by Emma Mills
It wasn’t I’ll always be your friend too. But it was something. I could work with that.
* * *
Joydeep and Sasha arrived, and we sat around the gallery—Joydeep stood, periodically pacing between the sculpture stands—and brainstormed.
“I think there’s only one real solution,” Sasha said eventually.
“Yes,” Joydeep said. “Save us, Wonder Woman.”
“We’ve gotta lean into it.”
“What do you mean?”
“We can’t fake Lucas. The fans will know him from a mile away, there’s no getting around that. But we could potentially satisfy part of the audience—the Existential Dead part.”
“And how do we do that?”
“Basically,” she said, “we need a fake Tyler Bright.”
“Sorry, what?” I blinked.
“What else can we do? The guy is a hermit anyway. No one’s positively identified him in public since 2001. He could look totally different now. We just need a guy that’s kind of the same age. We can, like, get him a jacket or something.”
“What kind of jacket?” Jamie asked.
“A jacket that Tyler Bright would wear, I don’t know! Some kind of jacket!”
“For real?”
“He’s not going to sing or anything. He just comes out, we do a brief interview, wave wave wave to the crowd, we’re done.” Sasha looked at each of us in turn. “Come on, who here knows a middle-aged white guy?”
No one replied.
“I can’t believe we’re actually considering this,” Joydeep said.
“She’s right, though,” Jamie said. “We’ve got to do something.”
“Okay, so think,” Sasha said. “Who do we know who’s an adult that we can trust?”
I took a deep breath.
I got us into this. I could—potentially—get us out of it.
With some help.
57.
DAN AGREED TO MEET AT Lincoln Square the following evening. He thought he was meeting me to talk about college stuff, but he was unknowingly meeting the entire Sounds of the Nineties team.
“Hello there,” he said, when he reached our booth. We had one of the circular ones in the corner. I was on the end, next to Joydeep. We all shifted over to make room for Dan to slide in.
“These are my friends, Sasha and Joydeep,” I said. “And you’ve met Jamie, from downstairs. We all have radio class together.”
“It’s nice to meet you, Sasha and Joydeep,” Dan said, nodding at each of them. “I’m Dan. It’s good to see you again, Jamie.”
A waitress swooped in and took our order. Dan ordered a black coffee. The rest of us ordered pancakes.
“So … I’m guessing this isn’t a chat about college,” Dan said, when the waitress had retreated.
“Not exactly,” I replied.
“Though our collective futures may depend on it,” Joydeep chimed in. “’Cause if this thing goes sideways, we may be in some real deep—”
“We were hoping to talk to you about something for class,” I interrupted. “We actually kind of … need your help…”
* * *
We told Dan the whole story. Our first disastrous shows, the promise to Mr. Tucker, the misunderstandings about the mystery guest. My dad backing out—that was a reveal for the others as well. I tried to downplay it, examining my plate of pancakes as I spoke. “He really was supposed to come, for Sidney’s play. And he said he would do this, but … something came up at work.” I couldn’t help but add, “He would’ve made it if he could,” and I didn’t even know why.
Dan just listened to it all, nodding at moments, taking occasional sips from his coffee.
Then we got to the heart of the matter—would he help us?
He let out a surprised laugh.
“You want me to pretend to be—”
“Tyler Bright, from Existential Dead,” I said.
“You sure have come up with something interesting here.” He shook his head. “Tyler Bright.” Amusement played across his face. “I haven’t heard that name in a long time.”
Jamie looked up from his food. “You’ve heard of him before?”
Dan nodded. “I have, in fact. I may be more familiar than most.”
Joydeep’s eyes widened. “Are you him?”
“What the hell are the chances of that happening?” Sasha said scornfully.
“Higher than you’d think,” Dan said with a smile. “But no, I’m not. I did know him, though. Briefly.”
“What?” I said, at the same time Joydeep said, “Seriously?”
Dan sat back in the booth, folded up his napkin, and pulled his coffee closer, though he didn’t take a drink. “Technically, I knew a guy named John Preciado,” he said. He paused like we knew who that was.
“He lived down the street from me growing up,” he continued, when no one jumped in. “Our mothers were friends, and we were friends too, even though he was a couple years younger than me. We liked to talk about music.
“I went into the army to pay for college, and after college, after serving for a few years, going overseas and all that, well … when I came back from the Gulf, I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life, but I knew it wasn’t the military anymore. This was a few years before I went back to school, got my dental degree … I don’t know if I ever told you that, Nina, but I didn’t start on that path until I was in my thirties.”
I shook my head. I didn’t know that.
“Well, I went looking for work, and I cycled through a bunch of jobs … telemarketing, construction, bartending … I’d try something for a few months, get fed up with it, try something else. I guess John heard, probably through his mother, when I was between jobs. He offered me a gig traveling around with his band—he was the bass player, had met up with these guys a few years ago. It was roadie work, sort of—loading equipment, tuning guitars, that kind of stuff. I drove their van. Just for one summer. As you probably guessed, that band was…”
“The Eagles,” Joydeep said sagely.
I elbowed him, and he grinned.
Dan grinned too. “Well, it was Existential Dead, of course. The unlikeliest little grunge band from Indiana. It was…” He trailed off, looking fond. “It was something else, I’ll tell you that.”
“Do you still know them?” Jamie asked, interrupting Dan’s reverie. “Is there any way you could get in contact with them? With John?”
“I’m afraid not,” Dan said. “I fell out of touch with all of them after that summer. I suppose it was one of those … moment in time sort of things.”
“But you’ve been around them. Around Tyler,” Joydeep said. “You know what he’s like. So … can you help us?”
“By impersonating him? For a ticketed event?” Dan looked … mildly concerned. “That has to be some kind of fraud, right?”
“I just don’t know what else we’re gonna do,” I said.
“Well. It must be a desperate situation if this was the best course of action.” Dan took a breath and let it out. Then he rapped his fist against the table. “Here’s what we’ll do. The show must go on. So I’ll be your guest.”
“For real?”
“As myself,” he said. “As someone with inside knowledge about the band that everyone there—or a portion of everyone there, I suppose, with the whole … boy band situation—but anyway, at least some of the people will come away hearing about something they seem to be interested in, and you’ll have a guest, as promised. I’ll look back through my basement … I’ve probably got some old pictures from that time. I think I…” He nodded. “I can definitely find something or other of interest. How’s that sound?”
More reasonable than a fake-out Tyler, surely. But also, wildly insufficient for what we were up against? But also also: appreciably better than what we had before, which was no guest, nothing even tangential to a guest or to Existential Dead, for that matter.
“That sounds … good,” Joydeep said, and Sasha nodded.
“That would
be great. Thank you.”
“Thank you, for calling me.” Dan smiled a little and flicked his gaze toward me. “I’m happy to help.”
58.
THURSDAY WAS THE DAY. THE interview had finally arrived. Tonight, the mystery guest would be revealed.
I didn’t know about the others, but I couldn’t eat lunch. Couldn’t focus in class. My mind was perpetually fast-forwarding to seven o’clock that evening, when the auditorium would be buzzing, awaiting the reveal of our mystery guest.
Unknowingly awaiting the moment when Dan—nice, kind, khakied Dan—would step out onto the stage.
What would happen? Would they boo him off? Would the TION fans and the Existential Dead fans riot? Would the four or five innocent people in the audience who maybe just wanted to hear an interesting talk be caught in the crossfire?
I couldn’t concentrate. I skipped last period and went to the student gallery.
To my surprise, Joydeep was there. He had a textbook and a notebook open on the table, but he was staring at his phone.
“Hey.”
He looked up, his expression brightening when he saw it was me.
“Free period?” he said.
I shook my head as I took a seat across from him. “Skipping.”
“Rebel.”
“I mean, there’s not much more that can compare to whatever’s gonna go down tonight.”
Joydeep looked at me placidly. “I think it’s all going to go really well.”
“For real?”
“No, it’s gonna be a bloodbath. But you know? Maybe we’ll still get some money out of it. For Jamie’s grandma’s thing.”
I thought of Joydeep in that very first radio class, gesturing back toward Jamie. He’s with us too.
“Why didn’t you go with Colby and them?” I asked. “Like when we first made groups in class.”
“Because.” He frowned and mumbled something that sounded like “peaks me.”
“Sorry?”
“He picked Sammy,” he said more clearly. “Over me. Hana and Lily, those are her friends, and he chose their group over mine.”
“Is that why you fucked with their show?”
“No, I fucked with their show because it’s funny and I’m good at it. But in general I feel like people shouldn’t abandon their friends.”
“But if you had been in his group, Sammy would have had to abandon one of her friends.”
“No she wouldn’t. There’s no reason Colby and Sammy had to be together in a group. You or Sasha could’ve gone with her people and Colby could’ve been with us.”
“Great to hear how fast you’d trade one of us out.”
“Hey, it was early days! I didn’t know—” A shrug. “I didn’t know how this was gonna turn out.”
“We still don’t know how it’s gonna turn out.”
“But we know about us, though. That we’re…” He waved a hand between us.
I smiled and raised my eyebrows up and down suggestively. “Soul mates?”
He sputtered a laugh. “You wish.” He made a funny face, like he was embarrassed to be sharing feelings. “I don’t know. We’re kinda … bros now.”
“Do we have to be bros?”
“Well, not if you don’t want to. I just thought—”
“I mean, can’t we be friends instead?”
He bobbed his head. “I could be okay with that.” It was quiet, and when he spoke again, his voice was oddly careful. “So. What does one friend do when another friend is obviously super in love with their mutual friend?”
I blinked at him. “I’m not—me and Jamie aren’t—” I shook my head. “I’m not.”
A huge grin split Joydeep’s face. “I didn’t even say Jamie. I didn’t even say you. You just assumed, because you are! You are!”
“You are!” I said. “Your face is!”
“Hey!”
“Sorry.” I put my head in my hands. “Vikrant’ll get you first.”
He huffed a laugh.
“I knew it. I totally knew it. Sasha and I have a bet going.”
“What’s the bet?”
“I’m not telling you. I don’t want to compromise the conditions of it. But rest assured, I’m going to win.”
“Whatever you’re doing here is probably tampering, though.”
“It’s not tampering to tell you I think you should tell Jamie how you feel.”
“That sounds like tampering.”
“That’s not the bet! That’s just being a good bro.”
“Okay, bro,” I replied, but I couldn’t help but smile.
59.
A STEADY FLOW OF PEOPLE streamed into the auditorium that evening. I tried not to look out into the house as we all stood backstage—me, Jamie, Sasha, Joydeep, and Dan. Mom and Sidney and Rose were out there somewhere in the audience. Their support was not optional.
You really don’t have to come, I had told them.
We’ll be there whether you like it or not, Mom replied with a smile. For both of you.
We all had our roles for the evening—Joydeep and Sasha would be doing the interview. I was going to record, so we could broadcast it on our show. Jamie was in charge of getting the equipment ready, the mics and the recording set up.
We were in this together.
We had readied the stage—three folding chairs sat in front of what must have been the opening backdrop for the middle school play, showing a row of buildings painted pretty realistically in shades of gray and brown. A projector screen had been brought down in front, partially obscuring it. Dan had given us a PowerPoint full of pictures he found from his summer with Existential Dead, and we gave it to Mr. Tucker to give to AV, so they could project it during the interview.
Dan was wearing a button-down shirt and slacks. No jacket, because I thought I’d keep it a little more rock and roll, he had said with a grin. I had tried to grin back.
The buzz in the auditorium was getting louder. I checked the time—ten till seven.
“Ah,” Dan said suddenly. “I’ve gotta go grab one more thing from the car. I’ll be right back.”
He headed through the black door in the back marked EXIT, and as he passed through, someone appeared on the other side.
“Thank you very much,” Dan said to the guy holding the door.
“Oh, hey,” the guy said as Dan passed through. “Are you, uh, in charge of this thing?”
“Folks in charge are right through there,” Dan said.
“Thanks, man.”
Dan disappeared, and then the person—two people, actually—entered the backstage area.
“Hi,” the first guy said. He was probably in his late twenties, with close-cropped hair and black sunglasses hooked into the collar of his shirt. “I’m Chris Brewer, I’m looking for—”
“Holy shit,” the guy next to him said. “That was Mr. Paint.”
“What?”
“That dude, that was Mr. Paint! The YouTube guy! Didn’t you—”
If he continued to speak, I didn’t register it. Everything went to white noise, because standing next to the apparent Chris Brewer—standing there in front of us—simultaneously existing with us—was Lucas.
As in the Lucas. Lucas from TION.
He was a miracle. He was a figment of our collective imagination that we conjured into existence out of sheer need.
I was instantly struck by how young he looked. I knew from Sasha that he was only a little bit older than Rose. But it wasn’t just that—it was how normal he looked. He was wearing normal jeans and sneakers and a T-shirt, he had on a normal baseball cap. Nothing about him screamed multimillionaire. Nothing said FAMOUS PERSON PRESENT. When he smiled, his teeth were very shiny and almost unnaturally straight, but other than that, he looked like any number of guys from Rose’s class, golden seniors now graduated, coming back to watch a football game in a brand-new college sweatshirt.
Chris’s voice filtered back through.
“—looking for a place to watch that’s a bit disc
reet, maybe here backstage, or if you have a light booth that’s easily accessible—”
Lucas ignored Chris, just as we were all ignoring Chris. “Is Mr. Paint the mystery guest?” he asked.
We all just stared, openly stared, at the TION member voted “Most Likely to Treat You Right (And We Mean Allllll the Ways)” by TeenStar.com.
My mouth had completely dried out. It was barely a word when I got it out: “You’re…”
“Lucas,” he said. “Lucas Kirk. This is my friend Chris.”
“Future manager,” Chris clarified with a grin.
“What are you doing here?” Sasha said. I had never heard her voice so high.
It was Joydeep who got it together first. It was like a flip switched inside him. An easy smile broke out on his face, and he crossed over to Lucas and Chris with a hand extended. “Hey, I’m Joydeep. We’re the Sounds of the Nineties team, we’re the ones putting on this event tonight.”
“It’s great,” Lucas said, shaking his hand enthusiastically. “We never had anything like this at my school. But my school wasn’t anything like … I mean, this place is huge. You really have your own radio station?”
“What are you doing here?” Sasha asked again, more urgently, her voice impossibly higher.
Lucas glanced at Chris, looking embarrassed. “I came to see Tyler Bright.”
“Seriously?” Joydeep said.
Chris shook his head, exasperated. “I told him it was a long shot. Basically a no-go. Yet he of all people is willing to believe online chatter from some fan accounts.”
“I know it’s just a rumor. But I was in Westfield visiting some family, and I knew if there was even a chance it’s true, I couldn’t pass up that kind of opportunity,” Lucas said.
“You’re a Deadnought?” Jamie asked.
“I’m, like, the Deadnought,” he replied with a grin. “Velvet Flycatcher changed my life. Tyler Bright is a legend.” He gave a quick look around. “We were hoping we could watch from backstage?”
The door swung open again, and Mr. Tucker came in.
“Hey, team? Crowd is pretty much seated, we should probably—” He paused when he caught sight of Lucas.