Super Fake Love Song Page 5

  Velociraptor® Elite. Stand Up for Fitness.

  I wore my wired headphones (Bluetooth headphones caused brain cancer, source) and listened to someone named David Bowie, whom I had just discovered. He sang “Let’s Dance.” I agreed, and danced while cycling. My helmet-mounted lamp danced back and forth in time.

  “Under the moonlight,” I sang. “The Cirrus moonlight.” I was a pretty proficient singer, brag if I must. I was in choir in junior high; I could precisely hit notes with the divine purity of a prepubescent altar boy.

  When I reached Jamal’s, I cruised up the herringbone driveway, through the carriage house, across a moonlit atrium, and into the guest villa garage, which was already open and waiting for me.

  “There you are, fast and furious,” said Jamal, adjusting a hanging bedsheet.

  “We’ve been waiting for this all day,” said Milo, setting down his video camera.

  The two stopped what they were doing and faced me.

  “For what?” I said, although I knew what.

  “For you to explain yourself,” said Jamal.

  I smiled a brittle smile that almost betrayed my mounting nerves. I of course needed to tell them about my lie. But I also needed to tell them about my solution.

  “I will,” I said. “I promise. But first, let’s do our important work.”

  “You’re killing us,” said Jamal.

  I held my hands in prayer. “Important work with my two best friends whom I love and can trust with even the most embarrassing admissions, no matter how desperate and pathetic.”

  “Impressive,” said Milo, and locked his camera into a tripod.

  We three fell into a familiar rhythm: Milo, the visionary director, adjusted settings and framed the shot to show only my arm and the rest of the minimal set designed by Jamal. We recorded a wide shot, a slo-mo shot, and a close-up of the Raiden’s Spark device and its parts.

  I recorded the narration, because I had the best voice for that sort of thing. Jamal edited everything together at his giant workstation: the title cards, the footage, the narration, and a sweeping fantasy music track, performed by Jamal himself on the keyboard in the corner.

  We played it back.

  “Perfect,” said Milo, who had the best eye for reviewing video. “Upload it.”

  Jamal uploaded it, and tagged it, and did all the irritating computer crap needed to make sure it was easily findable, because Jamal had the best brain for that sort of thing.

  Finally we sat back, slammed open imported Japanese Ramune sodas, and basked in the satisfaction of another episode completed while a carcinogenic wireless speaker played what Milo called real music, not the ear toxins trending online. We sat with our feet up on the same big orange pouf, the three of us in radial formation like the arms of a scientifically ludicrous but nonetheless sweet 1.21 gigawatt flux capacitor.

  “Lady Lashblade’s gonna give us a share,” said Jamal. “I can feel it.”

  We toasted: “To Lady Lashblade.”

  But I was remembering another toast in my mind: To metal.

  Jamal, having just read my mind effortlessly, said, “So.”

  “Earlier today,” said Milo, “a beautiful new student named Cirrus asked us if we were immortals.”

  “She asked us if we were the Immortals,” said Jamal.

  “Correct, the Immortals,” said Milo.

  My stomach performed a brand-new break-dance move called the Idiot.

  I just smiled fiercely like I was fighting massive gas.

  “Ha ha, ugh,” I said. I wished I could fabricate something on the fly, something less cringey than the truth.

  Jamal eyed me. “You don’t look okay.”

  “I don’t feel okay, so that makes sense,” I said with a laugh.

  “What’s wrong?” said Milo.

  This was bad. When Milo asked what’s wrong, he did not let go until the question was fully answered. He was like a bulldog. A big, gentle bulldog that clamped down on unexpressed emotions and shook with rabid fury until they’d been ripped free and were dripping wet in his powerful jaws of compassion.

  “It’s nothing,” I said, and winced at my error. It’s nothing was bloodscent for Milo.

  Milo’s emotional jaws squeezed harder. “Tell us what it is, Sunny Dae.”

  I wrapped my arms around my ears. “Sorry, you guys are breaking up on me.”

  “Not if we’re texting,” said Milo.

  Checkmate. I felt Milo’s teeth pierce my psychic skin.

  I sagged limp like fresh kill. I gave in. I explained the whole situation. Friends of my parents, my role as orientation buddy. Cirrus’s overwhelming coolness. Her confounding beauty. Her trenchant wit.

  “She’s very comely,” said Milo.

  “Comely?” said Jamal.

  I turned to Jamal. “I seem to have misplaced my quizzing glass, Mr. Jamal.”

  “I believe you misplaced it in the drawer housing your spats and garters, Mr. Sunny,” said Jamal.

  “Something wrong with the word comely?” said Milo.

  Jamal triumphantly jabbed at the air. “I knew something big was behind your wardrobe change,” he said.

  “I wish I had someone to orient,” said Milo.

  “I love her,” said Jamal.

  “Shut up,” said Milo. “Sunny has dibs.”

  “There’s no dibbing. Cirrus doesn’t belong to me or anyone.”

  “Then let me love her,” said Jamal.

  “She’s just so ding-dang cool,” I said. “That’s all. We barely even know each other.”

  I twisted my mouth into a grimace as I recalled the other night, Gray’s room, the lie. “And anyway, I’m not exactly the guy she thinks she knows.”

  Milo looked at me quizzically.

  “Oh, I lied to her,” I sighed in mournful song.

  Jamal raised his eyebrows. “Already?”

  “Shut up, butt face,” I said.

  “You shut up, tiny weird-ass face on your mama’s face’s butt,” said Jamal, parrying with confident ease.

  “That’s enough,” said Milo, and eyed me to continue.

  “I told her I was in a band,” I said. “Because I wanted to seem cool.”

  Milo and Jamal looked at each other for a moment to take in this information.

  “Hence, the Immortals,” said Jamal to Milo.

  “Sunny’s brother’s old band was known as the Mortals,” said Milo, stroking his chin.

  “That is remarkably flagrant,” said Jamal.

  “And derivative,” said Milo to Jamal.

  “Shut up,” I said.

  “Why do you think you want to emulate your brother, specifically?” said Milo.

  “I’m not trying to be my brother,” I said. “It’s just I thought I could I don’t know rahh.”

  Jamal and Milo just looked at me and waited.

  I dug my hands into my eyes. “I was there, she was there, she thought my room was Gray’s room, and I just kinda let her! All those guitars! I was nervous, okay?”

  “It is perfectly okay to be terrible with girls,” said Milo. “We are all terrible with girls. We know this about ourselves. You were just grasping for the only successful model of male sexuality you have ever known, and that was Gray. You are okay.”

  “I’m so stupid,” I said. “I’m so stupid I think umami is something babies say when they’re surprised.”

  Jamal loved playing I’m So Stupid, and joined in. “I’m so stupid I thought butt floss meant there’s actual teeth in our butt holes doing the cutting work.”

  “Incredible,” I said, and granted Jamal victory.

  “It is perfectly okay to feel stupid,” Milo said very, very gently. “Because the fact of the situation is, admitting your lie to her would be almost as creepy as having lied in the first place.”<
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  I nodded: Exactly.

  “I really admire watching you work,” said Jamal to Milo.

  “Revealing your spur-of-the-moment deception would only serve to masturbate the situation,” said Milo.

  “Exacerbate,” said Jamal.

  “I’m here to tell you that all you did was make a mistake any one of us could’ve made,” Milo continued. “You’re not stupid. Just desperate. And incoherent.”

  “We’re incoherent around girls, too,” said Jamal. “Just like o hai baby ng fnzzt shhphtphbpht.”

  “Dur hurr hurr pleez choose mee I’m a virgin hauhauhauhau,” said Milo.

  “Are we doing anything to sausage your anxiety?” said Jamal.

  “Assuage,” I said, gazing at my two best friends.

  I took a long sip, which was impossible given the design of the Japanese Ramune soda bottle, so I just kind of held the bottle to my upturned head and geared up for my pitch.

  “So, I thought I would just tell Cirrus the truth,” I said.

  Milo took a swig. “That is the hard road, old friend. A difficult trial that only the holiest of paladins such as yourself—”

  “But then I thought of a solution,” I said.

  Jamal stared at me sideways. “No,” he said slowly.

  “Just listen,” I said. I crouched low and held my hands out. Milo and Jamal recognized this as my Idea Guy hear-me-out pose.

  “I thought it was a question of maintaining a lie, which is unsustainable, or confessing to the lie, which is sociopathic,” I said. “But I have found a third path.”

  Jamal took a step back. “I know what you’re going to say.”

  “Hear me out,” I said. “Bands break up all the time.”

  “No,” said Jamal firmly.

  I gripped the air tighter.

  “I should be getting home,” said Jamal.

  “This is your home,” said Milo.

  “Hear me out,” I said. “It’s so simple. We learn a song or two. We hang out in the music room at school. Cirrus just happens to find us there. And we can be like Oh hey, Cirrus, what’s up, we were just practicing.”

  “And how long do we do this for?” said Jamal.

  “That’s the thing!” I cried. “The three of us pretend to have a fight. Creative differences, money, doesn’t matter. The band breaks up. Problem solved.”

  Milo opened his palms like a book. “As the Immortals die, so does your lie,” he said.

  Jamal aimed a long flat palm at my head. “You want us to help you so you don’t lose the girl.”

  “Not that she’s even mine to begin with,” I said. “But something like that.”

  “Listen,” said Jamal. “You know neither of us wants to see you get hurt by the situation you so inelegantly created in the first place.”

  “Tough truths,” I said. “I appreciate that.”

  Milo placed one hand atop the other. “You are talking about layering on a new lie to fix the old lie.”

  “Only temporarily,” I said. I swiveled to aim my hands at Jamal like a turret cannon. “You could play bass.”

  “Never before in my life have I played bass,” said Jamal.

  “But you play piano!” I said. “How different can it be? Piano is essentially a percussive instrument, and many consider bass guitar to be one as well! Six of one!”

  Jamal tilted his head this way and that, struggling with my reasoning.

  I rotated to Milo. “And you’re athletic! I bet you could totally keep a beat on drums!”

  “Never before in my life have I played drums,” said Milo.

  “You could totally learn,” I said. “For just long enough.”

  I glanced wildly between the two. Milo tapped a foot, then the other, then slapped perfect sixteenth notes on his thighs with his hands, as if testing his body’s capabilities. He shrugged his big muscly shoulders. He smiled.

  “Could be fun,” said Milo.

  “Stop,” said Jamal.

  I clasped my hands. “I love you guys. So much.”

  “You make it impossible when you say that,” said Jamal, squeezing his narrow head.

  “We love you too,” said Milo. He brought me in for a crushing hug.

  I stretched an arm toward Jamal. “Come on. Please.”

  Jamal underwent a seizure for three seconds, then joined the hug. “You owe us.”

  “No you don’t,” said Milo. “Don’t listen to Jamal.”

  I pushed them back to regard their faces. “Thank you.”

  “So we do this for a little while,” said Jamal. “Just long enough to make her believe it. And then it’s back to our regular DIY Fantasy FX programming.”

  “I promise,” I said.

  Jamal and Milo accepted, and I taught them how to share a fist bump and make the pledge To metal, just like Gray and his Mortals used to do.

  I bid them farewell. I rode off into the night.

  “Under the moonlight,” I sang, pumping my legs. The air felt great. Everything was a slight downhill from Jamal’s house, and the breeze was at my back, and I was flying free.

  I would go home, hole myself up in Gray’s room, and fiddle with all his equipment. I would orient myself. I would prepare. I would practice guitar. Maybe even try singing at the same time. I would plan my big plan.

  I reached home, activated the WhisperTrak belt-drive garage door, and dismounted. I entered the house silently so as not to wake anyone.

  But everyone was still awake. I could hear them. When I walked into the great room, I could see them, too.

  “Hey,” said Gray.

  II

  A snake sheds its skin as it stretches in size.

  What’s left behind is a ghost with no eyes.

  Regroup

  Uh,” I said.

  Mom and Dad sat on the couch with Gray, looking sleepy and pained.

  Having Gray as a big brother was like being related to a teen pop star in hiding. Gray, with his sharp feminine jawline; his messy ponytail of blue carbon hair; his fine musculature, as precise as anime line art. He wore a short-fringe suede jacket and necklace of opal and turquoise and silver. Evidence of some sort of neo-country rock outfit, perhaps.

  Seeing Gray suddenly before me after months of absence made me probe my own jawline (which was round) and my own musculature (which was largely missing) with dissatisfaction.

  Gray sighed through gritted teeth. “Whatever you’re thinking, Sun, do me a favor and save it.”

  Gray could have no idea what I was thinking, which was Did I leave any of my stuff in his room? Did I leave any of his stuff lying out suspiciously? I stifled the urge to glance up the staircase. Instead I looked down and noticed two big duffel bags and a guitar bag.

  “Are you . . . back?” I ventured.

  Gray thumped a fist on the soft couch arm. “I’m here with all my worldly possessions late on a friggin’ Tuesday night. Think, Sun.”

  “Gray,” said Mom. “Be gentle with your brother.”

  Mom had been telling me and Gray to be gentle ever since we were little.

  I rubbed my arm as if he’d just punched it. “Nice to see you, too, jeez.”

  Gray sneered—Fsss—and rose. He hoisted a duffel on each shoulder, then took his guitar.

  “Going to bed,” he said.

  But he didn’t head upstairs. He went downstairs instead, to some other room in the vast finished basement no one ever used. His footsteps faded into the big silence of the rest of the house.

  I felt a cool wave of relief that quickly turned into puzzlement. Why didn’t he go upstairs to his room?

  “What is going on?” I said after he was gone.

  “His band broke up,” said Dad. Amazingly, he was still wearing his headset.

  “Which one?” I said.

 
“There were multiple?” said Dad.

  Mom took Dad’s tiny headset out of his ear, turned it off with a careful squeeze, and tossed it into a crystal candy dish. “His roommate hooked up with his other roommate,” she said. “Then they up and moved to Seattle. We told him he could stay here and regroup as he gets set up with his next band.”

  For how long? I wanted to say.

  “Gosh,” I said instead. Gray had just been through some disappointing nonsense, after all. (Still: Didn’t mean Gray had to snap at me like he did.)

  “Had to happen sometime,” said Dad.

  “Don’t ever say that to Gray,” said Mom.

  “Roger that one hundred percent, dude,” said Dad. “All I’m saying is music is not exactly a super-duper stable source of income.”

  “Music is a brutal business model,” said Mom.

  “Absolutely,” said Dad.

  “I am glad he’s back,” said Mom.

  “Yap,” said Dad. “Me too.”

  “Me too,” I did not say. I was already dreading future interactions with him.

  Despite this, I found myself creeping alone downstairs after Mom and Dad went up to bed. I entered the basement, so pristine it still exuded new-carpet smell. I’m not sure why I did this. I think I wanted to spy on him. Catch clues about his new life. I felt like I knew so little about him now, and here he was.

  I reached the bottom of the stairs. I peeked in. He sat in the billiard room on an ancient poo-colored lazy chair. He was playing some old video game with the volume up loud.

  Reload!

  Ten seconds!

  You lose!

  “Goddamn it,” said Gray. His eyes looked like someone else’s. They looked rabid.

  He caught sight of me. His eyes did not soften or change. These were his eyes now.

  “Hey,” I said, more out of surprise than greeting. I knit my fingers at my belly.

  Gray glanced down. “You going through my old crap?” he chuffed.