She’d said friend. All his daydreaming of her, of wanting to be more, he suddenly realized that all he would be is the boy next door. “Ty cheated on you! At your own party!” Derrick was indignant, both at Ty and the prospect of being just Haley’s friend. “Why are you so upset because someone finally stood up to him?”
Haley started crying. “Because I never thought you would stoop down to his level. I thought you were better than him. But, no. You’re just like every other boy out there, thinking that the only way to solve problems is to beat them out of someone else. Well that’s not the kind of friends I want.”
“Haley…” Derrick started, but she cut him off.
“Coming up here tonight was a mistake,” she said.
“No, it’s not. It’s okay. You can be mad at me. I get it.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out the tape he’d made her. “I made this for you last night.” He was hoping it would be an adequate peace offering, something that would replace the anger that she had for him. “It’s a mixtape of songs that make me think of you.”
She took it from him and looked at the label that he’d written in his ineloquent cursive. “This is really sweet, Derrick, but it doesn’t change what you did. I just thought you were better than that.”
He was flabbergasted. “I am better than him! I would never cheat on you, or bully other people. I would be a better—” He wanted to say I would be a better boyfriend to you, but he stopped himself.
“I didn’t say better than him. Just, better than making those kinds of choices. You attacked him,” she countered. “That’s what I can’t get over. It’s that you decided to be just like him.”
“Whatever,” Derrick said, no longer interested in arguing his case.
“I’m just going to go back inside,” Haley said. She stood up and made her way down to the shed where she’d jump down onto the grass below. “Thanks for the tape.”
“Yeah.”
She left him up there alone, and he sat for a little longer, pulling his headphones on and turning up the volume on his Walkman, drowning out his frustrations.
17
♪ Gin Blossoms – Hey Jealousy ♪
“I CANNOT BELIEVE you,” Dee said, fuming. She had hung up the phone with Coach Vargas, which, during the entire conversation, which was more mmmhmmm’s and I understand’s from her end, and had given Derrick a death stare that became more intense and fierier as the conversation continued.
Derrick sat at the kitchen bar, his head held low and ashamed. In hindsight, now, he knew that he wouldn’t be able to hide the altercation with Ty from his mom and Doug, despite his best efforts. He really thought he’d gotten away with it, and he’d spent the last few days after school in detention instead of at tennis practice.
But then, Coach Vargas had blown his cover, calling to offer his condolences that Doug and Dee wouldn’t be able to come to the last tournament of the season, and to offer Derrick a spot on the team next semester.
“You can say goodbye to whatever noise project you and your friends have been doing in the garage. You’re grounded,” she said.
“For how long?” Derrick asked. He knew this was a possibility, so he wasn’t angry. Instead, he accepted the punishment.
“Until next weekend. No friends, no phone, and no music in the garage,” she said.
“Mom, that’s not fair! We have to practice for the talent show!” he argued.
“I don’t care. Maybe you can spend this week thinking about your actions. You can play with your friends next weekend.”
Doug, who stood in the kitchen, a beer from the fridge in hand, simply shrugged at Derrick. “The boss has spoken,” he said.
“I’m sorry, mom,” Derrick said. “I just couldn’t stand it anymore. He beat up AJ really bad, and I just lost it.”
“That’s not what I’m mad about,” she said. “I’m mad that you tried to hide it from us. Had you just told us what happened or what was going on, we’d be much more understanding. Don’t hide things from us.”
“I was just worried that I’d get in trouble for nearly getting suspended.” He cradled his chin in his hands, his elbows on the counter.
“I’m more mad that you didn’t tell us the truth. I don’t want you fighting, but I will never fault you for sticking up for your friends. However, this behavior is unacceptable,” she said. Then, with a huff, “Now go to your room.”
Derrick stood from the barstool and shuffled his feet down the hallway to his bedroom. He threw himself onto his bed and stared at the ceiling, watching the fan spin lazily, the blades rounding the base but not doing much to circulate air through the room.
Everything had gone to hell, all at once.
His amplifier was blown, though there would be no band practices anyway because he was grounded for the rest of the week. AJ and Dustin would be upset because their practice and rehearsal time was limited with the talent show just a month away. Except, there wouldn't be much practicing anyway because his amplifier was still with Ben.
On top of all that, Haley still wouldn’t look at him, much less talk to him. He’d caught her in the hallway in the morning before class and tried to talk to her, but she turned the other way, leaving him slack-jawed in the middle of the lockers. Even after school, he’d seen her going to tennis practice, and she turned the other way when she’d seen him.
From the living room, he could hear Sabrina the Teenage Witch on the television. Cassandra was laughing on the phone with one of her friends as they watched the show together. Scrounging around in his backpack, Derrick found his Pearl Jam tape and shoved it into his Walkman. Sliding the headphones over his ears, he turned the volume up. This was not how he wanted his Friday night to go. As he listened to the sounds of Pearl Jam, he looked over at his guitar, the Telecaster almost useless without the amplifier. He thought about picking at it, practicing some of the riffs that he’d written with the band, but they would sound lifeless without the volume and crunch that his now-blown amplifier could provide. On top of that, his hand was still sore from the fight. It was getting better, the bruising on his knuckles slowly receding, but they still throbbed when he made a fist or wrapped his hand around the neck of his Telecaster.
His bedroom door opened, and he pulled the headphones down around his neck. Cassandra stood in the open doorway. “That Ben guy is on the phone for you,” she said. “I told him you were grounded and you couldn’t talk to friends, but he said it’s about some business stuff? Anyway, can you make it quick? Me and Lindsey are watching Sabrina together.”
Derrick stood from his bed and he took the cordless handset from his sister and held it to his ear. “Hello?”
“Hey man, it’s Ben. I’m working on your amp,” the voice on the phone said.
“Oh, hey man. What did you find out?”
“Well, it’s not good news, little dude,” Ben said.
Derrick sunk into himself and groaned.
“The speaker cone is damaged and you’ll have to get the entire speaker replaced. Sherman can sell you one, and it’ll be about fifty dollars.”
“Fifty dollars?!” Derrick almost doubled over. The only time he’d ever have that kind of money would be close to his birthday, but that was still almost five months away. He could mow lawns in the summer for money, but summer had long past and the grass in the neighborhoods was dormant. Even then, he’d need to mow five whole lawns to get that much. “I can’t afford that.” He leaned against the wall, his head falling to his chest.
“I know, it’s not a cheap repair,” Ben said. “But, it definitely won’t work without it.”
The talent show was a month away, and they were already going to lose out on two weeks of practices because of him. He sighed. “Alright. I’ll figure it out,” he said.
“Cool man. Let me give you my number so you can call me back when you get the speaker. Write down the model number too,” Ben said.
Derrick scrounged around his backpack for a pencil and a notebook and wrote down the informati
on. He thanked Ben and handed the phone back to Cassandra.
She shut his door and left him again by himself, this time even worse than when she’d come in. He tossed himself onto the bed and jammed his face into the pillow.
It all seemed so overwhelming. The amp, grounding, Haley, all of it.
Pulling the headphones back over his ears, he let Eddie Vedder sing him to sleep.
♪ ♪ ♪
The rest of the weekend went slowly and boring, though Derrick convinced his mom to let him use the computer on Sunday evening to look up some information on the internet for school. She eventually capitulated, with express instructions to be done before 10:30. She and Doug had gone upstairs to go to bed, leaving Derrick in the glow of the computer screen in the living room. While he did his school work, some research on Julius Caesar and Mark Antony for Mrs. Rogers’ English class, he downloaded some songs on Napster. He was searching for some of the punk music that Ben had told him about at the music store, and he found some Fugazi songs as well as a band called The Juliana Theory. It felt like there was this entire underground scene he’d never heard of.
The songs that he downloaded, he planned to copy them to a tape after school the next day. He’d have a few hours before his mom got home from work that he’d be able to use the computer again.
He wished he had a CD player in his room. It would be easy to burn the songs onto a disc and he wouldn’t have to wait for every song to play onto the tape. He had had a boombox with a CD changer built in on his Christmas wish list, but until then, he’d have to stick with tapes.
Making the mixtapes also kept his mind off his injured hand and playing guitar. Doug had looked at it, twisted the digits on his left hand and determined that nothing was broken, but that he would need to rest it. Which meant no guitar playing for at least a week, if not longer.
Everything had gone to hell, all at once.
While on the computer, he was checking the download status when Cassandra walked into the living room.
“Is that Napster?” she asked.
“Yeah, just getting a few songs for a mixtape,” he said.
“Oooh,” she said. “Can you download some songs for me?”
“Yeah, after I finish up with these. What do you need?” he asked.
“Lindsay wanted a mix CD with some of the new N’Sync and Britney Spears. Do you think you could download some songs if I give you a list?” she asked.
“Sure,” he said.
“Great. I’ll split the money with you.”
Derrick’s eyes shot up from the screen. “What money?”
“Apparently we’re the only family with a CD burner. She said she’d give me ten dollars if I burned a mix CD for her, but I don’t know how to do it,” Cassandra said.
Derrick nearly jumped out of the chair. “Oh my god, Cass, you’re a genius!” he exclaimed louder than he’d intended.
Cassandra gave him a confused look, but Derrick was already excited. “How many other people do you know that need CD’s like this?”
“I don’t know, a few maybe. Why?”
“I need to make fifty dollars to get my amp fixed,” he explained. “This is going to be so easy. If we get ten people to give us ten bucks each, we both make fifty dollars. We can take orders at school tomorrow and have the discs delivered on Friday.”
“Fifty dollars?” she asked. “What if we did that every week? That’s fifty dollars before every weekend. I could literally buy a new outfit every Saturday.”
He did a quick calculation in his head. At just ten discs per week, he could make two every night and have them all ready for the end of the week. He could have Cassandra take the orders, and he could spend the evenings downloading the songs. With some luck, most kids who wanted pop music would invariably want some of the same songs, so he’d only have to download them once.
“Yeah, this is the best idea you’ve ever had,” he said. “Tomorrow, I need you to get as many orders as possible. I need to get my amp fixed before I’m ungrounded so I can be ready to practice with my band again.”
Cassandra agreed to the plan and Derrick began downloading the songs from the list she’d given him. Luckily, he had a couple of them from the mixtapes he’d already made for Haley. He looked at the clock in the bottom corner of the screen, and it read just before ten. He could get a couple more songs in before he had to shut off the computer.
He had an epiphany, though. No one needed the telephone while they were all asleep, so he could keep the computer connected to the internet all night. He could set all the songs he needed to download and have them ready in the morning. This idea was getting easier and easier every moment.
As he got the songs on Cassandra’s list in the download queue in Napster, his ICQ messenger application dinged and he opened the window that he’d minimized at the bottom of the screen. It was from AJ.
* * *
AJ: Hey man. Are you doing that
assignment about Caesar?
Derrick: Yeah, just finished.
AJ: We jamming tomorrow?
Derrick: I’m grounded. Mom found out about the fight. Plus my hand is still jacked. :(
AJ: Damn dude. I’m sorry.
How long till you can play?
Derrick: Til next weekend
AJ: …
Derrick: I know.
But I’ll have my amp fixed
before then so I’ll be ready to
practice for the talent show.
AJ: Cool dude. Meet me at
the corner in the morning.
I have an idea for the band.
Derrick: Alright. See you
in the am.
* * *
Derrick logged off chat and, with his list of songs set to download, turned off the monitor. He would get up to check it in the morning to make sure all the songs downloaded.
In his bedroom, he pulled his clothes off and threw them into the basket in the corner. He crawled under his sheets, but sleep was hard to harness. All he could think about was that he’d just found the solution to all his problems.
Well, all except one.
Because no matter how much money he could make from selling the burned CDs at school, no matter how quickly these two weeks could go by, Haley was still not talking to him. He passed her in the hall and she barely looked at him. When she once smiled and lit up when he walked into Biology class, she barely noticed when he took his seat next to her.
That was the one thing that stung the most. As he fell asleep, he thought about her, on the roof. In his half-conscious visions, in the dream-state halfway between awake and asleep, he gave her the mixtape. She nestled her head on his shoulder and then, as he turned his head to hers, she leaned in and kissed him.
18
♪ Pearl Jam – Spin the Black Circle♪
DERRICK MET AJ at the corner on their walk to school. After all weekend of being grounded, of not being able to talk on the phone or see his friends, it was nice to finally feel like he was free from the house and out from the tyranny of groundation.
“Alright, so I have this idea for the band,” AJ said excitedly. “You know, we are going to win this talent show.” As he talked, he moved his hands like he’d had a dozen cups of coffee before school. “I mean, that’s a given. We’re just too good. Anyway, once that happens, everybody will want more music from us. They’ll want us to play concerts and all kinds of stuff. Well, for Christmas, I’m going to ask for a four-track recorder. What if we spent the entire Christmas break recording a demo tape?”
Derrick thought about it. Though he wasn’t as certain that they’d actually win the competition, there was a definite allure to recording their songs. “That sounds awesome,” he said. “We have five songs now. That’s enough for an EP.”
“Exactly. We can record it over the break, and then when we get back to school, we can sell them,” AJ said.
“Do you think people would actually buy them?” Derrick asked.
“When we win this talent
show, we’ll be the most popular guys in school,” AJ said.
“What if we don’t go back?” Derrick asked.
“What do you mean?”
“What if this Y2K thing really does knock out all the computer systems and they can’t open the schools back up?” He kicked an aluminum can in the street and it bounced against the concrete curb.
“I don’t think that’s actually going to happen. My dad says the media is just trying to scare us all into buying stuff. But even if it does happen, if all the computers go out, I’ve thought of that already. Tapes are analog. So, the only way to listen to music will be cassettes, and the kids at our school will want music anyway. Either way, it’s a win-win!” AJ said.
“Well, I hope you’re right,” Derrick said.
As they walked to school in the late autumn morning, their breath visible in the cold air as they spoke, Derrick was glad to be out of the house. “I need your help with something,” he said.
“What?”
“Ask everyone you know if they want a mix CD. Any songs they want. Ten songs for ten dollars. I’m gonna make these custom mixes for people so I can get my amplifier fixed,” Derrick said.
“That’s a great idea!” AJ said. “You have a CD burner?”
“Yeah, Doug’s computer has one. Apparently he has to burn CDs to back up files for work or something. Last night, I left the computer on all night and was able to download twelve songs. I’m hoping a bunch of kids want the same songs so it’ll go faster. But, if I can get ten orders, I’ll have enough money to fix my amp.”
“Dude, yes. If we get enough orders, you can buy a whole new amp! What if we get to this talent show and you’re playing through a Marshall stack?” AJ said.
Derrick thought about it. That would be the ultimate rockstar look, standing in front of a giant tower of speakers. Though, even at ten dollars per custom CD, he would have to sell a CD to nearly every kid in the tenth grade in order to make something like that happen.
Mixtape for the End of the World Page 11