CHAELISA One-shots

You Belong With Me

***

Sitting on her bed with her homework spread out around her, the sleeves of her uni sweatshirt that she’d grown out of last year pushed up, Lisa was working on her chemistry homework as music played softly in the background.

The room was large, predominantly filled with trophies from science fairs and NASA posters, her desk buried beneath physics books and mid-term essay drafts that she was still finetuning. Her telescope was situated near the window and her clarinet case, battered and worn, lay at the foot of her bed beside her school bag. She’d already gotten in her practice for the evening and felt worn out from studying.

The curtains were pulled back from the bay window and she could see into the room directly across from her in the next-door house. The lights were on and the curtains open too, a ritual at this point, and she peered at the pacing blonde. Roseanne looked irritated, her cheeks flushed as she spoke animatedly into the phone, still wearing the red and white tracksuit of the cheer squad. She hadn’t been in long, her hair still up in a high ponytail, waiting to shower, and Lisa frowned slightly, her mouth pulling down in a disapproving grimace. She was fighting with Felix again.

Averting her eyes, feeling like she should get up and close her curtains so Roseanne didn’t think she was spying on her, Lisa twirled the pencil in her hand and scratched down the answer to a chemical formula. She finished up quickly and shoved the finished equations into her backpack for tomorrow before turning the music up on the small stereo. Roseanne was gone from her room.

Putting on one of her favourite artists, the room was filled with loud percussion sounds and bass. One of the perks of her mother working late every night was the fact that Lisa was always home alone, blasting her music and practising her clarinet as loud as she wanted to, ordering takeout and finishing her homework in peace.

With no qualms of anyone bursting into her room, looking for an argument, she let the music wash over her as the song changed, first just bobbing her head at the intro, before she was loudly singing along. Climbing to her feet, she turned the music up louder, the electro house beat drowning out the sounds of her voice as she danced.

Forgetting herself, Lisa pretended like she was at a concert, or perhaps performing at her own one, so wrapped up in jumping around dancing that when she turned around, she froze at the sight of Roseanne watching her through the window with an amused look on her face. Face stricken, Lisa’s mouth fell open and her cheeks flooded with red as she quickly dropped to the floor, mortification overcoming her.

She crouched for a long moment, wincing as she slowly reached up to turn the music down before she popped her head up high enough to look across the way. Roseanne was sitting in the window seat of her room, patiently waiting, and at the sight of Lisa’s eyebrows and forehead making an appearance, she held up her notebook with a message scrawled on it.

  Good song?

Flushing an even deeper red, Lisa slowly climbed to her feet, head ducked down and shoulders hunched self-consciously as she grabbed a notebook and marker from her desk that she kept for such conversations.

   Yes

She held it up in front of her burning face and lowered it after a moment, taking in the profile of Roseanne’s ducked head as she concentrated on writing a reply. Lisa waited and a moment later, Roseanne held up a reply.

   Which song?

   Spectrum

   Another Florence + The Machine one?