Mixtape for the End of the World

by Andrew J Brandt

  “Marco!” he called out.

  And a whisper from right beside him said, “Polo.”

  He spun, his arms wild, catching nothing but water and air.

  “You missed,” the voice said again, this time to his right. He faked reaching once and then dove for the source of the voice, feeling his hands on skin.

  Derrick opened his eyes, his blonde hair falling over them, and caught a face full of chlorinated water from Haley splashing him. She was laughing. “I thought I had you fooled,” she said.

  Dustin came up from beneath the water and looked at the watch on his wrist. “Have you guys seen Lindsey? I have to be home in twenty minutes.”

  A couple of the girls looked around. “She said she was going to the bathroom,” one of them said.

  Dustin climbed from the pool and dried himself off with the towel he’d left on the back of one of the lawn chairs on the patio. He went inside while the rest of the party went back to the game of Marco Polo, with Haley as the new Marco. A few moments later, there was a commotion from the patio door as Dustin came back out to the backyard. His face was ghost-white and he grabbed his bag and went for the gate at the fence without saying a word to anyone else. The entire party went completely silent.

  Their collective mouths dropped when Lindsey followed him out the door, in tears, begging him to stop, to talk to her.

  And behind her, Ty came out, his face somehow both embarrassed and smug.

  No one said a word. Everyone understood exactly what had happened. Haley immediately burst into tears herself, climbing out of the pool and running inside the house, shoving Ty out of the way. A couple of girls followed her in, each of them glaring at Ty as they did.

  Derrick and AJ stood silently in the pool, the only ones still in it. Then, AJ leaned into Derrick and shrugged. “Looks like Dustin has some free time now.”

  11

  ♪Nirvana – Smells Like Teen Spirit♪

  IN THE WEEKS after the pool party, and the social aftermath of Ty and Lindsey’s very public outing of cheating on their respective girlfriend and boyfriend, Derrick barely had enough time to breathe. Between schoolwork, tennis practice and fitting in time to play music with AJ and Dustin, it was all very frantic. On top of that, his mom and Doug were putting the finishing touches on their wedding plans, with the date just a single week away.

  The rehearsal space in the garage was beginning to get cramped with wedding supplies stacked where it would fit. Family and friends from all over would be descending onto Mount Vernon soon, and everyone in the house was rushing about, trying to get everything in order before the big day. Even AJ had been put to work by Dee, as he’d been the one tasked with counting the cases of water and sodas and stacking them.

  On the last Saturday before the wedding, Derrick and AJ were sitting on their amplifiers in the garage waiting for Dustin to show up so they could practice. Dustin was the only one of them with a job, as he was a grade older than them, so they had to schedule their practices around his work schedule.

  Derrick was restringing his Telecaster with a pack of strings he’d picked up from Sherman’s. They were a new style called Hybrid Slinkys, from the same Ernie Ball brand that he and AJ both liked. He found that they helped make his guitar sound heavier while giving him a lighter high end for doing solos and riffs on the high-pitched strings.

  AJ picked at his bass, a Squier Jazz that he’d picked up at Sherman’s as well. He’d bought it with money that he was saving for a car. A bass was more important right now, and he had told Derrick he still had six more months to save money for a car. It did make the practices sound more like a band instead of just three guys playing instruments. The bottom end gave some oomph to the rhythm. Derrick could feel it in his chest when AJ would turn up the volume.

  “I’ve got it,” AJ said.

  “What?”

  “Our band name.”

  “Oh yeah?” Derrick asked.

  “Yeah. We should be called Feedback.”

  Derrick considered it for a moment. “I like it. Unless we suck. Then people will say ‘Wow you guys sound like a bunch of feedback.’”

  “Maybe you’re right,” AJ capitulated and he went back to noodling on the bass, playing a sequence of notes that, to Derrick, started to take a shape as a cool riff.

  Dustin pulled up to the curb by the street and walked up the driveway. “Sorry I’m late,” he said. “My parents had me take care of a shipment that came in at the store.”

  AJ stood up and ensured his bass amp was powered on. He plucked a few notes on his instrument, the rumble coming from the amp reverberating through the garage. “It’s all good. Glad you’re here though. Derrick and I were thinking up band names.”

  “AJ likes Feedback, but I’m partial to The Hype,” Derrick said.

  Dustin sat at his drum set tucked in the corner of the garage. Every day, more and more wedding supplies surrounded it. He pulled a pair of drumsticks from his pants and hit the toms and crash cymbal to warm up. “I had an idea, but feel free to shoot it down,” he said.

  “No, give it to us,” Derrick said. “We’re all ears.”

  “Well, we’re a three-piece, like Rush and Nirvana. So I was thinking of single word names like that. I came up with Stealth.”

  Derrick and AJ looked at each other and nodded.

  “Stealth. I like it,” AJ said.

  “Me too,” Derrick agreed.

  “Cool,” Dustin said. “Stealth it is.” He counted out to four and began a beat.

  The sound coming from their instruments was the most amazing thing Derrick had ever heard, the feeling of being a band the most exhilarating experience. The three of them, here in this garage, it was like a dream come true. As they played through “Smells Like Teen Spirit” by Nirvana, he couldn’t help but smile the entire time. So many bands had started just like this, in a garage. He wondered how far they’d be able to take it. Were there countless cities and stages and tours in their future?

  AJ’s voice cut through the sound through an amplifier they had facing them, and Derrick was impressed with his skills of singing while playing the bass guitar. It really helped to solidify the sound as a band.

  After they’d played the song through, AJ pulled a sheet of notebook paper from his back pocket. “I wrote some lyrics, and I think I have a pretty good bass line to go with it. The song is called ‘Undivided’ and it kind of goes like this.” He played the riff that he had been practicing, pulling off and hammering on the A string of the bass.

  Derrick looked at Dustin and they nodded their approval. As AJ played the riff, Dustin began playing a beat in time with it, locking in to the rhythm of the bass line. Derrick watched, paid attention to the notes and hit a few power chords.

  AJ leaned into the microphone and began to sing the melody that he’d come up with for the lyrics. The song had a very Collective Soul feel to it, and Derrick matched his guitar playing to match that kind of style, playing a riff to match the syncopated rhythm of the bass.

  AJ held his hands up. “Guys, guys,” he said. “That was perfect. Derrick, that riff, I want to start the song with that, and then Dustin and I will come in after a couple of measures.”

  Dustin nodded his agreement. “Yeah, I think it’ll hit heavier if we do that.”

  As the boys discussed the song, they played through it a few more times, building up a chorus and a bridge. After they had it down to what they liked, they played the whole thing through. Derrick loved it. Though it was clear to him that AJ was the dreamer between the two of them, hearing the song that they’d written together made him giddy about the possibilities.

  What if they won the talent show?

  What if they were to keep this going?

  What if they played their own concerts?

  What if they moved to Seattle and joined the music scene up there?

  As the three boys discussed the song and were about to play it again, two shapes appeared in the light of the opening of the garage door. It was Ha
ley and Makenna. “Hey guys,” Haley said. “We could hear you from the backyard.”

  “I didn’t know you guys had a band,” Makenna said. “That’s so cool.”

  AJ gave Derrick a knowing glance, as if to say, See? I told you.

  Derrick’s eyes, however, were on Haley. She still had a sense of sadness to her. As she looked down at the ground, her tennis shoes shuffling some loose rocks on the pavement, Derrick realized he hadn’t been able to talk to her much the last three weeks after the fiasco at the pool party. Tennis practice and tournaments were quick and busy affairs and she was often surrounded by her close friends, usually with a “no boys allowed” attitude. She finally met his gaze and he gave her a tight-lipped smile.

  “What songs do you know?” Makenna asked.

  AJ stepped up to the microphone, his voice loud with an echo of reverb through the amplifier. “We know some Nirvana, some Collective Soul,” he said.

  “Ooh! Do you know that new one? ‘Heavy’?” she asked.

  AJ nodded at Derrick. “Let’s rock their faces off,” he said.

  Derrick started on the main riff, and AJ and Dustin came in after a measure. AJ’s voice wasn’t as raspy or breathy as the singer’s from Collective Soul, but he did a good job of imitating it. After the second chorus, Derrick tore into a guitar solo, showing off with some finger-tapping moves. He didn’t have a wah pedal that Collective Soul’s lead guitarist used, but he made do with some string bends and switching to the bridge pickup of the Telecaster which helped the higher-pitched notes cut through the bass and drums. His eyes stayed on the fretboard of his instrument, but he occasionally glanced up at Haley. Though she watched with her arms crossed, she was bobbing her head to the beat. Makenna was all eyes on AJ, and he seemingly knew it, throwing a wink her way.

  They finished the song and both girls clapped, Makenna more lively than Haley.

  “Wow!” Makenna said. “That was really good!”

  “Thanks,” AJ said. “We’re hoping to win the talent show at the end of the semester.”

  “You guys definitely will,” she said.

  “How about another song?” he asked. The girls nodded their approval, and he leaned into his two bandmates. “Alright, let’s do that one we just came up with.”

  Derrick and Dustin nodded, and they began playing the song. It filled Derrick with the same sense of pride and wonder, and as he played the main riff, he decided to give it some flair. Coming up on a note, he pre-bent the string in anticipation of it, a little trick called a “ghost bend” he’d learned watching blues guitarists. As he came to the note in the sequence, he’d have the string bent to the sound he’d want it to make and then pull it back down to give it a sliding effect.

  Except he bent the string too far and as he plucked it, the string snapped from the instrument and slapped him in the eye. His guitar made an awful sound and he immediately let go of the instrument and reached for his face. The rest of the band stopped when they realized what had happened. AJ took Derrick’s face in his hands and examined it.

  “Can you open your eye?” AJ asked.

  Derrick did, but it was filled with water and it stung.

  “Okay, looks like it didn’t hit the eyeball itself, just got you right beside it.”

  Derrick exhaled, but still kept his hand to it, tears welling up.

  The girls came up to console him, but Derrick waved them off, now more embarrassed than actually in pain. Makenna groaned with the end of the show, and told the guys goodbye. Haley gave Derrick a slight smile before following her friend back to her house.

  “Sorry,” Derrick said after the girls left. “I was trying to get too fancy with it.” Looking at the clock above the toolbox in the garage, it was nearly time to close it up for the evening anyway. If not, his mom would be out here complaining about their loud music.

  “It sounded great. Get fancy more often,” AJ said.

  “I don’t know about you guys,” Dustin said, standing up from the drum kit and stretching, “but that song we wrote is rad. That’s what I want to play at the talent show.” He stepped out from behind the kit.

  “I’m glad you like it.” AJ coiled up his instrument and microphone cables. “I’ve been working on that idea for a long time.”

  Derrick continued to touch his face where the string had slapped him. It still stung and he was certain it would bruise, though he’d be embarrassed to tell anyone that he got a black eye from a broken guitar string.

  After they’d packed up their instruments, coiled everything up and tucked the amplifiers against the wall, Dustin and AJ left. They agreed to practice again later in the week, on Wednesday. It was the only free evening that Derrick would have due to preparations for his mom and Doug’s wedding the next weekend. Derrick shut the garage door as his bandmates got in Dustin’s car.

  As he went inside, he was still humming the tune that they’d written. It was catchy, like an earworm. He couldn’t believe that they’d written it themselves.

  ♪ ♪ ♪

  After dinner—his mom’s spaghetti and meatballs with store-bought frozen garlic bread—Dee and Doug sat at the dining room table going over final plans for the wedding, which was scheduled for next weekend. Receipts, lists and cards were strewn all over the table’s surface. The stress of the impending day must have been getting to his mom, Derrick thought, because she was being snippy and short with Doug as they went over the checklist of everything they would need before the day of the wedding.

  Instead of finding himself on the losing end of one of his mom’s tirades, Derrick opted to do the dishes, placing them in the dishwasher and then getting out of the kitchen as quickly as possible. Recently, one of his favorite things to do was to climb up onto the roof and listen to one of his mixtapes while looking at the stars above. He would climb onto the storage shed that was tucked next to the house in the backyard and then hoist himself onto the roof from there. It was peaceful up there, no one getting short or sarcastic with him.

  He was ready for this wedding to be over and done with so that they could get on with just living life. Lately, everything revolved around the upcoming ceremony. He’d already played in two tennis tournaments—one against Cap City and the other against Murfreesboro—but neither his mom nor Doug had been able to come watch him play due to their preoccupation with and preparations for the wedding. It was beginning to be too much. When he was home, his mom seemed stressed and kept nitpicking tiny details about the wedding and their plans.

  After the Saturday ceremony, she and Doug would be gone for four days on their honeymoon, not returning from Santa Fe until midweek the next week. Derrick and Cassandra were going to be alone for those four nights. Even though Derrick had no intentions of doing anything wrong, he knew that the idea that he and his sister would be left alone filled his mom with anxiety, despite how many times Doug reminded her that he’d have officers running beat checks in the neighborhood every night.

  So, now, he climbed onto the roof with his Walkman clipped to the hip of his bootcut jeans. His Chuck Taylors gripped the shingles and he climbed up to the place on the roof that wasn’t as steep as the rest of it. The house’s second story was off to the south end, but just above the garage, he could sit on the shingles comfortably and watch the stars above and the occasional shooting star that would wink in the night sky.

  Derrick was fumbling with the cassette in his Walkman when he heard a voice. “Hey.”

  He looked down, and saw Haley standing at the wooden privacy fence that separated their yards.

  “Hey,” he said.

  “What are you doing up there?”

  “Just getting away from everyone for a bit,” he said.

  “Can I come up there with you?” she asked. “I’d like to get away from everyone for a bit too.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “Come to the gate, and then I’ll help you up here.”

  She went around the side of the fence to the gate and a few seconds later, Derrick helped her onto the shed and
then onto the house. Haley sat next to him on the still-warm shingles. The night air was cool, and she sat close to him. Derrick felt his heart racing the way it did every time she was around.

  Up close, he saw that her face looked swollen from crying. Her cheeks red and flushed, her eyelids puffy and makeup-free.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked.

  “My dad is freaking me out about this Y2K stuff,” she said. “When we got those information packets at the beginning of the year, I didn’t think it was a big deal. But he’s talking about losing our house and stuff. I don’t know. Maybe he’s overreacting, but it’s so scary.”

  “I don’t understand,” Derrick said. “Why would you lose your house?”

  “Something about his investments, and he said that the market is volatile, whatever that means,” Haley said. “Between him and Makenna’s parents, it just makes me feel like something bad is going to happen, and there’s nothing we can do to stop it.”

  “What’s going on with Makenna’s parents?” Derrick asked. When the girls were at his house earlier listening to the guys practice, she seemed happy and excited.

  “Her parents are, like, hoarding stuff like canned foods and water. They think that if the computers shut down, there won’t be any way to buy stuff at the grocery store and no way to get your money out of the bank,” she said.

  “Whoa,” Derrick looked out at the dark horizon and watched a blinking red light zoom in front of the white blinking dots.

  “Has your step dad said anything about it? Is the city preparing for an emergency if all the computers shut down?” she asked.

  “Honestly, I have no clue. I don’t see him very often. He’s always working, and when he’s not, he and my mom have been planning their wedding,” Derrick said. “I’m just ready for everything to settle down. Everything has been happening so fast.” He glanced at her, and she held her head low. “I’ll ask him, though, if it’ll make you less worried about it.”