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Chloe giggled as she pulled Beca into the locker room. “Shhh,” hissed Beca, “we’ll get busted.”
“I love you, Beca Mitchell. I don’t care,” the redhead said. She stepped forward, way into Beca’s personal space.
Beca chuckled. “I love you, too. But if we get caught…” She was interrupted by Chloe pushing her against the locker bank and smothering her lips with her own. Chloe let out a moan. Beca broke off the kiss. “Chloe! Shh! You are so loud.”
An evil glint shined in Chloe’s eyes as she grabbed Beca’s hands and tossed her head back. She began to loudly moan. “Oh, oh, Beca. Yeah. Ummm, oh yeah. Right there. Oh, Beca. Don’t stop.”
Red flushed Beca’s cheek as she clamped her hand over Chloe’s mouth. “Hush, you weirdo.”
“How was your day, dear?” Chloe’s mother sat the roast in the center of the table and took her seat across from her husband.
“Fine,” her daughter mumbled as she reached over and speared some meat onto her plate.
“Well, aren’t you a ball of sunshine?” Her father said. “Big plans this weekend?”
“Not really. Aubrey and I were going to catch a movie.”
“When will you be home?”
Chloe rolled her eyes. “Mom, I’m sixteen.”
“That’s right, darling. You’re sixteen,” Chloe’s father’s voice was stern.
Chloe turned to her mother. “Mom, may I spend the night at Aubrey’s?”
“If it’s okay with Aubrey’s parents.”
[From Chloe: They bought it.]
[From Beca: Really? So, we have like all evening together?]
[From Chloe: No, silly]
[From Chloe: All night]
[From Chloe: I told them I was spending the night at Aubrey’s]
[From Beca: Sweet]
[From Beca: My brother said he’d get us the hotel room. Just for us to be careful]
[From Beca: I promised him I wouldn’t get you pregnant]
[From Chloe: BECA]
The following afternoon, Chloe skipped up the driveway to her house and let herself in. She was halfway up the stairs when her father’s voice rang out. “Chloe? Get in here. Now.”
Fuck, Chloe thought to herself as she went into the kitchen.
Both her parents were sitting at the breakfast table, stern looks on their faces. “Chloe, where were you last night?”
“Mom,” Chloe said sweetly. “I told you, I spent the night at Aubrey’s.”
“Chloe,” her father said. “We wouldn’t ask you if we didn’t already know the answer.” Chloe’s stomach dropped.
“Honey, I called Aubrey’s mother. You weren’t there.”
“Now, where were you,” her father said gruffly. Chloe crossed her arms and kept quiet. “You were with her, weren’t you?”
“God,” Chloe blurted out. She quickly stood, knocking the chair over in the process. “So what if I was? I’m sixteen, Dad. I love her.”
“What do you know of love? Like I said, you are sixteen.”
“Well, I’m going to keep seeing her, and there’s nothing you can do to stop me.”
“There’s plenty I can do,” replied her father. “Just wait and see.”
“Seriously, Aubrey?” Beca ran her hands through her hair. “They sent her to Barden? That’s like a super strict girls-only boarding school. Don’t they see the irony?”
“Why didn’t you guys tell me to cover for you? I could have figured out a way to get my mom to play along.” Aubrey wasn’t exactly fond of Beca and Chloe dating, but she knew them being forced apart wasn’t the answer.
“There’s always FaceTime, and summer’s only a month or so away.” Beca was trying to keep from being heartbroken. Yeah, they were young, but Beca was sure of her feelings for the redhead. She’d follow Chloe to the ends of the Earth. She could handle a few months of separation.
“No, Beca. Her parents had her electronics restricted. And she’s not coming back for the summer. They are sending her to Lake Michigan to live with her aunt. Some tiny little place close to the Canadian border. Grand Marais, I think. Something like that.”
Beca pulled out her phone and tried to find it. “Woah, that’s like way out in the middle of nowhere.” Beca slumped down in her chair. “I’m never going to see her again,” she lamented.
“Don’t be so dramatic,” Aubrey said as she rolled her eyes. “She loves you, too, you know. Much to my dismay.”
Beca was sure Chloe’s parents would cave after a week or so. Chloe could be very convincing. She continually checked her phone for a text, her DMs on all her social media, and her e-mail. Surely Chloe would find some way to get in touch with her or was that school as locked down as rumors led everyone to believe.
After a month, Beca began to doubt the bond between her and Chloe. They’d never actually… you know. Even the night they spent together at that hotel. The night that caused all this mess. As much as they wanted, they agreed to wait just a little bit longer. Chloe’s parents probably didn’t know that. Oh well.
Stacie came to sit next to Beca on the school’s outdoor atrium bench. The shorter girl had her feet on the bench, knees bent, arms wrapped around them. Beca gave a long sniff and wiped her tears on her wrist.
“Maybe she’s already forgotten about me. What if she’s found someone else? I don’t get it; why is everything so complicated and screwed up? I mean, why are we not together. We love each other, right? Is there some unwritten law that some kinds of love are wrong?”
Stacie placed a comforting hand on her friend’s shoulder. “In Chloe’s parents’ mind, yes. That’s why they sent her to Barden.”
Beca took her notebook and threw it across the atrium as hard as she could. “Screw it.”
Stacie went to get the journal and came back. “May I?” She motioned to the notebook where she knew Beca jotted down her poetry that sometimes became song lyrics. Beca nodded as she rocked back and forth.
After reading a bit, Stacie closed the notebook and tucked it into Beca’s backpack. She looked at her friend. “Pretty awful, huh?” Beca sniffled.
“Yeah,” Stacie chuckled. “Those really sucked.”
“Life sucks.”
“Ugh, I can’t even write anymore, Stace. I’m going to lose my mind without her.”
Chloe did her best to keep a low profile at Barden. Everyone wanted to know her story and why she transferred in with only five weeks left in the semester. When she refused to tell them, some older girls made up their own stories and spread them around the school.
She shared her room with three other girls. Luckily Chloe was able to keep to herself most of the time. In the evenings, she curled up in her bed, staring at a picture of Beca she wasn’t supposed to have and would get in grave trouble if found out. Most nights, Chloe cried herself to sleep. She missed Beca something terrible and wasn’t sure how she’d survive until she graduated and turned eighteen before she could see her again.
She trudged through her classes, doing her best in hopes her parents would let her return home after her summer in the boonies with her aunt. Chloe used to always look forward to summer vacation. She saw it as a much-needed break from school. Then by the time school got out, she couldn’t wait to get back to classes because she missed her friends. That was almost how Chloe felt now, but all the time. School was the vacation, and Beca was what she missed.
One afternoon during mandated study time in their rooms, one of Chloe’s roommates approached Chloe’s corner of the room. She snidely announced that she knew Chloe’s secret. Chloe froze and then immediately relaxed, refusing to let on that her roommate’s words bothered her. One thing she’d learned in her short time on Earth was the most challenging part about being a teenager was dealing with other teenagers.
“I could make your life miserable, you know,” her roommate said.
Chloe looked up from her desk. “My life is already miserable. I doubt you could make it worse.”
“Yeah,” her roommate challenged? “I know where you hide that picture of yours. We aren’t supposed to have personal items here. I could get extra privileges for turning you in,” she stated proudly.
Chloe panicked on the inside and tried to stay calm outwardly. “You know what else? The best part about backstabbers being everywhere is that if there weren’t any backstabbers, I wouldn’t know who my real allies are. And real allies are hard to find. Especially in here.” She then returned to her studies, vowing to find a new hiding place for Beca’s picture, hoping her bluff had worked.
Barden’s teachers were strict, but the isolation was what was tearing most at Chloe. She was separated from her friends and, most importantly, from Beca.
Summer rolled around, and Beca still hadn’t heard from Chloe. She couldn’t get motivated to do anything. In fact, she didn’t even get out before two in the afternoon. One morning, she was sleeping soundly when she abruptly woke up on the floor next to her bed. “Whaa?”
“Get up!” Beca heard Stacie yell at her. The next thing she heard was the sound of her black-out curtains being ripped open. Bright light flooded in and filled the room.
“Aiiiiiieeeee,” Beca moaned as she slammed her pillow over her head. “Go away.” Stacie wrangled the pillow from Beca’s clenched arms. Squinting in the bright room, Beca saw two tall figures staring at her, arms crossed. “You’ve resorted to double-teaming me?”
“You’ve wallowed in your misery long enough, Beca.” Aubrey stomped her foot. “We know you miss Chloe, but this is ridiculous. How many days has it been since you’ve showered? Your room reeks.”
Beca frowned as she sniffed one of her armpits before grimacing. “Leave me alone.” She was miserable and certainly didn’t want her best friend and her girlfriend’s best friend bothering her. “I just want to be left alone.” Beca crawled back into bed and pulled the sheet over her head. She could hear her drawers being opened and someone rummaging through her clothes. Out of curiosity, she peeked her head out. “What are you doing, Stacie?”
“Looking for your suit. We’re one guard short at the pool, and I need you.” Beca opened her mouth to protest when her swimsuit came flying across the room and smacked her in the face. “Get dressed,” Stacie snapped. “Shift starts in twenty.”
Despite Aubrey and Stacie’s best efforts to get Beca out of the house and into public, they still couldn’t pull her out of her funk. Beca started skipping shifts at the pool, and when she did show up, she had on dark shades, dark even for Beca. One day after work, Beca was trudging towards her car when Stacie grabbed her by the elbow and pulled her into the shift supervisor’s office.
“You aren’t fooling anyone, Beca. You don’t show up to work, and you are late when you do show up.”
“So?” Beca’s response was sullen.
“And don’t think I can’t smell you when you get here. You smell like a brewery; the alcohol seeps from your pores, Beca. I’m worried.”
“You don’t know what I’m feeling,” Beca snapped. “I miss her. You don’t know how it feels when a part of you is gone. I don’t even know when I’ll see Chloe again. I don’t even know if she’s going to remember me. What if it’s over? What if I’m the only one hurting? She’s probably out at her aunt’s having a blast and not thinking about me at all. Fuck this.” Beca slammed her fist into the wall, leaving a good-sized dent in the sheetrock.
“That last canoe is up, Aunt Marge.” Chloe went over to the water hose, sprayed the dirt off her legs, and washed the sweat off her face and neck. One thing about being at her aunt’s was that she had to work hard, which kept her mind off Beca. But the nights – the nights were still hard. That was when images of Beca flooded her mind the most.
The previous evening, Marge had heard Chloe’s muffled sobs and came to check on her niece. “Chloe,” she said softly from the door. “Are you okay.?” Marge walked over and sat on Chloe’s bed. “It’s okay to be mad, you know.”
“I’m over being mad,” Chloe responded. “I’m mostly sad. I miss her, Aunt Marge. My heart aches. I mean, I know I’m still in high school and that my first love probably isn’t my true love. But how can I convince my heart to stop caring so much.”
“Sweetie, I don’t agree with what my sister is doing. But I also know I can’t change her. These years are the most important of your life. You are changing so much and finding out who you are. I hate that you have to face this dilemma – living up to your parents’ expectations by denying who you are.”
“I feel so mixed up inside,” Chloe sniffled.
“Blame it on your teenage brain being in disarray.”
“What if Beca’s forgotten about me?” Chloe mumbled. “Or worse, she remembers me but has decided she loves someone else.”
Marge wrapped her arms around her niece. “Oh, Chloe. I just wish you could be happy.”
As summer’s end approached, Beca began to dread returning to school. She had convinced herself that Chloe would be back for their senior year together. After three months of not hearing from her girlfriend, she’d all but lost hope of seeing Chloe until both of them turned eighteen.
Once the pool had closed for the season, Beca had resorted to living in her cave of a room, venturing out only for food and the occasional shower. She had been able to start writing again. These poems were darker than she’d written right after Chloe had been sent away. The difference was that she could put a beat behind the words.
One late afternoon, she was furiously working on tweaking some beats just right when her headphones were ripped off her ears. It was Stacie. “Come on, Stacie,” Beca whined. “I’m busy.”
“Shut up and take a shower. I’ll pick out your clothes, and before you say it – I won’t say no for an answer. I can call Aubrey to come over if you refuse.”
Beca grumbled as she saved the mix she was working on and closed her notebook. She showered off several days of grunge and dressed in the clothes Stacie had gotten out. “Here, idiot. Your hair is a mess.” Stacie dutifully brushed Beca’s hair out and styled it until she was satisfied with how her friend looked.
“Damn, Stace. Are we going on a date?” Stacie just rolled her eyes.
After a long summer of hard work, Chloe had some cash in the bank from wages her Aunt Marge paid her to help work the lake. She’d gotten good reports from her aunt and the school, so her parents loosened up some of the restrictions at school.
Chloe moved into the senior dorm, which was still tightly run but where she had a few more freedoms. Most importantly, there was a computer available. Students could earn time slots to get online. Her first night back, Chloe was lying on her bed studying the senior handbook. She was trying to memorize all the rules and find ways to earn extra time so she could contact Beca. Of course, if her parents found out Chloe got in touch with Beca, she’d probably be put back on restriction. But that would be worth it to find out if she still had a girlfriend after all this time.
She heard the door to her room open and assumed her roommate was coming in from dinner. Then she heard her dorm mother’s voice. “Chloe? You have a visitor in the lobby.”
Chloe rolled her eyes as she pulled herself off the bed. Her parents had only dropped her off the day before. Her mother was probably checking on her. Frankly, she wouldn’t mind if she went the entire school year without seeing them. ”Thanks, Ms. Sanchez.”
The senior walked down the stairs and made her way to the lobby. She looked around for her mother. When she saw a familiar figure standing, looking out the window, Chloe’s heart froze. “Beca?”