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
My phone buzzes as soon as I climb on the bus on Thursday morning. Then buzzes twice more before I even sit down. I don't bother checking it right away; the group text has been a nightmare. Half the time it's just Shawna sending us all a selfie and asking if what she's wearing makes her look fat, to which we all have to respond with cooing adoration and multiple emojis.
But when I pull out my phone, the group chat has 12 new texts and there's another, single text, from Cameron.
How did the fake audition go?
I had told him about it during tutoring on Monday. He had the date wrong—the fake auditions were yesterday—but the fact that he remembered and didn't just wait until after school to ask me makes me feel all warm inside.
Pretty good if you like vomit
I have a moment where I almost don't send that. Mom would have a nut if I said that out loud, to a boy. I feel like Cam will think it's funny, and I like the idea of being able to be honest with someone. I certainly couldn't tell Shawna, Casey, or Elsie that I had to swallow down bile as I walked up to the front of the room yesterday, and they were there. They saw what a nervous wreck I was.
That bad??
Nah, I text back. No actual vomit. But the first half of my song was awful.
So awful, in fact, that Miss Burgess pulled me aside after class. "Stage fright can be difficult to work through," she told me. "You recovered a bit by the second verse, but you weren't as good as I know you can be. At the real audition, I want you to think less about the audience and more about projecting to the back of the room."
I could tell, by the way Shawna's been acting, that she's sure I'm no competition for the audition. Which is good, because it means she'll continue to be my friend. And bad, because I can't pretend like I can't sing. I mean, I can pretend I'm super nervous. But if I throw the real audition, Miss Burgess just might fail me.
I have to come up with another way.
If you need to practice, I have keys to the auditorium, Cam texts.
Do I need to ask why you have keys to the auditorium? I include a thinking face emoji.
I have many secrets
There on the bus, I'm grinning like an idiot. As we pull into the school, I remember the group text and flip over. Of course it's Shawna, trying to decide on what shoes to wear to school. Too late for that. I'm sure whichever ones you picked will look great! I add a bunch of heart emojis.
All day Cam and I text back and forth, with me asking weird questions and Cam responding with his secret knowledge—except during tutoring, when we awkwardly have a face-to-face conversation. It's like we both know something has changed between us, but neither of us want to acknowledge it. I don't know what this is. I worry that it's something else. I don't want it to stop.
