Lila Anderson has returned for her sophomore year at McKinley High. After losing regionals, the Glee Club is officially at the bottom of the food chain, but when Lila comes back for the school year with a new look, she gets more than overlooked in t...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
✧.*
EVERYTHING felt different now.
The silence in my room felt heavier than usual, pressing in on me as I sat on my bed, staring out my window at the empty space across from me. Sam's old bedroom window was open, but there was nothing inside. No posters of superheroes taped to the walls, no scattered clothes on the floor, no faint glow from his video game console flickering late into the night. It was hollow, lifeless—like he had never even been there.
But he had.
This whole year, that window had been more than just a view into another room. It had been a connection. A place where whispered conversations happened past midnight, where crumpled notes passed between us in a tin bucket tied to a string. It had been ours.
And now it was nothing.
I had spent so long being angry, drowning in my own hurt, that I hadn't seen what was right in front of me. While I had been stewing over betrayal, over rumors, over everything I thought had broken us—Sam had been losing everything. His home. His security. And I hadn't even noticed.
Tears burned the back of my eyes, but I swallowed them down, reaching for the scissors on my desk. My fingers trembled as I held them up to the string stretched between our windows. The last thing tying us together.
For just a second, I hesitated. Cutting this meant something. It meant admitting things had changed, that whatever we had—whatever we were—wasn't the same anymore.
But maybe it never had been.
I tightened my grip and sliced through the string.
The snap was quiet, but it felt deafening. The bucket tumbled down, hitting the ground below with a hollow thud.
I didn't watch it fall. I just sat there, staring at the open, empty window across from me.
For the first time since I'd met Sam Evans...
He wasn't just across the way anymore.
He was gone.
~~~
Prom was supposed to be magical. Or at least, that's what everyone kept saying.
I sat stiffly in the choir room, my fingers tangled in the fabric of my skirt as Santana turned to Lauren with a dramatic shake of her head.
"You're up for queen. You can't make your own prom dress. Prom is like our Oscars," she said. "It's like the most important night of our lives."
Maybe for her, that was true. But for me? It just felt like another reminder of everything that wasn't falling into place.
I let out a heavy sigh, slumping back in my chair. "I can't even find a dress," I muttered. "Or someone to go with, for that matter. Everyone else either has a date or just isn't going. My life is over."
