Super Fake Love Song Page 10
“Dad keeps saying he’s proud of me for making the hard decision to pivot home,” said Gray, eyes fixed on the sopping towel.
I furrowed my eyes. “Pivot home? As in for good?”
“I keep telling Dad that I’m gonna move back up to Hollywood,” said Gray. He picked up the towel and wrung it out. “He was all, It’s just a social get-together, when in fact it was a friggin’ group interview over dinner and drinks.”
“So like a job interview?” I said.
“I am going to move back up to Hollywood,” said Gray. “No matter what.”
Gray wrung out the towel, rinsed it, wrung it out again until I thought it would tear.
I was at a loss for what to say. If Gray wanted to move back to Hollywood and start up that new band he had already lined up, what the hell was stopping him?
Gray wiped the counter again even though it was already clean. “So we get back last night, and Mom and Dad are all, It’s best to keep your passion separate, because if music becomes work, it stops being your passion and turns into a job like any other job.”
“What kind of horrible advice is that?” I said, repulsed.
“Basically they’re like, quit music except as a friggin’ hobby,” said Gray. “Just kill my dreams dead.”
Gray glanced at the door, listened for voices, and continued.
“On the drive home Dad’s all, I like to define my dreams concretely, this was my dream car forever, now look at us rolling, fsss.”
“Is he trying to say a car is the same thing as a dream?” I said.
Gray chuckled with despair. “Right? Dad’s been saying crap like that on repeat every minute since I got home. Every. Single. Minute.”
I’d never seen him so tired. I could see him old, as old as Dad and beyond. He wrung out the towel in the sink once more.
“Let me help you with that,” I said.
“I got it,” said Gray. He hung the towel to drip-dry, and ground away the cereal in the garbage disposal. It looked like the spill had never happened.
Gray picked off Os still clinging to his wet shirt. He smoothed his hair. He spoke softly now. “So what’s up with Milo and Jamal these days?”
“I’m sorry Mom and Dad are so annoying,” I said.
Gray didn’t seem to hear me. “That Cirrus seems like a sweetheart, huh? Happy for you, dude.”
“Hey,” I said.
“You’re having tons of fun right now,” said Gray. He smiled. “I can see it in your whole everything.”
I wanted to smile, but when I saw Gray’s own smile sag—laden with sadness—I knew his wasn’t the kind of smile that was meant to be shared.
“Better go change,” said Gray, and turned to leave.
He’d been back for a few days now. In that time, I hadn’t heard him once play his acoustic guitar.
“Did you ever perform ‘Beauty Is Truth’?” I blurted.
Gray paused, then said nothing. He drifted away to his netherworld downstairs.
I picked up Dad’s phone, unlocked it using his code, which I had visually hacked (i.e., seen) long ago, and reopened the Inspire tab. I logged out. Then I logged back in, deliberately using a wrong password. I did this three times until the system dropped the big red banhammer on me.
PLEASE CONTACT CUSTOMER CARE
AT 1-888-555-5150 TO UNLOCK YOUR ACCOUNT
It would take scatterbrained Dad months to get to such an item on his to-do list. Until then, Gray would be protected from his outburst. I tried to put myself in his hideous, WASP-y boat shoes. How dejected would I have to be to key my own dad’s car?
I wanted to go downstairs and hug Gray. I wanted to have him drop everything and drive me to Los Angeles. Show me all the places he ate, partied, gigged, and slept.
I glanced at the clock. Late for school. I threw on a waterproof poncho, adjusted my backpack straps, and pedaled out into the strengthening drizzle.
Originals
Let’s get this practice nonsense over with so we can work on DIY Fantasy FX,” said Jamal, slinging on his bass guitar with a quick duck of his head. It had been more than a week since our first practice. We were five sessions in now, and he was finally able to wear the thing without dealing high blows to me, Milo, or the surrounding equipment.
Jamal rested both long arms on his bass neck. “Our channel has twenty new subscribers this week,” he said, flashing all his fingers two times. “We gotta post a new episode, strike while the dwarven pigiron is hot.”
“We will,” I said.
On a nearby rolling blackboard—Mr. Tweed was one vintage cat—lyrics had begun to appear for each of our practice sessions. There was I wanna be sedated and With your feet on the air and your head on the ground. Today’s was this, in Mr. Tweed’s square, precise handwriting:
We could be heroes just for one day.
We of course looked these songs up and learned how to play them. They were just the right level of difficulty.
Thanks for the guidance, Mr. Tweed.
I knelt to turn on my amp and stared at its knobs in disbelief. “Someone messed with my settings!” I whined. “I had my distortion right where I wanted it!”
“Not cool,” said Milo from behind his drums.
Jamal tossed a Sharpie at me. “Mark your knobs,” he said. “That’s what I did.”
I reset my knobs and marked the respective indices. On the control plate I added
* THE IMMORTALS
“What are we playing, music master?” said Milo.
I donned my guitar. My friends stared at me for a moment in the silence. For the last few practices, we’d overcome our general incompetence to where we were able to cover the simple songs suggested by Mr. Tweed, as well as classic rock standards from bands with names like the Ramones and Nirvana and Hole.
“Well—” I said.
“Green Day!” ejaculated Milo.
“Green Day sucks my lactating nipples,” said Jamal.
“No, but listen—” I said.
“Weezer?” said Milo, instantly sad.
“Weezer is Green Day Reduced Sodium,” said Jamal.
“You take that back,” said Milo.
“Listen—” I said again.
But Jamal was whining now. “Why does it have to be rock and roll? No one does rock and roll.”
“Which is exactly why it’s due for a comeback,” I said. “Name one significant new rock band from the last three years.”
Jamal thought. “Japandroids?”
Milo closed his eyelids with the grace of a level-twenty sage. “Japandroids formed in 2006. Fourteen years ago.”
“I am so old,” said Jamal.
“Yo La Tengo,” said Milo, off in his own little world.
“Rock is dead, long live rock,” I said absently. I imagined playing with the airlock open. I would time our first notes to coincide with Cirrus’s perambulations, to ensure we fell within earshot. I would not have to approach her. She would follow the music like a scent. Just walk right in and simply be spellbound by my irresistible coolness.
“Fall Out Boy,” said Jamal.
“Sleater-Kinney,” said Milo.
“Ooo,” we all sighed, because we were all secretly in love with Sleater-Kinney even though they were old enough to be our moms.
“Thirty Seconds to Mars,” said Milo.
“That’s a ding-dang Japanese RPG soundtrack,” sniffed Jamal. “Best Coast.”
I unzipped my backpack. “I want you guys to listen to something.”
“Train,” said Milo to Jamal.
Me and Jamal stared at Milo: Train?
“Mom piped in early 2000s adult contemporary when I was still in her tum-tum,” said Milo with defiance. “All the greats: Norah Jones, Jason Mraz—”
I shook off this image of a fully grown Milo in his m
other’s abdomen.
This is stupid. Look at us.
“A real band wouldn’t do covers,” I said.
“We’re not a real band,” said Jamal.
“I’m talking about the effect we’re trying to achieve here,” I said. I didn’t want to say the word fake out loud.
“Jamal has a point,” said Milo. “Don’t we just want her to witness us playing, so that the illusion becomes complete? What does it matter what we play?”
“It matters because a real band plays originals,” I said. “Cirrus has friends in bands, I tell you. She’s probably watched a million shows from backstage.”
“Awesome,” said Jamal. “So all we have to do is work on an amazing original song while Lady Lashblade loses interest and our ScreenJunkie channel has a final tombstone post saying, Hey, fans, it’s been a real honor over the years but—”
“We can use this,” I said.
From my backpack I produced the iPod.
Milo tilted his head to read the iPod label. “Property of Gray Dae.”
I turned the iPod around. “No one needs to know that.”
“Including Gray?” said Jamal, wincing.
“There’s a song on here he’s never performed for anyone, and never will,” I said. “It was sitting at the bottom of a crate. We might as well make use of it.”
Jamal and Milo looked at each other, most likely wondering what they’d gotten themselves into. What I’d gotten them into.
“Just listen,” I said, and hit Play.
“Beauty Is Truth” boomed and growled through studio monitors, filling the room with its ever-shifting kaleidoscope of genres and moods. I watched as it brought Jamal and Milo up, then down, then back up again on waves of energy in every hue.
When it finally reached the hard-driving four-beat of its conclusion, I opened my arms.
“Right?” I said. “Right?”
Milo kneaded his chin, lost in thought. “Your brother is a genius.”
“Was,” I said sadly. “I don’t know about is anymore.”
Jamal nodded. “No way in any circle of hell can we pull that off.”
“Absolutely agree,” said Milo. “One hundred percent incompetent.”
I lunged to the blackboard and wrote so fast I broke chalk. “Look. I mapped out the chords for the first part. It’s not so bad.”
“You mapped the chords,” said Jamal. “You came prepared.”
Because I’m secretly taking this very seriously.
“G, G-sharp,” said Milo.
“Chromatically up to B,” said Jamal.
“Let’s just pick our way through super slow,” I said. “Milo, you count us in.”
“A-one, and a-two,” said Milo, like a USO big-band leader in the swinging 1940s, and already things felt stupid even before we’d played a single note.
We lurched into the song, if it could be called such a thing.
We were terrible. Me and Jamal seemed to be playing two totally different songs.
Milo administered blows to different drum parts with the frenzy of whack-a-mole gone pro, scrambling to keep up with what was on the recording.
Jamal’s face spasmed with unsettling dork theatrics between sneers and grins as he dug deep doinks out of the large bass.
We did not rock. We convulsed.
I sang. My sweet, high voice pierced the air with the same golden intensity of that divine sunbeam that delivered the most immaculate of conceptions from on high, elevating our noisemaking to a cult worship service.
To make matters much, much worse, Jamal found a mic and elected to “back up” my “vocals” with off-script ululations in fake Gaelic.
I winced the hardest I have ever winced. We had slathered Gray’s masterpiece with a thick layer of nerd-tella on top. I felt measurably nerdier than before.
Before Cirrus had entered my life.
“Beauty Is Truth” tumbled to an end like a nun coming to a dead stop at the bottom of a staircase with no one but diseased rats to note her passing.
“I thought we sounded convincing!” said Milo.
“Same!” said Jamal, impressed with himself. “Those were some killer time signatures you were playing.”
“What is time signatures?” said Milo.
“Did I sing okay?” I said quietly. “I’m equivalent to a mezzosoprano.”
“Perfect one hundred percent on expert mode in my opinion,” said Milo.
“Sounded gr-r-r-reat to me,” said Jamal. “Can we work on DIY Fantasy FX now?”
Jamal and Milo, nodding maniacally.
I bit my own face. We knew nothing. We were three imbeciles complimenting each other on things we had not a single iota of basic knowledge about.
I was getting the feeling that no matter what road I took, I would always wind up back in the bramble and thicket of Land-o’-Nerd. We had to pull this off. We had to rock.
“Let’s try it again one more time super-duper quick but this time really focusing on locking in a solid four-count backbeat?” I said, with my hands literally clasped. “The backbeat is the—”
“The foundation of traditional rock and roll, I know,” said Milo.
Jamal groaned like a manatee in heat. “There goes that seat at Lady Lashblade’s table at Fantastic Faire,” he said.
“Hah?” I said.
“Lady Lashblade messaged us directly,” said Milo. “She wants to guest review our next prop. That means she likes us. That means she— Uh, Sunny?”
I had been staring deep into the cone of the amp speaker. I had just discovered that I didn’t know which I was more concerned with: figuring out how to dazzle Cirrus with my fake band or getting DIY Fantasy FX big enough to earn a spot at Fantastic Faire.
“Just one more time,” I said. “Please. I beg you.”
Jamal shouldered his bass guitar and studied my face. It must have been a pathetic sight, because he nodded. “Fine.”
I clapped my hands. “Milo. Go boom-tssh, boom-boom-tssh.”
After a couple of stutter-steps, Milo settled into a stable rock beat. His eyes pleaded: How long do I have to do this?
I pointed at Jamal, and he began: Boon boon boon boon, ba boon boon.
Then I joined in with my guitar, choking distorted chords short with my palm as best I could, just like Gray used to.
Jhk jhk jhk ja jhk ja jhk ja ja jhk
We limped along like a flat-tired truck full of defective appliances all trying to run. The tempo slowed and stutter-stepped as we queenked and blonked our blundering way through the chord changes drawn on the chalkboard.
I crept up to the mic and bleated out some words. Milo and Jamal looked up at the sound of my voice, then looked at each other, then kept going.
I guess that meant I sounded good?
I realized we were looking down at our own instruments, not one another, which was probably why we weren’t playing in sync. So I moved to get Jamal’s attention, then gave him a look—that Geronimo! face that I’d seen Gray give to his bandmates when it was time to switch musical gears. Jamal caught my look and passed it on to Milo.
We landed the next chord change, more or less on cue.
The look had worked.
Back in high school, Gray had called this phenomenon of nonverbal communication among players throwing eyes. I thrilled inside, because I now understood what he meant after all these years.
As we neared the end of the song, I threw eyes again. I raised my guitar to make doubly sure we landed the final note. When it was time, I swung its neck down.
I wouldn’t say we ended the song. It was more like the song ended.
But at least it ended all at once like music was supposed to.
“That was awesome,” cried Milo.
“We got this,” said Jamal, eyes wild with adrenaline.
I just knew it.
Charms
The rain in Spain falls mainly on the insane in the membrane insane in the brain, wrote Cirrus.
Cirrus!
I flipped up my face shield, shoved myself away from my workbench, and held my phone with prayer hands.
Hi! I wrote.
I have watched every last gender reveal fail video on the internet, wrote Cirrus. I think I’ve lost my mind to cabin fever.
I clipped my phone onto its ergonomic stand, sat erect, and typed on my butterfly keyboard.
What a coincidence, I’m losing my mind too! I wrote. The rainbow backlit mechanical key switches went ta-KING-ta-KING with jackhammer speed. I was able to type a hundred words per minute—a hundred ten if I was particularly excited.
Let’s lose it together! I began writing.
Delete, option-delete, command-delete.
Dots pulsed. Jamal called those pulsing dots blowing bubbles, but I called them one of the worst user interface conventions ever designed. Worse than infinite scrolling, the Like button, or that slot-machine pull-to-refresh that always made me feel like a human guinea pig test subject pawing at the controls for either an electric shock, a dose of morphine, absolutely nothing, or a hard dry biscuit to devour while backed into a corner, scanning the edges of my iron room for hidden cameras.
Anyway if you’d like to drop everything and come rescue me from the abyss this fine rainy Saturday morning that would be fun, wrote Cirrus finally.
I flung off my face shield. Fantasy props could wait. Everything could wait.
Ok I’ve dropped everything to the floor, I wrote. Where?
My house? wrote Cirrus.
O, I typed.
K, I typed.
!, I typed.
Send!
I threw on the first outfit I could find—a bootleg Microsoft Zune tank top and extremely rare pair of LimeWire running shorts—before realizing I could not go to Cirrus’s house looking like I had just corporate fun-runned my way through time from the early 2000s.
I crossed the hall to Gray’s old bedroom, a habit at this point, and picked out what I remembered of Gray’s leisure wear choices from two years ago—tight black joggers, black camo hoodie—and put them in a backpack. I packed sunglasses, too: mirrored cop things that covered half my face.