Hand in hand, chest to chest and now we're face to face...
"How on earth do you get your voice to go that low? That's awesome!" whispered Alicia over to her right.
"It obviously has to do with an amount of training and skill" replied Daniel, slightly yelling to be heard over the roar of screaming teenage girls in the first 10 rows of the theater. "that and post-puberty vocal chords"
"Eww, that's nasty" said Alicia, "Why would you even mention that?"
"It's not my fault you're so squeamish" Daniel shot.
Daniel and Alicia were grade 8 lovers who somehow stuck together for five years of each other, with almost zero signs of slowing down. It was the the final day of high school for the both of them, aswell as their three mutual best friends, whom Daniel decided would enjoy seeing an acapella performance just as much as him and his girlfriend would. As soon as he heard about the competitive world of acapella he arranged for them all to get tickets to see the ICCA finals. He explained to Alicia how busy everyone was going to be over the summer and that this would be the best way to say goodbye. She was totally on board. Though she was mostly excited to see the two groups representing the college she would be attending.
All five of the grade twelve graduates whooped and hollered as the "Treblemakers-" as the announcer referred to them- hustled off the stage. They all took a second to glance at each other, checking to see if anyone of themselves wasn't sharing the same look of amazement as the others. After confirming they'd all had a similar experience, they looked back onto the stage just in time to see the next group - the Barden Bellas - hustling onto the stage as fast as they could in there 3-inch high heels and tight skirts, a clear negative side effect of dressing up as flight attendants to go along with singing and dancing. Daniel looks over at his friend Lincoln just as he sends a wink Daniels way, then whistles as loudly as possible between two fingers. Daniel rolls his eyes and gives an "I don't know him" kind of a face. A funny sounding tone buzzes from the singer at the front of the group and then the groups starts singing. It bugs Daniel a little bit that the leader of the bellas has a funny sounding voice that tends to go hand in hand with trying too hard to be heard. Thankfully the microphone gets handed off to a cute blonde fairly quickly and redeems their skill. That is until the pressure gets to the blonde and she releases it all over the crowd in front of her.
"Well that turned out fun!" Alicia said "at least it was before that poor girl got a bit excited"
"yeah," Daniel agreed "When you show up to Barden you should offer condolences from all five of us if you see her. I can't imagine how she must feel."
"Wait, you're going to Barden?" Lincoln asked Alicia, starting to smile a little "so am I! Along with my next door neighbour, Stacie."
The two other friends, Jacob and Charles, started joining in.
"I'm going to some place in Detroit, I heard that they have a pretty good acapella group there who would've made it to the finals if it weren't for some injury," Jacob said.
"I'm working to get into Harvard." Charles muttered.
"Yeah right!" Everyone laughed.
"Oh shut up!" Charles replied jokingly, understanding how everyone felt about his interest in school. He turned around to spit out his gum right before asking "What about you?" as he gestured to Daniel "Where are you going?"
"I don't know yet," he replied "I didn't work towards any scholarships, so my decision is mostly based on money"
"Well Barden is one of the cheapest choices, which is partly why I chose it." Alicia pointed out "That would work out great too! No one likes long distance relationships" Alicia reached over to grab Daniel's hand, which he countered with his playful twiddling, an act he commonly did to bug Alicia. Their relationship worked mostly around bugging each other constantly and playing around the same way you would see in a pair of best friends: trying to annoy the hell out of each other. They both treated each other with their highest amount of affection though still accepting that they weren't exactly stuck together. One time Daniel had asked Alicia directly if she still felt the same as when they started going out, to which Alicia indirectly replied "I feel great." Daniel very well knew that Alicia avoided the question as easily as she could, but he felt no need to further push the interrogation. Alicia had never made him feel otherwise about their relationship. Daniel simply, being the gentleman he was, wanted to ensure that Alicia was as happy as Daniel was.
"Anyways, it's a bit late. My brother's going to want me to see him before he goes to bed. Four year old priorities, huh?" Lincoln said. Lincoln treated his brother like the most important person in his life. Daniel occasionally joked that since Lincoln didn't have a girlfriend, he needed to put his love somewhere (to which Lincoln oftened violently responded, he had slight anger issues.)
Everyone gave him a hug and said good night before he started running to the parking lot to grab his car. Of their little friend group, he was the only one with a fully fledged liscence to drive. He also took immense joy in the fact that he managed to find a '71 Dodge Charger with only around 150 000 kilometers on it, quite a successful find considering the age of the thing. He wasn't taking any classes or extra-curriculars to do with cars, but right next to singing, vehicles were his passion. If it had four wheels or metal wings he loved it.
"Alright guys, Lincoln's right, It's late. I'm gonna go home" Alicia said.
"I'll walk you home." Daniel quickly volunteered.
"You don't have to do that." Alicia equally as quickly blurted. "Can I talk to you for a second, Daniel?" Drawing an eyebrow up north on Jacob's face. Jacob fancied himself some kind of relationship aid. He figured he would just explain his theory tomorrow via phonecall. As he and Charles turned to walk away (they lived on the same street) Charles turned backwards to walk without the wind in his face, immediately stopping and tapping Jacob's elbow, pointing back towards Daniel and Alicia.
"FINALLY" Jacob called out, interrupting the very experimental teenagery make out session that the couple was so invested in. Charles gave a catcall whistle at them. Alicia blushing and Daniel making a scene out of it by gripping Alicia's thin hips. Daniel immidiately went back in for a gentle kiss when Alicia, potentially getting back at him for his earlier joke about holding hands, put a box of tic-tacs in between their two mouths. Daniel had watched Alicia hand as it drifted to her purse and under the zipper had been a very suspicious shape. Daniel turned around to block out Jacob and Charles' view before reaching in and pulling out the evidently used pregnancy test, displaying two lines.
"What the frick?" Daniel whispered.
"You should know better than to go rummaging through someone's purse, dick!" Alicia spat back.
" I'll come back to that later, this is far more important! We've never had-..."
"It's not yours!" Alicia interupted, breaking up into tears.
"oh, hell." Daniel turned around, wiping his hands down his face. "Then who? Who did you get so excited over that you had to trample him over in bed?"
"Give me a break! It was an accident, he... sort of... pressured me into it."
"Who is 'he'?"
"I don't want to talk about it. It's none of your business."
"None of my business?! When did this happen?"
"I used the test a month ago." Alicia said clearly weakening due to her own "guilt"
"So you've been confirmed pregnant at 16 years old for a month and you didn't even want to tell me? And you think it's none of my business?" Daniel screamed, deliriously angry. While all this was going on, Jacob and Charles awkwardly and sadly huddled off to the side, but as they heard the tempers and voices rising they knew they were going to have to get involved.
"Alright Daniel! Calm down, public place!" Jacob called while him and Charles ran over to pull Daniel away.
"Thank god I'm driving." whispered Jacob to Charles, while ignoring Daniel's roars. Daniel wasn't ever heavy -only somewhere around 100 lbs.- so it wasn't hard to carry him to the parking lot, but it still hurt them to know that this event was going to interupt their friend group. It sucked even more to know that this was the best way they could to try and keep it intact.
"You better believe this is over!" Daniel roared finally, before being thrown in the back seat of a Dodge Dakota pick-up.