Little Red and the Big Bad Wolf

Aileen pulled into Finn’s driveway, parking the car before turning to talk to me. “You going to call me when you’re ready to be picked up?”

“If Finn doesn’t want to drive me home,” I corrected.

“Okay. Just remember, if you want to call me, call my cell. I’m hanging out with Ginger today, so I won’t be home.”

“Okie doke,” I agreed, leaning into the door as I opened it. “See ya later.”

“See you.”

“Thanks for the ride!” I called before shutting the door and running up to the front door.

Finn answered it, and he looked totally uncomfortable. “Hi, Ellie.”

“Hey. Where should we go to brainstorm?”

“Um, the basement’s fine.” I followed him down the stairs and through the door, which he closed after us.

“Look…” He ran his hand through his hair and let out a breath. “I’m really sorry about what happened last year. I just…I guess I read everything wrong, and I wasn’t thinking too well…”

I held up my hand to stop him and smiled. “Listen, just forget it, okay? It’s fine. We’re going to focus on now and forget about then.” That didn’t sound anything like me, but pushing all the crap out of the way to make sure that we had the best product possible definitely worked for me.

“So have you done any thinking about what we could do?” Finn questioned.

“Actually, a little too much.” I could feel my whole face brighten as I started to explain the plan. “So I was thinking that we could do a mash-up of two songs.”

“What songs?”

“Don’t laugh when I tell you. I know it’s going to sound like it won’t work, but I think with the computer software, we totally can.” Finn just stared at me, waiting for me to say what I was thinking. “I was thinking along the lines of…Shattered Glass by Britney Spears and You Give Love a Bad Name by Bon Jovi. Obviously, you’d do the Bon Jovi, and I’d do the Britney song.”

He stared at me, examining my face, probably trying to figure out whether I was serious or not. “You’re right. You’re crazy.”

“No, come on! I think it’ll work. And they are awesome songs of betrayal!” Still not selling the idea. “Then why don’t we try it out, see if it works, and if it doesn’t, we’ll have another game plan?”

“Alright, fine.” We were quiet for a second before Finn spoke again. “Should we work on the arrangement of the song before we start shooting the video?”

“No…” I trailed off sarcastically. “I think we should tape the whole video with the song that we mash up randomly so that we have to re-tape the stinkin’ thing a hundred million times.”

Finn snickered before pulling his chair up to the desk and searching the Britney song. “You didn’t even know it?”

“No. I just heard the Britney Spears part and knew it wasn’t going to mesh with the Bon Jovi one.”

We listened to the song the whole way through, me mouthing every word, since I’d memorized it a long time ago. At the end, Finn looked really unsure.

“Just wait. Remember when I revamped Honesty?” Finn nodded, the slightest of smirks enveloping his face. “I can work wonders with computer software.”

While I was working on it, I explained my idea for the plot of our video. “So it’ll be kind of weird, since we’re going to be mashing up songs, while everyone else probably won’t be. And we’ll also be singing the songs to each other, so the concept is that we had an explosive relationship where both of us betrayed each other and all that. Sound okay?”

“That sounds like it’s going to be a lot of work,” Finn admitted.

“So we’ll ask Mr. Schue if we can present next Friday. Trust me, the work is going to be worth it.” For a while longer, I tweaked the songs, trying to mesh the music and the lyrics.

It took a super long time (I mean, have you heard how different those songs are?), but I finally did it. Finn was actually grinning when I played him the final result.

“Ellie, you’re a genius!”

“Why, thank you.” I stood up and bowed. “So let’s work on singing it, shall we?”

Finn:Shot through the heart,
And you’re to blame, darlin’
You give love a bad name

Me:Did I wake you?
Were you sleeping?
Were you still in my bed?
Or is a nightmare keeping you up instead?
Oh, baby, are you feeling guilty for what you did?
If you think you’re hurtin’, you ain’t seen nothing yet.

Was it really worth it?
Was she everything
that you were looking for?
Feel like a man?
I hope you know that you can’t come back
‘Cause all we had
Is broken like shattered glass

Finn:Shot through the heart
And you’re to blame
You give love a bad name
I play my part, and you play your game
You give love a bad name

Paint your smile on your lips
Blood red nails on your fingertips
A schoolboy’s dream, you act so shy
Your very first kiss was your first kiss goodbye

Oh, you’re a loaded gun
Oh, there’s nowhere to run
No one can save me
The damage is done

Me:You’re gonna see me in your dreams tonight
My face is gonna haunt you all the time
I promise that you gon’ want me back
When your world falls apart
Like shattered glass
Glass, glass, glass

Do you wish you could rewind time and take it back?
I bet you realize that she ain’t half the woman I am.

Finn:Shot through the heart
And you’re to blame
You give love a bad name
I play my part and you play your game
You give love
You give love
You give love a bad name

Me:Feel like a man?
I hope you know that you can’t come back
‘Cause all we had
Is broken like shattered glass

“That…” I started, trying to find the right words, “was totally fucking awesome.”

“Couldn’t have said it better myself.” Finn looked over at the clock, seeing that it was almost three thirty. “Should we start working on the video?”

“Sounds great! But I kind of don’t have the clothes…”

“Um, actually, Kurt kind of has you covered…” Finn blushed a little and ran a hand through his hair.

“…What?”

“Kurt!” Finn called up the stairs. “Can you come down here now?”

Kurt appeared immediately, almost as if he was posed at the bottom, waiting for someone to beckon him. Then again, knowing him, that was probably exactly what he was doing.

Then, I felt a bunch of clothes land in my lap. There were jeans, skirts, tops, tank tops, leggings, everything that I could possibly ever want. “Where did you get all these clothes…?” I questioned, giving Kurt a look that both wondered about his sanity and threatened him for spending this much money.

“It’s a collection of everything that I’ve sneakily bought you on our shopping sprees since last year.”

I gawked at him for a second before he did a little wave and scurried back up the stairs.

“I guess I am covered…” I laughed, going through the huge pile of clothes. “God, I hate your brother.”

Finn shrugged. “So what are we going to do first?”

“Well, I’m thinking that it should be a legitimate music video, ya know? Like, it shouldn’t really look like a couple of teenagers did it. So I’m thinking that when I’m singing in the beginning, you should be sleeping, but you wake up from a nightmare. And I’ll be walking down the street, like I woke up early and left, singing straight to the camera, all angry and stuff. Does that sound okay?”

“Sure.”

“And then when you’re singing your chorus, I should be sitting at a bar or something-”

“How the hell are we going to get into a bar…?” Finn laughed.

“Grrr. We can make one in your kitchen, Finn!” I put my hands on his cheeks and made him look me in the eyes. “Focus. Picture it. Okay, so I wink at some guy across the bar, and you're going to be watching, shaking your head like you're disappointed in me. Of course, we're going to need some extras..."

“You want Puck to be the guy you wink at?” he assumed.

I sat there for a minute, debating it. “I can ask, but I feel like he and Santana are gonna be kind of busy.”

“Doesn’t that make you nervous?”

Immediately, I shook my head. “No. I figure that if Puck wants to cheat on me again, then he’s totally history. And he knows that very well.”

Finn nodded like this made sense, so I continued discussing my idea.

“Okay, so when I’m singing my chorus, it can show you walking down the street, and every person is me, so you have a little episode. Well, not really an episode, but you just lean against the wall of a building and hold your head like your world’s falling apart. Get it?”

“I’m getting it.”

“Then when I sing my bridge, I’m just going to look straight at the camera, all snarky and evil. When you sing your last chorus, you can do the same. And then, we’ll do the same thing that we did with my bridge for the last line, and at the end of the last line, we’ll be in each other’s faces like…” I moved to stand in the middle of the basement. “Here. Like we just screamed the whole thing.”

“That sounds totally awesome,” Finn told me.

“But?”

“But kind of impossible. We have Burt’s old video camera, and we have to try to get a whole bunch of Glee people over here for that bar scene.”

“OR!” Brain-blast. “Or we can just make it a small-scale thing, and we can just use Kurt.”

Finn stared at me for a second. “You don’t think people are going to laugh at that?”

“Should I ask Puck?”

“Probably. We’ll film that scene tomorrow after you and Kurt come back from hanging out.”

“Sounds awesome. God, I’m so excited for this.” And, strangely enough, I totally was.