Someday they won't be here, a small voice in her head whispered. Someday they'll be living their best lives, far away from you. They'll be so in love with their lives that they'll forget all about you. You'll just be a figure in a vague dream that they won't remember.
She put her hands over her ears, and laid her forehead on the formica desk in front of her. The dim bulb of the amp illuminated the defeated, slumping figure against the otherwise dark room. It was late, two a.m. probably, but time wasn't relevant in the midst of personal abyss.
It was so lonely. She felt so trapped. Beca Mitchell knew that soon her life would change, but she wasn't ready for it. Graduation was on the near horizon, and she wasn't ready to leave Barden University.
They'll chew you up and spit you out. You'll never be ready.
How was she supposed to go out into the real world? Was she just supposed to pretend that she was the best DJ the universe had ever seen, even though the only experience she had was the campus radio station and an unpaid internship? What the fuck had four years of overpriced, insanely expensive education taught her? English literature, philosophy, algebra, physics theorum. What had any of these mandatory courses done to tell her how to market herself to a record label, or how to collaborate with Calvin Harris, or how to adjust the frequencies between two songs to merge the bassline into an electric hit to get a crowd jumping?
That's right. Nothing.
And there was so much that she wasn't ready to give up besides that. For one, she loved college life. Sure, finals sucked when they came around and cafeteria food got pretty bland after a month, but it was a comfortable type of routine. There were many aspects of her life, but how could you beat Wine Wednesdays and karaoke parties with your best friends? She knew that her life would never be this simple in the real world, and that the people she was sharing her college experience with were about to disappear as well.
For years, the Barden Bellas had been her support, her life, her… family. Beca hated to admit it to herself, but there was scarcely a time that she could picture what her life had ever been like before the Bellas. They were a rambunctious group. Diverse, loud, and without bounds. But each individual girl was like a sister to her. The sisters that she never had. There was a love and an understanding that the group shared, and it wasn't anything Beca had ever been exposed to pre-college. Her family was broken, beyond dysfunctional since it was fragmented between New York and Georgia, with parents who tugged their only child between them like a braided rope that was frayed from years of fighting.
But the Bellas made her forget about all that. After their first win at nationals, it was as if she was finally able to forget the life that she had, the person who she was before. When the house lights were finally turned down and the Bellas exited the stage and the audience scattered, there was a freshness to the way she felt. A renewed hope for life. She could change who she was: exchange the bad parts within herself for good ones. It was one of those rare defining moments that alters life permanently into a "before" and an "after," and Beca knew that she could never be the same again. Who knew acapella covers could inspire life-changing decisions?
The Bellas supported all of it. It was a weird transition for her at first because the positive behavior garnered attention. Ill-tempered Beca was gone due to a day-in and day-out effort to be more receptive to those around her. Sure, Aubrey would chide her when she tried to awkwardly express her feelings before discovering a happy medium. Of course Fat Amy would jokingly question where the emo midget had gone, and why she had been replaced with a slightly nicer troll. Even Lilly chipped in once, saying something about how Beca reminded her of a cousin that had also gone through a drastic personality change but it turned out that it was to hide his werewolf secret.
And then there was Chloe, who was a whole different kind of support. Chloe Beale was the glue that held Beca together more than any of the other Bellas. In doubt, in stress, in defeat, Chloe was there. She was perhaps the biggest contributor to Beca's emotional growth. And the friendship they shared was wonderful. She couldn't bear to think of a world where she wouldn't see the beautiful redhead every day.
That day is coming fast.
The ugly voice in her head was right this time. After graduation, who knows where they would be? Beca couldn't imagine getting a career and remaining friends with Chloe all at the same time. It would be as if she lost a part of herself. Chloe was her best friend and the only reason she had come so far in life. Otherwise Beca would've dropped out from BU by now. Maybe she would be living in a cardboard box, had it not been for that amazing redhead who interrupted her shower those four years ago.
Maybe this is all just a dream. A wonderful, terrible dream. Perhaps you've been asleep this whole damn time, and when you wake up, you'll no longer have friends, or acapella, or classes to go to, or even this damn room to live in.
With this caustic thought, Beca whipped her head up, blinking her eyes several times. She turned to double-check that the room was still the same around her, eyes adjusting to the lack of strong light. Yupp, same band posters. Her mixing boards were there on the adjacent table. Fat Amy was still mouth-breathing in the middle of peaceful sleep.
Beca was stranded on agony island and the only other person in the space was completely oblivious to her inner strife. The two roommates were practically sisters, but the brunette still wasn't the type to burden others with her problems. Beca may not be the quiet, shy girl she once was, but that didn't mean she was open about her secrets.
Keeping her worries about post-grad life on the down-low is what brought her to her current misery. A sore butt from sitting on a wooden chair for "X" amount of hours as her mixes were yet again trash. Her brain talking over itself in hysterics. She had gotten nowhere after trying to produce something of worth that could be used as a demo to her hardass boss, and of course no schoolwork had been completed either. The small girl felt near to pulling her hair out and needed to leave the room.
You can run, but you can't hide.
Throwing on an old flannel and some even older Vans, Beca headed downstairs to sit on the back porch of the large shared house. Some fresh air could clear her thoughts, get her mind off of the imminent loss of friends and current life. She crept down the stairs and down the hallway, avoiding the creaky boards that would wake up her housemates. Reaching the kitchen, she froze when she saw a form sitting at one of the barstools at the kitchen counter.
In the moonlight that came through the window, Beca immediately recognized the figure to be Chloe.
"Hey creep. What are you doing awake?" Chloe asked.
"I… Didn't expect anyone else to be up. I was just going outside is all."
"Let me join you."
Gettin' deep in the feels is better when you have someone to share them with. Stay tuned.