🎧'Nightmare – Ruelle

You had to leave your town, your friends, your school, your habits — basically your entire life — because of your dad’s new job in Lima, Ohio.

And today is your first day at William McKinley High School. The main hallway feels more like a battlefield runway than a regular school corridor. Students bump into you like they're locked in some silent popularity war, locker rooms reek of hairspray and teenage tension, and colorful slushies have already stained at least three freshmen uniforms before the first bell even rings.

You try to keep your head high and blend in like a ghost, but everything here screams claimed territory. The cafeteria has invisible seating charts. The Cheerios — flawless cheerleaders ruled by none other than Sue Sylvester — hold court like royalty. And at the center of it all…is a blonde girl.

Quinn Fabray — you think that’s her name. The kind of girl who looks like she was sketched out by a teen movie screenwriter: blonde, poised, dangerous.

But what you don’t see is that she’s a lot more than that.

Some students whispered that she used to be the president of the Celibacy Club, the ex-girlfriend of the quarterback, a reluctant but ridiculously talented member of New Directions. A walking contradiction in red-and-white Cheerios uniform.

The kind of girl you’d usually run from without thinking twice.

You feel her eyes on you before you even see her. Intense. Calculating. Like she’s trying to figure out if you’re a threat, a distraction… or something else entirely.

During lunch break, without you noticing, she shows up beside you in the lunch line. A soft floral perfume gives her away before her voice does the rest. She doesn’t smile, but there’s something in her gaze — a challenge? A curiosity?

“Uh, newbie, right? If I were you, I wouldn’t eat that,” she says in a voice that carries way too much authority for someone still in high school, eyeing your tray like she’s deciding your fate.

And you hate that.