This is the soundtrack to Beca's life.
It's every song she's ever downloaded illegally, every record she's ever shed blood and sweat to pay for. It's the hum of perfected chord progression, the painful scratch of every misplayed note. Sometimes it rings in a hard, fast major and sometimes it shifts to a soft, slow minor, and sometimes–most of the time, really–it's caught in the inbetweens. The wrong lyrics get slapped onto the wrong notes, the wrong tempos get attached to the wrong faces, but it never stops. The music never stops.
At least, in theory.
There are spaces between the notes, but Beca's never really thought much of it. In fact, she thinks it's the hook, the thing that pulls her back–her anchor, her friend–the fuel for her passion. The silences–the inbetweens–are intoxicating; the way they fall in–unexpected, uninvited–and instill in you an agonising lust for what follows. Those are what make the next notes taste just so sweet as they do; the spaces inbetween.
This is the soundtrack to Beca's life. There are nine songs, and inbetween there is silence.
I.
The first is a woman in a red coat and a white scarf. Her breath is smoky in the damp winter air, her smile is warm in the cold, and she kneels down so that Beca can see her face. Truthfully, Beca doesn't care much for her face at first, or her anything, or anything at all. Her vision is glazed over with unshed tears and her face is so cold it hurts and her little heart is pounding so hard against her little chest she can't hear anything else.
The woman speaks–breathes, as though afraid to frighten her away–but Beca doesn't hear her and doesn't care what she has to say anyway. She,however–this little girl who was so grasped by emotion when she ran out the door that she forgot to put her shoes on first–has a lot to say, and no one to say it to. So Beca plunges into the arms of a stranger and talks, word for every choked word, until her lungs are just about to collapse. This is the first and last time she remembers opening up to anyone for a very, very long time.
There are gloved fingers in her hair and the arms that hold her are strong, if only for the layers that they hold her through. That's when Beca sees her face–it's a flash, really, but she soaks in every feature–gentle laugh lines, blue eyes, and a flash of orange beneath a hood. She's cried herself hoarse and she's drifting off to a quiet place, but there's one thing she hears before she's gone–something, she knows–and the voice behind it is the most beautiful voice she's ever heard.
"You'll be alright, little grasshopper," says the stranger, "You'll be alright."
Years later, the mark on her wrist turns from painful to numb like winter.
II.
The second is a boy who doesn't smile. Beca finds herself particularly fond of this trait; it reminds her of her, and she's the only friend she's ever had. He's tall and lanky and his hair is too long, but Beca likes him anyway. Occasionally he opens his mouth in a shimmer of metal and half-crooked teeth, but he's never happy–which is perfect, because neither is she–and Beca loves nothing more than being unhappy with him.
His name is Blake. For all his worth–as Beca soon comes to find–he does not understand girls.
(The truth is that he's just your typical high-handed pre-teen emo, and knows no more about music than anyone else does. He's one of those kids who totally love that song! It's, like, my favourite, and this other song by them is also really cool–those kids who think they can actually describe it. But Beca doesn't know that yet. Blake and Beca are nothing alike, actually, but she'll figure that out soon enough.)
It's when they're in that new record store that opened up down the road. She's excited out of her mind, really, but there's no way she can let him see that–he's just so chill, so fabulously nonchalant about everything, she really wishes she could just not care the way he does–and when she asked (pleaded, begged, she just needed him to see the music) he had said, "Sure, whatever."
Sure. Whatever.
She could have just about died of happiness.
In fact, she can still feel herself being drained–so slowly–of the energy that simply refuses to stop pouring into this absolute adoration she has.
(Well–I mean–she wouldn't quite call it that. He's alright. She guesses.)
So here they are. She's just started working illegally (it isn't her fault that people her age have so little ambition) doing odd jobs around Joe's tattoo place, and she totally has enough money to add something new to her collection of vinyls.
(It had started as compensation for the grasshopper tattoo, and then she realised that it gave her a legitimate excuse to get away from the ever-burning battlefield of her living room. And ever more attractive was the prospect of having her own money to spend, and maybe saving up for those turntables she'd been wanting so badly.)
Then his fingers ghost over an AC/DC record, and he says it.
"This song is so cool."
Her heart breaks.
III.
The third is a little girl with yellow hair and pink cheeks and the stupidest smile Beca's ever seen. It twists her insides in knots–makes her sick to the stomach–the way kids are always grinning and laughing like the world's fucking perfect. Maybe it isn't fair of her to say–she hasn't exactly been blessed in childhood herself–but the world isn't fair. Why should she be fair to a bunch of little idiots?
Unfortunately, said little idiots don't see things the way she does.
It's her first babysitting job, and–in case it wasn't painfully obvious–Beca hates children with a passion that can only sufficiently be compared to the fires of the Netherrealm and its demonic spawn.
(Not like Ermac or Ashrah or anything. What is Mortal Kombat again? A video game?)
However, this particular vile creature is earning her ten bucks an hour in exchange for tea parties, Dora the Explorer, and her sanity. It's almost worth it.
Almost–until she's dragged away from the comfort of the sofa she'd been ready to sleep on and into the nearest Toys R Us, still very much in flannel pajama pants and a tank top, half-sure she's still dreaming. She feels far too many eyes on her–some very much amused, others not so much–and before she can even begin to think about scolding the little dumbfuck, a strange metal cylinder with a big red button on it is thrust into her hands. The blondie flails about wildly in what Beca can only imagine must be an attempt at a gesture, jumping up and down like she's on a damn pogo stick.
"I'm Jedi, you're Sith!"
And suddenly Beca remembers. It wasn't little Spanish girls and talking monkeys she saw running around on the TV as The Smiths lulled her to sleep; it was Darth Maul hacking everyone to pieces with his double-bladed lightsaber.
(Not that she'd know, obviously.)
Beca is vaguely amused.
"Are you sure you don't wanna be Sith? I mean, red lightsabers are totally badass."
The girl–and suddenly Beca finds herself wishing she remembered her name–moves her lips as though to form the word badass–to taste it, run it across her tongue like a piece of candy she's never tried before. And she likes it, so she switches weapons with Beca.
"I've killed your master and now it is your turn to die, young Jedi!"
The little girl yells at the top of her lungs and lunges forward with all her might. Beca whips out her flashing blue blade and blocks the attack with far more intricacy than should be normal for a lightsaber fight in the middle of a toy store, but the force of the blow is still enough to knock her back into a newly haphazard group of yellow plastic cars. They scramble for dominance, swinging at one another–a pair of oddly well-trained nerd animals–and Beca would never in a thousand years say so much to anyone, but she thinks she might have been about to laugh.
"Alright, you want a piece of the Force? I'll show you, you little–"
"Ahem."
A pair of critical employee-of-the-month eyes stare her down like dirt on a shoe, and Beca shifts uncomfortably. She gets to her feet–blondie still giggling like an idiot–apologises for the mess, and speaks before she even has the chance to think.
"You want me to buy that for you?"
Well, now she can kiss those limited edition over-ears goodbye. But there's a weight on her back, arms around her neck and soft little snores in her ear that make her think it's almost worth it.
Almost–until her father gets that job at that university and her mother insists on a fresh new start in a fresh new state. She never sees the little girl with the yellow hair and the pink cheeks and the stupid smile ever again.
IV.
The fourth is the deafening, stifling rumble of life a hundred feet below, and a voice–strong and sharp–piercing through it all.
The stunt that Beca pulls today is one that should generally require weeks of planning, but takes her less than five minutes. In no time at all, she nabs a room key from a passer-by and slips through the doors of a small apartment complex undetected–her posture, her features, all rigidly composed–and by the time she's at the rooftop door it's just a matter of fingers and bobby pins. Then, she's alone with the breeze and the throbbing in her ears and the sounds of the city.
Beca isn't here because she wants anyone to know. She isn't here for anyone other than herself, really, or even for any reason at all. It hadn't struck her until a second ago, actually–until she thought (oh so briefly) wouldn't it be nice if I just–
"Wait a second–wait, stop!"
Beca frowns. She finds herself teetering far over the railing, her face looming dangerously over roads and cars, her arms frighteningly ready to give the final push to send her off. And suddenly, she's afraid–so much more afraid of lost opportunity than she is of her past, or of her present, or of her future–and she pulls herself away from that view into a blissful end and back into the misery of the inbetweens.
She never sees the man down on the street who takes the time to notice, but she doesn't really care. She doesn't care about him, or even about what he's saying.
They're just a few words, really, but suddenly Beca remembers. She remembers that the music isn't over yet.
V.
The fifth is the hollow, muffled drone of voices through the door of a bathroom stall. Beca takes in a sharp breath and frowns–she turns with a forlorn look to the flush and weighs the pros and cons of just pulling it and getting the fuck out before they notice her–but before she even has the chance to act, the voices come uncomfortably close and she pulls her jeans up as quickly as she can possibly manage.
"Are those, like, converse? Ugh, they totally are. It's her, Madison."
The door flies open and hits the wall like a brick. A dark-haired girl whose face has been assaulted with all the worst possible shades of Crayola pushes through with five or six clones at her back, and Beca stumbles backwards, jamming herself in the corner and smacking her head–albeit accidentally–all too hard against the wall. Madison's fist is in her collar and Beca feels her feet leave the ground.
"Hey, alt freak," she sneers in the most ridiculous accent Beca's ever heard, "you gotta, like, pay the visitors' tax to use this bathroom. Cough it up."
Well, no way in hell that's going to happen. Beca isn't going to sacrifice the money she wastes so much precious time to earn–she's not stupid enough to take her wallet to school at all, actually–and she definitely isn't letting it go to their collective pregnancy test funds. The issue, however–and it's kind of unfortunate–is that she's never exactly been the diplomatic sort. She knows she's better than kids like these, so why should she play along with their stupid games?
"Suck my dick," she spits, quite unwisely.
The truth is that Beca's never actually been in a situation like this before. She tends to stay away from people as a general thing, so she doesn't realise that–as is the way of the world–no matter how brilliant the comeback, nobody's going to like it.
It affords her a knee around the crotch and a snarky comment about the size–or lack thereof–of her hypothetical penis. She's on the ground again, but a fist quickly meets her face, and her own blood falls hot on her lips. There are hands in her pockets and that's when she starts pushing away–even though there isn't anything in her pockets, it just doesn't feel right–and the rest is a blur of screams, smacks and nails that are like knives. When nonexistent hips are swinging away and dissatisfied mumbles are fading into silence, Beca is left an aching mess and holds her knees to her pounding chest.
She cries. She cries so hard and so long she can't say how long for–and then she forgets how to cry at all.
VI.
The sixth is the rustle of a shower curtain, followed shortly by an exuberant squeal that makes Beca reach for the rape whistle that is nowhere to be found on her very naked self. She spins around in a frantic effort to conceal her lady parts and maintain the last shreds of her dignity, while peeking over her shoulder in attempt to talk her assailant into backing the fuck off.
Said assailant is a red-haired girl with eyes so blue you could swim in them, and it takes Beca a second to remember her, but she does. She remembers her thrusting a flyer into Beca's face and asking her to join some dorky singing group. She remembers a smile so bright it would have startled anyone, and sure enough, Beca isn't ready to see it again so soon. Especially not now–not here, of all places.
"I'm not leaving here until you sing."
Part of her still doesn't believe that this is happening, really. But if this is a dream–albeit a nightmarish one–she supposes she might as well go with the flow. She'll wake up soon anyway, right?
So she sings. And then the ginger–who glows, honestly–sings too, and the whole thing becomes freakishly intense. They're staring into each other's eyes and everything, and Beca's arms forget to guard her chest and her mouth forgets to frown. She feels stupidly exposed–in more ways than one–and the minute she feels herself grinning she purses her lips and pushes it back.
"Oh yeah," the other girl says, as though suddenly remembering her own nakedness, "I'm pretty confident about all this."
She gives a cute little wiggle of her shoulders in a gesture towards her own body, and Beca can't help it.
"You should be," she says. Because honestly, she should.
After that, things get really uncomfortable really fast. The ginger hands her towel back, and then someone else shows up to invade her personal space. A tall, well-built frat boy pokes his head around the corner, makes a comment about her voice that may or may not have been flattering in any other situation, and looks at her like a piece of meat. Beca hears the two of them laughing and whispering as they walk away (possibly to have more sex, but Beca doesn't really want to think about it) and her stomach hurts a little and her heartbeat is deafening.
She has no idea what just happened.
VII.
Beca can't hear the seventh all that well, honestly. She's a little bit drunk right now and her capacity to see straight is diminishing slowly. But she knows the bass–pounding relentlessly as it has a tendency to do–and she knows the sound of her breathing, too.
Jesse is the one who drags her to this party, but Chloe is the one who gives her the cup. As usual, Chloe's all smiles and rainbows and Beca's all gloom and doom, but in this one moment–this moment as she accepts it, knowing full well what's in the punch, knowing full well what will come to pass–Beca thinks they might have more in common than it seems. In this moment, she resolves to hack away at that sobriety, bit by bit, until it's all gone, and her memories too. Chloe–dear, sweet Chloe–presents her with this opportunity in the form of a plastic cup and a grin. Who is Beca to say no?
Before it can go away, however, it all comes back. Uncannily enough, it's Swift (uncool as she is) who reminds Beca that I knew you were trouble when you walked in and the features of her ghosts haunt her all at once. Dark eyes reach broken nails to her face, screams roar in her ears like the sea; Beca dangles helplessly from unknown heights and tastes blood on her lips. The hot, noisy room moves dizzily before her tear-stricken gaze but Beca knows she'll feel better after a couple more drinks. She has to.
And after a while she can almost feel a narrow body curved comfortably around her own and mumbling about kittens. She can see a lot of brightness and a lot of orange and the supple skin of a back caresses her fingers. Chloe's breath is hot against her ear and–sure everything's a little hazy, but–she can feel something in her chest lurch and in a burst of rationality she wishes Jesse would show up. Jesse never comes, though, and after a while Beca's flailing about on the dance floor with her crazy ginger and trying to make herself care but just not caring. Of course she has the alcohol to thank for that, but soon she forgets about Jesse and all she feels is skin and sweat and messy hair and she wonders if that part's just her.
Eventually, Beca finds a couch and drops like a dead man somewhere half-on it. Her and Chloe become just as much a tangle of limbs as they have been all night and Beca has trouble figuring out who's who but that's alright. She knows it's all hot and sticky and they both smell horribly like liquor but it's so hard to be upset about that right now.
Beca knows what Chloe is. Chloe is the girl that managed to find Beca beautiful, in the quiet way that lonely, unnoticed people are beautiful to those who notice them. Chloe made Beca forget what she would do if she weren't singing or dancing with the Bellas or getting dorky texts from her every morning. Chloe has made Beca need her–motherfucker–and that's exactly what she's been trying so hard to avoid.
Chloe's breath is hot. Beca reaches into the dark closet of her mind and pulls out the need to escape.
This is scarier than anything she's ever known.
VIII.
The eighth is a howling laughter that sends shivers down Beca's spine.
Actually, that might just be the cold. Yeah, it has a tendency to feel a little chilly when you're standing in the middle of nowhere with your feet in the snow–no, as in literally in the snow–half-naked and doing your damnedest to move your arms more than two inches away from one another. The irrefutable lunatic that is Aubrey Posen, however, seems unable to fathom the possibility that watching each other's bra straps turn to icicles while brokenly singing Ace of Base is deserving of anything less than a Nobel Prize. Her smile has always been a little strained, sure, but now she's having one of those moments when the crazy starts to seep through. It cuts her cheeks to widen her smile and turns her face a deathly white, until suddenly she's giving Heath Ledger a run for his money.
Beca has trouble understanding how this exercise is supposed to boost her confidence. She also has trouble understanding how it's anywhere near worth the hypothermia they're all about to die of.
"Well," Fat Amy rattles out from between her teeth, "that ginger definitely has a weird knack for making awkward situations even awkwarder. With her, like, unawkwardness."
For a minute, Beca stares dumbly in an attempt to understand what Amy just said. Then she follows her friend's gaze and sees Chloe all up in Lily's face, taking her arms and flinging them around. The poor girl looks like Chloe's about to step on a dead body she only freshly buried under the snow, her fear growing slowly but surely as a crescendo. Beca feels a pang of sympathy and a pang of something weird, and she huffs.
"Some people are born without kidneys. Chloe was born without the ability to comprehend social cues."
"Maybe she's French," says Amy.
"What?"
She tries to shrug her frozen shoulders. "Go to France and you'll see what I mean."
Beca sighs. "Whatever. I just wish she'd stop doing that to everyone."
Now Chloe and Aubrey are hugging and stuff. The aca-weirdos are sharing in each other's body heat and slow dancing to their own voices. Amy looks over at Beca, and her eyebrow leaps about ten feet in the air.
"Oh my God."
Beca spots Cynthia Rose grinning knowingly from a distance. "What?"
"You totally wish she'd stop being all touchy-feely with everyone else."
"… No. Hell no. There's no way I–oh my God Amy, shut up!"
That's when the laughter starts. Beca feels a little bit like a volcano; like the ones in Hawaii that don't so much erupt as they do bleed magma. It's kind of ironic considering their situation, but she feels herself slowly becoming warm the way your hands do when they hold someone else's, only without the pleasantness of it. She has a feeling it would feel a little better if Chloe's skin were touching hers the way it's touching Aubrey's right now, but Beca's too badass to ask for a hug and Amy's too Amyto stop roaring about how there are more gays in their all-female acapella group than should be statistically possible.
(Apparently this homosexual usurpation is a conspiracy to stunt American population growth so that the Chinese can ship their extra babies across the ocean and take over the world, but Beca stops listening as soon as the East Asian porn industry becomes involved.)
Soon enough, Chloe skips over like a flame and drapes her arms around Beca's neck. Beca pretends to hate the heat of skin on skin and when she's hugging back she makes some sort of half-assed excuse about how cold it is that seems to ring true with Chloe. Amy smirks and a rock drops in Beca's gut. It's true; Chloe treats her the same as everyone else.
Figures.
IX.
The ninth is a door that almost flies straight off its hinges when Jesse flings it open. Beca jerks her thoughts from the ocean of basslines in which they'd been lost and turns to impassioned features sitting on a gentle face. Jesse looks all sorts of angry right now–Jesse never looks angry–and Beca swallows.
"Jesse, what are you–"
"You're in love with her, aren't you?"
Well, there it is. Beca doesn't really know what to say to that. Certainly, she's long past the phase of blissful ignorance in the face of her own emotions, but Jesse doesn't need to know that, does he? Or maybe he does.
She weighs her options out. Denial or acceptance. A lie, or the truth.
Yeah, that's about it, and one of those choices is definitely starting to seem rather pointless. Beca sighs.
"Yeah. Sorry."
Jesse is pale, and begins to look as though he's about to go into cardiac arrest. He seats himself on her bed, trembling, and shakes his head. She truly feels sorry for him.
"Why me, then? Why did you choose me?"
Beca shrugs. Seeing as they're already being honest, she tells the truth.
"It was like the perfect movie ending, y'know? Struggling all-female musical group embraces change, wins the big competition; guy gets the girl and girl gets the guy, all that. It was easy. And besides, she doesn't–"
"You don't know that."
That one throws Beca off. Jesse's vehemence is still boring holes through her flesh, but this time it's a little more favourably directed. He stands up.
"Contrary to what you may believe, Beca Mitchell, people are capable of loving you. I do, and maybe she does too. But you'll never know that if you don't trust that there is a chance of it."
Okay, that one probably throws her further off. Further off a very, very steep cliff; a cliff which, she's beginning to realise, looks awfully smooth and very red with lines of gray running inbetween. More like a wall, really. And there are waves crashing relentlessly upon a shore, but no–no, that's not it–it's the wall, and it's tumbling as she falls.
So Beca stands. Beca stands and she runs; she bolts out the door faster than the wind, passionate as sin, and shows no sign of slowing as her socks meet concrete outside. She crosses the campus like a lightning bolt–through the door, up the stairs, up, up, up–and knocks frantically on the door.
Aubrey opens it. A bump in the road over which she jumps despite cries of what-the-hell-are-you-doing-here-and-why-are-you-in-your-pajamas-Mitchell to see Chloe sitting on her bed scrubbing wet hair with a towel and looking more than a little bit surprised.
"Beca?"
"I just needed to know," she breathes, finding herself suddenly fatigued, "what you think of me. Like, on a scale of one to ten sort of thing, I guess, or maybe–I dunno–because I'm–um–in love with you and stuff."
She can hear Aubrey shuffle awkwardly away, and silence. Beca is sufficiently shocked at herself for blurting that out so easily–something she would have probably been incapable of only a year ago–and Chloe blinks. Then she smiles, and then she starts laughing, and most people would have probably felt uneasy at that reaction but Beca's fairly certain it's a good one. All she can feel in her stomach is butterflies, but they're the beautiful kind, and they're making her feel so alive.
"I love you too."
And Chloe knows her. Chloe knows that even as she leans in to bring their faces so close she doesn't know how to push forward that one terrible inch, not herself. So Chloe puts her lips to Beca's but she doesn't force them; they only touch, like ghosts, and Chloe's hands are on Beca's stiff shoulders, and Beca begins to relax. Relax into the insanity with which Chloe's mouth overwhelms, into a spectacular sort of craziness as she pulls back and moves in again, and both of them just smile, nose to nose.
X.
At the end of the ninth song, Chloe takes the silence away. She puts in the next CD and she skips through the pauses between every single track, until Beca can't find them anymore.
This is the soundtrack to Beca's life. There are nine songs, and afterwards there is noise.