Beca lies.
She lies about being happy, being satisfied with who she is. She isnt paricularly pleased with herself, with no logical explanation
time skip idk why but it wouldn't make sense if i didn't add this here :>
Every moment is spoken for. We are up at six o'clock. We are drinking lukewarm coffee or watered-down juice by six forty five. We have thirty minutes to scrape cream cheese on cardboardy bagels, or shove pale eggs in our mouths, or swallow lumpy oatmeal.
By nine o'clock we're all running to our classes, trying to keep up with everything. Smiles sprawled on peoples faces, brushing past every figure without remembering their faces.
Beca was different, he thought, she must've been. She pays attention to people like a hawk pays attention to prey. That isn't normal, people whispered, desperate to have any conversation. It's totally normal, he thought. He understood. How should she comport if her sister was devoured by wolves after she got raped.
Faces stiffen when she mentions rape. Like Lucas was trying to help her get her jacket zipped up while she rested her head on his lap, clearly roofied, laying there unconscious.
People always liked Lucy better then Beca, even though nobody mentioned it, nor Beca, unless it was because they just wanted to have a quick laugh. The way they shoved past Beca, her presence was no longer acknowledged. Nobody dared to even give Lucy the wrong look. She wasn't fearsome, it was just the way her confidence reflected off of her.
time skip?
His hair fell over his forehead, he brushed out of the way, and he headed towards class. Communications and broadcasting.
It's so hot outside, too hot. His sweat was pouring from his face when he got inside the classroom. He spent most of his time mopping up in the bathroom. His room was too hot, filled with posters, and the building was too noisy with people running fans and coolers and playing music too loud.
He stumbled past a crowd of people hovering over a video. He always sat on the very edge, far away from the teacher. He always liked the diagonal view, not that it made a difference. He read that you have higher chances of surviving a shooting by sitting furthest away. Unflattering information, but weirdly factual.
The professor walked in, wearing a jean jacket pairing with a normal pair of jeans. He told us to search anything about Isla Leston and sprawled his legs over his desk, not being scared to use his given space.
At the computer, he copied in Isla Leston. A bunch of articles came up and some galleries that sell her work, she must've been an artist. He scrolled through, not sure of what he was suppose to keep an eye on, so he jotted down notes, until he saw one article titled "Death and the Disappearance of Isla Leston"
It was a long article, in some fancy art magazine, with tons of huge words and a black and white photograph of Isla and a little boy with dark, dark hair falling in his eyes. They are surrounded by paintings. He holds his hands up, happy. They drip with paint. Isla is laughing.
Her son died of a combination of pills and alcohol. His body was found in an alley in Brooklyn. Seth Leston. He'd flunked out of school, he was bipolar, she'd lost touch with him and even hired a detective, but she couldn't trace him. She'd canceled her own shows, and stopped painting.
Moral of the story, he left her, she couldn't bare it, and had to find him. She technically did find him, not ideally. He was not existing anymore. And maybe he had his reasons.
This was her disappointment, because she wasn't enough.
