“O…M…G…” Melissa de Silva - a petite red head with extremely intelligent and equally judgmental sea green eyes - gawks open mouthed at two men, dressed in head to toe 80s retro fashion in an unsettling array of clashing neon colors. They've taken up the entire dead center of the gymnasium, ridiculously throwing their limbs around to the beat of Bon Jovi blasting overhead, bouncing like kids a third their age, in real danger of knocking someone unconscious. “Well, there's something you don't see every day.”

“Maybe you don't…” a muffled voice beside her mutters, coming from a dark skinned girl with a puffy knot of tight curls atop her head, and penetrating blue eyes. She peeks up once, then drops her head in her hands, hoping that, any minute, she'll sink into the floor.

“Who in the world are they?” Melissa snickers.

“They're parent chaperones,” another girl, Cynthia, with pink and blue chalked blonde pigtails, says, pulling up beside her friends.

“You mean, they're the parents of someone who goes to our school?” Melissa asks in awe. “Oh, God!” she giggles. “We have to find out whose!”

“Why?” Tracy asks, raising her head from her hands, nervously toying with her curls. “Wh-why do we need to know whose parents they are? I mean, that's not necessary, is it?”

“Of course, it is,” Melissa says. “It is absolutely necessary that we discover the name of that poor sap…and make sure they become the social pariah they were destined to be for the rest of their junior high school career.” Tracy's stomach turns to stone and sinks to her ankles as Melissa glances over her shoulder and starts summoning more witnesses to the massacre unfolding on the dance floor. “Stephanie! Amy! Tina! Come look at this!”

“Wow,” Tina says, jaw dropped almost to the toes of her purple vinyl Doc Martens, which her parents bought her specifically to match the violet streaks in her hair.

“I know, right?” Melissa says, grinning with glee over her tragic find.

“Oh, Jesus Christ!” Stephanie chirps. “We have to make the most of this! Pull a Carrie or something! How much punch do we have do you think?”

“About three 5-gallon buckets from what I saw behind the table,” Amy offers, bouncing on the balls of her feet in excitement.

Tracy feels nauseous, a cold sweat breaking out underneath her hair and her clothes. She wants to butt in and stick up for the clueless men mindlessly having fun - she really does. It's what her mom would do. But she doesn't want to be an outcast. She puts on a strong front for her parents, but it's not always easy for her at school. And this is a new school for her. An academically advanced school. She beat out seven hundred other kids in her borough to get a place here. From day one, she seemed to be accepted by the popular crowd, which has never happened to her before, despite the fact that her parents are famous.

Or maybe because of that fact.

Melissa, in particular, happens to be the most popular girl at Hunter College School. Tracy was fortunate enough to find a way into her inner sanctum. It was an absolute fluke really – right place, right time, wearing the absolute right vintage Matisse printed t-shirt. She doesn't want to mess anything up.

“Those two are the biggest dorks I have ever seen!” Tina drones while Amy double checks the punch status. “Don't they even know what they're doing to their poor kid's reputation?”

“They're just having fun,” Tracy interjects.

“Fun?” Melissa chuckles. “They're a disaster!”

Tracy winces. She kind of agrees, but it's not Melissa's job to point that out. Tracy can't take this. It isn't right.

“I mean, how do you leave the house like that without getting stopped by the fashion police?”

“Didn't the mirror crack when they passed it?”

“Where the hell do you even find clothes like that? Goodwill?”

“No way! Goodwill would never sell that,” Cynthia jeers. “They have standards to uphold!”

The girls roar with laughter, all except Tracy. Seething quietly, listening to these shallow cretins poke cruel fun at two people they don't even know, Tracy finally snaps. If there's one thing she can't stand, it's bullying. There's no way she's going to stand by while this continues.

“You know what? What the heck is wrong with you guys?”

Melissa jerks back. “What's wrong with you, Trace?”

“What gives you guys the right to make fun of anyone? You don't know those people. You don't know their lives. Who died and made you supreme leader of the universe and everything in it?”

“Uh, did we miss something?” Tina asks.

“Yeah,” Cynthia agrees. “You're taking this awful personal.”

“Of course I'm taking this personally,” Tracy steams, hands balled into fists. “Those two lunatics out there happen to be my dads.” The girls gasp as if Tracy dropped the plot twist of the century. “And let me tell you something – they happen to be two of the greatest parents on the face of the whole wide world! So excuse me if you don't think they're cool because they're having a little fun, or their clothes don't match. F.Y.I. this happens to be an 80s themed dance. They don't dress that way all the time.” (They do dance that way all the time, Tracy thinks to herself, but decides it's better not to go with full disclosure at the moment.) “It's better than standing in front of the punch bowl, not dancing, and pretending to be better than everyone else, which, by the way, you're not, so…hmph.” With a z-snap in the air, Tracy turns on her heels and heads out on the dance floor. She turns to face them one more time when the mention of punch passes her lips. “And if a single drop of that punch ends up anywhere near my dads, I'm going straight to Dean Mildred and tell her exactly where it came from.”

Tracy storms off, cutting through the mob of dancing pre-teens, her body shaking with every step. Another school, another rep in the toilet, but she doesn't care. How can she when the two goofiest men on the planet are smiling at her like she's an epic sunrise piercing the dark?

“Hey, Tracy,” Blaine says, opening his arms for his sour-looking daughter. “You alright? You look like you might have had a little disagreement with your friends over there.”

“Are…are we embarrassing you?” Kurt asks, slowing his roll and looking around suddenly, the thought never having occurred to them.

“Nah,” Tracy says, re-securing the knot on the top of her head, “you're not. I just thought that maybe, you know, I could come dance with you guys, instead of loitering by the refreshment table?”

“Aww, of course, baby,” Blaine says, squeezing his daughter while he has the chance.

“Yeah,” Kurt says, playfully messing with her puff of curls, “why don't you show us some of those epic Anderson-Hummel moves?”

“Don't I get any moves from my momma?” she asks, falling in line with a simple side-to-side shuffle to the beat, occasionally snapping her fingers to add a bit of pizzazz.

“Your mom likes to refer to herself as a park and bark,” Kurt explains. “She stands in one place and blows us all away with her amazing voice.”

“Yeah,” Blaine says, switching his dance moves with the change in music, throwing his arms from side to side in a revamped rendition of the Hully Gully. “You get all your moves from us.”

Tracy's horrified gaze bounces from Blaine, jumping full on in to the Cabbage Patch, to Kurt, getting in sync with Blaine's groove, and she drops her forehead in her hands.

“Oh, sweet Jesus,” Tracy says, bidding a carefree last year of middle school farewell, “I'm in some serious trouble.”