Ever since transferring to McKinley High, Blaine Anderson had felt… off-kilter. His mother kept telling him it was because of the change in environment, but he remembered public school enough to not be startled by the shoves and scathing names. It was a mixture of things, really. In his trigonometry class, there was always a desk that no one would sit at. He even got snapped at by the teacher one day for trying. There was that Karofsky guy, who hardly ever spoke and walked around the school with empty eyes. The strangest thing of all, though, was the glee club. When Blaine had auditioned for New Directions, the director had told him he was in before he even finished the last note and the kids had gone absolutely nuts. He wasn’t good enough, he didn’t fit their dynamic, they didn’t need someone new. Mr. Shuester had eventually gotten them to calm down, but Blaine could still tell that none of them wanted him there. He’d tried asking the little goth girl if he had done something wrong (“Why do you all seem to hate me?”), but she just assured him that it wasn’t his fault. Who’s fault was it, then?

“Pay attention, white boy!”

Mercedes Jones. She was the worst. The others were at least trying to warm up to Blaine. Her hatred of him had just grown.

“Why should I?” Blaine huffed, sick of her attitude. “I’ve got the steps down and I could sing this in my sleep. You’re the one who keeps messing up!”

“Don’t you talk to me li-” Mercedes started to yell as she stomped over to him, but she was interrupted by bumping into a chair that Blaine could have sworn was on the other side of the room a moment ago. “Ow!”

“Anderson may be right, if you can’t even walk without running into things,” Puck snickered, sharing a high five with Finn. “Let it go, Effie.”

Mercedes grumbled as she rubbed her sore thighs, though she took the advice and didn’t bother Blaine again for the rest of rehearsal. It went relatively well after that, but Blaine couldn’t shake the feeling that the chair had moved on its own. Maybe he was just over-stressed and imagining things?