Mixtape for the End of the World Read online

  “Let’s just get enough to fix the amp I’ve got now, and we can worry about something bigger later,” he said.

  “Alright. I’ll ask some people in my classes if they want a CD. Ten bucks?” AJ asked.

  “That’s it. Hopefully we can get enough so that I can fix my amp and we can start practicing again. I like the idea of recording our songs too,” Derrick said.

  They crossed the street to the campus and made it just as the bell rang. Inside the halls, Derrick saw Haley in passing as he left his locker to Coach Vargas’s biology class, and she quickly turned away from him. Beyond anything else—his bruised hand, his busted amplifier—their friendship was the one thing he wanted fixed.

  ♪ ♪ ♪

  AJ found Derrick on the way to the cafeteria for lunch and handed him a handful of folded sheets of notebook paper.

  “What’s this?” Derrick asked.

  “These are the lists of songs that everybody wants,” AJ answered.

  Derrick took the papers in his hand and looked them over. There were at least three dozen sheets of notebook paper, each one with a list of songs scribbled on it.

  “Oh my god,” Derrick said as they walked into the cafeteria. As they stood in line, Derrick read each one. The initial shock of the amount of orders here wore off when he noticed that several of the requests had many of the same songs.

  “This is incredible,” he finally said. He noticed in the top corner of some of the pages, a check mark had been crudely scrawled. “What are these check marks?”

  “I was waiting for you to ask,” AJ said, and from his pocket revealed a wad of cash. “Those are the ones that have already paid.”

  Derrick’s eyes went wide. “You got some of them to already pay?”

  “Yeah man. I figured you’d need the amp fixed as soon as possible.”

  “How did you get so many?” Derrick asked.

  “I just told everyone that when Y2K hits, the internet will go down and they won’t be able to get music off Napster anymore.”

  Derrick nearly hugged him. “That is almost evil, but so awesome. Wow, man!”

  He counted the cash, low in his hands and close to his torso, the collection of fives and tens nearly spilling out of his grip. Of the thirty orders, over a dozen had prepaid, giving him more than enough money to pay for his amplifier repair.

  He split off twenty dollars and handed it to AJ. “Here, man,” he said.

  AJ declined. “No way. You’re doing the work, I’m just getting the sales.”

  “Take it, please. Without you, I wouldn’t even have all this. Please,” he said. “I only needed fifty dollars to fix the amp.”

  After a heartbeat, AJ took the money.

  “Let’s go to Sherman’s after school. We can pay for the amp, plus I’m going to need a lot of blank CDs,” Derrick said.

  “You know, with a few more sales, we can get you a wah pedal too,” AJ said. “You’ll sound more like Collective Soul when we play at the talent show.”

  Derrick’s eyes went wide. “Oh my god, yes.” He couldn’t believe that they’d opened up this revenue stream in order to buy the effects pedals, strings, everything they’d need for their band. Money, aside from the hundred dollars or so that he’d receive for birthday gifts, was almost always out of reach. Thus, the ability to purchase items such as effects pedals and amplifiers—the things that would catapult him from novice guitarist to something that resembled an actual musician—was usually left as the stuff of daydreams. Now, however? It was within his grasp.

  And if they were to really record a demo tape over the break, he would need those kinds of things to make them sound legit, and not just like a copy-cat garage band.

  As they talked, they took their food in the line, piling slices of pizza, a bowl of fruit and cartons of chocolate milk onto their lunch trays and sat at the end of one of the long tables that ran in parallel rows in the large, open cafeteria. A girl sat next to Derrick.

  “Hey,” she said.

  Derrick looked up to see Rebecca as she slid into the seat. Her hair, dyed black, with the blonde roots coming through at the part, hung to her shoulders in wavy locks. It clashed against her ivory white skin. Pushing a lock of hair behind her ear, she showed an ear with several piercings.

  “Hey Rebecca,” Derrick said.

  “I heard you guys are selling custom mix CDs,” she said. “Can I buy one?”

  “Yeah, of course,” Derrick said. “Ten songs for ten dollars.”

  She handed him a slip of notebook paper that had been ripped from a spiral notebook, the bits where it had been torn still hanging. Derrick unfolded it and read the list.

  It was full of the bands he and AJ listened to, the first was a song called “Spin the Black Circle” by Pearl Jam.

  “This is a great list,” Derrick said. “I have all these on a mixtape.”

  AJ took the paper and read it over as well. “If only more girls liked this music,” he pondered, folding it and handing it back to Derrick. “We’d have a lot less crappy music on the radio.”

  “Yeah, well, I’m glad they don’t. I like being different,” she said.

  Derrick added the sheet to his stack of other orders. “I’ll get this to you on Friday.”

  “Great. And,” she said, getting up from the seat, “if you guys think all the girls like the wrong kind of music, maybe you’re chasing the wrong kind of girls.”

  Rebecca started to walk away, but Derrick called out.

  “Hey, Rebecca.”

  She turned around.

  “Do you want to come listen to our band practice on Sunday?” he asked. Before she answered, the words continued to spill from his mouth. “We play stuff like you like.”

  “Sure,” she said. “Where?”

  Derrick ripped a corner from a sheet of paper and scribbled his address on it. Handing it to her, he said, “We practice around two o’clock. Come hang out. You’ll like it.”

  “Cool. Yeah, I’ll come listen,” she said.

  “Cool,” Derrick said.

  He sat back down and AJ stared at him, his eyebrows raised. He bit from his pizza and said between chews, “How do you do that?”

  “Do what?”

  “Talk to girls without them looking at you like you’re an alien.”

  Derrick ate his pizza as well. “What are you talking about? I feel like a bumbling idiot every time a girl talks to me.”

  “Well, find Rebecca’s list again and let’s look at the songs,” AJ said.

  “Why?”

  “Because she’s gonna fall in love with you if we learn one.”

  They continued to eat, and after a few minutes the conversation shifted away from girls and to their plans to record their demo over the break. However, Derrick let his eyes wander over to the table where Rebecca sat with a couple of the other “punk” kids, and every time he did, his eyes met hers, just for a moment before they both looked away again.

  She wasn’t usually his type, but Derrick couldn’t help but wonder what it would be like to date a girl like her. She was someone that he could talk about music with, who he didn’t have to be somebody else or become something he didn’t want to be just to impress her. The more he looked at her, the more he saw how beautiful she really was.

  He couldn’t wait for Sunday.

  19

  ♪ Filter – Take A Picture ♪

  DERRICK PLUGGED HIS guitar into the amplifier and turned the unit on. It hummed to life and he strummed a chord. It sounded like new. No, better than new. The new speaker was clear and punchy and seemed to hold more bottom end than the original stock one did. Even better, his hand felt great, and he gripped the neck of his instrument without any pain for the first time in weeks.

  “That sounds really good,” AJ said as he dialed in his bass.

  “Yeah, I’m glad Ben got it to work.” Derrick stepped on the Dunlop wah pedal at his foot and rocked the switch back and forth. His guitar’s tone followed the motion, creating an effect that mim
icked the sweeping sound from a Collective Soul album. He grinned with joy. It was perfect.

  The pedal cost him just over a hundred dollars at Sherman’s, but it was well worth the price. He’d made so many mix CDs—with even more orders to be fulfilled—that it took up nearly all his time making them. Fortunately, he only had to download the songs once. The downloading took up the most time, with each song taking as much as twenty minutes to transfer from Napster. But, once he had that done, it was easy to mix the songs in Winamp and burn them to a disc.

  Dustin pulled up to the driveway and walked in through the open garage door. “Some of the girls at school said you invited them to come listen to us,” he said as he went to his drum kit. He hit the snare to tune it and made sure his cymbals were tightened to their stands.

  Derrick’s eyes went wide. “I mean, I invited Rebecca,” he said. “But that’s about it.”

  “Well, Stephanie and Leah said they were coming today too. Looks like we’re going to have our first concert,” Dustin said. He pounded a beat on his drums and crashed the cymbals. “Which, I don’t mind. Leah’s so hot.”

  “This is gonna be awesome,” AJ said with a glint in his eyes. He immediately began running his fingers through his hair, making sure it fell in all the right directions. “What songs should we play?”

  Derrick ran through their list in his head. He came up with five songs that they could play for the girls when they showed up, a mix of covers with two of the songs that they’d written themselves. His hands were already sweating with the idea of playing in front of an audience. What if he missed a note or embarrassed himself in front of them? What if a string broke again like last time they’d had an audience?

  He didn’t have much time to dwell on his nervousness, because just as they were tuning their instruments and talking about the setlist they’d practice today, a car pulled up to the curb, its brakes squealing as it did. Three girls got out of the boxy Ford and strolled up the driveway. Rebecca and the two other girls approached the garage.

  Rebecca wore a tight black Mercyful Fate t-shirt over a long sleeve shirt. Her thumbs poked through holes in the sleeves. A black choker around her neck completed the outfit, though she didn’t wear the black lipstick that she normally had on at school. The two girls that accompanied her were similarly dressed, but, in Derrick’s mind, neither of them pulled it off as well as Rebecca.

  “I hope you don’t mind, but Leah and Stephanie wanted to come listen to you guys too, and I told them it would be alright,” she said.

  “Yeah,” Derrick gulped. “Yeah, it’s cool.”

  “So what is your band called?” Leah asked. Though Rebecca wasn’t very tall herself, Leah was even shorter, coming up to just Rebecca’s chin. She looked absolutely minuscule next to Stephanie, who was tall and curvy.

  “Stealth,” AJ answered into the microphone, his voice reverberating through the speaker that his microphone plugged into.

  “Cool,” Leah said.

  AJ leaned away from the microphone stand and said to Derrick and AJ, “Alright, let’s run through ‘Heavy’ and then that new one that we wrote.”

  Dustin nodded and counted off for Derrick. After the fourth beat, Derrick tore into the main riff of the Collective Soul song, using the wah pedal at his foot to accentuate the chords. It sounded amazing, just like the record. The girls watching seemed to be impressed as they looked at each other, nodding their heads to the tune.

  AJ beefed up the fuzz in his amplifier to distort the bass lines to make it sound heavier and fuller, which allowed Derrick to play a solo over the bridge. They finished up the song and whatever nervousness Derrick felt had completely subsided, though he couldn’t help but notice Rebecca watching him during the entire song.

  “That was so good!” Leah exclaimed.

  “Yeah, that was, like, better than anyone else,” Stephanie agreed.

  AJ bowed dramatically and then said, “We’re going to play one that we wrote.”

  As he spoke a couple more kids, freshmen that Derrick recognized from the hallways, walked up the driveway. “Hey man, we could hear you from across the street,” one of them said. His curly red hair sprayed out in every direction from his head. “Thought we’d come listen to you practice.”

  “Yeah, are you guys playing the talent show?” the other asked.

  There was now nearly a half dozen students in the driveway, turning this practice session into an impromptu concert, and Derrick could tell that AJ was loving it.

  “Yes we are,” AJ said into the microphone. “And now we’re going to play a song that my best friend here Derrick wrote.”

  Derrick began the riff for the new song, with the drums coming in behind him. The kids in the driveway began bobbing their heads and moving to the groove. AJ’s bass thumped in his chest and Derrick kept his eyes down on his guitar’s fretboard, not in fear of missing a note, but keeping his eyes averted from Rebecca’s gaze.

  As they finished the song, Dustin pounding on the crash cymbals and AJ making his bass rumble, the audience clapped.

  Rebecca called out, “Do you guys know ‘Shimmer’ by Fuel?”

  AJ nodded. “We do. Wanna hear it?”

  “Absolutely!” Her eyes lit up. She was normally quiet at school, but here, her face beamed with an excitement that Derrick had never seen before. She was actually quite gorgeous when she wasn’t brooding.

  AJ nodded to Derrick and he began the guitar intro to the song. He looked up at Rebecca who was absolutely beaming. She smiled at him as he played, and his stomach turned in knots. He thought about Haley next door, and how she hadn’t spoken to him since that night on the roof, how he’d been completely enamored with her since he saw her that first night they’d moved to Mount Vernon. But, now, here was Rebecca, who—though much different from Haley— he felt was more his type. Someone he could talk music with; someone that understood the things he was into. As they played the song she had requested, her infatuation with him apparent, Derrick felt it reciprocated in himself.

  Just as he started into the guitar solo of the song, Derrick’s playing was cut short by the sound of a siren at the road. He looked up from his guitar to see a police car pull up to the driveway, the lights spinning on the roof. The officer got out and began walking up the driveway. It was Doug, in uniform.

  He made a motion with his hand and mouthed, “Cut the music.” AJ and Dustin stopped as well, leaving only the hum from the amplifiers and the murmurs from the students who congregated in front of the garage.

  “Sorry guys,” Doug said. “We got a call of a noise disturbance over dispatch. You boys are going to have to cut it early today.”

  Derrick groaned. They were just getting into a groove. His nervousness had subsided and he was beginning to enjoy

  Doug turned to the students in the driveway behind him. “Show’s over. Time for you kids to go home.” Something in Rebecca’s face when he spoke looked like physical pain. Though Derrick could see it, see her eyes averted from the police officer, he didn’t understand her reaction.

  The six high school students who’d come to watch and listen to their band made their way out from the garage, with Rebecca and her friends climbing in the Ford sedan and driving off. Derrick pulled his guitar off his shoulder and flipped off his amplifier.

  “Hey, come here a second,” Doug said, motioning for Derrick.

  Derrick walked out of the garage and followed Doug to the idling police cruiser.

  “I don’t mind you guys using the garage as a rehearsal space, but if I get a call, I’ve got to shut you down,” he said.

  Derrick said, “I understand. We were probably a bit louder this time than normal because we had people from school who wanted to come listen.”

  Doug looked up for a moment and then back to Derrick. His eyes were stern, as was his tone. “I trust you to make good decisions on your own. But, I want you to know right now. Rebecca Winters is not welcome at this house. Ever. Do you understand?”

  Derrick was
taken aback, but instinctively said, “Yes sir.”

  “Good. I have to get back to the station,” Doug said. “You boys should go ahead and pack it up for the day, though.”

  Derrick acknowledged and said goodbye as Doug got in his car and drove off. Derrick trudged up the driveway back into the garage where his bandmates waited in confusion.

  “Everything alright?” AJ asked. “He looked pissed.”

  “What was that about?” Dustin said.

  “No,” Derrick said. “We have to find a new practice space.”

  ♪ ♪ ♪

  After a phone call to his parents that nearly devolved into him flat-out begging, Dustin hung up the phone and leaned against the wall. “They said yes,” he said with a sigh.

  After Doug had told them about the disturbance call, they’d come inside the house and Dustin called his parents to ask them if they could set up a rehearsal space in the warehouse area of their shop. Though reluctant at first, his dad finally capitulated.

  Derrick and AJ sighed almost in unison and then they all high-fived each other.

  “It’s going to take a few trips to get all our equipment over there,” Dustin said.

  “We’ll help tear your drum kit down and pack it up first,” AJ said.

  “That’ll be the hardest part. The speakers are heavy, but they don’t take as much time to set up,” Derrick said.

  The bed of Dustin’s Ford Ranger was large enough to fit their equipment in a couple of trips, so they got to work immediately on the drums. Once they were secured in the bed of the pickup, they hopped in, with AJ taking the cramped back seat.

  On the drive over, Dustin put in a tape and they discussed the instrumentation and how they’d record their demo over the break. From the backseat, AJ talked animatedly about the process, about how they’d be able to record their tracks independently and be able to overdub multiple guitars.