Hi,” I smiled, waving slightly. God, could I have been a bigger awkward turtle? Because I think not.

“Nice to meet you,” he replied, nodding toward me. Then, he turned back around and we were on our way to Kurt’s house.

As soon as we got to his room, he went right to work. “Alright, now what works best for your skin tone is natural colors, okay? Like, earth tones. Also, wear lip gloss that matches the actual color of your lips.”

“Okay,” I replied. He shot me a look, since he was working on getting the eye shadow off my eyes without ripping out all my eyelashes. Stifling a laugh, I closed my eyes and let him finish his work.

While he fluffed on eye shadow or dabbed my lips with colored lip gloss, he was giving me instructions on how to do it best, like they do on those commercials on the Style Network.

“Maybe,” I offered while he was readying other supplies, “you should just come over and do my makeup every day.”

“Sweet offer, but I have my own routine. My skin doesn’t stay this perfect on its own, you know.”

Just then, my phone started to ring. “I’m so sorry,” I expressed, standing up. Kurt nodded to show me that it was no big deal, and I pressed “Accept” to my mother’s call.

“Where the hell are you?!” she screamed. I was afraid that Kurt could hear every word and pressed the phone closer to my ear as I lowered the speaker volume.

“I’m over a friend’s house.”

“Why didn’t you call? I’ve been worried.”

“Because I figured that you wouldn’t even notice I wasn’t there,” I responded truthfully. It wasn’t something that she wanted to hear, but it was about time the truth came out. Though then again…maybe that wasn’t the best time to express it.

“You get your ass home right now. We’ll talk about this then.” There was dead air after her statement was done, and I sighed.

“I’m sorry, Kurt, but I have to get home. My mom’s pissed, for some reason. We can finish this another time, okay?”

“Sure,” he nodded. “Make sure you pick a good song for Glee.”

“Oh, I already have,” I smiled before making my way up the stairs. After yelling a fast good-bye and thank you to Mr. Hummel, I made my way down the street to go home: the last place in the world that I ever wanted to spend my time.