"Beca, these are the Bellas." Chloe had brought Beca to the green, a lawn in the middle of campus. The green happened to be outside of the library, a few academic buildings, and a multipurpose building with several places to eat. Beca had recognized this particular space before, since she liked to bring her laptop outside to mix for a clearer headspace than her dorm room allowed.
The group of girls all mused back greetings, some more occupied than others. They were all sitting on multicolored rugs and towels to keep off the grass, and lunch bags and sodas were scattered about.
"Beca you said? I'm Aubrey Posen." A tall blonde girl immediately got up and held her hand out to Beca, waiting for a handshake. Beca reciprocated with a limp hand, mildly uncomfortable by the formal greeting.
"Aubrey is my fellow co-captain of the Barden Bellas." Chloe looked at Beca, smiling with flashing teeth, reading Beca's facial expression.
"We're the greatest aca-bitches of them all." Aubrey added proudly, later joining Chloe at her side. "I'll run down our team. Up front loud and proud is Fat Amy." Aubrey gestured to the heavier blonde girl busy rummaging through a wooden basket.
"Which one of you twig bitches stole my salami?" She called out, not noticing the roll of salami was already in her lap. When noticing she had been introduced, she directed to Beca in an accent: "Ello, Fat Amy, I'm in the business of business. No really, my major is business. And don't you dare fucking touch my salami." She quickly resumed her rummaging, eyeing around the other girls in an attempt to spot her meaty treasures.
Aubrey continued down the line to a girl with bold lipstick and jet-black hair. "That's Lilly." The girl murmured in reply, at a volume no one could really make out. Not even bothering to decode what Lilly said, Aubrey then motioned to a dolled-up girl who was facing the complete opposite direction. "This is Stacie, our resident mathematician."
"Hey." Stacie replied with a wink before averting her attention back to where she was looking. Beca followed her gaze and noticed the girl was flirting from afar with a boy sitting on the steps of the library.
"Next are Jessica and Ashley." The two girls sat side-by-side, one a brunette and the other a curly blonde. It was hard to tell them apart, and Beca wondered if they were secretly cousins. "And no, I can't tell them apart." Aubrey read Beca's mind, whispering to Beca's side.
Beca noticed the remaining girl was giving her the one-up, leaning back onto her hands with a smirk sprawled over her face. Once the girl realized that Beca caught her gaze, she introduced herself with, "and I'm Cynthia Rose." Beca could only tighten her lips and respectably nod in reply.
"And that's all of us!" Chloe finished for Aubrey, portraying a sort of admiration for the seven girls in front of her.
"There you are, you dirty bastard." Fat Amy finally found her salami, ripping it out from the underside of her leg. "Come sit Beca, join the feast." The Australian patted the space next to her on the rug, scooting over to the right. With a hesitant look back towards Chloe, Beca joined the girls with their lunch.
Geology was both Chloe and Beca's last class on Tuesday and Thursdays, and the rest of the girls were all done by 2:30pm. They all had relatively different schedules, and none of them shared any other classes besides Jessica and Ashley, who were both classics majors. All of them had only recently reunited after the summer and were reestablishing their semester routines. Chloe and Aubrey were the only leftover seniors, and the rest of the girls seemed to be sophomores.
Beca quickly discovered that the nine girls now lived together in a house dedicated just for their acapella group. The captains of the Bellas prior to Chloe and Aubrey had managed to campaign for a house after their group had brought Barden University positive press and an increase in admissions. The house used to belong to the Ultimate Frisbee Club and was thereafter named "Frisbee House" until hazing allegations revoked their rights to having a property off campus. Barden's President granted the property to the Bellas, contingent on them continuing their competitive success. When Beca was later invited to come back with the girls to hang out at the Bella House, she got to see the infamous Frisbee House for herself.
"We're just a quick walk off campus!" Chloe huffed, walking down the slope of their street in lavender-colored heels. She led Beca in front of the pack of girls to point things out as she went, learning that Beca was, in fact, a freshman. Although Beca had been to this university plenty of times because her dad worked there, she let Chloe play tour guide for her own amusement.
They eventually stopped in front of a square-shaped brick house that sported a white columned feature piece over and around the door. It was relatively smaller than the others houses surrounding it on the street – ones Beca already knew were owned by Greek Life chapters or sports teams. The street itself, aptly named "College Street" was located closer to downtown, but still remained within a residential area surrounding the university.
Chloe jammed a brass key within the lock and swung the door open with a beckoning grin. The rest of the girls had caught up to them and piled within the entryway, dispersing across the house. Most of them ended up settling within the living room, occupying the two couches and assorted chairs around a low-lying glass coffee table. Beca followed suit, collapsing on the black leather couch that separated the common room from the kitchen.
Beca felt mildly awkward about the whole thing, since she did kind of just go back with them to their house when she only met them all a few hours prior. Beca figured going to their house was a better option than sitting in the stale silence of her dorm room with her standoffish roommate Kimmy Jin. The Bellas in particular were not like Kimmy Jin and definitely not silent. Almost immediately, one of the girls was already singing and several girls were backing her up with complimentary sound effects. Beca had to strain her neck to identify that the higher soprano voice belonged to Aubrey.
Oh, Mickey, you're so fine,
You're so fine you blow my mind,
Hey, Mickey.
Hey, Mickey.
Oh, Mickey, you're so fine...
"RIFF OFF!" Fat Amy screamed from the upstairs balcony, bounding down the stairs to join the group.
"What the hell is a riff-off?" Beca asked without any explanation in return. Fat Amy had already began singing the next part, with Beca quickly realizing that it was an entirely different song than the one Aubrey was singing.
You're so fine and you're mine.
I'll be yours till the end of time,
'Cause you made me feel,
Yeah, you made me feel,
So shiny and new,
Like a virgin…
Aubrey countered back, interrupting Fat Amy's rendition with "Hit Me With Your Best Shot" by Pat Benatar.
Like the one in me, that's okay.
Let's see how you do it.
Put up your dukes, let's get down to it!
Hit me with your best shot,
Why don't you hit me with your best shot.
Hit me with your best shot,
Fire away!
It took Beca a few back and forth verses to realize that there actually was a pattern to this madness. The word at the end of the line had to be the beginning of the next song that was going to be sung. She had so many questions, but didn't want to interrupt what they were flying back and forth with across the living room to ask. She instead whispered to the redhead who sat to her left, leaning over with: "So, you just pick any song that works?"
She replied "Yeah, any song."
"And you just go with it? Nice." Beca realized what they were doing verbally was sort of what she did with her mixing software. Only, they were doing it live and took segments from different songs to lay them back-to-back rather than on top of each other.
Stacie had chimed in with "S&M" by Rihanna, standing up to flow her body into waves and Cynthia Rose standing up to contribute.
Na na na come on.
Na na na na na come on, come on, come on.
'Cause I may be bad but I'm perfectly good at it.
Sex in the air, I don't care I Iove the smell of it.
Sticks and stones may break my bones,
But chains and whips excite me.
'Cause I may be bad but I'm perfectly good at it…
Stacie and Aubrey kept up with each other, bantering several lines at a time until the other one would outdo the last song. The riff-off only ended when one of the girls messed up the sequence, and they instead all stopped singing and began to laugh until their faces burnt red.
Beca decided acapella was a polite version of a cult.
After the giggling fits had ended, the girls eventually settled down to linger around the common spaces. None of them were really doing much work since it was still the first week of the semester. Chloe and Beca, however, were each tapping away on their computer keyboards writing up an assignment for geology. It wasn't until Chloe leaned over to ask Beca a question that they realized they were both working on the same discussion post for their shared class.
"We can move upstairs to my room, if you want? It's quieter." Chloe proposed to the brunette, who looked around at the girls before quickly deciding that they should move. Jessica and Ashley were getting a little too into a Buzzfeed quiz and were arguing about Ryan Reynolds.
Chloe had ushered Beca up from the couch, leading her up the stairs and into the hallway. Chloe's room was the first on the left, and shared a wall with the high ceilings of the living room. Beca wasn't sure exactly how many bedrooms were at the end of the hallway, but Chloe at least had one to herself. "Make yourself comfortable."
Beca aimed for the desk against the right wall, plopping into a black office chair before scooting up against the desk. Chloe had already taken to her bed, laying down on her stomach with her legs propped into the air. As the two started to settle again and go back to their writing assignment, Beca heard singing once again.
You shout it out.
But I can't hear a word you say.
I'm talking loud not saying much.
Beca immediately recognized David Guetta's "Titanium," an EDM song she was already attempting to spin a remix from. Beca hastily tabbed over to her mixing software, pulling out a pair of chunky white Beats headphones from her backpack. She didn't have any of her soundboards to play around with, but instead recorded Chloe's vocals by pressing the familiar red-dotted button within the software.
I'm criticized but all your bullets ricochet.
You shoot me down, but I get up.
While hearing the song live, Beca began to fiddle with the sound adjustments, monitoring the blending of beat elements she previously saved on her file. Reaching the chorus, Beca couldn't help to chime in. She failed to notice how well her lower range complimented Chloe's, who stretched up an octave to harmonize.
I'm bulletproof nothing to lose,
Fire away, fire away.
Ricochet, you take your aim,
Fire away, fire away.
You shoot me down but I won't fall,
I am titanium.
You shoot me down but I won't fall,
I am titanium.
"You can sing!" The sudden exclamation startled Beca, who threw off her headphones involuntarily.
"Dude!" Beca almost yelled back, swiveling in the office chair to face the redhead who was now hovering over the sitting brunette.
"How high does your belt go?"
"My what?"
"Oh, my God! You have to audition for the Bellas." Beca couldn't comprehend much that was going on at the moment, only that Chloe was piecing things together at a million miles an hour and Beca's heart was still racing at an alarming pace. "Just consider it. One time, we sang backup for Prince. His butt is so tiny that I can hold it with, like, one hand."
Chloe only continued to brightly stare down at Beca, and several seconds passed by before Beca was prompted to ask: "You know David Guetta?"
"Have I been living under a rock? Yeah. That song is my jam." Chloe responded, shifting her head in approval. "My lady-jam."
"That's nice."
"It is. That song really builds."
"Gross."
"Can you sing the rest for me?"
At this point, Beca was already scrambling her things together, slamming her laptop shut and shoving it into her bag. She shrugged it onto her shoulders, stammering a "Dude, no!" at Chloe while she stood up from the chair.
"Not for that reason." The redhead bantered back, watching as her tiny new friend was basically running out of her room. She knew she didn't actually scare off Beca, but she was leaving in quite a hurry for no explainable reason. "You have a lovely voice!" Chloe called out to Beca, who was well into the hallway by that point.
"Thanks!" Beca shakily yelled back, bounding down the stairs and out of the front door. She kept up her pace until she got to the sidewalk, where she slowed to a walk and continued in the direction of her dorm.
Holy shit, Mitchell. What the fuck was that.
Her heart was still racing, refusing to calm down as Beca replayed the last five minutes. She couldn't stop revisiting the way her classmate looked down at her with those crystalline eyes, no matter how much she tried to shake it off. Once she got back to her dorm room, she immediately sat down at her desk and put in black earbuds to pick up where she left off. She kept fooling around with the mix of the vocals she recorded with Chloe until her eyes got red and dry from staring at her computer screen.
Meanwhile, Chloe was left standing in the middle of her room, pondering the intentions of someone who'd be a really good addition to the Bellas. Where did she even go anyway? Once she turned to return to her bed, she noticed in her periphery that her petite visitor had left her headphones in haste. She saw the cord messily thrown across the desktop and was humored by the fact that they were almost comically big for its user. You'll have to sit next to me again to get these back! Chloe smiled to herself, clutching the white set of electronics in her hands.