Super Fake Love Song - David Yoon Page 0,19

switch to a more conventionally acceptable and therefore more boring ringtone.

Will you be my lunchmate? wrote Cirrus. I ate with the guidance counselor in her office yesterday and it was 1930s Berlin in there.

I smiled the most ridiculous smile ever. I showed it to Jamal and Milo.

Jamal looked at me, awestruck. “That means you’re married.”

As you wish, I wrote back.

Foot-ball

Are you ready for a real American lunch at a real American school?” I said.

I found Cirrus standing on a concrete berm by the outdoor amphitheater, which was already imprinting in my mind as a sacred site of great significance and origin. She observed the rivers of braying teenfolk with arms folded and the hard eyes of a desert shepherd.

“Show me all of your country’s secrets,” she said with a smile.

I was feeling bold, so I held out a hand to help her down. She just slapped me five and jumped.

“I get to sit with the cool kids,” she said.

I faked a rakish snarl. “Come on.”

I felt a swagger rising within me. I was walking with the mysterious and beautiful new girl, who happened to live just down the street, no big deal.

My swagger froze and shattered as soon as I glimpsed the lunch area. At the far end were Milo and Jamal glaring up at Gunner, who, right on cue, snatched away Milo’s basket of fries and tipped his sports drink into his tray for good measure. His hairless, gray-skinned sidekick cackled through rotting teeth:

“Nerd tax.”

The sight gutted me of all confidence, leaving it to splatter and curdle all over the floor.

I began to hyperventilate. Cirrus thought I was cool. She thought I was brave. Because she thought I was something I was not. Because I’d told her I was someone I was not.

If you became friends with someone who turned out to be someone else, did that mean you’d have to start all over again with the real them? Would you even want to?

“Over here,” I said, veering us off-course toward a blank wall concealed by planters.

I sat down on the ground. Cirrus cheerfully followed, not knowing any better. She did not know this area had no coolness to it whatsoever. How could she?

I wished I could rewind time and simply say,

This is actually Gray’s room. Not mine.

But time travel had not yet been invented and never would be, no matter how many lazy-brained sci-fi movies fantasized about it without proper peer-reviewed study.

This was a stupid, stupid problem, and I kicked myself for having created it.

I peered and watched Gunner saunter away in the distance. Milo poured out his flooded tray into a drain in the floor with practiced care. I felt bad that I hadn’t been there to help absorb and defuse the abuse. Instead, I was safe here with Cirrus. It felt selfish of me.

Cirrus and I opened our bags and investigated our lunches. Cirrus unwrapped what looked like an al pastor cemita sandwich, but on pretzel bread—quite the twist. I groaned with an almost sexual desire at the sight of it.

“What is that?” I said.

“An experiment,” said Cirrus. “My parents let me pick whatever I want for grocery delivery, since it’s mostly just me in the house anyway. I wind up messing around with food just for kicks.”

I revealed my lunch: pita sandwiches filled not with gyros but leftover bulgogi and dabs of sambal oelek. Lunches were always random, slapdash affairs haphazardly assembled with whatever I could find in the refrigerator. But they were always good, too.

“Trade, trade, trade,” said Cirrus with big eyes.

We traded. We ate.

“This is amazing,” I said.

“This is amazing,” said Cirrus. “And not too wet.”

I looked at her.

“I’m not a huge fan of wet foods,” said Cirrus. “Cereal, most soups, tuna salad sandwiches.”

“I’m glad,” I said.

“We definitely have the best lunches out of any of these genetically engineered philistines,” said Cirrus.

One person’s usual is another person’s brand new.

A sudden wave of nausea swelled. Because right now I was very much liking being with Cirrus. And I could tell she was liking being with me. Or what she thought was me.

“So is it considered cool to sit here because Americans aspire to set themselves apart from the rest of the herd?” said Cirrus. “I saw an ad that said something like that.”

“Americans are brainwashed from an early age to believe that they are blesséd children of God with total sovereign autonomy and unlimited individual control over their destinies no matter what systemic prejudices or disadvantages they might have been born into, which in