Mixtape for the End of the World

by Andrew J Brandt

  “It’s the cops!” AJ said, but Derrick just rolled his eyes.

  “It’s my mom’s fiancé,” he said as Doug pulled up next to them in a police cruiser.

  “You guys going somewhere?” Doug asked out the rolled-down passenger window. He slowed the vehicle down to match the boys’ walking speed and sidled next to them on the road.

  “We’re going down to Sherman Music,” Derrick said. “AJ needs some new guitar strings.”

  “Axe slinger too, huh?” Doug said.

  “Yes sir,” AJ said.

  “I have to take this car to the mechanic shop, which is just a few blocks from Sherman’s,” Doug said. “Why don’t you boys hop in? I’ll give you a ride there.”

  AJ’s eyes went wide. “In the back of a cop car?”

  Derrick was about to tell his soon-to-be stepdad that they would be okay walking, but AJ cut him off with an excited “That’s awesome!”

  The two boys climbed into the backseat of the cop car. The plastic seat was uncomfortable, hard against their backs, but the air conditioner was a welcome reprieve from the late-summer heat outside.

  “Do you have a lot of bad guys back here?” AJ asked.

  “No, not too many. I’ve probably had a few of your classmates caught out after curfew though,” Doug said with a grin.

  “Nice! Who?” AJ asked.

  “Can’t tell you that part.” Doug winked in the rearview mirror.

  “Can you run a red light?” AJ asked.

  “I could if I wanted to.” Doug grinned. “Graduate high school and join the academy. We need young officers.”

  AJ shook his head. “No way, man. I’m going to be a rockstar.”

  Doug let them out at the curb and told Derrick that his mom would be expecting him home by five o’clock. Derrick thanked him for the ride, as did AJ and they went inside the music shop.

  It was a musician’s dream. Dozens of guitars hung on the wall, separated and organized by acoustic, electric and bass. There were Fender Stratocasters, Telecasters, Gibson Les Pauls and more. Derrick feasted his eyes on it all. He could spend hours in here and still not play every guitar. Near the back of the store, several drum sets were set up, and someone was playing a four-beat rhythm.

  “This is the coolest guitar shop I’ve ever been in,” Derrick said, amazed. “We had a music store back in Clearwater, but it was kind of run down, and they didn’t have the nice guitars. Definitely no Gibsons. This, though. This is like heaven!”

  “Come here,” AJ said. “I’ll show you the one I want.”

  Derrick followed AJ to the guitar racks and AJ pulled down a candy apple red Fender Telecaster. The instrument had a white pickguard and chrome pickups.

  Derrick beamed. “I have that one,” he said.

  “Shut up,” AJ looked at him incredulously. “Seriously?”

  “Yup. Doug got it for me when we moved here.”

  “Wow,” AJ said. “I need a Doug in my life!”

  “Come over this weekend and we can jam on it,” Derrick said.

  “Okay!” AJ said. He sat down on a bench next to the rack. Pulling a cable hanging from a Fender amplifier on the ground next to them, he picked at the guitar, the tone warm and clean. He played a couple of riffs and licks before handing it to Derrick. “Let’s hear what you can do.”

  Derrick took the guitar and sat on the bench that AJ vacated. He sat the guitar in his lap and thought for a moment. He adjusted the tone settings on the amplifier and started playing a riff from the song “Tomorrow” by Silverchair.

  “Oh, I know that one!” AJ said, excited. “I love that album! Turn it up!”

  As Derrick got to the chorus of the song, he hit the distortion on the amplifier. AJ belted out the words to the song, his voice loud and cutting through the guitar’s crunch and tone. Derrick was impressed at how well he sounded and how he made his voice sound nearly just like the singer from Silverchair.

  “Wow,” Derrick said after he stopped playing. “That was really good.”

  “You think so?” AJ asked.

  “Better than Taylor Hanson!”

  “I swear to God, dude. I will impale you with the neck of that guitar if you mention that name again.”

  Derrick laughed and handed the guitar to AJ. “I’m never going to let you live that one down.”

  AJ hung the guitar back on the wall-mounted rack. “I’m glad you think it’s funny. It was so embarrassing. I really thought he was a girl!”

  AJ walked toward a display rack of guitar strings and pulled a bright pink package from its hanger. “Ernie Ball Super Slinky,” AJ said, holding the package of strings up for Derrick. “These are the best strings on the planet.”

  “I know. I use the same ones,” Derrick said.

  “Of course you do. It’s like we’re the same person.”

  Though he had friends in Clearwater, Derrick never felt like he had someone who seemed to understand him, who had the same interests and style. And here in Mount Vernon, he found someone like that almost immediately. For the first time in nearly two weeks, he was actually glad that they’d moved here.

  AJ checked out at the register and they left the store.

  “Let’s grab a Slurpee.” AJ nodded toward the 7-11 across the street.

  They crossed Main Street, dodging a few cars and went into the convenience store, the door chime dinging above them as they did. AJ paid for their drinks and started their way back home.

  They walked back to their neighborhood, Slurpees in one hand and guitar strings in the other, and never once did the conversation stop as they talked about their favorite bands, childhood memories and everything else that came to mind.

  For the first time in his life, Derrick felt like he had a best friend.

  8

  ♪ New Radicals – You Get What You Give ♪

  THE SCHOOL WAS decked out in maroon and white, the colors of the football team. Lockers were decorated and the cheerleaders made spirit signs that hung on the walls. The first game of the season was that night and the day was full of a pep rally and excitement surrounding the game. Derrick learned that the first football game of the season was always played against their cross-city rival Mount Vernon Prep, which was a private high school on the north side of town.

  The night before the game, students from Mount Vernon Prep would make the trip across town and try to deface the field with spray paint, and every year a group of Seniors were tasked to spend the night at the field to ensure that the grounds remained safe. It was an annual tradition that had gone on for nearly forty years.

  Derrick and AJ walked to school every day that week, and on that Friday morning, Derrick carried a tennis racquet with him. A Wilson brand, his mom bought it for him the day after his practice with Haley—the practice that he had to constantly remind and correct his mother was not a date.

  “Do you think you’ll make the team?” AJ asked.

  “I don’t really know,” he said. “I feel like I suck compared to all these other kids that have been playing for years.”

  “Well, you do suck,” AJ shrugged. “But you’ll get better with more practice.”

  Derrick assumed that was true, though he’d practiced nearly every night since Monday. He and Haley had gone to Paramount Park to hit balls across the net for nearly an hour after dinner. Though he enjoyed hanging out with her, and would do so at any invitation, he didn’t think she saw him as anything more than a friend.

  She had invited him to the pool party on Saturday at her house and the day couldn’t go any slower to get to the weekend. AJ would come over that night as well. After the football game, they planned on playing guitar all night.

  On the walk to school, a pickup truck, an older Ford in two-tone blue, swerved behind them, its engine revving as it sped by. The tires splashed water that had settled in the curb from a recent lawn watering, soaking Derrick and AJ’s pants. Derrick recognized the pickup almost instantly. Though the paint was lighter in the daylight than it had been when he�
��d seen Haley get out of the passenger’s side that first night in Mount Vernon, Derrick remembered it clearly. As Derrick jumped back instinctively, cursing, AJ grabbed a rock from the road and chucked it at the pickup. It hit the rear window of the cab, cracking the glass.

  The driver braked to a halt, the truck’s tires squealing in the middle of the road in protest.

  Ty Anderson hopped out of the single cab and, gawking at the spiderweb crack in his rear window, huffed his chest. “Are you kidding me? I’m going to kick your ass, faggot!” he yelled as his feet began pounding the asphalt toward them.

  Derrick backpedaled but AJ stood his ground, the bottom of his pants soaking from the groundwater splashed on them. “Come and do it, then,” AJ said. “It would be your third strike.”

  Ty stopped walking, the words seemingly a brick wall that he couldn’t step past. He stood silently as other cars drove by cautiously with Ty’s truck idling in the middle of the street. Finally, he said, “I’m going to get you for this one. You better watch your back, Gay Jay.”

  “I’ll be here whenever you’re ready to go to juvie,” AJ said, holding his arms out wide.

  Ty pursed his lips and then turned to Derrick. “Hey new kid,” he said, “don’t get this fag’s gay germs on you.”

  “Better than douche germs,” Derrick said with a false bravado. He silently cursed himself. He couldn’t believe that that was the best he could come up with. Later that day, he knew he would have over a dozen witty comebacks and retorts.

  Ty walked back to his truck, slammed the door as he got in and drove off, a cloud of black exhaust spilling from the twin pipes under the tailgate.

  Derrick’s heart was beating a million miles an hour, and he could feel it against the fabric of his t-shirt. “What was that all about?” he asked.

  AJ wiped some mud from the bottom of his jeans. “He’s just a jackass,” he said, pulling his backpack tighter on his shoulders. “He beat me up in a bathroom last year and shoved me in a locker another time. The school has a three-strike bullying rule. If he does anything like it again, he gets expelled.”

  “You should let him do it, then,” Derrick said. “Just get one good hit in.” He mimed a boxer throwing a punch.

  “How about you take the hit?” AJ asked.

  Derrick thought about it for a moment and then declined. “No way. That dude is huge.”

  “Right?” AJ said. “I don’t want to get hit either.”

  “Why does he pick on you so much though?”

  AJ shrugged. “The Hanson thing,” he said. He sighed, his head hanging low.

  “Dude, I’m so sorry I laughed. I promised not to.” Derrick felt guilty now seeing the pain on his friend’s face.

  “It’s okay,” AJ said. Then he cracked a smile. “It is actually kind of funny.”

  “Did you really have all those magazines?” Derrick asked.

  “Oh yeah. Tiger Beat, all of it. Even the posters that came in them,” he shook his head, laughing at himself. “I immediately went home and ripped them off my walls. It was so stupid.”

  The fear from nearly getting beat up in the middle of the road gave way to a lighthearted humor, imagining AJ tearing the Hanson posters from his walls in embarrassment.

  “I mean, with the long hair and everything,” Derrick surmised, “I can see how you’d think he was a girl.”

  “Nobody would even have known if I’d just kept my mouth shut, but no,” AJ said. “I just had to let everyone know that I thought the singer from Hanson was cute.”

  They were both laughing now and as they crossed the Paradise Street crosswalk onto campus, they heard the first bell ring. Holding on to their backpacks, they ran across the courtyard to join the rest of the students making their way into the school to start the day.

  ♪ ♪ ♪

  The school day went by slowly, but at the end of his last period, Derrick walked across campus to the tennis courts on the southwest corner of the grounds. He’d stopped in the locker room in the gym to change into a pair of Nike shorts and a Lions t-shirt that he had stuffed in his backpack. There were several students on the courts already, doing warmup stretches and getting ready for practice. Coach Vargas stood off to the side of a court, watching two players volley a ball over the net back and forth. Their agility and speed was impressive and Derrick caught himself gawking at them. Finally, one of the players missed the volley and the ball fell into the netting. The girl that missed it threw her hands up in exasperation.

  “No!” she yelled, though everyone else around clapped and cheered.

  As the two players left the court, Derrick walked up to Coach Vargas. “I’m here for the tryouts, Coach,” he said.

  The coach clapped him on the back. “Fantastic! I was hoping you’d be out here. Haley already told me how much you’ve been practicing. Go join the rest in warmups and I’ll grab you in a bit,” he said.

  Derrick did as he was told, and joined a circle of students on the court. They sat on the ground, stretching out and touching their toes, alternating hands, twisting their torsos. Derrick found a place close to Haley and she smiled at him. “Hey!” she said. “Are you ready?”

  “I hope so,” he said, feeling the tightness in his hamstrings as he reached out with the tips of his fingers. “As ready as I’m going to be, at least.”

  After stretches and warmups, Derrick was already fatigued and he knew he’d be sore the next day, but Coach Vargas took him to a far court and, carrying a bucket of bright green tennis balls, took one end of the court. Derrick took the other as Coach Vargas yelled out, “Alright, we’re just gonna hit the ball back and forth for a bit. I want to see your form and how quickly your eye adjusts to where the ball lands.”

  Derrick nodded and the first ball came at him like a bullet. He ducked under it, not even attempting to swing, in fear that the thing would take his head off. “Sorry!” he called out to the coach.

  “It’s okay. First try jitters.” The coach threw another ball in the air and launched it at Derrick. Swinging the racquet in a backhand stroke, Derrick heard the ball clang against the fence behind him before he’d even realized that he’d missed it.

  He was starting to feel embarrassed, that perhaps he was in over his head. He was also frustrated with how fast Coach Vargas’s serves were compared to Haley’s. Perhaps she’d gone easy on him, he thought. Maybe out of pity? It filled him with even more frustration, that they’d practiced all week for nothing. He couldn’t even hit a ball at even a medium velocity.

  Possibly recognizing the frustration on his student’s face, Coach Vargas called him over to the netting. “Part of this game is to anticipate where the ball is going to go and preparing your swing in that place. Don’t react when you see the ball coming toward you. Know where you need to be before the ball is there.”

  “How do I do that?” Derrick asked. It sounded like sorcery.

  “Time and practice,” the Coach said. Let’s try again.

  They went back to their respective positions and Coach Vargas served another ball. This time, Derrick watched the angle of the coach’s racquet and moved to hit the ball as it arced toward him. With a forehand swing, he connected with the ball and watched as it soared high in the air, over the fencing and the trees that surrounded the tennis court complex.

  “Whoa!” Derrick exclaimed. “Sorry!”

  “That’s okay, that’s progress,” the Coach said. “Lower your racquet angle and try it again.”

  On the third serve, Derrick moved into position to his left and gave a backhand swing that launched the ball like a missile to the other side of the court. It bounced once and Coach Vargas volleyed it back. Landing in nearly the same spot where his serve had come, Derrick swung again. They went back and forth like this a few more times before Derrick missed a ball and it clanged against the fence behind him.

  “That was good!” Coach Vargas said. He motioned for Derrick to meet him at the netting. “You’ve got a strong swing, especially that backhand, and when y
ou have it controlled, it’s got a lot of potential. Practice is every day after school, from three-thirty to five, so be here Monday ready to go. I think you’ll be great on the team,” he said and shook Derrick’s hand.

  Derrick took it in for a moment. He’d never had much motivation to be involved in extracurricular activities, but maybe Mount Vernon would be a clean break from who he was in Clearwater. He felt like a blank canvas, with all the possibilities within reach. He told the coach thank you and went to leave.

  He passed Haley on one of the courts. “Hey!” she said. “I saw you from over here, you did really good,” she said as she waited for a serve from her practice opponent, the tall black girl they sat with at lunch.

  “Thanks. I made the team,” he said. Haley squealed.

  “That’s awesome!” She turned and shouted toward the girl on the other end of the practice court. “Did you hear that, Makenna? Derrick made the team!”

  Across the court, Makenna yelled out a congratulations and then served to Haley. Derrick watched them for a few minutes play back and forth. Haley finally was able to volley a hit close over the net that Makenna couldn’t quite reach in time.

  At the side of the court, Haley grabbed her water bottle and took a drink. With water dripping down her chin, she asked Derrick, “Are you coming to the football game tonight?”

  “If you’re there, I’m there,” he said, and she smiled.

  “Good,” she said. “I’ll see you tonight then.” She wiped her chin with the sleeve of her Mount Vernon Tennis t-shirt and went back, bouncing on the balls of her feet, to the service line of the court.

  He told her goodbye and walked home, smiling the entire time.

  9

  ♪ Live – I Alone ♪

  THE FOOTBALL STADIUM’S lights glowed high above the football field. Dug from a mound and into the ground, the stadium was a hole in the dirt with an Astroturf field below. The metal and concrete benches were built onto the sides of the dugout hill and it caused the cheers to reverberate through the entire ten thousand seat stadium. Most of the town shut down on the Friday nights that the Mount Vernon Lions were playing at home. They could hear the raucousness as Derrick’s mother Dee drove both him and AJ to the game. They sat in the backseat of the Corolla while Cassandra sat up front.