Little Red and the Big Bad Wolf

The next day, I walked into Glee Club with Puck behind me, rambling about something or other. I knew it was very ‘bad girlfriend’ of me not to be listening, but I just wasn’t in the mood to be listening to him ramble. After all, I’d only had five hours of sleep the night before.

I sat down and leaned forward, my elbows resting on my knees, and rubbed my eyes a couple times, yawning. “Red?”

“What?” I turned my head to Puck, seeing that he clearly wanted something from me.

“I asked you a question.”

“What was the question?”

He seemed to realize that he’d just talked for God knows how long without me hearing a single word and chuckled lightly. “Never mind.”

“‘Kay.” I yawned again, looking at the door where Mr. Schue usually entered. “When is he going to get here so we can start Glee Club?”

“I have no idea.”

“He needs to hurry,” I whined. “We have to listen to Artie, Brittany, and Tina.”

“Why are you in such a rush?”

“Because I don’t have any homework, which means that I can go home and sleep forever.”

“If you go to sleep right when you get home, doesn’t that mean that you won’t sleep tonight?”

So a whole cycle would start and I would never sleep at night again. Kinda. “Maybe,” I admitted in defeat, leaning back in my chair with my arms crossed. “Party pooper.”

“Sorry I’m late, guys,” Mr. Schue announced as he walked into the room. “Who’s up first?”

Brittany stood up first, smiling. “I’ll go.”

“Great, Brittany. Go ahead.” Mr. Schue stood off to the side while Brittany bounced toward the front to tell Brad what she was doing. He gave her kind of a confused look and gestured to the rest of the band to talk to him.

They conversed for a second before shrugging and parting ways. The sound was really soft, at first, before it went into trippy, and Brittany started her song. Kind of.

It was Revolution Number 9. Now, anyone who’s ever heard that song knows how creepy and weird it is, but it didn’t have too many different lyrics to learn, so I guessed that was why Brittany thought it would have been a good idea.

Mr. Schue cut her off after two and a half minutes to keep it from going on to its full length, and everyone gave a half-hearted applause. “That was…great, Brittany.”

She smiled again in her slightly dopey way before heading back to her seat and settling down.

Everyone was quiet for a second, not really sure what to do next. “Artie, you want to take the floor?”

“Uh, sure,” he agreed, wheeling himself forward. Mercedes gave him a thumbs-up for good luck as he started to sing The Long and Winding Road.

It was so great, it actually almost made me cry. That’s what sleep deprivation will do to a person, I guessed.

Puck nudged me and laughed, so I shoved him back subtly. “Shut up,” I sniffled. “You’re so mean to me.”

Before he could come back with something, Mr. Schue told Tina that it was her turn. She sang Penny Lane, and it was pretty good.

“Alright, guys. That’s it for today. Ellie, Finn, and Sam, your turn tomorrow.”

“Sir, yes, sir!” I responded, saluting and all, before bursting into hysterical laughter.

“She’s tired,” Puck covered up for me before anyone could question if I was high or not.

A couple of people nodded in understanding, but other people still just looked confused. They didn’t have long to give me weird looks, however. Everyone started filing out to the hallway, and I followed close behind with my bag over my shoulder.

“Maybe you should sleep,” Puck told me, watching me almost bump into the doorframe as I walked while yawning.

“I probably should. Any chance you can give me a ride home and be late for practice?” I questioned, pouting a little bit.

“Yeah, sure.” He reached into his backpack and pulled out his keys, trying to look cool by swinging them around on his finger. What didn’t make him look so cool, though, was that he dropped them on the floor in the middle of the empty hallway. So not only did he fail, but it was really loud.

“Nice job,” I told him sarcastically. “Now pick them up and let’s get goin’.”

He coughed and picked up his keys, trying to look all innocent like it totally hadn’t been him.

Once we were in the car, we were kind of quiet. Which was unfortunate for me, since I leaned my head against the window and was starting to nod off a little bit. When I was tired, really tired, I usually went back and forth between being totally slaphappy and so brain-dead that I couldn’t string three words together and have them make sense.

“Red?” Puck asked. I was in that kind-of-asleep mode where I could hear everything that was going on, but I certainly didn’t want to get up. “C’mon, I have to get to football practice.”

“Ughhhh,” I groaned, picking my head up off the window. Then, I picked up my bag and mumbled, “Thanks.”

Inside the house, it was quiet, since Aileen hadn’t gotten home from work yet. Even though I knew it was wrong, I just threw myself on to the couch and fell back into a deep sleep.

“Ellie!” Aileen yelled what seemed like five seconds later. The clock said that it was two and a half hours later, but I was having trouble believing it. “Elegance Joy!”

“What?” I muttered, holding my head. The bad thing about when I napped was that I usually woke up with a headache.

“When I came home, I decided to do a little cleaning, and I thought I’d do your room as a surprise.” It took me until the end of that sentence to realize that she was not happy. “And something fell out when I emptied your trash. You want to tell me what this is?”

I yawned and sat up before looking over at her, standing right next to the couch with one hand on her hip, the other holding something. Squinting, it slowly dawned on me what it was.

A condom wrapper. Which she found in my trash barrel.

Oh, shit.