Super Fake Love Song

by David Yoon

  I passed Cirrus’s condo now. Her light was off.

  The Immortals were fake. Cirrus, our one and only fan, was not.

  Cirrus was the realest thing in my life.

  Shred

  Even though it was a Saturday, there were kids on campus. Kids in the lunch area, dancing in unison. Kids on the lawn, playacting. Kids in the main theater, singing. Kids everywhere, all getting their acts together for the talent show.

  Three kids in the music room, plus one adult.

  We had been practicing under Gray’s guidance for a week now.

  Even though it was a Saturday, I did not change my routine. I still had to take the heinous ten-speed. Still had to go behind the Cernoseks’ junipers to change into a pair of Gray’s silver-black jeans and assassin hoodie, to avoid parental suspicion. I’d brought shirts for Jamal and Milo, too: Think of it as a dress rehearsal, I told them.

  Gray again wore corporate leisure clonewear from some breakfast meeting earlier this morning. I could smell faint traces of tomato-y alcohol on his breath. It was strange to think of him drinking, especially before noon. But that was just me, hanging on to the teetotaling Gray I knew from before.

  People change.

  Gunner, for instance, came over to my house.

  I know.

  He sat in my room and simply looked through storage container after storage container, marveling at the contents of each. We got so sucked in that we didn’t even get around to playing through the Tomb of Horrors. Evening came, and I found myself inviting Gunner to stay for paella dinner. He would’ve, too, had it not been for another video review session with his dad.

  “Next time,” Gunner had said.

  “Sure,” I’d said, and discovered that I had meant it.

  I had my first-ever conversation with Gunner’s sidekick, who was named Oggy, short for August. I was quietly floored to realize I had never known the kid’s name until now.

  We talked about girls and cars.

  Back in the music room, me and Milo and Jamal stood panting after yet another run through “Beauty Is Truth.”

  “Pretty good,” said Gray. “You guys are at least fifty-five percent of the way to having a respectable performance. That’s more than halfway, nerds.”

  “Please don’t call us nerds,” said Jamal.

  “Ready, nerds, let’s go again.” Gray held up the iPod and hit the button.

  We played along with Gray’s recording—scrambling to match every note of every guitar, every beat of every drum. I kept my vocals in tandem with his vocals, singing with the Gray from three years ago.

  As we fought our way through all seven minutes of the song, Gray watched us closely. He pointed out our cues like a conductor. He adjusted my chin to stick to the mic better.

  I sang, as powerfully as I could. My voice soared high like a faerie pinpoint of light into a night sky. I trilled and rolled and added every frilly bit of rococo ornament I could remember from my boys’ chorus days in middle school. I glanced at Gray, who was watching me with his palm clamped over his mouth in amazement. Pretty sure it was amazement at the time. Felt amazing to me, anyway.

  Now the song was coming to an end, and I threw eyes all around to make sure we stuck the landing.

  “Better,” said Gray, clapping now. “Sunny, you got this rock falsetto thing going on.”

  “So I’ve heard,” I said, panting.

  “Rock is full of men with high, sweet voices,” said Gray. “Freddie Mercury, Prince, Jeff Buckley, that guy from Muse.”

  “So where does that put us?” I said. “Seventy percent?”

  Gray inflated his cheeks, thinking. “Sixty,” he said finally, before moving on to Milo.

  “You’re a natural drummer,” he told him. “Unselfconscious, spontaneous. But you need discipline. You need to play loose but tight. I’m giving you a click.”

  “Loose but tight,” said Milo. “Loose but tight.”

  “What’s a click?” said Jamal.

  “No, but a click track, or click, is a cheat that turns drummers into mechanized automatons similar to the AI beats that come preloaded with GarageBand software,” I said.

  “Yes, and it’s a metronome,” bellowed Gray. “Yes, and!”

  I blinked. Did I say something wrong?

  “You say No, but a lot,” said Gray.

  “I do?” I said.

  “Stop saying No, but,” said Gray. “Say Yes, and. It’s Improv 101.”

  “Improv,” I said.

  “I took a class back in Hollywood,” said Gray in an offhand way that was undeniably—

  “Cool,” said Jamal.

  “Very cool,” said Milo.

  “Yes, and keeps the momentum going,” said Gray. “No, but shuts everything down. The former represents acceptance; the latter represents rejection.”

  To be clear, Gray was not being annoying. He smiled. He glowed. For a moment, my mind flashed back to our kitchen back in Arroyo Plato.

  “Yes, and click tracks are very useful and valid,” I tried.

  Gray shot a finger at me: That’s the spirit. Then he turned to Milo. “Use these earbuds.”

  Milo stuffed the earbuds into his ears. “Boop, boop, boop, beep!” he shouted.

  “Obviously you guys won’t have my recording to keep time with for the real show, because any chucklehead knows a real show is not supposed to be freaking karaoke,” said Gray. “So lock in with Milo. Milo is the ground everyone is standing on.”

  Milo raised his eyebrows with meek understanding. “I am?”

  “We gotta do something about this cocktail kit,” said Gray. “No one plays these, except maybe Prince that one time as a joke.”

  I kicked a leg at Jamal. “Told you,” I said.

  “Eat my hole,” said Jamal.

  “Jamal-on-bass,” said Gray.

  “Yes sir,” said Jamal.

  “Your groove is solid, but my god, look up at the audience once in a while.”

  Jamal tried looking up.

  “You look like you’re holding in a king-size dookie,” said Gray. “Give me a bass face.”

  By bass face Gray meant puckered lips and a back-and-forth head bob.

  “Like this?” said Jamal.

  “Yes!” said Gray. “But no overbite. You are a duck. You’re a super-serious duck and you’re walking, you’re walking.”

  “Super-serious duck bass face,” said Jamal.

  “Actually,” said Gray, approaching me, “all of you look up. Sunny, you’re the friggin’ front man. Look up at me.”

  “Like this?” I said, raising my chin as if I were at the doctor’s.

  “Now bring up your guitar and just kinda curse out the neck real close as you’re playing,” said Gray. “Just grit your teeth like this and mouth a bunch of angry stuff like, You ugly guitar with your dumbass frets and your dumbass strings.”

  That part was easy. Stupid rock-and-roll faker making up lies to impress a girl who do you even think you are.

  “Correct!” said Gray. “That is a proper face melt.”

  And he showed me a freshly taken photo on his phone to prove it.

  “Ugh, no pix,” I said.

  “Get used to it, man,” said Gray. “You will be onstage.”

  “Miss Mayhem, no less,” said Jamal, who had a habit of saying the perfect thing to accelerate anxiety.

  Gray froze at the name. “What?”

  “The school rented out Miss Mayhem for the talent show,” I said.

  “You’re kidding me,” said Gray. “What in god’s cruel sense of humor does that even mean, right?”

  “I don’t know?” I said.

  Gray’s eyes swam. “I played Miss Mayhem. Twice.”

  “Hey, dude,” I said.

  Gray returned to the room. He smiled a frown.<
br />
  “Anyway,” said Gray. “You’ll be up there. In front of an audience. But I want you to focus on a single, certain someone. Not some flaky A&R rep or fake insta-friends. Someone important. You know who I’m talking about.”

  I imagined Cirrus standing before me, watching. Photographing me with her mind. What would I look like to her? Would she mostly see the top of my head as I gazed down at my shoes?

  I lazily stroked a chord, then another, then another. I seemed to be unable to play any harder. I was, I realized, paralyzed by fear. Fear of taking a chance, since taking a chance meant risking ridicule, and I did not know if I was really prepared for such a risk.

  “That is not rock,” said Gray. He choked my strings silent and drew his face suddenly close to mine. He must’ve had Bloody Marys: I now detected garlic and celery. “Friggin’ take it seriously. Or maybe you’d be better off taking a job as a friggin’ accounting intern and sitting and nodding all day like a friggin’ yes-man with the other pathetic corporate burnout losers.”

  I blinked. I drew my hands back. My lower lip disappeared into my mouth. Milo and Jamal looked terrified, too.

  Gray released the neck of my guitar, which gasped out a quiet E-minor 11 with relief. He hung his head. He didn’t have to say what he was thinking. I could tell simply from the way he found an amp to sit on. Back-in-the-Day Gray, so briefly visible, was deflating into a puddle.

  I didn’t know how to talk to Gray right now. So I talked about him.

  “Gray used to shred, you know,” I said. “You should’ve seen him onstage.”

  “I remember,” said Jamal. “You showed us enough videos.”

  Milo—bless him—picked right up on my tactic. “He shredded the pants off half the planet,” said Milo.

  “Half the planet could just pee where they stood,” said Jamal.

  “You guys are weird,” said Gray, finally laughing a little.

  “If you gotta go, you gotta go,” said Jamal, writhing with legs akimbo now.

  I joined in, and so did Milo, and finally we got the laugh from Gray.

  “Should we keep going?” said Gray.

  I held my guitar, got into position, and nodded.

  “Okay,” said Gray. “I want you to channel Yngwie, or Satriani, or Reid.”

  “Are those . . . countries?” I said.

  “Or,” said Gray, thinking. “I want you to channel Tiamat. Remember that?”

  “Tiamat,” I said, and closed my eyes to imagine the feared five-headed goddess of all chromatic dragons. I used to go on and on to Gray about my favorite monster Tiamat, back in the days when he would still listen.

  “Upon the plane of the Nine Hells you stand, releasing your evil spawn upon the sinful realms of men,” said Gray, clearly struggling to recall lore so rudimentary that even baby gamers could rattle it off in their sleep. But I forgave his lack of savvy. Because it was working.

  “Now Asmodeus and the ghost of Bane command you,” said Gray.

  I raised my guitar and played the fastest riff I could manage, spewing silent insults at my own fingertips—stupid imbecile clown telling her Gray’s room was yours—and when I was done, I flung the neck aside like I had just sliced open a charging orc.

  “Yes, and!” cried Gray, pointing with folded arms.

  “Yes, and I’m a friggin’ paladin,” I said.

  (“Technically anti-paladin, since Satan is lawful evil,” muttered Milo.

  “Respectfully counterargue that Satan is chaotic evil because of his penchant for meting out punishment at random,” said Jamal, who had been having this argument with Milo for years.)

  “Power chord, now,” said Gray. “Windmill it.”

  I wheeled my arm up and around and made my amp roar with the sonic hellfire of distortion. I ended with my tongue out and a horn salute held high.

  “Cool,” said Jamal.

  “Hurr,” said Milo.

  “See how these guys’ big stupid lizard brains just lit up?” yelled Gray. “That is rock and roll. Gentlemen, I’d say you’re at sixty-one percent now.”

  I huffed and puffed. I remembered this feeling. Remembered it so keenly. I could hear the creaky wood floors of our craftsman house. I could see my friends—we were so little then!—sprinting down hallways through blinding shafts of sunlight. I could hear us: shouting battle cries, or casting spells in a fake tongue, or calling out for backup.

  I had missed this feeling. The feeling of playing.

  How many years had it been? How long had I been stuffing myself down into one of my airtight plastic containers? Trying to hide myself away?

  It had felt so liberating to run around and make believe back then. It had felt so cool. We really did believe we were cool—the best versions of ourselves, realized by pretending to be someone else.

  I wished I had stuck with it, and to hell with all the haters.

  But then again, there had been so many haters, hadn’t there?

  Haters hating everything so much it was impossible to tell if they liked anything other than hating. Maybe that’s why I had become so cynical. It was hard for me to keep any optimism once the world around me started bullying my every move.

  I saw Gunner, lifting the blotter on his desk.

  I huffed and puffed, still in my pose. Gray snapped a pic.

  “I used to do that pose,” said Gray.

  “I’m a copycat,” I said, with a laugh that quickly turned sour.

  “Hey,” said Milo. “Come on. There’s no point in being hard on yourself at this stage.”

  “We’re doing this for you,” said Jamal. “You’re doing great.”

  “There’s keeping a super-duper positive attitude,” said Gray. “My old bandmates could’ve used some of that.”

  Gray raised his old iPod. “Now: Let’s go through it again.”

  $3,000

  One did not go to Bed & Bath Vortex for a short period of time; there was no such thing as popping in to grab one thing from such a store. The building itself could comfortably fit eight soccer fields; on the roof was painted the colossal company logo, so that warships flying overhead could know of its dominion. The average documented visit to a Bed & Bath Vortex was 150 minutes long.

  That was fine by me.

  We strolled into the store, which was lit by thousands of fluorescent lights far above. Potpourri and rose soap filled the air.

  “Sweet stench of rot,” said Cirrus.

  “Memento mori,” I said. “Remember you too will die.”

  “Being aware of death is supposed to make you appreciate life more,” said Cirrus. “But it doesn’t look like it’s working.”

  We pushed our way through a turnstile. I allowed her to go first, like an exemplar of romantical gentlemanliness would.

  “If you forgot your twenty-percent-off coupon today, you can always visit BedBathVortex.com to sign up for a free virtual discount,” said a thick voice.

  We looked up to see an elderly greeter in an apron.

  “You scaled the mountain of life,” I said, “and on its summit was the nation’s largest selection of premium domestic accessories.”

  The elderly greeter looked insulted. “It is better than Stalin.”

  I froze, then slunk away, taking an astonished Cirrus toward the mists of Humidifiers.

  “It is better than the gulag,” cried the greeter.

  People were not always what they seemed to be.

  Cirrus found an abandoned shopping cart with items still in it, considered the items, and decided to keep them. “Come on. We have to spend three thousand bucks while we’re here.”

  “Ha ha,” I said.

  “No really. My mom and dad gave me three thousand bucks. To help get me set up.”

  My eyes got big. Three thousand dollars was more than what a quarter of the American working populatio
n made in a month, after taxes. “What,” I said, “with like DIAMOND-encrusted soap dishes and compression stockings spun from GOLD?”

  Cirrus covered her laugh with the back of her hand. “What the hell are compression stockings?”

  “They’re these wonderful socks, extra tight, that keep you warm without the bulk, um, increase blood circulation, and also prevent stuff like edema and thrombosis and clots.”

  “Thrombosis?” said Cirrus.

  “Not that I would know anything about compression stockings,” I said rapidly.

  She regarded me with the most tender confusion—strange boy—and drew me into her cloud for a kiss. When I opened my eyes, it was hard to believe I was still on earth.

  “Come on,” sang Cirrus, resuming our stroll. “Let’s spend this guilt money.”

  “Guilt money?” I said.

  Cirrus sighed. “When my parents aren’t around—meaning always—we text the same shortcut phrases: Good morning, how are you, good night. When they are around, they go all out with an all-day boat cruise. And what the hell is this—a carrying case for a single banana?”

  She held up a hinged plastic case in the shape of, and for the purpose of containing, a banana.

  “Great Pacific Garbage Patch,” I said. “You’re saying there’s no in-between with them. No normalcy.”

  We pushed the cart out of one aisle, only to be swallowed by another.

  “If I never get to experience normal life with my parents,” said Cirrus, “can you still call them parents?”

  “Technically yes?” I said, trying out a laugh.

  “Yay,” she said, betraying a flash of bitterness across her face.

  I stopped, overcome with the urgent need to make her feel better.

  “Do you ever tell them how you feel—?” I said.

  “I have, and it’s pointless,” said Cirrus quickly. She snatched a packet off a nearby shelf and brandished it like Perseus with his severed head. “Normal wipes? Nay: man wipes.”

  “Society in decline,” I said. “How do they respond?”

  Cirrus hesitated, then put the man wipes into the cart. She slowed to a standstill. She closed her eyes.

  “I think they’re just not the type,” she muttered.