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.
“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.