Singing (Micro Fiction Monday)

She was singing again.

She sang every morning. I heard her sing when I was eating breakfast, as I was heading out the door for class...I even heard her through the loud pounding of the water when I was having a shower.

The walls of a college dorm are not very thick. I knew this when I applied to live here, and when I wheeled in my two bulging, crammed-to-the-point-of-exploding suitcases into the building on move in day. I shouldn’t have been surprised when, the morning after my first night in my room, I was awoken by the sound of my neighbour singing along to Let It Go from that new Disney movie.

But I was. I was surprised, I was caught off guard, but most importantly, I was irritated.

I didn’t say a word. Not when I was woken up at 6 am by the opening words of Shake It Off, not when my early morning cram session was interrupted by the chorus of Breakaway, not even when I could barely hear my mom on the phone over the belted lyrics of the Friends theme. I stayed quiet, because it was her home, too—and I didn’t want to start any drama.

But her singing was bad. It was wobbly and off key and too loud when it wasn’t supposed to be. It was driving me crazy, and as soon as she started up Classic at seven in the morning, I lost it.

I stormed out of my room, not caring when the door slammed loudly behind me. I stomped the ten feet between our rooms and pounded my fist against the door marked “Lizzie” in big, bubbly, colourful letters. My scowl didn’t lessen when her singing cut off abruptly, and her padded footsteps made her way towards me.

What made my scowl disappear entirely was her honey coloured hair, cut short and sticking out wildly in all directions, and her green eyes that seemed to almost twinkle—like she had been expecting my arrival all along.

Damn it, she was beautiful.

“Hey!” she exclaimed, like I was her best friend, and not someone that she had only met once—briefly—during orientation. “Emma, right?”

Maybe I could put up with the singing, after all.