Page 65 of Rocked: The Price of Dreams

His heartfelt warm smile morphed into a mischievous one. “Now...are you gonna rock the fuck out of this joint?”

“That...we can do.” I struck the strings and retuned the flat B. Much better.

I turned to our captive audience. I sucked in a deep breath and transformed into performance mode. Flicking my hair over my shoulder, I stepped up to the mic. “Good evening, Montgomery High.”

“Woohoo!” They cheered and clapped.

This was beyond surreal. Most of the people in this room had ignored us, bullied us, or had not given us the time of day during the past four years. But now, here they were. Cheering us on. Go figure.

“So now you’ve had a warmup.” I hovered closer to the mic, then turned up the volume in my voice. “Who’s ready to fucking party?”

Mr. Benson scowled at me from the side of the stage then broke into a beaming grin. As we struck the opening chords of “Teenage Dirtbag” by Wheatus, he grabbed Principal G. by the hand and dragged her onto the dance floor along with a bunch of other teachers.

After our first song, we churned out Jason Derulo’s “In My Head” followed by the tracks we’d submitted to the YouTube contest, then we transitioned seamlessly into a song we wrote last summer, one of my favorite slow tracks. We’d joked that it was about the high of discovering sex and Kyle falling in love. But in my heart, the lyrics reflected how I felt about Kyle and Hunter. They were my world. My life. My reason for living. We were on this path together. I hoped it never ended or led us in different directions.

We dialed down the tempo. Softened our voices. I took the first verse.

I found a love,

That fate must have written in the stars.

Because you,

Make my heart race oh so fast.

Like a blinding light,

All I see is you.

Like the rising sun,

I burn for you.

Hunter and Kyle joined in. We sang in perfect harmony.

You set my soul on fire,

Fill me with desire.

Your kisses send me higher,

My heart feels lighter,

When I’m with you.

There’s nothing else I wanna do,

Than be with you,

Every day.

For the rest of my life.

For the rest of my life.

At the end of our slow song, we picked up the pace. We churned out another hit to get the crowd dancing before ending our impromptu set with our most popular track from the YouTube contest called “Rock All Night.”

I ripped out an incredible riff, then slammed my hand over the strings to kill the reverberations. Panting, I thrust my hand into the air and hollered, “All right, Montgomery High. Rock on and good night.”

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