“The brand is us ,” Lulu typed back. “And we are not vests.”
Kimmy’s lip quivered, then cracked into a grin. “You look like you lost a fight with a My Little Pony.”
Their project that July was the mall’s “Teen Talent Meltdown,” a karaoke contest held in the atrium between a Cinnabon and a Spencer’s Gifts. They weren’t singers, but they didn’t need to be. They had a two-part harmony on “Love Story” by Taylor Swift that they’d perfected in Lulu’s basement, singing into hairbrushes while the wall-mounted AC dripped onto a pile of Seventeen magazines. 2010 kimmy kimm & lulu chu
All they knew, in the summer of 2010, was this: they had each other’s backs, they had a terrible sense of style, and they had a song that belonged to no one but them.
But after the contest, sitting on the curb outside the mall with a shared soft pretzel, Lulu leaned her head on Kimmy’s shoulder. “We were the best, though.” “The brand is us ,” Lulu typed back
They didn’t do the matching vests. They didn’t do the chaos fairies. Instead, they walked up to the karaoke stage, grabbed the two microphones, and launched into a chaotic, joyful, slightly-off-key mashup of “Baby” by Justin Bieber and “Tik Tok” by Ke$ha. Kimmy rapped the verses. Lulu sang the chorus while balancing the top hat on Kimmy’s head.
A pack of eighth-graders sneered as they walked by. “You two are so weird.” They weren’t singers, but they didn’t need to be
“We were the only ones who had fun,” Kimmy agreed, wiping a smear of cheese salt off her blazer.