2010 Kimmy Kimm & Lulu Chu -

They came in fourth place. The winner was a boy who played “Wonderwall” on an acoustic guitar and cried afterward.

And for two girls with two names that sounded like they belonged on a bubblegum pop album, that was more than enough.

A pack of eighth-graders sneered as they walked by. “You two are so weird.” 2010 kimmy kimm & lulu chu

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.”

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 came in fourth place

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.

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. A pack of eighth-graders sneered as they walked by

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.