Three Days Later . . .
The alarm went off and Mitchie hit the snooze button. Her entire body was sore, and she wanted ten more minutes just to lie perfectly still.
Although she had been dreading the thought of leaving Camp Rock, two solid days of cleaning and scrubbing had made her much more open to the idea. In those two days, a place that had once been filled with music and friends was now one that only inspired visions of brushes, brooms, and aching muscles.
On the other side of the cabin, her best friend and roommate, Caitlyn, was sleeping fitfully. After a summer filled with countless late-night talks about everything from camp to boys to their favorite bands, Caitlyn had become what Mitchie always imagined a sister would be like.
“Arrrgggh,” Caitlyn said as she snapped awake with a sudden yelp.
“What’s the matter?” Mitchie asked, startled.
Caitlyn looked around the room to get her bearings. “I was having another nightmare,” she said, her heart still racing.
“What was this one about?”
“A giant bathroom that could never be fully cleaned,” she answered, panting. “It was horrible.”
Mitchie fought the urge to laugh.
“Well, the bathrooms are all clean now,” she assured her. “Come on, it’s time to get up.”
Caitlyn nodded. “I think I need a long, hot shower.”
“Good idea,” Mitchie told her.
Caitlyn was still in the shower when Mitchie left the cabin and headed for the Mess Hall of Fame. It felt strange to walk across camp with everything so quiet and empty.
A gust of chilly air blew across the lake, and Mitchie flipped up the collar of her fleece jacket. Summer was definitely ending. She and her mother were leaving for home early the next morning. Soon school would start, and it would be homework and quizzes and . . .
When Mitchie opened the door to the kitchen, the first face she saw was Shane’s.
Not a bad way to start the last day, she thought.
“Crikey, it’s early,” Shane said, speaking in an exaggerated British accent. “How ye doin’ on this fine day?”
Mitchie laughed. “I’m, like, totally radical,” she replied, trying her best to sound like a surfer girl.
“Is this all part of Brown’s big plan?” Mitchie’s mom asked as she expertly scrambled some eggs in a skillet.
“Like, totally,” Mitchie answered.
Mitchie quickly filled her mother in on the situation. Originally Brown had just wanted each of them to perform a song from a different era of rock and roll. But sometime over the past three days, he’d also decided he wanted them to try to stay in character as much as possible during the final day.
“He says it will make everything more authentic,” Shane said, still working on his British accent.
“And you would be?” Connie asked him.
“I’m straight out of the British Invasion of the sixties. You must have been there—the Rolling Stones, the Who, the Beatles.”
“Actually,” Connie said as she jokingly gave him the stink-eye, “I’m not quite old enough to have experienced all that firsthand. But of course I’ve heard their music.”
“I’m sorry,” Shane said as he flashed a guilty smile and momentarily broke character. “I didn’t mean to imply that you were old or anything.”
“It’s okay,” Connie said with a laugh. “I know you guys think anything older than twenty-one is ancient.” She turned to her daughter. “And you would be?”
“I’m, like, totally the new wave and pop scene from the early eighties,” Mitchie said, twisting a strand of hair around her finger as she talked. “It’s grody to the max!”
Connie laughed. “That, I did experience,” she said. “That was my era. You should have seen me. I had all the clothes. I had all the posters. I even had an autographed picture of Belinda Carlisle. It was epic.”
“Wait a second,” Mitchie said. “I know that name. Linda Carlisle. I was reading up on new wave bands the other day. What group was she in? Bananarama?”
“As if?” Mrs. Torres responded in perfect eighties slang. “First of all, it’s Belinda, not Linda. And she was only the lead singer of my favorite group, the Go-Go’s.”
“That’s right, the Go-Go’s,” Mitchie said, remembering. “I never knew they were your favorite group.”
“I saw them in concert three times,” Connie added, suddenly bopping to a beat in her head. She scooped the eggs from the skillet onto their plates.
“Thanks,” Mitchie said, smiling at her mom’s moves. She took a deep breath. “These smell great.”
“Actually,” Connie corrected. “Back in the day, we would have said they smelled gnarly.”
“Gnarly’s good?” Mitchie asked, perplexed.
Connie nodded. “To the max.”
Shane took a bite of egg and smiled as if it was the most delicious thing he’d ever eaten. He started serenading Connie to the tune of the Beatles song “Yesterday.”
Scrambled eggs
How I love to eat your scrambled eggs
Mitchie laughed. “What’s that supposed to be?”
“Paul McCartney,” Shane answered. “When he wrote the song ‘Yesterday,’ he started with the music. He used the words scrambled eggs until he came up with yesterday. I learned that from my research. And it also happens to fit this particular occasion.”
“That’s pretty cool,” Mitchie said, impressed. Shane had really done his homework.
In between all the cleaning and packing, they had tried to learn as much as they could about their different eras.
“The more you know about them, the more you understand their music,” Brown had told everybody. “And the more you understand their music, the more you understand your own.”
Research meant listening to songs and hanging out in the camp library, which was filled with books, classic performance videos, and neatly organized stacks of Brown’s music magazines.
In fact, the library had been a key to their survival during cleanup. Whenever they were too tired to continue working, they were allowed to take a break and head there. And, since Brown wanted them to have access to everything, he didn’t make them clean out the library. He would take care of it himself.
“What song are you doing tonight?” Mitchie asked Shane as they left the kitchen and walked out into the dining room.
“I still haven’t decided,” he answered. “It’s so hard to settle on one.”
“Tell me about it,” she answered with a sigh. “Well, we’ve got until eight o’clock, I guess.”
The dining room was empty and all the tables but one had been folded up and pushed against the wall. Mitchie sat down first and smiled when Shane took the seat right next to her.
When the summer started, all Mitchie knew about Shane was what she had seen on Hot Tunes or read in the gossip magazines. And almost all of that was negative. According to them, the lead singer of Connect Three was just another spoiled rotten rock star.
Now she knew that despite some well-publicized mistakes, Shane was a terrific guy.
They had become close friends and loved to goof around, talk in-depth about music, and go for the occasional canoe ride. Now she wondered what it was going to be like when she went back to the real world and he returned to superstardom.
A few minutes later, they were joined by Colby. Brown had given him alternative rock and grunge, so he was trying his best to seem deep and thoughtful. At least as deep and thoughtful as he could manage while also eating a breakfast big enough to feed half the grunge bands in Seattle.
“What is all that?” Shane asked in stunned amazement.
“It’s my last breakfast with Mrs. Torres,” Colby said with a smile as he ran over the menu. “She made me all my favorites. Breakfast burrito, Texas toast and bacon, the hash browns she makes with the little peppers and onions, and orange juice.”
“That’s unbelievable,” Shane responded. “You’re not even human.”
“Don’t listen to him, Colby,” Mitchie said. “You have made my mom’s summer. She loves cooking for people who appreciate her food so much.”
Colby smiled and said something that they couldn’t quite understand because he was chewing a big chunk of Texas toast at the same time.
At that moment, Caitlyn entered from the kitchen, carrying a tray loaded with enough food to rival Colby’s. She actually wasn’t walking with her tray so much as she was swaggering with it. It was all part of her role. She had been assigned hip-hop and was already fully into character. “Yo, yo, yo, word up!”
“Word,” Shane replied as they bumped fists and she sat down.
There was a moment of silence, and then everybody laughed, no one louder than Caitlyn.
There was something kind of funny about little Caitlyn trying to act like an oversize rap personality. But the truth was, Caitlyn loved hip-hop and had been thrilled when Brown assigned it to her.
Tess came in right after Caitlyn carrying a tray containing a bowl of cereal, fresh fruit, and a glass of orange juice. Even though they were indoors and it was summer, Tess was wearing sunglasses and a scarf. The funny thing was that Mitchie couldn’t tell if she was in costume or just being Tess.
Colby swallowed a hunk of breakfast burrito and finally came up for air long enough to talk. “How’s it going, Miss Thang?”
“That would be Miss Diva,” Tess corrected. “A Motown diva, to be exact.”
Shane couldn’t help but laugh. “That’s a stretch.”
Mitchie swallowed nervously, not sure how Tess was going to react. But after pretending to have hurt feelings for a moment, Tess flashed a huge smile and rolled her eyes. “I have absolutely no idea why Brown picked that for me.”
Now they all laughed, and Mitchie sighed with relief. She and Tess had gotten off to a rough start, but things had gotten much better since, and she now considered Tess a friend. At least here at camp. Mitchie wondered if they’d still keep in touch during the school year.
“Where’s Lorraine?” Caitlyn asked right before she took a bite out of an apple.
No one had seen her.
Just then Mrs. Torres came in carrying a basket of blueberry muffins and singing something that Mitchie didn’t recognize. She assumed it was a Go-Go’s song.
“Here you go, guys,” Connie said as she put the muffins in the center of the table.
“Muffins, too?” Mitchie asked.
Connie shrugged. “Today’s the last day. So I’m cooking whatever we’ve got left. It’s either that or throw it out.”
“Heaven,” Colby said as he grabbed a muffin and took a bite. “I’m in heaven.”
The others shared a look.
“Amazing,” Caitlyn said. “He’s like an eating machine.”
“Mom, have you seen Lorraine?” Mitchie asked.
“She was the first one here this morning,” Connie explained. “She wanted me to tell you all that as soon as you were done with breakfast, you should head over to wardrobe. She has a surprise for you.”
“I wonder what it is,” Colby said.
“Maybe, if you’re lucky, it will be more food,” Caitlyn joked.
“Nah,” Colby said, totally missing the fact that she was kidding. “You know how she is about food around her clothes. Although, I could go for something sweet to hold me over till lunch.”
The others just laughed, because they knew that despite the feast he had just consumed, Colby was one hundred percent serious.