“Lie awake in bed at night,
And think about your life.
Do you want to be different?
Try to let go of the truth,
The battles of your youth,
'Cause this is just a game.”
- Beautiful Lie (30 Seconds to Mars)

To compare Dalton Academy to William McKinley High School would be equivalent to comparing day to night. Where Dalton was quiet, classy and tolerant, McKinley was boisterous, rude, and in many ways bigoted.

"Sooo! This is my current school, welcome to William McKinley High School." Blaine narrated as he tried to navigate his way around the crowd of students, apologizing for every stepped on toe. "Here you can pretty much see the students being segregated by their own cliques. You have the popular kids, the nerds, the misfits.

“Those are the hockey players and the football players. These guys are known for giving people slushee facials so I should try to avoid them today." Blaine turned the corner on the hallway. "Ah, and those guys there are from the glee club, we all stick together. Let's go say hi to them."

"Hey look! It's the hobbit from that posh school!" An arm shot out and yanked Blaine's camcorder away from him. "What do we have here? Ooooh, fancy. Hey, check this out, I didn’t know that they have journalists in Middle Earth."

"Can you give that back to me, please?" There were four of them so Blaine knew he was definitely outnumbered. With a whimper, he recognized one of the bullies to be David Karofsky. "It's—it’s nothing special."

"Nothing special, you say?" Karofsky was handling the camcorder now, smirking into the lens. "Let's see. Well, would you look at that? This little sucker is recording."

One of the jocks grabbed Blaine by the back of his shirt and pulled. He stumbled backward as he choked on the tightened collar around him. "Look! I am Blaine and I am on camera! I'm the star of Nude Erections. I am such a loser, this is me getting my loser ass kicked in school."

"Come on, give it back!" Blaine tried for the camera, only to feel an ankle cross his legs and cause him to fall to ground, winding him on impact as the group laughed heartily. His face burned in humiliation.

"What’s going on here?!" Mr. Collins, the woodshop teacher, shouted from down the hall.

"Shit! I guess that means cut.” The bullies started to make a run for the door. "Yo! Dumbass! You want your camera back? You can have your shitty camera."

"Please don't thr-" The camcorder clattered to the floor and slid toward the locker before hitting it with a thump. "Damn it!" *And it’s a camcorder, stupid.* Blaine thought as he got to his feet on shaky legs. *Oh, God. Don’t let it be broken. Please don’t be broken.*

Blaine picked up the camcorder and tried to assess the damage. There were one or two chips around the edges, but other than that the camcorder seemed to be still in working order. He switched off the device and put the camcorder back into his backpack. Perhaps that last segment could be edited away.

*****************

"This is where I sometimes eat lunch." Blaine had the camcorder set up on one of the bleachers; the position gave a clear view of the field. "This is a good place to be if I wanted some peace and quiet. You get to observe all sorts of people. See there? Those are the Cheerios, McKinley's cheerleading squad. A couple of them are in New Directions. New Direction is the glee club in this school. We’ll get to meet them later." Blaine took a bite out of his sandwich.

"Hey, Anderson!" Blaine turned his head to see the Cheerios co- captain heading toward him.

"Oh, hey! Hi, Santana."

"You need to turn that off there, Polanski." Santana gestured at the camcorder. "You’re creeping the girls out even more than that time Berry tried to work hot pants."

"What-" Blaine blushed "Oh no, no, no, I'm not recording you guys. I'm just recording things in general."

"I know that, Anderson!" Santana threw her hands up in exasperation, and then she leaned closer and lowered her voice. "Look, I know you play for the other team and you've been pretty smart about not advertising that at McKinley. But that means as long as everyone is under the impression that you are straight, they're going to think you are some weirdo creep if you set up a camcorder out here. Like Jacob Israel or something. So take my advice and put that thing away before someone else is forced to do something about it."

"Right." Blaine sighed. He turned around and took the camcorder off its tripod.

"You know Mr. Schue and the rest of New Directions wouldn't mind if you tape them, right?" Santana gestured at the camcorder. "You'll probably make Berry's day actually."

"I do plan on taping all our rehearsals, I think it'd be great to review them to identify any moves that may need improvement." Blaine stood up and straightened his sweater.

Santana made a face at that. "Leave it to you to take the fun out of everything. There're so many things you can do with that." The look in Santana's eyes was making Blaine feel uncomfortable. “You know, like making sex tapes with Hummel?”

"Santana!" Blaine was pretty sure his face must be turning red right about now. "That's just ... wrong!"

"Prude! Well I gotta get back to practice, Anderson." Santana fixed her ponytail before starting her descent down the steps. "Stay outta trouble!" She looked over her shoulders and gave him a little wave.

"See you." Blaine waved back a little self-consciously before deciding that he might have better chance of avoiding trouble if he headed over to his next classroom early.

*****************

"This is the New Directions, aka the glee club at William McKinley High School. Unlike the Dalton Warblers, the New Direction consists of both male and female participants. So going the first row left to right and then moving to the second and third role, we have the following members: Rachel Berry, Finn Hudson, Sam Evans, Mercedes Jones, Mike Chang, Tina Cohen-Chang, Quinn Fabray, Santana Lopez, Brittany Pierce, Artie Abrams, Sugar Motta, Rory Flanagan, and Noah Puckerman.” Mike and Tina waved and then shared a demure kiss for the camera. “Er, Tina and Mike aren’t related by the way.”

Blaine paused the playback, resting his head on his palm as he watched the frozen images. He wondered if he had always talked that much or whether it was the act of video-taping everything that prompted him to be so verbose. He would probably have to edit and trim some of the footage, but the New Direction's rehearsals looked good. The choreography looked relatively uniform. Blaine switched on his desk lamp to get a better view of the rehearsal recording, he had promised the glee club that he would show the taped rehearsals to them tomorrow after he had edited everything.

He heard his father coming through the door a little too late. Rough hands grabbed him by the shoulders and the next thing Blaine knew, he was on the floor, the left side of his face stung where Mr. Anderson had hit him.

"When I say this door stays open, I mean it!" The man pushed the contents on Blaine's desk onto the floor, some of them hitting the boy as they fell. "Now go do your homework!"

Blaine stayed where he was for a few more minutes after his father left the room. This was getting more and more difficult to cope with every day. He sighed and turned off his camcorder. In the words of Scarlet O’Hara, tomorrow would be another day.

A better one he hoped.

*****************

"I'm just saying, you should get out more." Kurt looked at Blaine for a few seconds before turning his eyes back onto the road. "I'm getting really worried about you, Blaine. Having a hobby, or multiple hobbies, is not a bad thing but I think this is consuming you."

"There isn't anything to do around here, you know that." Blaine sighed and pushed himself back against the car seat in frustration. "Besides homework, Decathlon, and glee club, I'd rather record meaningful things in life than deal with that drunken excuse of a human being."

The uncomfortable silence stretched on. Mr. Anderson was always an awkward topic of discussion for them. For Kurt, he didn’t know how to approach this without making Blaine feel worse about it. For Blaine, he simply did not want to think about the cards that life had dealt him lately.

Kurt decided that it was best the change the topic before the drive became too awkward. "Hey! I heard from Finn that Sugar is having a rave tomorrow night for her birthday. I think it's out by that old farm on Chestnut Farmway?"

"Yeah, she practically invited the entire Ohio." Blaine mumbled.

"We should go. And as you said, everyone will be there. Straight, gay, jerks, nice people, you name it. It'll be a good opportunity to meet people outside of our circle. And I have this new Westwood number I’ve been dying to debut. Well maybe not ‘new’ per se, but it was a real find at an affordable price!"

"We?"

"Do you think I'm going to let you go alone to fend for yourself?" Kurt reached over briefly and moved the camcorder so that he could get a better look at Blaine. "I think, Blaine Anderson, we need to start crossing off a list of firsts in our humdrum lives. So why not our very first rave?"

"I'm not too sure if getting my eardrums blown out is exactly my idea of a good time." That and this is starting to feel like a date. Not that he minded but Blaine was the one who said they should stay friends. Blaine bit back a sigh. *Why did I turn him down again?*

"Earth to Blaine!" Kurt waved his hand in front of Blaine's face.

"Huh?" Blaine blinked. He had been staring, how embarrassing. "Sorry."

"I said, we're going." The tone in Kurt's voice left no room for argument. "Everyone will be there and people are probably going to be way too busy getting drunk and hooking up to give us a hard time. Besides, some of the Warblers are coming. Being stuck in an all-boys school is making them awfully frustrated. The guys will be happy to see you. After all, once a Warbler, always a Warbler."

"True. It'd be good to see them again." *It'd be just like the old times.*

"You won't be alone. We'll all be fine." Kurt put his hand on Blaine's shoulder briefly to reassure him. But almost too soon, the hand was gone.

"Because of strength in numbers?"

Kurt smiled. "Because of strength in numbers."

"Okay. Count me in then."

(TBC)