Super Fake Love Song - David Yoon Page 0,64

felt cold and baggy and uninspired. I missed Gray’s clothes. This was a silly exercise, because I’d just change into my pajamas in a matter of minutes anyway, but I still did it just in case I ran into Mom and/or Dad. An ounce of prevention!

At home, I climbed upstairs, pulled the Ring of Baphomet off my finger, used it to crown my tiny desk knight as king. My phone played its two-chord rock riff—jhk jhk—and I found myself missing my old Elf shot the food! ringtone.

I was all mixed up.

I want to be with you all night, wrote Cirrus.

Me too, I wrote. I guess there’s always school tomorrow

Not the same, she wrote.

Not the same at all

Are you sleepy?

Nope, I wrote.

Good, she wrote.

She blew bubbles for a moment, then sent a strange message:

WHYSOHCIRRUS HAS INVITED YOU TO

PANOPTICON LIVE

I understood immediately.

One sec, I wrote.

I slinked downstairs without a sound. I found the headset charging on the kitchen counter. I slipped the goggles on like a hat, semaphored my way through account setup using the hand wands, and defined an invisible play space in the dark living room.

Then my eyes

filled

with

sparkles.

Sylphs

I find myself floating among stars. Below me there is a cluster of dark green malachite set into an infinite sheet of pure lapis lazuli: an island alone in the night sea, lit by the single white spotlight of the quarter moon.

I float down into the forests there, where amber lights guide me. The air becomes close. Sounds of dripping rainwater and creaking wood.

We are young sylphs, still lacking wings and earthbound. Her wrapped crown of berries and lichen glows with greenish-white bioluminescence, skin a butter-pecan cream, eyes black onyx. My own hands glow a dogwood pink fading to chartreuse at the extremities. When we approach each other, our colors blend and brighten.

The fireflies of the forest light a path, which we follow. There is the puzzle of the hidden red rocks, which is easy enough to complete. There is the stone lock. We rotate it to reveal a tunnel leading to a cave of gems. More puzzles await within. She shows me how to solve them all.

At the center of the island is the tree god, who blesses us with a shower of leaves, and in twin novae of scatterlight we are reborn with long vellum wings. We can do anything now.

Sing, she says. She places me on a colossal tree stump ten thousand rings old. She multiplies herself into an audience of hundreds, each lit a different color, waiting for me to begin. I only got to hear you sing once, she says. I want to hear you sing again.

I have dozens of voices at my disposal. But I choose to be default, normal, and my voice weaves through the impenetrable forest canopy, loops a star or two, and filters its way back down. The audience glows in unison now: white and blue and green and orange.

We kiss in that awkward way avatars do: the polygons of our faces glancing off each other, never really touching. The world powers down, stripping itself of light, then texture, then the glowing wireframe underpinning it all, finally leaving only darkness.

90%

Two weeks until the talent show.

I felt light. I felt like gravity had lessened just a bit. I didn’t know how else to explain my lengthening stride as I walked. The ease with which I sped my bike toward Cirrus’s condo every morning with her daily call of Let’s ride!

Every morning I jump-mounted my ten-speed, no doubt damaging soft tissues in the process, but I was starting to care less about things like that. I had neglected to wear my sleep cap twice already, for instance.

Every morning I ducked behind the Cernoseks’ junipers and emerged anew, clad in, say, a torn baseball tee and plaid ska pants with chains that served no purpose other than to sparkle and clink with each step.

I was feeling a momentum that would soon push the talent show far behind me in the past, bringing me finally into a clear future where I could be me and only me.

My momentum rose in inverse proportion to Gray’s posture, which shrank with resignation as he accepted Dad’s nonstop mentorship in corporate client services. Gray was normalizing. He was accepting.

In the hallways at school, I would see Gunner leading his squadron of meat-brains hither and yon, aimlessly patrolling. Where they once sniffed at me like hyenas, now they each gave me the nod, starting with Gunner and rippling down each wing of their