Puck was pissed. Actually, scratch that, he was furious. A single sheet of paper clutched in his hand, he stormed down the hallway towards the computer lab, entering to see Lauren idly sitting in front of one of the screens, editing a film project before her first class of the day.

"You are a bitch," he said in lieu of a civil greeting.

Lauren looked up, her eyebrows snapping together. "Care to elaborate?"

He held up the article, which was nearly crumpled in his hand. "You printed this crap about Kurt being insane! You know these are being handed out at the front entrance like Wendy's flyers?"

"It's not crap; it's true."

"I don't care! You went behind our backs!"

Lauren showed absolutely no signs of guilt or remorse. "First off, I didn't print it – Jacob did."

"It lists you as the source for the recording!"

Lauren sighed, pursing her lips in irritation. "I'm not part of the club any more, Puckerman. Can't betray you if I'm not one of you."

"Don't use that crap as an excuse. This," he snarled, waving the article in her face, "is crossing a lot of lines."

Lauren finally stood up, crossing her arms and somehow glaring down at him even though she was shorter. "It's journalism, Puck, not politics. Look, I cut a deal with Jacob months agoto bug the choir room so that we'd get firsthand accounts of any drama, and frankly, you guys have been seriously boring lately. But McKinley's first gay couple on the verge of a breakup due to fact that one of them is missing more than a few wingnuts? JBI's all over this like chocolate on Oreos."

"Well, then take it back!" Puck was nearly shouting now. "Post another article that says it was – I dunno – false information or something! A bad source!"

"I'm the source," Lauren snapped. "And even if I did retract the publication, it wouldn't matter. Everyone's already heard the recording – they all know."

"Then say you tampered with it!" Puck yelled, beginning to grasp at straws.

Lauren rolled her eyes. "Hummel's got the single most recognizable voice out of the entire student body. And we're a high school gossip blog, not Universal Studios. We don't have the tech to doctor anything that much, let alone an audio file."

"I don't care! Just do something!"

"What are you so worked up about anyways? I thought you hated the Hummel kid."

"I never said that."

"Well, you certainly acted like it."

Puck shook his head, crushing the article into a ball before tossing it angrily into the trash. "Jesus, Lauren."

She sighed. "Puck, if I could do something about it, I would—"

"Yeah, bullcrap," he spat, already heading for the door. "Next time you want a free makeout session in the supply closet, don't come crying to me."

Kurt walked into school that morning feeling mildly nervous about seeing Blaine. The two hadn't spoken since their shouting match two days before, and yesterday it had been agonizing to be in the same room. Kurt had made himself swear to talk to Blaine before the end of the day – regardless of what Kurt wanted, he knew that Blaine at the very least deserved an apology. And if that meant throwing himself on his knees, then Kurt was willing to get his designer jeans dirty.

He was halfway down the main corridor when he realized that, despite the large number of students already crowding the hall, it was suspiciously quiet. It wasn't silent – just hushed. He looked up, his heart lurching when he saw that more than half of them were looking straight at him.

Oh, God…

This was not the usual 'You're weird so I'm going to avoid you' look that he received on a more than daily basis. The stares that he was getting now were disgusted, more along the lines of 'There is something deeply, deeply wrong with you.' Most of them were also holding a single sheet of paper, glancing back and forth between it and Kurt.

Mr. Schue suddenly broke through the sea of glares and approached Kurt, obviously worried. "Kurt," he said softly, placing a hand on Kurt's shoulder. "Miss Pillsbury and I want to talk with you."

"What's going on?"

His teacher sighed. "Come on. Let's go to my office."

Mr. Schue's hand remained firmly on Kurt's shoulder the entire way to the choir room, where they entered his tiny office annex. Miss Pillsbury was sitting behind the desk, nervously examining her nails. Kurt was about to ask why, if it was a guidance counselor meeting, they weren't meeting in the guidance counselor's office, but then he realized that Miss Pillsbury's office was (ironically) far less private.

"Oh, good, you're here," Miss Pillsbury squeaked as Kurt sat in one of the two chairs across from the desk. "Blaine, please, have a seat."

Kurt's heart skipped when he noticed that Blaine had been standing at the back of the room, completely silent. Once Blaine had sunk into the other chair, and Mr. Schue was leaning against the wall to Blaine's left, Miss Pillsbury spoke, her hands flattened against the desk top.

"I'm not sure if either of you are aware that there was an article published on Jacob Ben Israel's blog yesterday evening…" she started, faltering towards the end.

Mr. Schue decided to step in. "It makes some really serious claims," he said. "And… I hate to say it, but it also provides some pretty solid evidence to back up those claims."

Blaine said nothing, and Kurt had a twisting feeling in his gut that he knew already what the problem was. Just to be absolutely sure, though, he summoned up the courage to ask what the claims were.

Miss Pillsbury clamped her lips together for a moment before admitting, "They're about your… your condition, Kurt."

Kurt's eyebrows snapped together. "You know about that?"

"I know we haven't talked about it personally, but state law requires that if there's a student with a serious mental illness, then the health officials at their school need to know about it," she explained apologetically.

Mr. Schue didn't say anything, but he looked absolutely crushed, like he'd been holding on to some shred of hope that the rumors weren't true and now that last shred had disintegrated.

Kurt took a deep breath, his sinuses tight like he was underwater. "What evidence were you talking about?"

"There was a recording," Miss Pillsbury said, her voice trembling. "A recording of an argument that the both of you had a couple of days ago."

Kurt rested his head in his hands, feeling more violated than he ever had during his life. Blaine asked him if he was all right.

"Look, I'm here for both of you," Miss Pillsbury assured them. "Kurt, you're under a lot of stress right now, and I know that that's a… delicate situation for you. So, whatever you need, I'm here. And Blaine, you're going through a lot as well, so I'm always open to talk or suggest ways to deal with that, and whether you want to meet with Kurt or alone is up to you."

Blaine gave a silent nod, casting another nervous look in Kurt's direction. "I… I think Finn needs to be here too," he said. "He knows what to do when Kurt…" He trailed off, but luckily Mr. Schue understood what he meant and quickly left to find Finn.

"Kurt?" Miss Pillsbury ventured, her eyes wide and uncertain. "Are you all right?"

"No," he said, and Blaine was relieved to hear Kurt's voice. "How the hell did they record us?"

"There were hidden microphones in the choir room," she confessed. "I don't know how long they've been there, but Mr. Schuester went through early this morning and he thinks he removed all of them. Still, we're bringing Jacob Ben Israel and Lauren Zizes in to Principal Figgins' office later today to make sure, and after that they'll most likely be suspended."

"Suspended?" Blaine echoed, still trying to keep an eye on Kurt, who was looking more and more like he was about to throw up. "They should be expelled!"

"It's not for me to decide." Despite her claim to neutrality, it was clear from the uncharacteristic force behind her tone that Miss Pillsbury wholeheartedly agreed with Blaine. "Kurt, we're going to call your parents and you can just go home early today. You can stay in here until they come to pick you up. Normally I don't encourage students to hide from embarrassment, but today I think—"

"Miss Pillsbury," Blaine cut her off. "He's not here any more."

Her eyes widened even further (something that Blaine hadn't previously thought was possible), warily staring at Kurt, whose expression and posture had gone dead a few seconds before. "Oh, gosh, is he…?"

Blaine nodded.

"Wow."

His gaze whipped over to glare at her incredulously.

"I – I just meant… I studied this kind of thing in college, but I've never…" she faltered.

"He's not a textbook, Miss Pillsbury."

Mercedes hadn't fully realized just how much she hated her school until this particular morning. After walking through the front entrance and having the printed-out article shoved in front of her nose, she stormed through the hallways searching for Jacob Ben Israel. She finally spotted his frizzy red cloud of hair and cornered him by the Home Ec room.

"You are a disgusting human being and if it's the last thing I do, I will rip your head off and feed it to Coach Sylvester's rottweilers!"

"It's just journalism!" Jacob cried as she yelled at him, pushing him up against the wall of lockers behind him. He squirmed. "I had to find a hard-hitting story to get into Columbia!"

"You won't be getting into anywhere when I'm through with you!"

Mercedes was about to continue her rant peppered with threats, but then Finn ran past them, shoving people out of the way as he headed for the choir room with Mr. Schue hot on his heels. She gave Jacob one last rough shove and promised him that they werenot through and if he wanted to escape her wrath he had better relocate to Mexico, then rushed off to follow Kurt's stepbrother.

At the door to the choir room, she nearly collided with Santana, who for once did not greet her with an insult. "Mercedes, what the hell is going on?" she cried, holding up a copy of the article. "Is this true?"

"I don't know," Mercedes said breathlessly, going into the room and immediately searching for Kurt since she knew that he always came here when he was stressed. Rather than sitting on the risers alone like she expected, she spotted him through the window of Mr. Schue's office, where he was sitting with Blaine, Finn, Mr. Schue, and Miss Pillsbury all crammed into the tiny room.

Mercedes wrung her hands, chewing on her lip nervously as she watched the goings-on through the window. Finn was crouching next to Kurt's chair, speaking to him quickly and urgently, his forehead creased with more worry than she'd ever seen on his face.

Kurt's expression, on the other hand, was what really made her heart skip. His fingers were gripping the chair arms so tightly that she could see the white skin on his knuckles from where she stood, and his face seemed… bent. The angles of his profile were all wrong – she'd never seen him this angry and unhappy and scared all at once, and it was changing his very shape.

She gasped, her hands flying over her mouth, when Kurt's arm suddenly lashed out and struck Finn across the face, who, rather than look at his stepbrother in shock, simply grabbed his wrists as if this were an everyday occurrence. Miss Pillsbury, Mr. Schue, and Blaine all looked like they would rather be anywhere but there.

"Jesus," Santana said, Mercedes suddenly remembering that the Latina was with her. "Jew-Fro was telling the truth."

Mercedes didn't know why it had taken her this long to realize it, but it wasn't until Santana had said so that she finally began to see (if not understand) that Kurt… wasn't Kurt.

She had barely had enough time to process this when Kurt abruptly let out a bloodcurdling scream directed specifically at Finn. Mercedes and Santana flinched simultaneously and watched as Blaine quickly stood up and slammed the door behind him as he came into the choir room, his arms hugging his chest and his eyes glued to the floor.

"Blaine—" Mercedes started.

He held up a hand. "Not now," he snapped, heading for the door to the hallway. "Just… not now."

The two girls watched him disappear into the corridor, then yelling from Mr. Schue's office drew their attention back. Mercedes couldn't quite make out any of the words, but Kurt was doing most of the yelling while Finn attempted unsuccessfully to keep him calm.

The most terrifying moment, though, was after Kurt finally stopped shouting. He paced a few steps towards the window, his hands wound into his hair, and he stood there for a few seconds, his chest heaving as he tried to breathe evenly.

And then, he drew his head back and rammed it with tremendous force into the glass.

Mercedes shrieked and Santana backed up several steps, swearing under her breath in Spanish. Kurt's head struck the window one more time before Finn was able to pull him away, nearly lifting him off the ground as Kurt thrashed at him, a trickle of blood winding its way down his forehead.

Santana grabbed Mercedes' arm, pulling her towards the door. "Come on, let's get out of here," she said.

"What? No." Mercedes wrenched her arm away from Santana, glaring at her incredulously. "I'm not leaving him!"

"Mercedes," Santana said slowly, surprising Mercedes with the use of her actual name. "Look at him. He's psychotic! Finn and the germophobe can handle it, and you're not even in there with them, so there is nothing you can do. You saw what happened to Blaine's face—"

"You don't know that that was Kurt."

"Oh, right! Maybe it was the person that just tried to run his head through a window!"

Mercedes' jaw clenched, sheer rage bubbling through her veins at Santana's insistence. She was about to snap back with some sort of speech about sticking together, complimented with a threat, but the door to Mr. Schue's office burst open behind her.

And all hell broke loose.