Mixtape for the End of the World

by Andrew J Brandt

  “Uh…” he stammered. “I, uh…” He stopped to collect his words.

  “What class are you looking for?” she asked.

  He simply handed her the paper schedule in his hands.

  “Oh, Coach Vargas,” she said. “The front office must have mistyped this. He’s in 1120, at the other end of the hall.”

  Derrick sighed. Of course it was.

  She looked at the schedule again. “D. Townsend. What’s the ‘D’ stand for?”

  Derrick took the schedule as she handed it back to him. “I’m Derrick,” he finally was able to get out.

  “I’m Haley,” she said. “I’ll walk with you to class.” She started down the hall back toward 1120 and Derrick fell in step beside her.

  Haley. She had a name, and it was Haley.

  “Didn’t you guys move in next door to me last week?” she asked as they walked.

  “Yeah,” he said.

  “I thought so. You looked familiar. Is Chief Davis your dad?”

  “My stepdad. Well, about to be. My mom and him are getting married in October and they decided it was best that we move in before school started,” Derrick said.

  “That’s cool,” she said. “He’s been our neighbor for a long time. Well, ever since the old Chief died.”

  Derrick’s brows furrowed. “The Chief inherits the house of the old one?”

  She laughed. “No. His dad was the old chief. And then when he died, the new Chief Davis got the job, and he also inherited the house. My dad is on the city council so they talk a lot.”

  “Oh, cool,” Derrick said. That explained why Doug had the job while being so young. Small-town politics.

  “Yeah,” Haley said. “We always have a back-to-school pool party in my backyard the weekend after school starts. It’ll be this Saturday. You should come over. Since we’re neighbors. You’ll be able to meet everyone here at school better that way.”

  “Oh, um,” Derrick stammered again, mentally kicking himself in the ass. He felt like he looked stupid, unable to get words out of his mouth. He always imagined he’d have more confidence when it came to girls, but anytime a member of the fairer sex talked to him, he clammed up for some unexplainable reason. Perhaps it was because now all he could think about was this gorgeous girl in a bikini. “Yeah, that sounds great.”

  The tardy bell rang just as they walked into class and as Haley took a seat next to her friends who waved her over, Derrick took the only free seat left, toward the front of the classroom. As he sat down, he glanced back at Haley and she gave him a wave. It filled him with a nervous warmth.

  Coach Vargas, a short, squat man with tan arms and sunburned nose under a visor, black hair spilling out the top, came into the classroom and sat a shoulder bag onto the desk. He introduced himself to the class, though it was apparent that he was well-known in the school. As he took the roll, he got to Derrick’s name. “Townsend?” he said.

  Derrick raised his hand.

  “You a new student?” the coach asked.

  “Yes sir.”

  “Great. Where are you from?”

  “Clearwater, sir,” Derrick said sheepishly.

  “Well, welcome to Mount Vernon High. Hope you like it here,” he said.

  Derrick mouthed a thank you and Coach Vargas got to the work of the day which amounted to nothing more than going over classroom and lab rules and the syllabus for the semester. Each student received a packet with classroom requirements, including lab tools. Derrick flipped through the syllabus and saw that they’d be dissecting frogs later in the semester.

  After the bell rang and class was dismissed for their next period, Coach Vargas stopped Derrick on his way out the door. “I know coming to a new school can be rough and making new friends isn’t easy, but getting involved in extracurricular activities can help. Do you play any sports?”

  Derrick said no, but that he was signed up for choir and theater.

  “Try tennis out. I’ve been coaching for twenty years, and we’ve been to State every year for the past decade. It’s fun and we have a good time. Plus, colleges love to give out tennis scholarships.”

  From behind them, Haley, her arms full of books spoke up. “You should definitely try out!” she exclaimed. “We have a ton of fun. Coach Vargas is the best.”

  “Um, okay,” Derrick replied.

  “Alright, you two better get on before you’re late for your next class. Where are you headed?” the coach asked.

  Derrick looked at his schedule, the lines in the paper now permanent from folding and unfolding, the edges frayed from being shoved in his back pocket.

  “English, with Mrs. Rogers,” he said.

  “Oh great, you’ll love Becky. She’s a great teacher. Her class is in the next wing over,” Coach Vargas said.

  Derrick thanked him for the advice and hurried on to the next class before the next bell rang.

  In the hallway leaving Coach Vargas’s classroom, Haley turned to the other direction, but not before stopping. “I’m headed to Algebra,” she said. “Find me at lunch, if I don’t see you before then. I’ll introduce you to all my friends.”

  Derrick nodded and turned toward the direction of his next class with a huge grin on his face. He’d never been one to receive female attention before. In Clearwater, he was just Derrick Townsend. But, here? In this new school? He could be anyone. He liked that idea. He could be whoever he wanted to be. He could be popular. That would infuriate Cassandra, and he smiled to himself at the idea. If at this new school he was one of the popular crowd while she had to watch from the sidelines? She would really hate him then.

  He arrived at Mrs. Rogers’s classroom and found an anonymous seat in the middle of the rows. Right when the tardy bell rang, another student plopped into the desk next to him. Derrick looked over and did a double-take.

  The kid, with a mop of brown hair that fell over his ears and nearly in his eyes, wore a pair of ripped jeans and a plaid flannel shirt tied around his waist, like an Eddie Vedder clone. And he wore the same CBGB shirt.

  4

  ♪ Buckcherry – Lit Up ♪

  THE KID LOOKED over at Derrick and gave him a facetious grin. “Nice shirt,” he said.

  “Uh, thanks,” he said. “You too.”

  Suddenly, Derrick didn’t feel so original, like an outsider to pop culture. At the same time, he felt an instant kinship with this grunge holdout.

  “I’m AJ,” the kid said.

  “Derrick.”

  “You new?” AJ asked.

  “Yeah. Moved here last week,” Derrick said.

  “Dude that sucks. I’m sorry.”

  “What? Why?”

  Before AJ could answer the question, Mrs. Rogers, a short, plump blonde woman, shushed the class and started taking roll. When she got to AJ, calling out “Tooley, Anthony John,” she looked up and saw the next kid on the list—“Townsend, Derrick”—dressed nearly identically to AJ and she gave a grin. “Did you two coordinate outfits?”

  The rest of the class, not having noticed, turned their attention to the two boys in desks in the middle of the classroom and laughed as well. Derrick felt his cheeks go flush and he sunk into his desk, his back forming to the curve of the plastic seatback.

  Mrs. Rogers hushed the class again and began going over their syllabus for the semester. Derrick, without turning his head, returned his attention to AJ Tooley and the kid gave him a shrug.

  “Welcome to Mount Vernon,” he whispered.

  ♪ ♪ ♪

  After his four morning classes, Derrick found his way to the cafeteria for lunch. After grabbing a brown plastic tray from a pile at the beginning of the lunch line, he made his way through the selections, pulling a slice of pizza, a basket of crinkle-cut french fries, an apple and a paper carton of chocolate milk onto the tray. Once in the open maw of the cafeteria, he scanned the room. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Haley waving in his direction from a table surrounded by other kids.

  Derrick made his way over and Haley sco
oted over on the bench. “Guys,” she said. “This is Derrick. He just moved in next door to me. Chief Davis is his stepdad.”

  The group at the table, seven in all, welcomed Derrick, though he stuck out like a sore thumb in his baggy jeans and CBGB shirt. The rest of them wore Tommy Hilfiger or Chaps branded clothing.

  One girl, with jet black hair and mocha skin, introduced herself. Her name was Makenna and she asked him where he’d moved from.

  “I’ve got a cousin that lives in Clearwater,” an Asian boy said. “Do you know Tommy Tran?”

  “I do,” Derrick said. All these questions, coming from different people, he could hardly keep up with who was asking what. He felt like a science experiment, or a new toy. “He’s a Senior this year, I think.”

  The Asian boy nodded. “Man, small world,” he said and Derrick agreed.

  Haley spoke up, “Coach Vargas asked Derrick to try out for the tennis team.”

  “Oh, you’d like that,” the girl with the mocha skin said. “We have a lot of fun at tournaments. Have you played before?”

  “No, not at all. We didn’t have tennis in Clearwater.”

  “Well,” Haley said. “Come over after school and we can go to Paramount Park and I’ll teach you before you meet with Coach Vargas.”

  Derrick really liked the idea of spending time with Haley, so he agreed.

  They all continued to eat their lunch and talk, with Derrick being the main subject of conversation. He’d never had so much attention back home in Clearwater, but he was enjoying it. Haley and her friends made him feel at ease and that perhaps this transition would be easier than he’d originally thought.

  ♪ ♪ ♪

  The rest of the day went by quickly, and each class was more or less a repeat of the previous—the teacher took roll call and went over classroom rules and the syllabus. He finally saw Cassandra in their World History class after lunch. Before the tardy bell rang, he asked her if she liked the school, and she said she did. She’d gone to lunch off campus with some kids she’d met in her Chemistry class. Juniors and Seniors were allowed to leave campus for lunch, and she’d gone to an apparently popular place called the Burger Barn, because that’s where a large contingent of the upperclassmen went for their forty minutes. Derrick was jealous that she got to eat off-campus, but he told her that he’d made friends and was invited to try out for the tennis team. She scoffed at that.

  “You? Tennis?” she said.

  “What?” he said defensively. “It sounds like fun. Besides, I want to start over new here. Not like Clearwater. I was a nobody there.”

  “Well, good luck,” she said.

  Their conversation was cut short by the teacher, and they left in opposite directions. He hoped that her first day was going well, though. If anything, they had this kindred experience of being the new kids.

  With the final bell of the day, all the students poured out of the school and into either the parking lot that resided on the east side of the campus or onto the sprawling front courtyard. Derrick started walking home when he heard a voice calling out behind him on the sidewalk.

  “Hey! New kid!”

  Derrick turned and saw AJ coming up the sidewalk. After a couple seconds of half-running, he caught up to Derrick. “Hey man,” AJ said. “How was your first day as a Mount Vernon Lion?”

  “It was pretty cool,” Derrick said. They fell in lockstep as they crossed the street. “Do you live near here?”

  “Yeah, over on Orchard,” AJ said.

  “I don’t know where that is,” Derrick said. “We live on Tangerine. Tangerine and Sixteenth.”

  “Okay, cool. You’re, like, two blocks from me then.” He pointed to Derrick’s headphones around his neck. “What are you listening to?”

  “Just a tape that my mom’s fiancé gave me.” He looked down at his Walkman through the display hole. “Goo Goo Dolls. Superstar Car Wash. It’s pretty good. Here.” He pulled the headphones from around his neck and handed them to AJ.

  AJ put them on as Derrick hit play and he started bobbing his head. “Dude, this is rad. I like this!”

  Derrick smiled and agreed.

  “What else do you listen to?” AJ asked.

  Derrick answered with a list of bands that were constant residents of his Walkman’s tray, including Pearl Jam, Fuel, Eve 6 and Bush.

  “Dude, yes. Fuel is amazing. And Eddie Vedder is a god.”

  Derrick smiled and agreed.

  They walked together along the sidewalks away from the school. “Where did you move from?” AJ asked.

  “Clearwater.”

  “Whoa. What brought you all the way here?”

  Derrick explained the situation of moving to Mount Vernon, of his mom and Doug’s upcoming wedding and everything else. For the first time since moving here, he felt relaxed. He felt like he had someone he could talk to. Someone like him.

  They talked about music and bands until they got to Sixteenth Avenue, and Derrick pointed off in the direction of Tangerine Drive. “I’m this way.”

  “Cool, man. I guess I’ll see you tomorrow,” AJ said as he turned to cross the street.

  As Derrick started walking off toward Tangerine, AJ called out. “Hey. Do you walk in the mornings too?”

  “Yeah.” Derrick said.

  “Cool. I’ll meet you here tomorrow. 7:45?”

  “Sounds good man,” Derrick said and tipped his hand in the air. He turned back around, pulled his headphones over his ears and pushed play.

  5

  ♪ Tal Bachman – She’s So High ♪

  THE TENNIS BALL came at him and Derrick swung the racquet but missed. Instead, the ball clanged against the chain-link fence behind him, bounced back and rolled a few feet on the clay surface.

  Breathless and sweating, he grabbed the ball from the court and called out to Haley, “How about a rest?”

  He was at home when she had knocked on the front door, wearing a pair of athletic shorts and a Mount Vernon High tank top, with two racquets in hand. His mom and Cassandra practically pushed him out the door. Even on the walk to Paramount Park, a neighborhood park that stretched three blocks with a pair of tennis courts on one end, Derrick was already thinking about the ribbing he’d get when he returned home.

  Haley went to the side of the court by the net and, sitting on the ground and leaning against the chain-link, took a sip from a Gatorade water bottle. Derrick sat next to her, careful not to sit too close, despite wanting to be as close to her as possible. Even with a band of sweat beading in her brow, she was the most beautiful girl he’d ever seen. He wanted to look at nothing else but her.

  “You’re getting the hang of it out there. You tend to tuck your elbow when you swing forehand, and that makes you swing under the ball. I’ll show you how to extend your forehand swing after we take a break,” she said.

  “Yeah, that sounds good.” Of course, she could have told him that they’d be setting his feet on fire while pelting him with tennis balls fired from a bazooka and it would still sound good coming out of her mouth.

  “Did you enjoy your first day at MV?”

  “Yeah. It was a lot less scary than I thought it would be. I’ve never been the new kid before, you know?” he said as he took a drink from his own water bottle. His mom had handed it to him as he walked out the door. “Are you from here?”

  “Born and raised. My parents were high school sweethearts. Dad runs the monument company and he’s on the city council. My mom stays at home, but she works at the church a couple of mornings a week. Like, babysitting little kids so other moms can run errands.”

  “What’s a monument company?” Derrick asked.

  “You know, like headstones?”

  “Like at a cemetery?”

  “Yeah. He designs those and cuts the granite.” She seemed so comfortable with the idea though the thought of making gravestones gave Derrick a shiver.

  Seemingly noticing Derrick’s response, she gave him a quizzical look, her eyebrows furrowed and lips pursed.
“What? It’s not that creepy, stop making that face.” She gave him a playful shove and he bounced against it. Derrick liked her, but he was also happy to know that she seemed to enjoy being around him too.

  “How does someone get in the graveyard business?” Derrick asked.

  “It’s the monument business, thank you,” she answered sarcastically. “I don’t know the specifics. It’s what my family has always done. My grandfather started the business back in the sixties. My dad and his brother started working there when they were teenagers. Who knows? Maybe I’ll take it over when I’m old enough.”

  “Sounds like you have your life planned out already,” Derrick said. He thought he did, too, until they were forced to move to Mt. Vernon. However, that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing since he met Haley.

  “I don’t know about that,” she said. “I don’t know. What do you want to be when you grow up?”

  “I want to be a rockstar,” he said. “I want to make it, somehow. Record an album and play concerts all over the world.”

  “That’s ambitious,” she said. “What do you play?”

  “Guitar, mostly,” he said. “And some piano.”

  “I hated piano when I was a kid,” she said. “My parents made me take lessons and it was awful. I had to learn these classical pieces that I had no interest in. I don’t even remember any of it now.”

  “I started learning guitar last year.”

  “What do you like to listen to?” she asked.

  He answered with the same list of bands he’d given AJ earlier that day.

  “That’s cool, I guess,” she said. “I listen to N’SYNC, Britney Spears, stuff like that. I like the dancing.”

  Derrick didn’t want to tell her that he hated those boy bands and the cookie-cutter pop music, but his judgement was apparently plastered on his face.