Super Fake Love Song - David Yoon Page 0,45
heretofore ever uttered to me.
In the following silence, Gray took five to consider the mise-en-scène before him with a hardboiled detective’s eye. The ax. The dame what just scrammed. Gray’s old glad rags on this sap right here, and also on Jamal and Milo. Some kind of hinky grift—with his own brother as the boss fakeloo artist?
When Gray reached the newly doctored flyer—THE IMMORTALS—his eyes narrowed.
I could see him selecting words in his mind and carefully lining them up like surgical tools.
Finally Gray simply said, “Unbelievable.”
He noticed my shirt. “You—”
He noticed Milo and Jamal’s shirts. “And you two—”
Milo and Jamal folded their arms in a useless attempt to hide.
Gray’s confusion broke with a chuckle of amusement that quickly soured into disgust. He took a moment to sneer at all the old things in his old room. I noticed he hadn’t taken a step inside. He clung to the doorway and came no farther, as if the room were a quarantine ward.
He sneered at Jamal. “You enjoying my old shirt?”
Jamal said nothing.
Gray turned to Milo. “You?”
Milo said nothing.
“Please—” I began.
“Please?” said Gray with another laugh. “As long as you’re asking nicely, then yeah, go ahead and play pretend with all my old crap, you amazing losers! Immortals? Really?”
“You can’t say anything—” I began, then stopped myself.
Gray smirked mightily. “She doesn’t know.”
I remained stopped.
“Holy crap,” Gray said. “Of course she doesn’t know.”
I could only hold back the trembles.
“Don’t worry, dude,” said Gray. “Your secret is super-duper safe with me.” He made a swinging exit from the doorway, leaving his grin floating behind for a long time after he left.
Promise
In the chaotic scrum of morning homeroom we debriefed one another via text message for privacy, sitting back-to-back-to-back in Triforce formation—an instinctive response designed to protect ourselves from surprise attack.
JAMAL
So Gray’s gone from garden variety dick to full-on douchtube
Welcome to my never-ending disappointment.
MILO
I found that encounter very stressful
JAMAL
You think?
God I think Gray wants to blow our cover
MILO
But for what possible reason?
Just to mess with my life
JAMAL
He did say our secret is safe with him tho
MILO
Oh Jamal, that was sarcasm.
JAMAL
Oh
MILO
Arch sarcasm.
JAMAL
So our secret isn’t safe is it
I just don’t know what he’s gonna do
MILO
I’m sure he won’t do anything.
JAMAL
Oh god what if he does tho
MILO
I’m sure he was just bluffing, Jamal.
But what if he wasn’t
What if Gray tells my parents . . .
who will then tell Cirrus’s parents . . .
who will then tell Cirrus
Oh my god
JAMAL
Who will then tell the whole school, and then we would be totally ducked and up shut creek without a paddle for sure why why why did we agree to be in a fake band
MILO
Jamal Maurice Willow!
I will do something . . . I got us into this mess, I will figure this out
JAMAL
How??
I will convince Gray to leave us alone, I promise
JAMAL
How????
MILO
Trust Sunny!
JAMAL
Trusting Sunny was the problem to be perfectly honest Milo Hector de la Peña
MILO
You are out of line!
JAMAL
I’m sorry Sunny
I take it back
It’s ok, you are my best friends, I feel terrible about putting you in this situation, love you both
JAMAL
Love you too
MILO
Love you three.
Maybe we could run CREAPS on the problem
JAMAL
lol
MILO
Everything’s going to be fine.
Gray is just being an annoying big brother, that’s all.
He wasn’t always annoying
JAMAL
He wasn’t?
Story for another day
From before our time
Anyway
JAMAL
So Sunny uh
Mhm
JAMAL
Esmeralda’s Veil?
MILO
Jamal.
JAMAL
Sorry sorry nvm
No you’re right I promise I’ll work on that too . . . promise promise promise
The bell rang.
We put our phones away. The teacher came in, made a bunch of trombone sounds, and dismissed us.
Outside, I traveled through rain-wet covered walkways, casting a tube of light and sorcery that dazzled all who beheld me. I wore a stained white Deftones shirt cut into a wide-neck; I wore a pair of Edward Zipperpants. I had discovered a studded leather cuff for my wrist. The cuff did not tell time or light up or fetch your email or anything. The cuff just rocked.
Did I rock?
A trio of freshman girls gave me the Look. I just sighed. If only they knew.
I was an impostor.
This morning I’d been sure I would get caught by Gray, that he would snatch my backpack, unzip it, and dump all his clothes out. But he hadn’t. He was sleeping in, like every morning.
It amazed me that in this life, Gray had gotten to walk around wearing whatever he wanted, switching personas freely as needed. Meanwhile I, ever the loser, seemed to have no license to do such a thing.
Why?
What colossal acrylic lottery-ball blower machine decided that Gray should be the winner and I should be