Disclaimer: I do not own the characters of Jeff or Nick, Glee, Dalton, or Next to Normal, which the general premise is based off of.

A/N: My first fanfic EVER. Yay. Gonna pull the "please don't hate me, it's gets better!" line. Leave a review if you want to join my list of favorite people ever. If you really feel so inclined, go listen to "I Am the One (Reprise)" from N2N, which was the general idea behind the story.

It was 9:46 the night that it happened—that is to say, at 9:46pm, the fight happened.

It certainly wasn't, by any means, the biggest fight Jeff and I had ever had. In fact, we'd gotten in worse—fist-fights, even—in the earlier days of our friendship. Jeff would usually have been the one tomake some sort of snarky comment about my overachieving study habits, and my comebacks would always sound eerily similar to "Well, if you hadn't spent so much time in the mirror admiring your hair yesterday afternoon" in some way, shape, or form.

This wasn't, however, one of those fights. Well, not really.

It was the night of the Winter Formal, held at the ceremony hall at the largest—well, only—hotel in town, which was the only venue big enough to fit the vast majority of the Dalton student body and their dates.

Surprisingly enough, I had taken the initiative and formed an elaborate scheme, including a whole lot of balloons, a fake snowman, and a very large box of packing peanuts, to ask a girl named Amy to the dance. I had liked her for a few months; truth be told, she was kind of out of my league in terms of the social status, so I was thrilled when she had said yes. Jeff had, naturally, eschewed all formalities and, almost as a second thought, asked some random girl, essentially, to the dance. He claimed to have known her from some kind of musical exchange program the Warblers had done with our sister school, but I wasn't sure I believed him. I hadn't even been there when he'd asked her.

The evening appeared to start out normally enough, what with dinner at one of the nicer restaurants in town. Amy and I had taken pictures at my house before we left to meet up with Jeff and his date, because, as always, Jeff was running a little bit behind due to an unforeseen hair emergency. We'd decided to drive to the dance in separate cars so that, in the off chance that I wanted to leave early (hey, I had a big test in Calculus that following Tuesday after the extended weekend!), I could, even though I'd told Amy that I wouldn't want to; she had assured me that she could find a ride if necessary.

By my own rough estimates, we'd been at the dance for about an hour. I'd just made it back onto the dance floor when I realized that Amy was no longer dancing with Jeff and his date, waiting for my return so we could dance together again. In a lack of foresight, I'd left my tux jacket on when we arrived and started with the dancing, even though Jeff had suggested I take it off. I should have listening, considering that he, of all people, should know how hot it can get when you're dancing.

"Where's Amy?" I asked Jeff, half-yelling over the pounding Katy Perry track that was being blasted through the speakers by whatever mediocre the the dance committee could afford to hire for such a prestigious event as this.

"What?" Jeff yelled back, glancing at me over his date's shoulder as he danced against her. His yelling in her ear seemed to have no effect whatsoever on her. I wondered if she was deaf. Hadn't we done an exchange program with a school for deaf kids last year?

"Amy! Where did she go?" I repeated, straining my voice once more to be heard over Miss Perry's belting vocals.

Jeff frowned, craning his neck to scan the crowd. "I, uh—Oh!"

I glanced in the direction that Jeff's head was pointed. "What? Can you—"A glint of red—Amy's hair—flashed in the corner of my vision. I could just barely see her through the mass of bodies and the pulsing light display. "Nevermind, man. I see her!"

In hindsight, I definitely heard Jeff call after me—something like, "Nick, wait!"—but I'd already begun pushing my way closer to the center of the crowd of bodies, towards Amy and her bright red hair. By the time I got to her, the song had changed into something louder, something, somehow, dirtier, with a pounding bass line and a fast beat.

The first thing I registered was Amy. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I noted how weird it was that her hair looked almost purple under the blue lights. Second to register in my mind was that she did not seem to be in need of a dance partner—or a date, quite frankly; she had her tongue shoved down the throat of another Dalton student, one who, in my opinion, was popular for no reason it seemed other than the size of his biceps and his complete lack of respect for any kind of authority figure.

I stopped in my tracks. Several thoughts raced through my head all at once, most of which included violent action being taken upon the jerk who'd stolen my date. Being that I generally elect to avoid being pummeled by people twice my size, however, I felt my feet take me back the way I'd came, the realization that she'd simply used me as a ticket to the dance sinking in.

I brushed past Jeff and his date. He reached out his hand to my shoulder, but I ignored him, shaking it off. I returned to the table we'd claimed as our own and left our things at—our tux jackets, the girls' purses—and, with a huff, collapsed in a seat.

It was a full song later that Jeff finally appeared by my side, pulling out a chair for himself.

"I take it you saw, then?" he asked.

I rolled my eyes. Leave it to Jeff to put it in such simple terms. "You could have at least warned me!" I spat, my words leaving a foul taste in my mouth.

"It's not like I didn't try!"

"Bullshit, Jeff. You could have told me that she was making out with that gorilla!"

Jeff barked out a cynical laugh. "Like it wasn't already painfully obvious that something like this was going to happen. No offense, man, but you can be so ridiculously naïve sometimes."

"What the hell are you talking about?" I grumbled, crossing my arms with a huff. I glared up at him.

"Well," he said, "first, we have the fact that she was flirting shamelessly with the waiter at the restaurant."

"She was not!"

"And then she kept flirting with me throughout dinner!"

"She was being friendly!"

"She was using you, Nick!" Jeff replied, rolling his eyes. "I don't know why you're defending her. God, you're such an idiot for thinking that she was into you, you know that?"

"What the fu—"

"Oh my god," came the high-pitched voice of Jeff's date, interrupting me. Her big blue eyes were wide with surprise. "I, um, I just wanted to check my phone. I—I'll just go," she said quickly, grabbing with small purse off the table from in front of Jeff before darting off, bearing a striking resemblance to a blonde mouse.

Jeff stared after in her in surprise.. Taking advantage of his silence, I charged on. "God forbid you just let me have one moment where I'm slightly higher than you in social standing, Jeff!"

"What are you talking about?"

This time, I laughed. "You're just pissed that I had the balls to ask someone popular to the dance and you didn't," I told him harshly, stabbing at his chest with my finger. There was a disconnect in my mind as to whether or not I was more pissed off at Amy or Jeff, although it appeared to be the latter of the two. "I know you're totally obsessed with the whole popularity thing, but did you really care that much? I mean, it was one night, Jeff. Why couldn't you have let me be the cool one just once?"

"Really, Nick? That's what you really think this is about?" Jeff asked, his tone suddenly icy. His eyes were cold.

I rolled my eyes. "I know that's what this is about, okay?"

"You don't know anything," Jeff mumbled, rolling his eyes. He grabbed his tux jacket from the back of his chair, the expression in his face suddenly pained.

"What the hell? Where are you going?"

"I'm leaving."

"God, I hate you!" I shouted after him.

Jeff turned around and, for a brief moment, looked as though he was about to say something before deciding against it. As much as he liked to put on the brave front, he was never the one to stay and confront his problems.

The last I saw of him that night was the back of his head as he pushed through the main doors leading into ceremony hall, the colored lights reflecting off of the blondeness of his hair.

I left the dance soon afterwards, despite Blaine's best efforts to get me to come dance with him and Kurt, and Trent's threats of broken arms if I didn't stop being "the biggest party-pooper Dalton had ever seen since the last time that Wes misplaced his gavel."

I assumed Amy would get the message that she ought to find an alternative mode of transportation home when she got back to the table and saw that everyone else's stuff was already gone, as I had offered to take Jeff's date home. I still didn't know her name.

Because of the extended weekend, I had opted to stay at home rather than at the dorms, as had Jeff, under the impression that I would get more studying done if I didn't have to listen to Jeff humming along with his iPod every time he tried to do his math homework.

I hung my tux jacket up in my closet, reminding myself to remember to have my mom wash it before the dance showed up; somehow, I'd spilled Diet Coke on the right lapel and, even though it couldn't really be seen, it had dried the material stiff and was starting to smell funny. The tux pants were tossed in the direction of the dirty clothes pile that was growing in the corner of my closet, while I opted for a more comfortable pair of basketball shorts.

With a glance over at my clock—it was 11:38—I decided that I could still fit in some studying for Caluclus. A little integration would help clear my mind. Numbers certainly didn't leave you hanging at a school dance to go make out with a different, more impressive equation.

By the time I'd I started in on my third story problem, though, I heard a knock on my already door. I didn't even have the chance to respond before my mom came in, which was unusual for several reasons: one, it was kind of late, and my parents weren't exactly the "night owl" types, my mother less so than my father; two, my mom had her phone in a death grip; and three, my mom's eyes were red, like she'd been crying. She let out a sob, and I realized that tears were still leaking from her eyes.

"What's wrong, Mom?" I asked.

"Honey," she managed, "it's Jeff."

I rolled my eyes. I stood as though to go and hug her. Sometimes she got worked up over little things. One time, when Jeff and I had had as small fight over a song for Warblers solo auditions, she'd burst into my room, in tears, demanding that I be the one to apologize. "Mom, it's not a big deal," I told her. "We fight all the time. He'll get over it."

"Nick," she said slowly, measuring her words, "Jeff was in a car accident on his way home from the dance tonight. He's—"

My eyes widened. "What?" I felt my knees go weak. "Is he going to be okay?"

Everything seemed to slow down as I saw her shake her head. There was a disconnect between my eyes and my brain. I couldn't be seeing this.

"Jeff didn't make it," she replied.

"What?" I choked out, my vision blurring.

I couldn't understand. I didn't want to understand.

"Nick, honey. Jeff is dead."