"The Barden Bellas. America's most successful all female a capella group ever. Under the direction of Aubrey Posen they were the first female group to win. Under the direction of Beca Mitchell and Chloe Beale they won a second and third time and became America's only team that won the world championship of a capella. Emily Junk kept the tradition of winning."
Lucy Johnson shook her head in disbelief when she finished reading the newspaper article. She found that article when she was doing research for a project. She never heard of the Barden Bellas, but she was pretty sure that the Beca Mitchell mentioned in that article was her grandmother. The other names in the article didn't ring a bell.
Lucy let out her breath. It was almost comical how less she knew about her own family. She never knew her father. And her mother refused to talk about her youth. She wasn't particularly interested in her own family history, but after finding that article she just had to know.
Maybe it was time to visit the nursing home where her grandmother stayed. It was high time she would get some answers. But the thought of visiting her grandmother scared her. Her grandmother wasn't a nice person. She was a bitter old lady. She didn't care about anyone and was sarcastic as hell. A trait Lucy had inherited from her grandmother.
But first she needed to do more research. She needed to know for sure. Maybe it was just a coincidence. Someone with the same name. She prayed it was just a coincidence.
She grabbed her phone and typed Barden Bellas in Google.
Her heart stopped when she saw the first image. Okay, this was definitely her grandmother. She recognised the tattoos on the younger version of her grandmother. She noticed that there were several music clips of the Bellas. She couldn't bring herself watching it. This young Beca Mitchell didn't look like the grandmother she knew.
But she didn't know much about her grandmother. Her own mom refused to talk about her. The only thing Lucy knew was that her mom and grandmother had got into an argument years ago and haven't spoke ever since. Lucy visited her grandmother twice a year. And those visits weren't fun or nice.
Finding this new information was a shock for Lucy. She scrolled through the images and saw several pictures of het grandmother and famous artists. Her grandmother had sung with Snoop Dogg? Had her grandmother been famous? A lot of questions formed in her head. Questions she couldn't ask her mom.
She made some copies of the article before leaving the library. She needed to find as much information as possible before confronting her mom or grandmother with what she had found.
When she came home she made herself a quick meal. She sat down and started her laptop. She opened word and started to type. She needed to collect all the information from the article before she could continue her search.
She typed the four names she had found in the article. She looked up the picture again she had found on Google and found the rest of the names of the Barden Bellas.
She typed every name in her word document. This was going to be an interesting project. She hoped that she could track one of them down. Maybe they could tell her more about her grandmother. Maybe she would understand why her grandmother was the way she was.
Lucy was so busy with typing that she didn't notice her best friend and roommate Jade walk in.
"Holy shit, is that your grandmother?" Jade asked.
"Yes, apparently she was quite famous" Lucy said.
"She was hot too" Jade commented.
"Eww, that's my grandmother we're talking about. But I suppose she did look pretty back then" Lucy said.
When Jade sat down, she started to tell how she found the article while working on her project. She showed her friend the pictures she found online.
"Have you watched the music videos?" Jade asked her.
"No, not yet." she said.
"Well let's watch them!" her friend said excitedly.
After watching some of the clips, the two girls were stunned. The Barden Bellas were good singers.
"Now I know where you get your voice from" Jade said softly.
Lucy sighed. She could sing pretty well but she stopped singing years ago. Her singing was exactly the thing her mom and grandmother argued about. Her mom always had encouraged her to sing. Her grandmother had forbidden her to ever sing in her presence.
"Why did you typed all those names in word?"
Jade's voice brought her back from her memories.
"Those are the names of the Bellas. I hope I can track one of them down. Maybe they can tell me more about my grandmother" Lucy said.
"Do you want me to help you trace them?" Jade asked her.
"Yeah, I would like that" she replied.
It would be difficult to trace ten women who are now in their sixties. Ten women she only knew with their maiden names. They probably were married and had different surnames.
She discussed the possibility of not finding one of them with her friend. But Jade was positive they could find one of them.
Jade looked again at the names of the Bellas. One of them had the same last name as herself but she didn't think anything about it. She had met more people with the same last name.
"Hobart, Onakuramara and Junk aren't common surnames. If we start with them maybe we find something" Jade reasoned.
She had a point. So they divided the task between them. Lucy would try and find as much as she could about Patricia Hobart and Jade would do the same with Lilly Onakuramara.
It wasn't much to start with but it was worth a try. If nothing would come up they would try the same with Emily Junk.
A soft "oh my God" made Lucy stop with her research.
"Did you find something?" she asked friend.
She looked at her friend and was immediately worried when she saw the shocked expression and pale face of her friend.
"What is it?"she asked in a voice she didn't recognise.
Jade didn't respond. She only pointed at the screen of her laptop. Lucy's own face turned white when she looked at the picture her friend was pointing at.
The picture showed the Bellas in their forties. Apparently it was token at an reunion. She looked better at the picture and immediately understood why her friend was so shocked.
Next to her grandmother stood Jade's own grandmother. It wasn't hard to recognise the her. Jade was the spitting image of her own grandmother.
"It seems I'm not the only one with a family secret" she managed to say.
And suddenly it dawned on her. No she knew why her grandmother acted the way she did around her. It wasn't her singing. She didn't want Lucy to find out that she knew exactly who her friend was. Apparently their grandmothers go way back. And they both had neglected to mention it to the girls.
Their grandmothers had been Bellas in the same team.
The sweet old lady they both knew as Jade's grandmother Anna, was in reality Stacie Conrad.
Realisation hit them hard. Their mothers must've known that too. They had been friends since they were children themselves, but always refused to tell how they met each other.
What the hell had happened that they kept it a secret for twenty years?