Super Fake Love Song Page 9

  From the sparsely populated bleachers opposite ours came a football team that looked very much like that of Ruby High, all red-and-white as opposed to our white-and-red. Their cheerleaders looked like our cheerleaders; their coach shared the same taste in vee-neck sweaters. It might as well have been the same school, just with everything flopped in mirror image.

  It was another school in the multiverse of schools, and had the heavenly coin of fate landed heads, I would’ve found myself in the mirror world opposite us, rooting for Delgado Beach High.

  But the coin hadn’t landed heads, so I was on this side of the field.

  The crowd on this side of the field applauded politely for our guests.

  “AND NOW,” cried the speakers, “HEEERE’S YOUR RUBY HIGH RAH-VAH-JURRS!”

  Immediately the crowd stomped to their feet, the Ruby High marching band blasted the air with fiery brass and a fast hailstorm of ratamacues, and everyone around us began clapping and hooting.

  I had a habit of ridiculing fans of sport. Teams switched players all the time. Sometimes, they even switched geographic locations. Therefore, what was a team but for uniform color combinations and logos?

  But now, seeing how Cirrus batted her hands together and marveled at the aluminum trembling with thunder beneath our feet, I wondered: If being where you were when you were was but a wobble of physics, and all else was equal—Ravager or Avenger—why not belong?

  Why not join in?

  People, I realized, rooted for teams not necessarily because one was somehow fundamentally better than the other. They did it mostly just to belong.

  Because it was nice to belong to something, or someone.

  I glanced at Cirrus, who had glanced at me, too.

  White-with-red football players erupted from a large decorated paper hymen and streamed onto the field between two lines of jittering lunatic cheerleaders. On the opposite side, red-with-white football players did the same.

  The crowd instinctively steadied their applause to keep time with the music now, and I figured what the hell, and clapped along. Cirrus held her hand up so we could clap together, which was surprisingly difficult. We managed a few claps, quickly got out of sync, and wound up shoving pressed palms oddly back and forth like we were some kind of silly machine. We learned chants. We high-fived strangers. We yelled, and our cheeks became red in the deepening cold of the night.

  “Go, Avengers, go!” yelled Cirrus along with the crowd. “I mean go, Ravagers, go! Sorry!”

  She teetered, and I caught her with both arms.

  When the Rancho Ruby High Ravagers—our side of the field—ultimately lost, Cirrus and I joined the crowd streaming down the bleachers and watched as parties dissolved into the night with murmurs and backslaps and hugs.

  We’ll be back, they said. We’ll get ’em next time.

  “I’m a Ravagers fan!” said Cirrus. “I loved it!”

  I did too.

  * * *

  —

  The ride back was flat and quiet, and the rows of dewy centenarian sycamores standing sentinel layered the sky above with all the velvet colors of night foliage: Edward greens and funeral teals and spotted charcoal. I had never quite realized how beautiful the ride home was until now.

  Until Cirrus.

  Her hair blew into her face, so she bicycled hands-free for a moment to deftly tie it back.

  “All the Ruby High people looked so sad by the end of the game,” said Cirrus.

  “And for what, right?” I said, gearing up for ridicule out of sheer habit. I would’ve gone on, but this time I stopped myself.

  “They really believed in their team,” said Cirrus. “They belonged to them. It was nice to see.”

  My mind flicked over to an image of Milo and Jamal and back. I belonged to them. We were a team. Cirrus was new. She had no team.

  “I could belong to you,” I said.

  “You could belong to me,” I said.

  “We could belong to each other,” I said.

  Scratch, scratch, scratch. I found I could say nothing. Cirrus filled the silence.

  “So I’m settling in pretty well, thanks for asking,” she said, tossing a wry smirk at me.

  “Oh my god, I am inconsiderate and self-centered,” I said. I squeezed my eyes. “You settling in okay there, Cirrus Soh?”

  We both stood on our pedals to allow a speed hump to pass.

  “Having you around makes it easier,” she said.

  Her words made me abnormally warm. Everything she said and did made me abnormally warm.

  “Having me around makes you, uh,” I said, painting myself into a syntactical corner.

  Cirrus glanced at me. “You are strange,” she said.

  “Your mom’s butt is strange,” I said.

  “Not that she’s ever around for us to examine it,” said Cirrus with a puff.

  A moment appeared, and began to stretch ominously in length. I knew so little about Cirrus’s home life. Imagination tended to fill voids in unpredictable ways, so I began spinning scenarios again: Her parents didn’t exist, Cirrus was really a runaway, and so on.

  I wanted to ask. But from the look on Cirrus’s face, her parents seemed like a sensitive subject. What if I broached a subject so sore it wound up driving her away?

  So I just quipped, “We’re not seriously talking about your mom’s butt,” and when Cirrus laughed, the ominous moment snapped in two and whipped clean away.

  I was lightly sweating by this point. I unzipped my hoodie, let it billow with night air.

  “Whoo, got a long uphill ahead,” said Cirrus, and klonked into a lower gear. “So I heard the Immortals were practicing yesterday.”

  I sighed, something I did whenever I got nervous. “You did?”

  “Jamal told me,” she said. “I think that guy is in love with me.”

  “Wouldn’t surprise me,” I said.

  “I think Milo might be, too,” she said.

  “Wouldn’t surprise me,” I said.

  “I would really love to hear you guys play,” said Cirrus, almost coyly.

  We reached her street and approached her condo. We stood and pumped our pedals until we reached it, and then we just kind of stood there on our bikes, panting.

  “Can I check out what you’ve done with the place?” I said, shooting hot breath in the cool air.

  “No,” huffed Cirrus. Her eyes darted. “Sorry—it’s still all boxes everywhere, nothing to see yet, but later when it’s ready sure but not now is that okay?”

  “Of course,” I said, immediately intrigued.

  Cirrus gazed at me with beautiful sheepish eyes. “Sorry.”

  “It’s totally okay,” I said. “You got boxes everywhere, I understand.”

  I blinked at the ironic fact that I, too, had many boxes in my room that I didn’t want Cirrus to see. Only my boxes were the permanent kind.

  We stood close. Cirrus’s lips couldn’t have been more than thirty centimeters from mine. I badly wanted to move a centimeter closer, but I could not. Every muscle in my body refused to contract, out of sheer terror. Only my lip muscles grew tight.

  Cirrus stood frozen, too. Did she want to kiss me, too? Or oh god, did she not? That made no sense—wouldn’t she take evasive action, then? Maybe she was just as scared as me?

  We might’ve stayed frozen all night, if not for the voice:

  “Lovely night.”

  These words, uttered in dreamy singsong, came from an older woman’s silhouette framed in a dim amber window next door.

  “It is,” said Cirrus slowly.

  We waited and waited, but the woman did not leave.

  Cirrus leaned in and whispered, “Is she still there?”

  I whispered back. “Your neighbor is terrifying.”

  “I think she sleepwalks,” whispered Cirrus
. “I think this is all a dream to her.”

  “Let’s not wake her,” I whispered.

  Somehow our lips were now a hundred centimeters apart. A normal distance. The moment had passed. No longer was I hot; indeed, I was freezing now. The night mist around us had thickened into sprinkles. Those sprinkles were turning into actual rain.

  “I guess I should go inside,” said Cirrus.

  I stomped on a pedal. “See you tomorrow,” I said.

  “Not if I see you first,” said Cirrus, then cringed at herself. “I don’t really know what that expression means.”

  “It means if you see me before I see you, then you’ll have time to avoid me,” I said.

  “Well, that’s horrible,” said Cirrus. “I take it back. I will see you tomorrow.”

  “Isn’t that what I said in the first place?” I said.

  “Bye,” said Cirrus.

  “Bye,” I said.

  “Bye,” said Cirrus.

  “Bye,” I said.

  “Go!” said Cirrus with a sweet laugh. “You’re getting all wet!”

  “Bye,” I said, and laughed too as I pedaled away.

  * * *

  —

  Later.

  I lay awake in bed. The whole world was asleep, lulled by the sweeping caress of vast curtains of rain spanning all the land.

  I sat up. In dim light, my room looked like some sort of ice hotel. Blocks and blocks of Arctic White airtight plastic storage containers formed walls and canyons glinting everywhere in the dark.

  I suddenly felt like a hoarder. I looked around.

  I absolutely am a hoarder. This room is not normal.

  How had I not seen it before?

  No normal American teenager lived like this. My room was not normal, because I was not normal. Even Milo and Jamal called my room a warehouse workshop with a bed.

  A normal American teenager would’ve kissed Cirrus tonight.

  I swiveled out from under the sheets and automatically inserted my feet into my memory foam slippers, only to violently kick them away with twin thuds. Everything felt stupid—my room, my slippers, everything. I scrambled my hair. I felt a little like I was bursting at the seams with manic energy.

  Was I frustrated with myself? Yes.

  Was it because I knew that I could never, ever bring Cirrus into this psychotic memory palace of a place? Partly.

  Mostly, it was because of this: I just realized that I had spent my whole life thinking I was better and smarter and more clever than all the other idiots on the planet, when really I was nothing more than afraid. Meanwhile, all the other idiots on the planet were busy running around having fun.

  I realized the one word that best described my high school self:

  SHAME

  In the very next moment, I also realized:

  Enough.

  I crept across the hallway and into Gray’s room. I lay down on his perfectly made bed in the blue light. This was a normal room. This was the kind of room I wanted: a room I could bring Cirrus to, with all my stuff displayed in the usual manner—in the open, and not concealed within uniform stacks of white. A room that proudly showed who I was.

  I knew that Gray’s room no longer showed who he was.

  Who was Gray now?

  Once upon a time, Gray was Gray. Until we moved from Arroyo Plato, and he became something else. Mom and Dad were once Mom and Dad, too. Until they weren’t.

  Not me. I would be as blatantly me as I could be for all to see, and to hell with the Gunners of the world. I would unpack all my white storage containers. I would even build shelves.

  Maybe Cirrus would find this me unsettling.

  Or maybe Cirrus would love this me. Maybe her love would act as a protective shield, for it was rumored that love possessed a mega–magic armor bonus.

  Things could go either way.

  All I could do was take that chance.

  Murder

  Breakfast!”

  I opened my eyes. It was morning. Around me the rain pattered on.

  I clicked a sticky tongue. My mouth tasted like guano paste. My head was cold. My whole corpus was cold. And rheumatoid stiff.

  I had slept on top of Gray’s bed. At one point I had found a pillow to drool on.

  The last thing I remembered was closing my eyes, lying back, and listening to “Beauty Is Truth” just one more time.

  “Sun,” said Gray, now stomping up the stairs.

  “Oh no,” I said.

  I scrambled out of bed, flailing like a rough android prototype. I hit Gray’s guitar still leaning against the amp, sending it to the carpet with a heavy binggg.

  No time to pick it up. I darted out, across the hallway, and into my room to hop over storage containers and fling myself under the bedsheets.

  Seconds later, a knock. Gray poked his head in. “Mom’s making me tell you to come eat when she could do it just fine all by herself because I’m your big brother and I’m supposed to look after you or whatever, god.”

  “Just a sec,” I said, in my best morning whimper.

  After I was sure he was gone, I crept into his room to harvest the day’s outfit from his cornucopia of dark and broody fashion choices. I stuffed them into a backpack for my daily visit to the old storage shed by the bike racks.

  Breakfast had already been set out, all in silver and gold-rimmed porcelain in the hotel room service style Mom had always dreamed of having since forever. I shuffled to my chair, sat, and began consuming half the table.

  Mom and Dad ate in silence. At the end opposite me, Gray abjectly stared into a giant bowl of rainbow cereal going soggy. He wore another button-up, another pair of khakis. He looked freshly taxidermied for a viewing.

  “How did the meeting with Trey Fortune go?” I asked him, and immediately knew it was a mistake.

  “I’ll be downstairs,” said Gray, and shot up out of his seat.

  “You are here, Gray,” barked Dad. “Be here. With us.”

  “Fsss,” said Gray, and slumped back down.

  “What do all winners have in common?” said Dad.

  “Super-duper positive attitude,” mumbled Gray.

  “Plenty of people would hire Manny Dae Jr.’s oldest son in a nanosecond,” said Dad. “Remember that.”

  “Anyway, the meeting went great,” said Mom. “Trey wants to intro him to the whole team.” She scanned Gray up and down with an upturned palm, as if providing visual proof.

  “That’s,” I said, wanting to echo Mom’s great, but I changed tack when I saw Gray sadly sink his face nearly into his bowl. “That’s, yeah!”

  “You should be proud,” said Mom.

  “We are,” said Dad.

  “Absolutely,” said Mom.

  Gray swiveled his spoon to the other side of the bowl, then back.

  “Oh, hey, Sun,” said Dad to me. “Before I forget—could you?”

  He handed me his phone, opened to the Inspire NV customer log-in screen.

  “Honey, we have that call in forty seconds,” said Mom.

  “Dude, just conference me in on yours,” said Dad.

  “Grr,” said Mom, and began tapping her tablet. She shoved Dad out of the room. “We’re on, Mr. CEO, game faces.”

  “Yap,” said Dad.

  They vanished, leaving me and Gray alone. I looked at Gray. Gray looked at his cereal. He was dead still but for a single knee madly jackhammering. I thought about how I had worn Gray’s Antichrist hoodie last night. It was more mine than his now.

  Back to Dad’s phone. Solving his log-in problem, it turned out, was a matter of flipping a content blocker plug-in to Off. I hit Reload, let the autocomplete fill in his password, and found myself successfully scrolling among forty-eight different camera views.

  I tapped Driver Side Front Lower and scrubbed ar
ound. Dad was driving home from his reserved parking spot at the gleaming offices of Manny Dae Business Services. The car made its way home, entered the garage, and let Dad out. After a moment, the lights went dark and all the colors flipped into black-and-white night mode. Nothing special.

  “I don’t get it,” I muttered.

  “Get what,” said Gray.

  I showed Gray what I was doing. “I’m trying to find the balljiggler who keyed Dad’s—”

  I stopped, because Gray had stopped. He eyed the phone like it was a king cobra.

  “No,” blurted Gray. He lunged for the phone, splashing cereal all over himself in the process.

  When I looked at the screen, I saw a ghostly figure flit past in the dark. I scrubbed back a few seconds—sure enough, a hand holding a screwdriver was digging into the side of the Inspire NV. But inside the garage?

  Gray rose to his feet. I huddled over the phone to keep him from getting at it.

  I jumped back five seconds, and held my forehead in disbelief.

  There was Gray, glaring at the car with murder in his eyes.

  The multicolored Os of cereal funneled themselves into a narrow white delta of milk and moseyed down a stream dripping off the rounded edge of the quartz countertop.

  “Close that tab,” said Gray.

  “What the hell,” I said.

  “I just,” said Gray.

  “Why did you do that?” I said.

  “I don’t know, I don’t know,” said Gray. “Get me a towel or something.”

  “Get it yourself,” I said.

  Gray did, and flung it over the mess. We both watched as the cloth became dark and heavy with milk. Then Gray lunged for Dad’s phone again.

  “Close the tab, dude,” he said.

  “Dad’s gonna ask about it anyway,” I said, holding the phone behind me. “What then?”

  Gray looked like he wanted to rip all the hair off his head.

  I lowered my voice to a murmur. “Why did you do it?”

  Gray searched and searched for words. It felt like a whole minute passing. I tuned my ear past the white noise of the rain and could detect Mom and Dad authoritatively babbling office-speak in the next room.