Super Fake Love Song

by David Yoon

  Gunner stopped and turned as if he’d been expecting me to say exactly that word.

  “Yes?” crooned Gunner, with the dark charm of a backstabbing, conniving court eunuch.

  I pointed at his cell sculpture. “Is that thing due today?”

  “Mhm,” said Gunner.

  I flopped my arms with defeat. “Can you get an extension or something?”

  “I can get pretty much anything I need,” said Gunner, victorious. He flung the fragile ugly sculpture into a nearby rain puddle, where it began dissolving with each pelting drop.

  “Southeast corner of Emerald Ave. and Sapphire Street,” said Gunner. “Let’s say Sunday afternoon.”

  “Can we just get this over with tomorrow?” I said.

  Gunner shook his head quickly. “I got practice.”

  I blinked. Did this guy do anything but football?

  Gunner gave his hands a big smug clap. “Bring that brain of yours, Dae.”

  * * *

  —

  It was now somehow Saturday night. I was back in my room.

  I sat at my workbench and scowled at my white storage containers. The house was so silent I could hear myself blink.

  I told Jamal and Milo I would figure out what to do about the Gray Problem. They, of course, had no idea that the Problem had expanded to include Gunner.

  I, of course, had no idea what to do.

  Just thinking about that problem gave me much, much angst.

  I had also promised them I would work on improvements to Esmeralda’s Veil. That was a much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much easier promise to fulfill.

  So I sat at my workbench and flipped my face shield down.

  Esmeralda’s Veil was a good idea on Jamal’s part, but its biggest flaw was that it was way too noxious to pass the Safe part of the CREAPS test. I removed the stinking smoke bomb from the base of the tube and replaced it with a portable, battery-operated humidifier, one of the many compact nebulizers I kept around the house to protect my sinus tissues from allergens.

  I taped the humidifier into a plastic bottle of water, flipped the switch, and watched as delicate fingers of mist began streaming from the perforations in the wand. Silent, odorless, nontoxic, easily refillable with free and abundant H2O. For extra shiny, I lined the clear tube with an LED array strip to turn the mist blue, green, orange, and so on.

  I clipped my phone to its stand, recorded a short rough to send to Jamal and Milo in the morning, and tidied up. From my tiny knight I took a tiny sword pen and wrote

  Esmeralda’s Veil Version 2: Success (+3 Magic Defense Bonus, +2 Evasion Bonus)

  Lady Lashblade was sure to be impressed.

  My feeling of satisfaction lasted only for a moment before giving way to my previous foreboding. Gray was still out there. And Gunner.

  I wrote Gray’s name in my notebook, then crossed it out hard with a ballpoint pen until the paper tore. I did this over and over.

  GRAY GRAY GRAY GRAY GRAY GRAY

  I was angry. Mainly at myself.

  STUPID STUPID STUPID STUPID STUPID

  All I wanted was to somehow rewind time to the part just before Gray came home. I wanted to somehow keep him in Hollywood—find him another roommate, whatever—so that I could keep being Rock Star Sunny. So that I could keep having fun, because I was having fun, in a way that I hadn’t for a long time.

  Why should my fun get ruined?

  Gray didn’t even like his old stuff anymore. Why should he care what I did with it?

  Why did Gray have to be what he was—the lord of all douchetubes?

  I slammed my notebook shut.

  I headed downstairs.

  Down, down, to where the air grew muted and musty with disuse. Gray’s door was ajar. I shoved it open against thick carpet unflattened by any footstep.

  Gray did not move.

  I peered closer. He lay on the derelict recliner with one hand covering his eyes and frayed, gaffer-taped headphones sealed over his ears. He sighed deep and slow.

  When I touched the chair with a fingertip, he wiped his eyes, which fluttered wildly against the light until they found me, focused in, and dimmed. “What,” he said.

  Gray had been listening to his old iPod. His eyes were poofy and red.

  “What are you listening to?” I said, as bitingly as possible, which was not very much.

  “Music,” said Gray.

  “You forgot you even had that thing,” I said, wiggling my toes to muster up courage. “You’re not even using it.”

  “What the hell are you using it for?” said Gray.

  I stopped, searched for words like a fish gasping for air. “Nothing,” I said.

  Gray watched me for a long moment, and I was too paralyzed to do anything but simply let him. I wanted to say so many things, but found I couldn’t.

  Gray began chuckling softly. He squeezed his temples, shook his head.

  “Seeing you with my guitars, and her sitting there,” he said.

  “Stop,” I commanded.

  A single laugh—a loud one—escaped his throat before he could catch it. “I’m sorry,” he said, not at all sorry. “That was one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen.”

  “Shut up,” was all I could come up with as a retort.

  “You guys are completely stupid, you know that?”

  I gritted my teeth. The only thing I could do was stand there as Gray found my predicament amusing. I wished I could stun him with Raiden’s Spark for real from one hand, and then cast Esmeralda’s Veil with the other so that I could abscond with the iPod while he choked on clouds of sulfur—no constitution-saving throw, automatic lose-a-turn. After that I would be long gone, and he would find himself now guarding a dungeon with no treasures left to defend.

  “I miss high school,” said Gray suddenly.

  I released my spell-casting fists, dissipating their pent-up magic.

  “I should’ve just gone to college,” said Gray.

  I knitted my fingers at my belly. Was Gray about to cry?

  Gray cleared his throat and coughed a mock cough. “Questlove once formed a fake band to impress a girl,” he said. “That band became the Roots. My senior-year buddy Justin Lim formed the Mortals for the same reason.”

  I spoke cautiously. I was now seeing the faintest image of Back-in-the-Day Gray—the slightest tremor could tear it asunder. “He did?”

  “The Mortals did not become the Roots,” said Gray.

  Gray picked at a hole in the recliner, realized he was only making things worse, and stuffed the brown thread back in.

  “I heard Justin’s getting married,” said Gray. “So I guess it worked.”

  “Do you keep in touch with—”

  “No,” said Gray, stone-faced.

  “Oh,” I said. His laughter from just an instant ago felt like yesterday.

  Gray sneered at the air. “Justin had it right,” he said. “No one wants the musician, they just want the music. No girl wants to deal with gig after gig, night after night, stuck with a total loo—”

  He was about to say loser.

  Gray covered his face with his hands.

  “You guys friggin’ rocked,” I said, and took a step closer to my big brother.

  Gray lowered his hands. “We did, didn’t we.”

  He stood. He unplugged his headphones. He picked at the back of the iPod, pick pick pick, until the gaffer tape with Property of Gray Dae peeled off. He balled the tape up, flung it into the other debris in the room. And he handed the iPod to me.

  “Thanks,” I said, and reached for it.

  But Gray snatched it up. “You have to play it right,” he said.

  “I will
,” I whined, and reached again.

  “Promise me you will absolutely play the hell out of ‘Beauty Is Truth,’” said Gray. “I spent a lot of time on that song.”

  I shrugged like a marionette. “All I can say is I’ll do my best?” I said.

  Gray eyed me. “I don’t like the sound of that,” he said slowly. “Not one bit.”

  He slipped the iPod into his pocket.

  “Aw come on, god, just give it, dude, what the hell,” I said, increasing my pitch with each word until I sounded like I was six by the end.

  “Promise me,” said Gray.

  “I promise, god,” I said.

  “Where do you guys practice?”

  “Music room at school.”

  “When are you practicing next?” said Gray.

  “I dunno,” I whined. “Maybe tomorrow?”

  “But that’s a Sunday,” said Gray.

  “Mr. Tweed said we could,” I said.

  Gray thought for a moment. “I got brunch with Dad tomorrow,” he said. “When’s your next practice after that?”

  I stopped. “Huh?”

  Gray spoke like I was a foreign exchange student who was also very slow. “Tomorrow morning. I have a brunch thing. With Dad. But your next practice. After that. We will go together. Okay?”

  I blinked bemused little blinks. Was what was happening what I thought was happening?

  “Okay,” I said.

  III

  Frost holds the virus for thousands of years.

  Winter eternal protects us from fear.

  Blotter

  The next morning, I got up and headed directly to my phone dock located safely away from the delicate tissues in my cranium, breaking my steadfast rule of not checking the infernal first thing in the morning, because doing so led to increased anxiety and unhappiness—

  But things were different now.

  Because on the screen was one message from very early this a.m., from Cirrus:

  I’m on a boat.

  And indeed, there was a photo of a boat, taken from a dock. Brandon and Jane Soh stood nearby.

  Are you leaving the country? I wrote, then deleted it. Bad joke. Instead, I just went with

  Wish I was there.

  At the same time, Cirrus wrote, Wish you were here.

  Jinx, we both wrote simultaneously. I smiled a big dumb smile.

  I think your brother’s a little jealous of you btw, wrote Cirrus.

  Really? I wrote.

  He’s kind of a dork, no offense, wrote Cirrus. And meanwhile you’re . . . you, heart emoji.

  I slapped my thigh and twirled on one foot and hit a white plastic container, which caused me to lose my balance and fall into still more white plastic containers.

  When I got back to my feet, I wrote,

  Kiss emoji.

  And I put my phone in my pocket, which I normally never did because of what microwaves can do to the epidermis and possibly subcutaneous tissue even through thicker fabrics. But I wanted to make sure I didn’t miss a message like I had while stupidly asleep at 5:03 this morning. It was currently 11:11 a.m.

  I descended toward the breakfast nook. One end of the table there was covered with folders, agreements, and invoices.

  At the other end sat Mom, all by herself. Oddly, she was wearing a tee shirt and sweats and not her work clothes. I tried to remember the last time I’d seen her dressed like this. I couldn’t put my finger on the right word to describe how she looked.

  Relaxed.

  Before her sat two bowls of red. Cold thin flour noodles with spicy gochujang sauce, topped with icy slivers of cucumber, white radish, and pear. It was the simplest meal we’d had in a while, and one we used to have often at our old place.

  “It’s bibim naengmyeon for brunch today, okay?” said Mom.

  “Love it,” I said. I was drooling already. I took my phone out of my pocket and fastidiously set it next to my chopsticks.

  Mom pursed her lips like an imp thief. “Waiting for someone to call?”

  I blushed. “No,” I said, so unconvincingly even I was embarrassed for myself.

  “’Kay,” Mom said, shrugging, and began pushing her noodles around with the forced indifference of parents of teenagers everywhere secretly aching for those days of unfiltered intimacy they had with their children back when they were small.

  I pushed my noodles around, too. The noodles were winning. “Are Dad and what’s-his-face out wheeling and dealing?” I said.

  Mom flattened her eyes at me. “You mean Gray, your one and only brother, who you love more than anything?”

  “Nurr,” I said.

  Mom stretched and mixed with her chopsticks, like noodle calisthenics. “Those two are doing links and drinks at the golf club with some of Trey’s top subcontractors. So you’re my brunch date, ha.”

  I blinked. “Gray doesn’t drink. Neither does Dad.”

  “They’ll hold a mocktail if it means locking in a couple new retainers,” said Mom. She slurped. “Oh my god, all I want to do is carb out, I swear.”

  “Then I, too, shall carb out with you,” I said, and slurped.

  “It’s gotta be the stress,” said Mom.

  “Everything okay?” I said.

  “Just work,” said Mom, glancing up at the piles of paper. “Work work work today, Sunday, every day.”

  “That sucks.”

  “It’s fine,” said Mom through chews. She paused. “It’s funny.”

  “What’s funny?”

  “I’ve never had a Sunday brunch date with just me and Dad at the golf club, or lunch or dinner, for that matter,” said Mom. “Only work events.”

  I noticed Mom wasn’t wearing her usual headset. I tried to read her face. Was she sad? Wistful?

  “Anyway,” sang Mom, mostly to herself.

  At the end of the counter I spotted something: an expensive-looking VR headset. I pointed at it, looked at Mom: ???

  Mom rolled her eyes so hard her face went slack, and then she leveled a wry gaze at me.

  “From our day with the Sohs,” she said. “If Cirrus’s dad bought a dozen red elephants, your dad would, too.”

  We ate for a moment. I didn’t know what to say to her. Part of me wanted to suggest we move to a cheaper house, in a cheaper neighborhood, and just coast for a good long while. I imagined we had plenty of money to do that. But then I tried to imagine Dad downsizing back to our old four-cylinder, five-door Fava hatchback from our Arroyo Plato days, and could not. American progress went one way only toward just the one eternal goal, which was always more.

  Jhk jhk, went my phone.

  I dropped my noodles with a splat. It was Cirrus.

  I was staring at a glorious photo of a whale spouting into the sparkling green sea. It was the best photo ever taken in all of human history.

  Jhk jhk, jhk jhk, jhk jhk. My phone was practically playing rock and roll. Three more photos arrived: another whale, three gray streaks of dolphins from very close up, and a diving pelican.

  I took a ton of photos . . . just amazing out here, wrote Cirrus.

  “Honey, please don’t text at the table,” said Mom. She had uttered this exact phrase at least sixteen thousand times in the last five years.

  “Sorry,” I said, even though I wasn’t sorry at all.

  “Who is it?” said Mom. She glanced over. I made no effort to hide the screen.

  Mom beamed sweetly at me. “Text as much as you want,” she said.

  I’m only gone for the day but I miss you already, wrote Cirrus.

  I miss you too, I wrote back.

  I can’t wait to see YOU, wrote Gunner.

  Ugh! Gunner!

  I unhinged my jaw and slid the remaining noodles down my gullet, then wiped my face clean with a footlong sticky tongue.

&n
bsp; “Sunny!” said Mom with amazement and concern.

  “Can I please be done now?” I said.

  “What are you, seven?” said Mom.

  I glanced at the phone and danced a pee-pee dance.

  “Go,” said Mom.

  I went.

  “Hey, Sun,” said Mom, before I left. “It’s nice to see you coming out of your shell like this. What’s changed with you?”

  “Nothing,” I said. “Puberty 2.0.”

  “Huh?”

  Jhk jhk, went my phone. I didn’t look at it.

  “Gotta go,” I said.

  Mom just smiled. She had no idea I was heading out to bargain for my soul.

  * * *

  —

  The corner of Emerald Avenue and Sapphire Street was where Gunner had suggested we meet.

  But the intersection was empty. There was nothing here, really, except one big house and another big house two hundred meters away. Beyond lay a grove of palm trees and a rocky beach keeping the indifferent sea at bay. I had reached the far southwestern edge of Rancho Ruby.

  Had Gunner sent me here on a wild goose chase? I imagined him texting me another location, just to troll me.

  I’m here.

  Immediately he (or what I assumed was him) responded: Lock your bike to the pole and go up the orange stairs.

  How did he know I had my bike? I wheeled around, looking for hidden spy cameras.

  I looked about and there, indeed, was a set of orange Spanish tile stairs leading up between rows of overgrown rosemary.

  Gunner was waiting for me at the top of the stairs. He stood alone before a massive tiled hacienda with an artfully weathered door studded with heavy étoile nails, the kind used to crucify Jesus on the cross that he dragged for miles under the whip of the Romans. Gunner’s sidekick was not there. It was just me and him.

  I stepped inside the cool dark house. I stepped into the eighteenth century. Dark wooden chests banded with black iron, coats of arms on the wall, cage sconces around every light.

  Gunner had a perfectly antiqued green glass of ice water ready for me. Was it poisoned? I touched my tongue to it. It tasted lemony. I glanced around and spotted a dispenser jug full of spa water, the kind with fruit and stuff floating in it.