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?
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High...
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Side A: Mitzi
In my workshop I turn on my old boombox and tune into the classic rock station. Dad always moans about all the 80s songs, saying, "The eighties weren't that long ago!" and I have to remind him that I was born two decades later. "They shouldn't be playing Nirvana, at least! The nineties aren't oldies!"
The first song that comes on is Journey, one of my favorites. I start singing along. "Wheel in the sky keeps on turning! I don't know where I'll be tomo-o-rrow-oh-oh-oh!"
Normally I'm knee-deep in a project before I start belting, but clearly my mood is up. Why? No need to keep an eye on my phone for if Shawna texts. And Cameron's still mad at me, so he's not texting. Phone-free afternoon, the way I like it, clearly. No disruptions while I work.
I dismantle the outer housing for the amp, and spend some time banging out the dents and drowning out the music. It's never going to look quite like it was when it was new. Then I focus my attention on the amp's innards while an idea percolates. Scrap metal, welded together to form a new housing for the amp, so it looks really industrial and cool.
Then the Bad Thoughts start in. "You're helping him?" hits me in every variation of how Shawna, Casey, and Elsie said it. "Seems to me if you're going to do all that work, you should charge money," Mom said when I used to go around asking our neighbors if they had any appliances that needed fixing. I had this little sign for my workshop that I made out a scrap board and a wood-burning tool that said "Mitzi's Fix-It Shop." Mom complained enough about Dad taking me to the store to buy tools and supplies for my projects that I started digging broken stuff out of the trash and combing through construction sites for leftover nails and tools. Dad used to help me in the workshop more, but now he comes home from work tired, and Mom's worn him down. I can't ask Dad for help with this project.
Fixing Oz's amp, the way I envision it, would cost a lot of money. I don't have any welding supplies, and not many pieces of scrap metal.
There is one person I can ask... although I'm not sure he wants to hear from me.
The next day, I take a deep breath and steel myself before entering the tutoring center.
"Hi," I say to Cameron, who has clearly been waiting for me, even though he looks back down at his book when I walk in.
"Hi," he mumbles. He stands up, putting a bookmark in the massive paperback he's reading—it's one of the Game of Thrones books—before grabbing his stuff and heading over to our usual table.
He waits until I sit down before sitting down across from me.
It's gonna be like that, then, I think.
I'm pulling out my science homework when he says, "So are you, like, dating Reece now?" Cameron still isn't looking at me.
"No." I look at him directly across the table. He fiddles with his pen, clicking it over and over. "I just sat with him at lunch."
