Rachel watched through tear-strewn brown eyes as the glee club held a 'secret' meeting without her. She had heard Mercedes speaking about it but when she talked to Kurt he had blatantly denied it. Standing in front of the cracked open choir door, she understood why. She blinked back the tears as she heard the hateful words she'd always feared they said but could believe. She listened to Mercedes rant angrily about her, Santana calling her a hateful bitch, and on and on.

She wanted to say something, anything to defend herself but it felt as if her throat was caught. This was her to them, some judgmental bitch that controlled everything but it wasn't her as she knew. If she was any bit of the girl they thought she was, she would have walked into that room and greeted them with a cheerful smile, let them know that she knew they were talking about her but that she didn't care because every star had a little infamy, it came with the job, and then sit in the front, and pretend she didn't notice the alienation of herself as everyone else moved one seat up.

But she wasn't that girl now, that strong girl who could ignore the whispers, the consternation, and most of all, that sinking feeling that came with the realization no one truly cared. Right now, she wasn't Rachel Barbara Berry, future rising star, just Rachel, a normal high school girl who couldn't understand that why in a group of misfits, she was still the outcast. A girl who blinked her tears away at night as she sat in an empty house, wishing for the phone to ring, even if it be just her fathers checking in. A girl who stood on the outside, wishing someone to invite her in.

Right now, she wasn't the girl that would walk in with a smile and wield her only defense, her clever wit and sharp tongue, against her oppressors, who would lash out with veiled insults and bright masks. She was that girl who suppressed away her tears and stood on the outside. She couldn't hide anymore, she didn't know why, and her shame seemed raw in the light. She wasn't strong but weak. She wasn't wearing a bright smile, but hiding shining tears. She was about to turn away from the room, unable to watch anymore as Santana imitated her horribly to the laughter of the club, when Mr. Schuester came behind her.

"Rachel? What's wrong?" his voice was filled with concern, and Rachel wished for a moment that she could believe it was real, but he was already passing her, not really noticing that the traditional 'nothing' that passed her lips was missing. She had missed her chance to be able to speak to Mr. Schuester, really speak to him like Finn or anyone else could, a long time ago. To him, she was the linchpin of the group, the strong adhesive that held together unstable, flammable material and somehow got them to work together. To him, she was the constant; constantly cheerful, constantly strong, constantly happy. For him, her unhappy or God forbid, depressed was unthinkable. Once, she could have said the same.

"Mr. Schue!" she smiled brightly as he turned around, "I have a song I want to sing to the club, may I?" he nodded, smiling, the concern already gone. That was Rachel, nothing could be wrong with her, she was concrete, the sturdy mix that would never fail. She smiled as if it were true. She turned to the glee club, that deceiving smile still in place.

"I wanted to sing a song that I think reflects a lot of people in the world. It's the holidays now, and a lot of us are going to spend it with family, you know," she smiled brightly as if she really believed her next line, "besides our glee family, and I just wanted everyone to remember that some people aren't as lucky as us to have such wonderful families, like this one, ones that don't care enough for them," the smile fell and her eyes were so intense as she stared down the club, a few shifted in their seats almost guiltily, almost. "So I'm singing a ballad from the world renowned country singer, Martina McBride, 'Concrete Angel'." She smiled again before standing in the center of the room, the pianist already beginning the notes.

"She walks to school with the lunch she packed,"

It was morning, and she was alone again, her fathers out on some trip. It didn't matter that it was their daughter's twelfth birthday, she was a mature girl and she understood how important her fathers' jobs were. That's why she blinked the tears away as she hummed happy birthday to herself and walked down the street, hello kitty lunch box in hand.

"Nobody knows what she's holding back

Wearing the same dress she wore yesterday

She hides the bruises with the linen and lace, oh,"

She could feel them there, the painful reminders of how hatred she truly was. The purples mixed into the greens to provide the colorful manifest of her days. If she concentrated enough, she could hear the gleeful laughs as the footballers left her on the ground, bruises already forming across her back, hear the horrid taunts.

She wondered as she stared unrelenting at her fellow glee-clubbers, if they could to. If they remembered the times they had laughed with the rest as the stinging cold of the slushy dripped down her face, blistering the tender flesh of her chest under her shirt. If it haunted them at night like it did her, leaving them crying themselves to sleep in a too quite home. She doubted it.

"The teacher wonders but she doesn't ask,"

Mr. Schuester was staring at her as if he'd never seen her before. He looked as if he wanted to stop the song, to cease it before his fears were confirmed, before he saw the cracks through the concrete. Before he saw the girl beneath the stone, before he saw the real Rachel.

"It's hard to see the pain behind the mask,"

She smiled brightly, and Mr. Schuester relaxed. He didn't even seem to realize the words she sang, merely pausing to enjoy the sound of her angelic voice before going back to wherever he went during one of Rachel's numerous solos. She desperately wanted him to understand but of course, the pleasant voice hid the harmful words, and it flew over him.

"Bearing the burden of a secret storm

Sometimes she wishes she was never born,"

"Don't say things like that Rachel!" her father yelled, tears in his eyes as he looked at his pride and joy, his fifteen year old daughter. She stared back impassively; all the tears she had shed were already gone from her eyes. She had done it; she had unleashed her deepest and most terrible secret into the world to her father of all people, and she felt horrible.

She stormed from the room silently, slid into her room and locked the door behind her. Into the bathroom she went, staring at the too pale skin and overly bright, pink eyes in front of her. Beside her, near her right hand, was a nonprescription pain pill bottle. That was the first night she had first considered suicide, in the morning she had taken it all back. She had told her fathers she hadn't meant what she said, that she'd been upset at everything going on in her life and that truly she loved her life and was grateful for her birth. That was the first time she'd lied to her fathers. It wasn't the last.

"Through the wind and the rain she stands hard as a stone

In a world that she can't rise above,"

She was sinking fast now, staring at the faces in front of her. All now, seemed to have caught on to what she was singing about and their faces showed back their thoughts. Some were guilty, Tina's and Kurt's faces shone in it, but they were very few. Mercedes and several others were impassive. The ones that hurt were the others. Finn was staring at her as if she were some kind of freak, and Santana was whispering something in Quinn's ear, causing both to laugh.

Rachel could feel the tears coming, and she didn't hide them, letting them fall as she sang the song with a feeling none in the room could say they'd ever heard Rachel sing before. None could guess that it would be the last time as well.

"But her dreams give her wings and she flies to a place

Where she's loved concrete angel,"

She closed her eyes from the faces of the Glee club, from the scorn of Santana and Quinn and thought of a different life, one where she was accepted. She had dreamed of it before, a wonderful life where few hurt her intentionally and her life wasn't spent in abject terror of the abuse she would face at school, or the loneliness she felt at home, but where at least someone had accepted her.

She had thought she had found that dream in Finn but he had turned from her, first for Santana and Brittany, then from her horrible mistake. She had thought she found it briefly in Jesse St. James but he had tried to use her for sex and then left her. Recently, she thought she found it in the friendly companionship of Kurt but once the boy had returned from Dalton, new beau in tow, he had been all too willing to join the Berry Hate Brigade.

And so she was left to just what she thought the boys had become: her dreams. Once upon a time they had been happy, a loving family, mother included, a few friends she could count on without worrying that they would turn on her in the next moment, the simple things. Now they were darker; a time in which she had never been born, where she watched Finn marry Quinn as high school sweethearts and Puck live a good life, where Mercedes and Kurt got their fair share of solos and the glee club was truly a place for happiness.
Sometimes, her dreams were even darker. Where they, the glee club, cried over her funeral; her grave was but a small reminder that she had lived, truly lived, at one time. That dream had become more frequent now, and as she heard the whispers turn to jeering laughter, quiet, but carrying, it briefly became a fantasy.

"Somebody cries in the middle of the night

The neighbors hear but they turn out the light,"

Many of nights, as she lay in bed alone, tears had come, silent at first, but sobbing and dry retching soon followed. Her fathers were never home on those nights and she always managed to play the noise complaints off as her practicing her all-important singing. Her fathers never doubted her and the neighbors never spoke to her parents directly, merely grumbled about it over the phone in messages she deleted soon after their appearance. Neither party cared enough to ever double-check her claims or to ponder why a seemingly happy teenage girl would be crying more and more frequently through her nights.

"A fragile soul caught in the hands of fate

When morning comes it will be too late,"

It was too late for a lot of things; for her to make things right with Finn or Jessie or Puck, or to become friends with any of the glee-clubbers. It was too late for a lot of things, but as Santana 'accidently' pulled the plug to the microphone she was using, she realized the most important thing as laughter emerged. It was too late for anyone to care about her. As she stormed out the door, tears falling down and leaving a salty, glistening trail behind her, the glee club didn't realize it was also too late to save her.

Through the wind and the rain she stands hard as a stone

In a world that she can't rise above

Rachel wrote the letters carefully, in her scrawling and curly writing, and signed each with a torn gold star. She wasn't a shooting star, a she'd always thought, or even that concrete evidence that proved the glee club was there, breathing, kicking, and strong. She was a falling star, bright in the few moments that it flashed across the sky, but doomed, no matter how many times she got back up, to fall back into the dark abyss below her. This time she wouldn't get back up.

But her dreams give her wings and she flies to a place

Where she's loved concrete angel

Rachel had finished the letters, the ink had dried as well as her tears and she had placed them within two pale pink envelopes, one directed towards her fathers, one to the glee club before going to the bathroom and grabbing the pill bottle. In one go, she downed the bottle in its entirety, noting its nearly half-full state as she forced it down her throat. With dry eyes (she had never thought it would be this easy, this simple) she laid herself on her bed and closed her eyes.

As she faded she swore she saw an angel, it's face beautiful, but it's smile sad, as if it knew her, and was said to see her go. She reached for the angel, and it grabbed her hand and led her away from the darkness, into a pale but warm light. Her fathers found her with a smile on her face.

A statue stands in a shaded place

An angel girl with an upturned face

The rock face looked like her, weathered but still as beautiful as she had been the last day he'd seen her alive, singing her heart out to an oblivious and uncaring room. The hair was stone but it cascaded down, bearing the striking resemblance to how hers had looked, the lustrous brown locks that he used to run his fingers through. The body was carved into the elegant grace she had held herself in and his breath caught in his throat as his own withered hand went to stroke her face, shivering slightly in the cool touch.

A name is written on a polished rock

A broken heart that the world forgot

Rachel Barbara Berry was written there, followed by her birth and death date: December 18th, 1994 – March 5th, 2010, she had been barely sixteen years when she had taken her life. Below that were no words, but an engraved star. He ran his fingers over the star, not minding as it cut into his fragile skin. It had been sixty years since the love of his life had died of a broken heart. His never let him forget it.

I was bored and was listening to Concrete Angel when this popped into my head. I wrote it down and decided to upload it. I left the man at the end up to anyone's interpretation, whoever you guys thought would love her. I didn't really have anyone in mind, but if you review, I'd love to hear what you guys thought it might have been. I enjoyed writing this, sad as it may be, and hoped you liked reading it.