Super Fake Love Song - David Yoon Page 0,51

and Jamal that I was leaving to meet Gunner, but had forgotten to text when I actually got here.

MILO

Are you there yet?

JAMAL

If you do not update your last known location in the next minute we will assume you have been incapacitated and will call a rescue squad

I am here, I am safe

JAMAL

Still don’t understand why you can’t just help this jerk over video chat or something

MILO

We will keep pinging you just in case.

Roger

JAMAL

Who is Roger

The only decorations in Gunner’s room were six trophies, all for football, starting from the Pee Wee era all the way up.

I eyed his closet door, his dresser. I sipped my water. The water was ice cold.

I placed my glass on the coaster. “So listen,” I said. “I’m happy to help you with your science stuff, okay? Just tell me what you need.”

“You guys are crazy, faking at being a band,” said Gunner with a sudden smile. I’d never seen him smile like that before. “You mofos are some friggin’ crazy-ass mofos.”

He flinched at the doorway, cautious. “I’m not allowed to swear,” he whispered.

“You didn’t,” I said.

He relaxed. He looked at me again and slowly resumed his weird smile.

“Anyway, I don’t blame you, someone like Cirrus,” he said. “I’d do the same thing, too, if I could.” He chuckled. Then he got sad. Then he smiled again.

It seemed like within Gunner there were multiple emotions fighting to surface. I searched his face for clues, but couldn’t discern anything. Aside from being a bully skilled at catching prolate spheroids of leather, what did I really know about him?

“So I actually already got started on the cell model,” said Gunner, and dragged a big new Tuffy trash can from his sparse closet. It was full of plastic bricks. Atop the bricks sat a large baseplate with something built on top: a haphazard arrangement of randomly multicolored towers that even a child would give a harsh critique session to.

“I guess you could call it a start,” I said.

Gunner beamed. “Thanks, man,” he said.

Gunner was different in his home. He was almost shy.

I set the model on a dresser, dug my hands into the Tuffy, and got to work.

“A cell is organic,” I said. “You have to make the Lego curve and look rounded. Like this.”

I quickly built a simple hemisphere out of thin layers that shrank as they reached the top.

Gunner held his chin like someone who had read that holding one’s chin made one look smarter. “Huh.”

“Also, you can’t use just any color,” I said. “I’d use one color per cell structure, like blue for mitochondrion, red for the nucleus.”

I worked for a few minutes, sifting and snapping. I hadn’t built with Lego in a while, and I found myself entering a not-unpleasant, familiar flow state. When I was finished, I realized I had replaced 99.998 percent of Gunner’s original work.

“Dude,” said Gunner. “That looks so rad now. We’re done!”

“We’re not done,” I said. “Tell me what’s missing.”

Gunner held his chin again, then remembered he had a textbook, then went to leaf through it.

“’Kay, so, we need the endoplastic rectum,” said Gunner.

“Endoplasmic reticulum,” I said. “Specifically the rough.”

“And probably this Golgi thing,” said Gunner.

“Apparatus,” I said.

“They’re so tiny and noodly,” said Gunner. “Can we just leave them out?”

“Only if you want a D,” I said. Both the endoplasmic reticulum and Golgi apparatus were intricate, ribbon-like structures no Lego could replicate. But I would never let such a limitation stop me. I loved limitations. Limitations set creativity free.

“Do you have ribbon, or maybe extra-wide, extra-long rubber bands?” I said.

“I have cleat shoelaces,” said Gunner.

“Perfect,” I said.

I instructed Gunner in how to build a matrix of axle holes, which were to be plugged at regular intervals with plentiful, easy-to-find 3M connector pegs (Lego part no. 6558) to form a small field of posts. The shoelace could then be wound around and across the posts to create an arrangement labyrinthine enough to visually convey the complexity of both organelles. We slotted in both modules and then stood back to admire our work.

“Now it looks even radder,” said Gunner.

“You have to be able to say what each part does,” I said. “Endoplasmic reticulum, go.”

Gunner glanced out the doorway, as if his dad were there listening. “It makes lipids.”

“And?”

“Cholesterol.”

“Golgi, go,” I said.

“Takes the molecules from the endoplasmic reticulum and makes complex testicles.”

“Vesicles,” I said, laughing.

“I keep thinking it’s testicles,” said Gunner, laughing, but he suddenly stopped and muttered darkly, “Stupid.”

“Hey,” I said. “Don’t say that.”

Gunner gave me a sheepish look.

“I tried to