Two high school misfits who hate each other. One music competition where they have to work together. Can their love of classic 80s rock unite them?
************************************************************************************************
High...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
Side A: Mitzi
It's a delicate balance, putting on just enough makeup so that I feel like I look pretty, and not so much that Mom won't notice that I'm getting dressed up to go to the movies. Just enough that I don't feel like a hideous troll, not so much that Cameron thinks I'm getting pretty for him. Like the first day of school, it's all about a balance: looking nice but not too nice. I wear my jeans and Converse, and straighten my hair, and put on a cable-knit sweater. It's dark purple, so it's a step down from black but a step up from pink.
I told Cameron to text me when he gets here and not to come to the door. When I get the text that says here, I grab my bag and race down the stairs. "They're here!" I tell Mom and Dad, who are scrolling through the Netflix menu.
Mom starts to get up. "Oh! We'll finally get to meet—"
"We're running late!" I call. "You'll meet them next week, I promise!"
And I'm out the door.
I arrive at Cameron's dad's car breathless. It's an SUV, covered in the usual winter dirt. I open the back door only to find Cameron sitting in that seat.
"I'll go around," I say at the same time Cam says, "I'll move over."
He unbuckles and slides all the way over and I climb in.
"You must be Mitzi," Cam's dad says, looking at me in the rearview mirror. "We were beginning to wonder if you were real."
Cameron groans, loudly.
I don't want to say that my parents feel the same way about Cam, only they don't even know he's a boy, so I grimace and say, "Ha ha."
"You'll have to deal with my dad humor." Cam's dad starts to drive away, crawling down our road at the posted speed limit of 25. He'd better hurry up or my Mom will find some reason to come running out and catch us. "It's not every day my son has a first date."
I stop breathing.
"Dad, please," Cam moans.
"And I vowed, when I first learned that I would be having a boy, that I would embarrass the heck out of him when the time came."
"He seriously won't stop." Cam looks at me. Even in the darkness of the car, I can tell he's blushing. I have no idea what my own face is doing. All hopes of this not being a date have been smashed against the rocks.
"Ha ha," I say again.
"So what do you see in Cameron, anyway?" Cam's dad asks. "Was it his boyish charms, or his dashing good looks, both of which he gets from his father?"
"Um," I say.
When Cameron realizes this is all I'm going to say, he says, "It's the brains, which I get from Mom."
"Touché," Cam's dad says.
Cam and his dad go back forth all the way to the movies. I say as little as possible. I wish I could joke around with my parents like this. I wish my hands weren't sweating and my stomach wasn't gurgling.
