Super Fake Love Song

by David Yoon

  I held up the tiny miracle to the warm afternoon light, where its leaves glowed with a lime translucence. I asked its forgiveness for murdering it and its brethren. All of time slowed down as I beheld this very special specimen: the trees in midsway, the clouds now halted, the wind just a trace of a breath.

  I watched as Jamal and Milo gave each other the slowest high five ever. They swung their arms mightily as if underwater.

  I blinked one blink, then another. In the distance appeared the girls’ track team, all agonizing over where to sit on the opposite end of the field. Cirrus emerged, her arms limp and exhausted. She plopped down where she was. She sat alone. She picked at the clover. Held it up.

  I knew exactly what kind she got.

  There was a low, syrupy yell from Ms. Coach Oldtimer, the female fraternal twin to Coach Oldtimer, and Cirrus heaved herself up to run a hundred-meter dash alongside Artemis and six identical blondes.

  Boosh, went the starting gun in slow motion. Exploding lazily against the amber sky. The girls: statues en pointe as they accelerated millimeter by millimeter off their blocks. Cirrus, moving a little later than everyone, a little slower than everyone,

  her tee shirt the newest,

  her shorts the newest,

  herself the newest,

  feet slapping clay while the others gazelled,

  evanescing upon spiked hooves that propelled,

  while she stomped to a stop with her arms all a-flail,

  now Artemis crashing right into her tail,

  both girls grasping their knees

  and gasping oh please,

  screaming with laughter as they readied their fingers,

  cocking and shooting like merry gunslingers:

  two fingers—middle finger—

  two fingers—middle finger—

  and, as if she heard my heart cheering her on,

  turning her gaze to meet mine from far yon

  and flip her final, most colorful bird—

  for me, a boy so happy it was perfectly absurd.

  * * *

  —

  “Show me windmill,” said Gray.

  I windmilled.

  “Good, but not so hard that you’d break your strings,” said Gray. “Now show me machine gun.”

  I raised my guitar and decimated the imaginary audience with four fast left-hand trigger fingers.

  “Headbang,” said Gray.

  “Fist of Lucifer,” said Gray.

  We were in the music room at school. Milo and Jamal sat and watched, smiling dorkily at me through their upper teeth. As if that wasn’t bad enough, Gray was shooting video.

  “Finish with a Statue of Liberty,” said Gray.

  I did and held the pose, panting. I had worked up a light sweat. Gray hopped down from his perch atop a swivel stool.

  “That’s it, great job,” said Gray.

  “Years of role-playing!” I said.

  “Critical hit, baby!” said Milo.

  “Sword of Damocles!” said Jamal.

  “Didn’t that hang by a single horsehair?” said Milo. “Something about with great fortune comes great risk?”

  “Sword of Sages?” said Jamal.

  “Zelda,” grunted Gunner, nodding earnestly.

  “Bunch . . . of . . . nerds,” muttered Gray with awe.

  I glanced at Gunner, who seemed to take this as a high compliment.

  Gray took a swig from his big water bottle, and when he belched, I could smell beer.

  “You’re not supposed to have that in here,” I said.

  “Come on,” said Gray. “I look forward to this all day.”

  I blinked. “You do?”

  “Final practice, you guys,” said Gray. “Let’s get it.”

  We ran through the song. We no longer thought about hitting the right notes. Now was the last chance to earn what Gray called style points.

  Jamal was too stiff to really do much of anything, so he settled on a somewhat convincing figure-eight headbang over the neck of his bass.

  Milo could twirl both his sticks now, and still land them in time to the music.

  And I could windmill, machine gun, headbang, and Fist of Lucifer.

  At one point I spied Mr. Tweed spying us through the door glass with snarled lips and finger horns. Gray slid his “water” bottle behind him, out of Mr. Tweed’s view. Not that Mr. Tweed noticed or would even care. After today we would most likely never practice in here again.

  We played steady and hard, like an unstoppable windowless steel train traveling straight through the fires of hell. We were not just making music. We were putting on a show.

  Throughout it all, Gunner maintained the sound levels and made sure cables were routed safely. Gunner had swung by to wish me luck, took one look at the mess of our setup, and swooped in tsking to tidy things up.

  I threw eyes at Milo, and he instantly knew it was time to play forte, then double forte, then dig hard into the last measures. Jamal spread his long high-jumper legs to form a power triangle. He threw out a kick high enough to ignite the upturned fist of my final Statue of Liberty.

  We all turned to Gray to hear him call out his percentage. For a moment he said nothing. Then he simply shook his head.

  “Always wondered if my song would actually work,” said Gray softly. “Beauty is truth, is beauty, is truth.”

  I exchanged glances with Milo, Jamal, and also Gunner—our first and last roadie.

  “Well?” I said.

  “It does,” said Gray. He laughed a laugh stained blue with memory. “Better than I imagined.”

  Gray went to each of us and jiggled our weary shoulders. The five of us brought it in for a final band salute: To metal.

  “My beautiful nerds,” said Gray, “you are at one hundred percent. You are ready.”

  IV

  Kids think they vanish when their eyes are closed.

  Everyone else knows that they are exposed.

  Sunset

  Did I sleep?

  I couldn’t tell.

  All night I rested on the uncomfortable sharp edge dividing consciousness and unconsciousness, afraid to move for fear of falling.

  If I slept at all, my dreams were the meta kind—dreams wondering if I were really asleep, dreams about dreaming.

  It was the day of the talent show.

  I woke up late. I’m pretty sure half the school did, since so many of us were slated to be at Miss Mayhem’s in Los Angeles all day for sound checks and last-minute stage blocking and whatnot. Classes were in disarray because so many people were missing.

  It’s one big study hall today, wrote Cirrus. Just people passing the time. I miss you.

  I miss you too, I wrote.

  Are you nervous?

  Nope, I wrote.

  Duh, it’s not like this is your first show.

  I stared at that last line, not sure how to respond.

  See you tonight, I wrote finally.

  Milo came over in his mom’s bulbous minivan, which we loaded up with guitars and whatnot. I brought a toolbox containing Gray’s old stage makeup. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Mom and Dad staring out the window with utter bafflement. They had no idea what was happening.

  I waved to them, and they waved back.

  Milo and I drove to pick up Jamal, who met us with armloads of snacks.

  “It’s just a forty-minute drive,” said Milo.

  “Road trip,” cried Jamal, ignoring Milo.

  “I guess let’s do this,” I said.

  We wound through the spaghetti streets of Rancho Ruby, passing Cirrus’s condo, passing the school. We ascended onto the freeway.

  We were three fake bandmates in a van. Anyone regarding us would think we looked cool. If we looked cool and acted cool, did that ma
ke us cool?

  The equipment squeaked in the back. We were listening to “Beauty Is Truth” just a couple times, at my insistence, to cement it in the backs of our minds.

  In a vintage GeoCities hip bag I had brought ibuprofen, adhesive bandages, antacid tablets, cough drops, baby wipes, spare change, a key-chain flashlight, a hand-crank radio, earplugs, potable water, MREs, and so on—everything you need for a disaster preparedness kit, just in case.

  The van crested a hill, and Los Angeles sat waiting in the smog: a jagged citadel of dirty gray steel in the hot sun like the last bastion of civilization in a world baked lifeless after decades of catastrophic global warming.

  My god, Los Angeles was an ugly city.

  But my god, Los Angeles was still cool as hell.

  We approached slowly, like a scout ship being pulled into a galactic destroyer by tractor beam.

  “Take the next exit for Vermont Avenue,” said Milo’s mom’s minivan.

  We did. Jamal and I pressed against the window to behold the city’s wonders: a raven-haired model aglide on a single-wheel scooter; a naked man bathing himself with a brand-new Super Soaker; a United States Post Office Lamborghini; five soaring palm trees, painted tip to root with pure white. Murals swirled by on every wall. We rolled down the windows and smelled everything we could, like dogs do, and detected pupusas and longanzina and anise and curry.

  “Take the next left onto Sunset Boulevard,” said the van.

  The cynic would say Sunset was like any other street in this godforsaken post-apocalyptic wonderland. But it wasn’t. It was a twenty-some-odd-mile-long serpent behemoth whose head had no idea what its tail was doing.

  At one end was a cozy neighborhood art park, then a gleaming hospital complex, then a storied media studio district, then the world headquarters for a global cult. The grimy ironic hipsters came next, then the street artists with their dyed fingertips, then the string of guitar shops populated by off-duty rockers in black afternoon denim.

  After that came the Sunset Strip known all over the world. Music club after music club, where stars rose and fell and, yes, literally died at its curbs. The Strip was where the Sunset Boulevard of the mind ended. In reality, Sunset continued on all the way to the sea, passing through fiercely manicured, fiercely white Beverly Hills and Bel Air—those intensely boring, parasitic enclaves solely obsessed with sucking as much wealth out of surrounding Los Angeles as possible. No one cared about that part of Sunset.

  Who would, when Miss Mayhem was right there in front of you?

  “Long live rock and roll,” said the minivan.

  I stared at Los Angeles baking below me. Everyone liked to call Angelenos fake, because they would do and say anything to make their dreams of stardom come true. According to the internet, Andy Warhol once said, “I love Los Angeles. I love Hollywood. They’re beautiful. Everybody’s plastic, but I love plastic. I want to be plastic.”

  Andy Warhol, embracing the fake. A pop artist through and through.

  As for the rest of us, didn’t we all fake it? Just a little bit, every day, at school, at work?

  Wasn’t it more unreasonable to expect someone to be perfectly honest and unwavering and unaccommodating every waking moment of their lives?

  Was I asking myself all this stuff just to try to make myself feel better?

  “Let’s load out,” I cried, and leapt into the heat.

  I squinted up at the marquee.

  RANCHO RUBY SENIOR HIGH SCHOOL PRESENTS THE 8TH ANNUAL TALENT SHOW EXTRAVAGANZA AND GALA FUNDRAISER

  I carried equipment up the stairs—curséd stairs, just perfect—which led to a “greenroom” backstage scarred with the autographs of thousands of rockers throughout time, all circling an ornate framed silver print of the eponymous Miss Mayhem herself.

  I had to look. It took me a few minutes of careful searching.

  But then I found it, written small in Gray’s hand:

  THE MORTALS 2017

  “May we play the hell out of the talent show tonight,” I prayed to Miss Mayhem.

  “Sure, whatever,” said Miss Mayhem. “Your school prepaid all their tickets.”

  I stuck my tongue out at the portrait.

  Jamal and Milo brought the last of the stuff up. Other kids followed. Soon the greenroom became crowded.

  “All right, listen up,” said a familiar voice, and Mr. Tweed emerged from behind a curtain. “First we’re gonna set up our stage props and equipment, with the least complicated acts in the front—Juggalo Acrobats, that’s you—and the most complicated in the back. That’s you, Immortals.”

  I looked at Jamal and Milo. Things were getting really real really fast.

  “Then it’s time for sound checks, ’kay?” said Mr. Tweed. “Once we get your levels set, remain onstage and let Gunner tape and mark your mic with your name.”

  Gunner appeared. He wore an Immortals tee shirt. The sight of it made my brain momentarily brown out.

  “What are you doing here?” I said.

  “Ditching school—and football practice!” said Gunner with glee. “My dad’s gonna be so mad!”

  “After your sound check is done,” said Mr. Tweed, “you’re free to get lunch or hunt for celebrities or whatever. It’s back in the greenroom by three, makeup at three thirty, curtains at four. Any fundraising merch goes on the table downstairs. Everybody ready to put on a show?”

  We clapped. Everyone pitched in, each helping the other set up their equipment, spike the stage with fluorescent tape, and so on. We handed around snacks while Gunner manned the sound booth, barking orders to move a light or adjust a mic. He was good at this. I idly wondered if he’d be useful for future DIY Fantasy FX videos.

  Finally there was a lull. Everyone was sitting around, hanging out with their legs dangling off the black stage, taking selfies, buzzing with anticipation.

  “Immortals, to the stage for sound check,” cried Mr. Tweed from the theater.

  I jumped to my feet, bumping off a column to bump right into another.

  Jamal and Milo took their stations. As soon as I joined them, Gunner plugged us in and sprinted back to the board to adjust our levels.

  “Immortals are good to go,” said Gunner over the speakers.

  All around us were kids and parents and teachers, all carrying stuff or taping things down or whatever across the empty audience pit, which seemed just really too huge, like an airplane hangar, really.

  They all glanced at me as they hustled by, with this look that said, Oh, so that’s the show’s finale, and Sunny’s the front man.

  I grimaced at Milo and Jamal. They grimaced back. Then we launched into the intro.

  Jamal played on an impeccable Orange with unlimited tightness and tone. Milo finally sat before a real drum set, a beast that could move huge quantities of percussive air—much better than that gangly cocktail kit that looked like a vaporator from the Skywalker farm.

  And me? I had a mic on a stand with a scarf. I had a floor monitor to lean up on, and acres of stage upon which to earn style points. I had a Marshall stack towering behind me, a blind and all-powerful moai waiting to unleash its ancient scream.

  We played. We opened the doors of hell, just a crack, just a fiery slit of orange with screams coming from within. I leaned up to the mic—I preferred it just a few centimeters out of reach—and screamed those first lines penned by Gray so long ago:

  You fade out, I reach in

  Crack the floor, fall within

  After sixteen bars, I slit my throat with the edge of my hand to stop Milo and Jamal. From the back of the club I saw Gunner underlit by the orange lights of the mixing board. He looked demonic, but friendly, a friendly demon, and gave us a thumbs-up.

  “Levels are good,” boomed Gunner.

  The crowd around us gave a house cheer.

  Mr. Tweed hopped up
onto the stage and bellowed into a mic, “Whoo, Sunny and his Immortals bringing it!” he said. “And that was just a teaser!”

  The whole room looked at me. I could only wave back, like a motorized mannequin beckoning customers from the side of the road.

  In the greenroom, Jamal and Milo massaged what muscles they could find in my shoulders.

  “You got this,” said Jamal. “Think about your reward. Clean slate with Cirrus. Livestream with Lady Lashblade tomorrow. Back on track.”

  “Are you shaking?” said Milo.

  “I got this,” I said. “I got this Igotthis igotthis.”

  “You kinda have to,” said Jamal.

  I breathed in and out. “Okay.”

  I sat at the dressing room mirror and began streaking my face with tears as dark as ash. Jamal and Milo joined me, and we regarded our collective reflection.

  “We look like an old-skool album cover,” said Jamal with delight.

  We sat and stared at one another, the most nervous goth metalheads ever. I waited a few minutes until we had the room to ourselves; then I took a marker from my disaster preparedness kit, found the spot on the wall, and added the words:

  THE IMMORTALS 2020

  Then I wordlessly motioned for Jamal and Milo to crowd in for a selfie.

  We crowded around the screen to examine the resulting photo.

  “We look great,” I said.

  “We look like we need buckets to barf into,” said Jamal.

  “They have buckets in the loading dock,” said Milo.

  There was a commotion, and distant applause. I crouched and peeked out beyond the stage, where Mr. Tweed was. He murmured this and that to a small crowd.

  “They’re here already?” I wondered.

  Milo crowded in. “Who?”

  “People,” said Jamal, kneeling at my side.

  Dad was there, standing oddly stock-still even as Mom held his arm and danced to the pre-show music coming from the speakers. She punched him playfully, and he snapped out of whatever daze he was in to give her a forced smile.

  Next to them stood Jane and Brandon Soh, observing the stage through little brass field binoculars. They looked like they had just stepped off a steam-powered drill transport that had arrived moments ago from the secret civilization at the center of the earth.