In the hazy, glitter-glued summer of 2010, Kimmy Kimm and Lulu Chu ruled the narrow hallway of Westbrook High’s freshman wing. Not with cruelty, but with an unspoken, two-person empire built on shared ringtones and identical butterfly hair clips.
They came in fourth place. The winner was a boy who played “Wonderwall” on an acoustic guitar and cried afterward.
Lulu grabbed Kimmy’s hand. Kimmy squeezed back. 2010 kimmy kimm & lulu chu
Kimmy was the architect. She was tall, with a planner color-coded in six shades of gel pen, and she knew that the key to their future was visibility. Lulu was the heart. She was small, quick to laugh, and could make a friendship bracelet out of dental floss and sheer will.
They didn’t know that in two years, Kimmy would move to a city with better prep schools, and Lulu would find a crew of art kids who painted murals on abandoned walls. They didn’t know that Facebook would become ancient history, or that their BBM chats would vanish into the digital ether. In the hazy, glitter-glued summer of 2010, Kimmy
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.”
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. The winner was a boy who played “Wonderwall”
And for two girls with two names that sounded like they belonged on a bubblegum pop album, that was more than enough.