The students filed in, the hallways becoming a traffic jam in record time. Among the complete chaos of the crowd, a short redhead attempted to keep her balance as she felt the touch of so many others, which wasn’t a fault of anyone’s. She sighed lightly, running one hand through her unkempt hair while the other held her schedule at eye level. She glanced at her hair, shrugging to herself when she recalled racing out of the door without brushing her hair.

“Maxine!” The exclamation of her own name caused her to turn, only to be met with a hug from Rachel, which confused the hell out of her, as the last memory of Rachel was the two about to exchange blows; still, Rachel had her moments. Maxine hugged her back, using her best ‘greeting’ smile as she called it.

“Hi, Rachel! How was your summer?”

Maxine half listened to the array of activities that had gone on during the summer, her mind spacing off as she thought about things. The two girls were both snapped from their separate worlds by the familiarly irritating voice of McKinley high’s local gossip whore, Jacob Ben Israel.

“I have to go practice with Kurt. I’ll see you in Glee club,” Rachel said with a nervous tone. Before Maxine was able to respond, Rachel had disappeared in the crowd. And Jacob had spotted her; apparently, his focus was on the glee club members, as he was beside Maxine, his microphone a little too close for her liking.

“So,” he began, “what do you want to be when you grow up?”

Maxine’s mind whirred for a moment, screaming things that made no sense, given the question asked. Before answering, she shrugged.
“I’d like to become a stage actress, an artist, or a writer,” she smiled to herself, playing with the hem of her shirt.

Jacob made a sound of discontentment, rolling his eyes. He wanted a better plan, juicy news that would be popular with the kids at the school, not a repeat of Rachel Berry, even if they barely had anything in common.

“What about any specifics?” He refused to think of his incessant question as prying, as he was a journalist. That was his job, really.

“I’m a junior,” she said flatly, “why should I have to choose one right now when I have my senior year to plan?”

That was the moment that Jacob realized that she had nothing interesting to say, at least, nothing to interest the jocks and popular students of the school. He left, mumbling to the camera man in disdain.

With the gossiper out of sight, Maxine walked to the choir room, reminded of her first audition the year before, and how shy she had been. Looking down at herself, she realized that not much of her appearance had changed at all. She still struggled to match her clothing, and every outfit she wore still clashed against everything. She knew that she would need to fix it in order to fit in a little more, and thought of asking Kurt for advice.

As she walked through the door, she noticed three trophies. She had to stifle a laugh when she recognized the tiny twelfth-place trophy. Even though she had been there, in the grand city, she found the incident frankly hilarious. Especially when Santana had started to speak in Spanish, even though the Latina cheerio scared the shit out of her.

Maxine sat in her usual seat next to Kurt and smiled toward him. As Mr. Schue explained the reasoning for bringing the trophies out, she laughed as Kurt went on about the ‘kiss that missed’ on Youtube.

Mr. Schue announced that the club would have to work much harder, especially when it came to getting new members, as they were now three short. Maxine tuned out Santana’s snarky comments as she spotted something purple near the doorway. When her eyes focused, she realized the purple object was a piano, and there were three of them.

Before Mr. Schue could explain everything about them, most of the club had already gotten up to examine the pianos closer. Maxine stood a foot from the middle piano, enamored by the sleek design of it, and the rich lavender-like color. She stepped back, not wanting to look like an idiot. Personally, she couldn’t wait until the project started, even if she knew she would probably be drowned out by Rachel’s many solos.

Maxine nearly jumped as she felt her pocket shake, just realizing it to be her cell phone buzzing. As she looked at the screen, she smiled as she found that Blaine had texted her. She remembered being introduced at Rachel’s party, and the fact that they had to kiss during Spin the Bottle. She blushed lightly as she recalled that it had been her first kiss; also that it was chaste. Until Blaine had initiated more of a French-kiss after a moment, a mistake he had made since he had been wasted at the time. She knew of his sexual orientation, and really wanted to see whether Blaine would ask Kurt out or not, having noticed the latter’s crush after a while.

She pushed her memories to the back of her mind as she realized that she still hadn’t read the text yet.

Hi, Maxine. It’s Blaine, from Dalton.
As she read the text, she giggled. “Of course I know who you are, silly,” she said to no one in particular. She immediately typed up a quick reply.

Hi Blaine! What’s up?

A few moments later, she felt a buzzing in her pocket again, and she had sat down in her seat for class.

May I ask you for a favor, or an opinion of sorts?

Of course! Any time at all. Would you prefer to talk in person about the favor?

Yes, I would love that. Could you stay in the choir room until everyone has left?

Of course I can. Augh, gotta go. See you later.

She swiftly put her phone in her bag, looking over the syllabus that she had just been handed. Maxine glanced toward the clock, and cursed herself for doing so. Why re-develop the habit so early?

As soon as the bell had rung for lunch, Maxine put her things into her locker, and headed down to the lunchroom. She sat at the table the ND usually sat at, and chatted casually with Puck about the math homework they had gotten. Maxine looked up at Rachel as she started to talk about the fact that there was a purple piano in the lunch room, located close to the lunch line.

After a few moments, the whole of ND had stood up, ready to dazzle the rest of McKinley high.

See the people walking down the street
Fall in line just watching all their feet
They don’t know where they wanna go
They’re walking in time

Maxine started to dance to the beat of the song as Rachel started, her heart pounding in her chest. She felt it ready to explode as she started to sing the chorus, and couldn’t help but move like crazy as she got more and more into it.

She watched her fellow teammates in awe as she continued to sing, reveling the strong feeling in her chest. It was only the lack of music that made her realize that they had finished singing, really. For a moment, she had a content smile on her face, then watched in confusion as food was thrown at Rachel. She couldn’t help but feel a rush of adrenaline as the second helping was thrown. As soon as she was hit, she picked up a wad of whatever food she could get her hands on, and launched it into the crowd. After a moment, the sounds of the hectic cafeteria started to get to her, so she headed to her next class.

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Sitting in the choir room with clothing that stunk of rotten food was the last thing Maxine had wanted to do as she listened to her fellow students talk about how no one had come to audition.

“It’s true,” a brunette at the door began, “you guys sucked ass.” Maxine frowned toward the girl, trying to figure out where she had seen her.

“And who are you?”

“I’m Sugar Motta,” she stepped forward, walking into the room, “and I have self-diagnosed Asperger's, which means I can pretty much say whatever I want. I'm like a diplomat's daughter.”

Maxine had to resist the urge to stand and strangle the girl. To use her disability as an excuse for acting like a bitch; something that always gave people with Maxine’s disability a bad reputation. She eventually powered through it, though her knuckles were white as she clung to her chair.

In a flash, after Sugar had performed her audition, Maxine had snapped. She stormed down the row of chairs, hoisting herself over the food covered piano, and tackled Sugar Motta to the ground; much to most of the club’s astonishment.

Mr. Schue was the first to act, pulling Maxine off of Sugar. He glared toward her, his expression livid. “Go see principal Figgins,” he commanded, pushing her toward the door. After a moment, he got Sugar on her merry way, and he placed a hand on Brad’s shoulder as he walked back in.

“It was only a matter of time,” Puck said, smirking slightly.

----------------------------------------------------------

Maxine sat on the black sofa in Figgins’ office, staring down at her hands as she hunched over slightly. She watched them twitch nervously, and sighed as all the attempts to swallow the lump in her throat didn’t work. She knew she was close to tears, but she wanted to keep her composure.

“Could you explain to me what happened, Ms. Connolly?” Figgins wanted to get this over with just as much as she did. He hated interrogating students.

“I think Mr. Schue was pretty clear,” she said, her tone bordering sarcasm, “I jumped over the piano and tackled Sugar.” She winced as she heard her words playback in her mind, as though they had been forced. Maxine had no idea what had made her snap so suddenly, and she felt as if she couldn’t hold her tears any longer. She had never done something violent, and was scared out of her wits, mostly due to the fact that she tackled another student to the ground.

“Why, though?”

“She used my disability,” she said, not giving Sugar any credit with her ‘self-diagnosed’ bullshit, “and she blamed all her actions and whatever she said on Asperger’s. She does not have Asperger’s Syndrome, Principal. Do you know how hard it is to live with autism, sir? And then to have some idiot slander our names. It hurts,” she said, finally breaking down into sobs.

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“I heard you ‘brought the hurt’, according to Kurt and Mercedes,” Blaine spoke, walking into the choir room, sighing and patting Maxine on the shoulder. “What happened?”

She smiled toward him, shrugging as if it had been no big deal. She then grinned sheepishly up at him.

“I jumped over that piano and tackled her to the ground,” she explained, and went on further as his expression had turned to one of shock, “She used my disability as a scapegoat, Blaine. I can’t even explain how much that hurts.”

After a moment of silence, Maxine changed the subject. “So, what did you need me to help you with?” This seemed to distract Blaine from the tackling incident, so she was happy for that.

“Kurt told me that you’re good at keeping secrets?”

“Of course! I’m very loyal when it comes to secrets.”

“I’m going to be starting my junior year at McKinley high tomorrow,” he breathed, touching his gelled hair. Maxine tilted her head ever so slightly, yet beamed at him.

“That’s fantastic, you can join the New Directions!”

“That’s what I need help with. I want to do ‘It’s Not Unusual, by” - -

“Tom Jones! Blaine, that’s a perfect choice! One of my favorite songs of all time!”

Maxine looked away for a moment, her face red as a beet.

“Blaine? Could I ask you something?”

“Sure?”

“Can I sing the song to you right now? I’ve never sung it in front of anyone but I’d love to sing,” - - Blaine put a hand on her shoulder to silence her.

“I’d love to hear your rendition. I don’t think I ever heard you sing a solo.”

It's not unusual to be loved by anyone
It's not unusual to have fun with anyone
but when I see you hanging about with anyone
It's not unusual to see me cry,
oh I wanna' die

Maxine let herself relax as she sang, her eyes actually tearing up as she did so. She made herself dance in place to get more comfortable, and to avoid a rigid stature.

It's not unusual to go out at any time
but when I see you out and about it's such a crime
if you should ever want to be loved by anyone,

It's not unusual it happens every day no matter what you say
you find it happens all the time
love will never do what you want it to
why can't this crazy love be mine

It's not unusual, to be mad with anyone
It's not unusual, to be sad with anyone
but if I ever find that you've changed at anytime
it's not unusual to find out that I'm in love with you