Perfectly Imperfect

Night of Neglect

Mr. Schue walked into the choir room, dropping cardboard boxes labeled 'SALTWATER TAFFY' before turning to the whiteboard and writing '5,000 x 0.25= 20,000', "All right, we need $5,000 to pay for our trip to nationals in New York."

Quinn furrowed her brow, unsure of how they spontaneously lacked the funds obtained after Sue Sylvester's downfall at Cheerleading Nationals, "What happened to the money that we got from the Cheerios?"

"I guess Sue was hiding it in offshore accounts in the Cayman Islands and we're having some trouble accessing some of it. any of it. This is saltwater taffy."

"I love saltwater," Britt happily giggled beside Artie.

Mr. Schue rolled his eyes, continuing, "When I was a student here, we paid for our entire trip to nationals selling this classroom to classroom, door to door. We pushed this stuff like crack. And so will we. So to make $5,000 at 25 cents apiece we need to sell 20,000 pieces of taffy."

"Wait. Do you honestly think that we can sell 20,000 anythings?" Santana asked rhetorically. "We won Regionals for the first time since dinosaurs roamed the planet and I still got a freakin' cherry Icee facial."

Dani set her jaw still wanting to go find her brother and slap him after slushing Santana this morning, "And trust me, I'm still plotting my revenge to make Karofsky pay for it. He may not have eyebrows when he comes to school tomorrow."

Snickering at Dani's plans for her brother, Quinn nods in agreement with Santana, "Yeah, Santana's right. Nobody cares about us."

"I can't listen to this," Mike huffed, swinging his backpack onto his shoulder.

Mr. Schue looked concerned at his typically quiet student as he turned to leave, clearly frustrated, "Mike, are you okay?"

Mike sets his jaw gritting through his teeth, "No. You guys complain all the time about being mistreated but you have no idea what it's like to work your butt off for something and have everyone, even your friends, ignore you."

Lauren looks at Mike as though they'd never met before, leaning into Puck's shoulder, "I'm so trying to remember his name right now."

Artie, Tina and Dani got out of their seat, joining Mike at his side, "Artie, Tina, Dani and I are on the Brainiacs."

Nathan looks at them shocked, not having known about this before, "Isn't that the Academic Decathlon team?"

"We have one of those?" Rachel asks surprised, having thought she was in every club in the school

"Yes, we do. And the four of us went on the Smarty Pants Show and beat Carmel High to go to the Academic Decathlon finals in Detroit next week," Artie explained.

Sam looks embarrassed at the quartet, feeling like a bad friend for not remembering that his friends were on TV, "You guys were on TV? Why didn't you tell us about it?"

"We did," the four snapped at him, frustrated that no one listened to them.

Mr. Schue looks at the quartet, somewhat confused by the team. He motions at Mike, Artie and Tina, "Wait. I- I get the three of you being on the team."

"Is it because two of them are Asian and Artie wears glasses?" Puck asked innocently, making his classmates giggle.

Mr. Schue suppressed his smile, "No. But Dan-"

"I swear if he says he doesn't understand why I'm a part of the Academic Decathlon team though I've tutored literally every single person in the room, I'm going to hurt him and I'm gonna like it," Dani mumbled, daring Mr. Schue to finish his thought.