Unlikely Star

A Night of Neglect

I confidently strode into Glee Club the next day. With the news that we would be going to Nationals, I felt a new high every time we had rehearsal. I saw an open seat next to Sam, so I decided to take it. I had realized that I maybe, possibly might be falling for him. But I didn't want to act on them. Who knows if he felt the same way? And, he had already dated two of my closest friends, so I would want to make sure it was fine with them (I assumed it was considering what he told me about his and Santana's relationship, and the fact that Quinn cheated on him).

"Hey Mallory." he said as I sat down.

"Hey." Mr. Schue cut down any kind of conversation we could have when he walked in and wrote some kind of mathematical equation on the board. I wasn't really sure, I would only understand and pay attention to math in my actual math class.

"All right, we need $5,000 to pay for our trip to Nationals in New York."

"What happened to the money that we got from the Cheerios?" Quinn asked.

"I guess Sue was hiding it in offshore accounts in the Cayman Islands, and we're having some trouble accessing some of it. All of it." My god. That woman will do anything to ensure that none of the Cheerios money goes to the Glee Club. "This is salt water taffy." Mr. Schue held up a small thing of candy. "When I was a student here, we paid for our entire trip to Nationals selling this." I wasn't quite sure how they managed that. Salt water taffy is disgusting and just sticks to the roof of your mouth.

"Classroom to classroom, door to door. We pushed this stuff like crack." I almost got hit in the face with a piece of candy, but luckily Finn grabbed it before it hit me. "And so will we. So, to make $5,000 at 25 cents a piece, we need to sell 20,000 pieces of taffy."

"Do you honestly think we can sell 20,000 pieces of anything? I mean we won Regionals for the first time since dinosaurs roamed the planet, and I still got a freaking cherry Icee facial."

"Santana is right. Nobody cares about us." That was true. The other day, a bee landed on my back and everybody failed to tell me because they thought it was my pet.

"I can't listen to this." Mike grabbed his backpack and began to walk out the door. Tina, Brittany, and Artie started to follow him out. "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, including your friends, ignore you. Artie, Tina, Brittany, and I are on the Brainiacs."

"Isn't that the Academic Decathlon team?" I didn't even know the school had one of those.

"The four of us went on The Smartypants Show and beat Carmel High to go to the Academic Decathlon finals in Detroit next week.

"Wait, you guys were on TV? Well, why didn't you tell us about it?" Sam asked.

All together, they said, "We did!" I was thinking back to last week, trying to remember if they did. I'm pretty sure Tina mentioned it, but I wasn't sure when it was. I was planning on asking her about it later though (I really didn't).

"Wait, I get the three of you being on the team, but Brittany?"

"Liz Schneider was our fourth, but she got Rubella. Her parents are some kind of hippies who don't believe in vaccines."

"Brittany was the only person we could convince at the time. Anyways, sadly, we can't afford to go to the finals, so we're going to have to forfeit."

"Wait guys, how much do you need to pay for the trip?" Mr. Schue walked back towards the board and started erasing the amount of taffy that we needed to sell.

"If we only eat funyuns, then $250."

"Which means, we need to sell more taffy." I rolled my eyes at his request. How on earth are we supposed to sell more than 20,000 pieces of taffy?