Super Fake Love Song - David Yoon Page 0,31

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