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

“Alright,” Mr. Schue announced as he entered the room, ending everyone’s side conversations. “Mercedes, you’re up!”

She stood, looking great and confident as always, and said something to the guy behind the piano. I wasn’t exactly sure what his name was, but he was always there when we needed some music. He was quite the reliable guy.

Then, the music for Midnight Train to Georgia by Gladys Knight and the Pips started playing. Mercedes had juiced it up significantly so that it could better show off her outstanding voice, and she did an absolutely fantastic job with it.

“Holy shit,” I muttered to Kurt, “I knew she was good, but that was just…oh my God.”

Kurt smiled like, ‘Oh, I know’ before applauding as the song pulled to stop. “Beautiful, as always, Mercedes,” Mr. Schue congratulated. “But, I have to wonder, why did you pick that song?”

“Because it’s a song that’s been passed through my family. When it came out, my grandmother sang it to my mother, and my mother used to sing it to me.”

“That’s really sweet,” I voiced. My family didn’t have anything like that. It made me kind of jealous.

Mercedes smiled in my direction before coming back over and sitting down. “So, who wants to go tomorrow?”

“Ellie does!” Kurt volunteered.

My eyes grew wide, and Mr. Schue laughed a little. “You want to go tomorrow, Ellie?”

“Um…sure?” Oh, God, no. How was I supposed to compete with that performance? I didn’t want to go after Mercedes!

“Okay, we’re set for that!”

Oh, God. I had to make sure that I was hardcore prepared, that was for sure.

* * *

“Don’t worry,” Kurt assured me as we were making our way out to the parking lot, “you’re going to do fine.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“Because you have a really great voice. Just make sure that you know all the words, and you’ll be fine.”

“Thanks, Kurt,” I granted. That got the wheels in my head turning a little. What if my performance was fun…? That could shield the fact that my voice wasn’t, and never would be, as good as Mercedes’.

He nodded. “No problem. Well, there’s my dad. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Yup!” I watched as he got into the passenger’s side of his dad’s car, and I turned the other way to walk home.

Right when I stepped through the door, I heard yelling. Already. Oh, dear lord, save me.

“Why do you do this?!” Dad insulted. “You know I hate your sister! I hate your whole family!”

“She needed someone to watch Grayson. It’s not a big deal. He’s a well-behaved kid.”

Grayson was my one-and-a-half year old cousin. He was cute as a button with wispy light blonde hair and gorgeous amber eyes. I loved him with all my heart, and he seemed to reciprocate the emotion.

In the living room, I heard crying. So Grayson was already here, and they were scarring him with their yelling. Just what a child needs…

I intervened, going straight to the living room and taking Grayson out of my mother’s arms and grabbing his diaper bag.

“Where do you think you’re going?” she snapped.

“To take Grayson where he won’t be mentally scarred for life and end up being a violent hater like you guys are currently teaching him to be,” I replied matter-of-factly. With that, I put him at the end of the stairs and watched him giggle as he squirmed up them. It was one of his favorite things in the world to do, but he couldn’t do a lot of it that day.

“KITTY!” Grayson exclaimed with a squeal when he saw my fat old cat, Boobah, (I don't know why the hell I named her that. Lapse of judgment, I guessed) at the top of the stairs. She was mean though, and when he started toddling after her, she hissed and ran under Mom's bed.

“Okay, don’t die,” I joked, pulling Grayson up into my arms and escaping into my room. “That kitty’s a meanie. Want to watch some Sprout?” It was his favorite little kids’ station, and it could keep him mesmerized for hours.

He nodded emphatically, so I put him on the floor and turned on my TV. I had already memorized what channel it was, having watched Grayson so often, and watched as he immediately found the drawers at the far corner of my room.

For some reason, he loved to open and close them, occasionally taking out DVD cases to take the DVDs out of them. He never hurt anything (for a toddler, he was extremely aware of what not to do), so I didn’t mind giving him free reign on everything.

“Ellie,” Grayson cooed, reaching up and handing me the Dirty Dancing DVD case and DVD. “Fix.”

Chuckling, I took them and put the DVD back in the case, snapping it into place. “Want to go put it back?”

Instead of answering, he just took it and toddled back to where he had found it. He was definitely going to grow up to be a smart guy.

“Milk?” Grayson asked a while later. He was plopped on my bed, enthralled with the singing puppet on the screen.

“Wait right here, okay? I’ll be back.” For a second, I fished through his diaper bag and found his Sippy cup. I knew I could trust him not to get himself hurt if I was gone for ten seconds, so I just shut the door behind me so he couldn’t follow me, and grabbed him some chocolate milk from the fridge.

“How’s he doing?” Mom questioned, leaning against the doorway of the kitchen.

“Fine. Just as usual,” I answered in a curt tone. I didn’t want her to get any ideas that I was happy with her, just because she was talking to me in a normal voice and, for once, not yelling at me to clean up my already squeaky-clean act.

“He’s not hurting anything?”

“No.”

“Does he need to be changed?”

“I don’t know.”

With that, I brushed past her and started running up the stairs. Grayson turned and grinned at me, showing off his teeny teeth. Just the sight of him made my heart melt.

I realized that his clunky boots were still on, and I went to go take them off. “Nooo!” he screeched.

“Okay, okay,” I chuckled. “Fine. We’ll keep them on.”

He took a long gulp from his cup as he continued to watch the TV. After a while, he started to get bored, and started to run around again. It was almost five by now, and I was thankful that I didn’t have any homework. I knew that I wasn’t going to get anything done with him darting around every which way.

“Ellie,” Grayson yawned, rubbing his eyes. Ah, someone was getting tired.

I was sitting on the bed, and he ran over, his shoes thumping on the hardwood floor. When he put his arms up to tell me to take him into my arms, I did so.

Immediately, he put his ear against my chest to hear my heartbeat, and his eyes fluttered closed, his long eyelashes making shadows against his chubby cheek.

Rubbing his back softly, I turned down the TV so the voices were just murmurs in the background. Once his breath started to even out a little bit, I leaned back so that he was lying on top of me. He didn’t stir in the slightest.

Slowly, I felt something getting increasingly wetter on my chest. Looking down, I noticed that his chocolate milk was spilling out of his cup, staining my shirt.

Oh, well, I smiled. It’ll dry, and Kurt said this shirt was ugly anyway.

For a long while, we stayed there, Grayson sleeping, occasionally taking deeper breaths and squirming. My arms were tight around him, making sure that he was safe.

It felt good to have someone depend on me. Someone who actually loved me and wasn’t afraid to show it.

Someone who still had only good inside their soul.