Super Fake Love Song Page 2

  Materials too expensive and not common enough, Milo would say.

  Totally fun FX but maybe not quite feasible for a real-world use case? Jamal would say.

  No but how about this one, I would counter, moving my previous concept into a cloud folder named Idea Archive. The folder contained more than a hundred note clippings spanning my entire friendship with Milo and Jamal.

  Milo was the Production Adviser. Jamal was the Promoter.

  I was the Idea Guy.

  Our group chat was named the SuJaMi Guild, for Sunny, Jamal, and Milo.

  In Chemistry, we three huddled in the back of the classroom and drew on notepads while the rest of the students boiled strips of balsa wood or whatever those bucktoothed lemmings had been told to do.

  Me and Milo and Jamal were strictly B students.

  “Excuse me,” said Ms. Uptight Teacher. “What do you three think you’re doing back here?”

  I thought fast. “It’s STEAM.”

  STEAM referred to any activity that involved Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Math. Falling off a skateboard could be STEAM. Eating tacos could be STEAM.

  Ms. Uptight Teacher peered at my scribbles. “Huh?”

  “STEAM,” I insisted.

  “STEAM,” said Jamal.

  “Okay, but—” said Ms. Uptight Teacher.

  “STEAMSTEAMSTEAM,” said me and Milo and Jamal.

  She left us alone to brainstorm in peace.

  While picking clover in the golden Friday afternoon light of another track practice, me and/or Milo and/or Jamal—it was hard to remember who said what first—came up with Raiden’s Spark: electroluminescent wires spring-launched from a wrist-mounted device.

  “It fulfills our CREAPS requirement,” said Milo.

  “Cheap parts,” I said, counting on my fingers.

  “Readily available,” said Jamal, counting on his, too.

  “Easy to assemble,” said Milo, nodding.

  “Awesome effect,” said Jamal, nodding, too.

  “Portable,” I said.

  “Safe!” cried Milo.

  “We got ourselves a plan, Karaan,” I said, referring of course to the god of all lycanthropes.

  I reached out both arms to exchange high fives with Jamal and Milo at the same time. Jamal’s was gentle as a baby’s kick. Milo’s could break a cinder block.

  “Hey,” yelled Coach Oldtimer. “Let’s get lined up for sprints, pronto.”

  “In a minute, beef strokinoff,” I snapped, irritated.

  “Jeez, you guys, come on,” said Coach, waving his clipboard in vain.

  I turned back to Milo and Jamal. “I’ll get building over the weekend.”

  “Early start,” said Milo. “Bravo.”

  “The early bird rips the worm from the safety of her underground home and bites her in half while her children watch in horror,” I said.

  I spent all Saturday shuttling back and forth between home, Hardware Gloryhole, and Lonely Hobby in Dad’s sapphire-blue-for-boys Inspire NV, an electric car that cost triple the average annual American salary and was crucial to looking the part. Mom had one, too, in burgundy-red-for-girls. She was forever taking it in for service because The more expensive the car, the more attention it needs—but the more attention you get.

  Armed with supplies, I holed up in my room.

  Here in my room, I felt safe. I felt free. Free to be 100 percent me. I had all the things I loved surrounding me, all hidden away in Arctic White airtight storage containers.

  In my room were maces and shields and swords. There were dragons and dice and maps and pewter figurines, all painted in micro-brush detail. There were elven dictionaries and fae songbooks. There were model pliers and glue and solder guns and electronics and wood.

  I banged containers open and closed, and gathered the tools I’d need. I had a whole system. I preferred opaque containers because I did not want anyone to see, and therefore judge, the things I cared deeply about. The things that made me me.

  I flipped my face shield down and got to work. I soldered. Glued. Test-fired. Live-fired. I took notes in my lab book. I crashed asleep, sprang awake the next morning, and kept right on going. I fell into a fugue state deep enough to alarm even Mom, who took a full ten-minute break from her twenty-four-hour workday to cautiously offer a plate of simple dry foods to keep her younger son alive.

  Mom tapped her ear to mute her call—a gesture gone automatic over the years. “Even nerds gotta eat,” she said. She was working, even though it was a Sunday. She wore a cream-colored work blouse incongruously paired with yoga pants and horrible orange foam clogs, because Video meetings are from the waist up.

  “I’m not a nerd,” I said from behind my face shield. “I’m an innovator for nerds.”

  “Right, Jesus, okay,” said Mom, hands raised.

  By the time Monday evening came around, I was up to version twelve of the Raiden’s Spark. I turned off the lights. I aimed my hand at the door, thumbed a button, and let fly a ragged cone of neon-bright wires.

  The wires streaked across the stone chamber in a brilliant flash and wrapped Gunner’s steel helm before he could even begin a backswing of his bastard sword. The rest of my party cowered in awe as a nest of lightning enveloped Gunner’s armored torso, turning him into a marionette gone mad with jittering death spasms, with absolutely no hope for a saving throw against this: a +9 magic bonus attack.

  The wires of Raiden’s Spark retracted smoothly into the spring mechanism via a small hand reel. Gunner lay steaming on the flagstone.

  I turned the lights back on. I flipped my face shield up. I blinked back into my room.

  I opened my lab book, which I had meticulously decorated into the hammered-iron style of medieval blacksmithery.

  DIY FANTASY FX—SUNNY DAE

  From the tiny arms of a tiny standing knight I took a tiny sword that was not a sword but a pen, and muttered words as I wrote them.

  “Raiden’s Spark, success.”

  Fakery

  You’re not wearing that,” said Mom.

  “I always wear this,” I said.

  “Not to dinner at the club, you’re not,” said Mom. She had traded her usual WFH yoga pants for a long gray wool skirt.

  I looked down at my clothes. Glowstick-green vintage Kazaa tee shirt. Cargo shorts the color, and shape, of potatoes.

  Dad appeared in a suit and tie, which is what he always wore. He put down his phone, sighed at my room and its many white plastic storage containers, at the newly completed Raiden’s Spark, and at me. He shook his head.

  “Still with the toys,” he murmured to Mom. “Shouldn’t Sunny be into girls by now?”

  “The book said kids mature at their own pace,” murmured Mom back.

  “I hear everything you’re saying,” I said. “And the Raiden’s Spark is hardly a toy.”

  Dad went back to his phone. Dad also worked twenty-four-hour days. Dad and Mom worked at the same company, which they also owned and operated.

  “We’re at the club tonight,” said Mom. “Please wear slacks and a button-up and a blazer and argyle socks and driving loafers.”

  “And underwear and skin and hair and teeth,” I said.

  “And a tie,” said Dad, eyes locked to his screen.

  “Get your outfit in alignment—now, please,” said Mom, and turned her attention back to her buzzing phone.

  I changed my clothes, hissing. Then I prepared to descend the stairs. I hated stairs. People slipped and fell down stairs. Our old place back in Arroyo Plato had not been cursed with stairs.

  Gray, my older brother, once called me fifteen going on fifty.

  He didn’t call me anything now.

  * * *

  —

  Dad’s blue-for-boys Inspire NV wound silently through the spaghetti streets of ou
r neighborhood: Rancho Ruby.

  Rancho Ruby was developed all at once in the late nineties as a seaside mega-enclave for the newly wealthy. It was the setting for Indecent Housewives of Rancho Ruby. It had its own private airstrip for C-level executive douchebags of all denominations.

  If you thought Playa Mesa was fancy, that meant you’d never seen Rancho Ruby.

  Rancho Ruby was 99.6 percent white. We, the Daes, were one of the few minority families, and one of two Asian families, possessing the wealth required to live in such a community.

  Being a minority in a crowd of majority meant having to prove yourself worthy, over and over, for you were only as credible as your latest divine miracle. For Mom, this meant seizing the lead volunteer position at my school despite her unrelenting work schedule. For Dad, this meant pretending to care deeply about maintaining an impeccable address setup and swing amid the endless poking and ribbing at the Rancho Ruby Country Club.

  Mom and Dad’s company, Manny Dae Business Management Services, was started by Dad’s late father, Emmanuel Dae, a first-generation Korean immigrant who gave his only son his name, his charisma, and his client list. Once upon a time, the company was run out of his old house in Arroyo Plato, which after his death became our house.

  This was the time when big brother Gray and I would rattle the floors of the old craftsman with our stomps and jumps and sprints. When clients—all immigrant mom-n-pops from the neighborhood, understandably intimidated by American tax law—would happily toss back any toy balls or vehicles that happened to stray into the living room, where Mom and Dad held meetings in English, simple Korean, and even simpler Spanish.

  It was also the time when Gray helped me make my first costume—a tinfoil helmet—so that I could play squire to his knight. Together we conquered the backyard lands and stacked the corpses of pillow goblins ten high, often joined by customers’ children enchanted by Gray’s charms. Even back then, Gray had charisma like no other.

  Magic missile! Gray would scream. And I could practically see it!

  Magic missile!

  But.

  Mom and Dad—hustling like hell all over every county in Southern Californialand—landed their first C-level client with C-level cash. After that, they could not imagine going back to the mom-n-pops with their handwritten checks and collateral jerk drumsticks.

  Landing a few more C-level clients—all in Rancho Ruby, all acquired through word of mouth—enabled them to move us into the seven-bedroom monstrosity we lived in today.

  “We’re here,” said Dad.

  I jerked awake. The Inspire NV had taken us to the cartoonishly oversize carriage house of the Rancho Ruby Country Club. Three young valets—one for each of us—helped us out of the car. They wore hunter green. They were all Hispanic.

  “Sup,” I said to my valet.

  “Have a wonderful evening, Mr. Dae,” said the valet. He looked about twenty-one. Gray was twenty-one.

  Dad handed him the key fob. “I appreciate everything you and your team do,” he said.

  The valet, unaccustomed to such sincerity, brandished the fob with a smile.

  “Of course, Mr. Dae,” said the valet.

  Lion’s-head doors opened to reveal a heavily coffered oak corridor leading us toward the restrained din of a dark velvet cocktail lounge and beyond, deep into the cavern of the dining room proper to sit in deep leather booths as rusty crimson as a kidney.

  A waiter—dressed in real steakhouse whites with a real towel draped over his forearm—led us to our booth.

  “Thank you, Tony,” said Mom.

  “My pleasure, Mrs. Dae,” said Tony. “Medium rares all around, extra au jus?”

  “You know us so well,” said Mom.

  The dining room murmured away, for this was where the serious networking happened; I watched Mom and Dad as they alternated between scanning the room and checking their phones, scanning and checking.

  “Now, will we be needing this fourth place setting?” said Tony the waiter.

  “Not tonight,” said Mom. She’d been saying this for three years now.

  Tony began stacking the place setting.

  In order to distract Tony, I pointed and said, “Is that stag head new?”

  Tony glanced back at the wall, giving me time to palm a miniature teaspoon.

  “That thing’s been creeping me out for years,” said Tony.

  I glanced at Mom and Dad, but they of course did not notice my pilferage.

  Tony whisked the plates and utensils away. That fourth place setting had been meant for Gray. It was sweet that the staff still put it out, just in case.

  Gray had forgone college against Mom and Dad’s wishes. He was living forty minutes away in Hollywood, the glowing nexus of every dazzling arc light crisscrossing Los Angeles, and well on his way to becoming a rock star.

  I imagined Gray, lit from all sides by flashbulb lightning.

  “Honey, did you get my Hastings Company email?” said Mom, tapping at her phone. “They’re asking about reseller permits.”

  “What the hell do we know about reseller permits?” said Dad.

  “Just make something up, Mr. CEO,” said Mom.

  “Fake it till you make it,” said Dad, and he high-fived Mom.

  Then they returned to their phones.

  “Sunny,” said Mom. “Did you get my email about later tonight?”

  “Uh,” I said.

  “I sent it this morning?” said Mom, growing disappointed in her son. Tony swept a drink in front of her, and she swept it to her mouth for a sip in a fluid motion without breaking eye contact with me.

  I was terrible at email. I would leave it unchecked for days at a time. Email was the awkward transitional technology between snail mail and texting. Pick one or the other. Even the word email—electronic mail—sounded vintage, like horseless carriage.

  Mom frowned. “Your morning email is what sets the tone for the rest of your day.”

  “Email is fundamentally incompatible with my workflow,” I said.

  Dad raised his eyebrows as he worked his phone. “I got your email, dude. The Sohs, right?”

  “Yap,” said Mom. Something appeared on her extremely large smartwatch, and she flicked it away. “So, to reiterate what was in the email: Our old friends from college, commercial development consultants, you’ve never met them, are here from London for the next three to six quarters, working on this ginormous mixed-use project in downtown LA, but, and, so, we got Trey, who should be here tonight, to score them a condo just down the street, anyway, their daughter, Cirrus, you’ve never met her, same age as you, she’ll be at Ruby High starting tomorrow, so we figured you could show her the ropes, because we and the Sohs have always done favors for each other.”

  “Sohs?” I said.

  “Jane and Brandon Soh, S-O-H,” said Dad.

  “Cirrus isn’t gonna know anyone,” said Mom. “So I figured you could be her orientation buddy.”

  “I’m the world’s worst orientation buddy,” I said, because it was true. My main interest was in cataloging the imbecilic spectacle of human folly, not justifying their inane rules and customs with explanation. I bit a nervous fingernail.

  “Friends in need, Sunny,” said Dad, eyes on screen.

  I hated meeting new people. New people terrified me.

  “Tha-anks,” chanted Mom.

  Dad looked up from his phone and narrowed a hunter’s gaze. “I see Trey Fortune,” he said. “Right there.”

  “Take the conch,” hissed Mom. She swatted his shoulder. “Go, go, go.”

  Dad holstered his phone, took a breath, and whispered a little prayer: “Keep a super-duper positive attitude.”

  “There’s my CEO,” said Mom. She patted his back.

  Then Dad slunk off into the dark. Within moments, he reappeared with Trey Fortune.

&n
bsp; Mom shot to her feet. “It’s so good to see you, Trey,” she chirped.

  I groaned silently and rose, as etiquette demanded. “Hi,” I said.

  “Love the tie, Gray,” said Trey Fortune.

  I could only blink at the man.

  “I mean Sunny—my goof,” said Trey Fortune. “You and your brother are practically twins.”

  I wanted to point out that Gray was five inches taller than me and eight points handsomer, but I could not. I said nothing. For a good couple of seconds, too.

  “All Asians are technically identical twins, at the genetic level,” I said.

  Trey made a horse face: Did not know that!

  Dad, who often confused my jocularity for unhinged derangement, erupted into the fakest laughter in the annals of laughing, dating all the way back to the prehistoric walrus. Mom picked up on Dad’s cue and laughed as well. Together they laughed loud enough to cover up their mortification at their son.

  The laughs did the trick, and soon Trey Fortune was laughing right along.

  All of us laughed, except for me.

  * * *

  —

  Later.

  Back in my room.

  As I changed back into my cargo shorts and placed my dress slacks into a white plastic storage container, a miniature teaspoon fell out.

  I smiled.

  I took the little spoon across the hallway to Gray’s room.

  I walked in. I sat on the bed, which was perfectly neat from years of disuse. When Gray moved into his own apartment in Hollywood, he took only what he needed from this room and left the rest sitting wherever it sat, giving the place the feel of a ship abandoned mid-dinner:

  Posters, old vinyl, three guitars, a bass, amps, club flyers. Graffitied Docs in the closet; a frayed wardrobe of black pants and tee shirts, all still hanging; a leather jacket.

  Gray had left it all without a second thought, creating a ruin frozen in time. A Tomb of Cool.

  I opened Gray’s old desk drawer. It was full of tarnished teaspoons, all stolen from the country club by either me or him over the years. It had been our little gag ever since we moved to Rancho Ruby. We had performed this small act of disobedience without fully realizing why. Without fully understanding that it was our small way of claiming this new, unfamiliar neighborhood as our own.