Super Fake Love Song - David Yoon Page 0,66

a group high five above our heads, with Gray joining in as our secret fourth Immortal.

Each night I’d ask him what percentage our progress was.

“I’d say another five percent,” Gray would say.

“That’s it?” Jamal would cry.

“I think you’re just saying that to make us work harder,” Milo would grumble.

“Actually maybe only four,” Gray would say, wincing ironically. After being beaten with padded timpani mallets, he would relent. “Okay, five.”

Five or four, we were making steady progress.

To prove how far we’d come, Gray showed us a video he’d secretly shot from the hip last week. We looked like toddlers on a playdate playing in clueless parallel. We didn’t look like that anymore. The latest video proved we were well aware of one another and communicating like an actual band.

To prove how far we still had to go, Gray showed us a video of himself performing with the Mortals taken years ago. It wasn’t “Beauty Is Truth,” but it got the point across. Gray performed. By contrast, we were still just knocking out notes with all the grace of dockworkers.

Each night, Team DIY Fantasy FX would promise ourselves we’d go set up at Jamal’s after band practice to put together the Esmeralda’s Veil episode, but each time, we’d find we were just too exhausted. There simply weren’t enough bars left in our batteries.

Before bed, Jamal would report on his obsession with those LARPros interlopers.

They are still idle, no new episodes, no updates, he would write. But for how long?

Friday came. We’d been practicing for more than four weeks now.

“How ready are we?” I asked.

“Let me see your hands,” Gray said. Jamal’s fingertips were nicely callused, as were mine. The insides of Milo’s index fingers were sandpapery now from his basher grip on the sticks.

“There goes my hand modeling career,” said Milo.

Jamal batted our hands away from Gray and gripped his shoulder. “How ready are we? Spit it out, man!”

Gray sighed, blew out his cheeks like he did every night. “Eighty percent.”

“That’s like a B!” said Milo.

“I will take a B!” said Jamal. “Does that mean we can stop early?”

Gray made a reluctant face: No. When Jamal and Milo turned to look at me, I was making the same face.

“Come on!” said Jamal.

“Just a little more,” I said.

“Well, it’s Friday, and I’m starving, so I’ll smell you guys later,” said Jamal.

“I’m gonna go to bed,” said Milo with a yawn.

“It’s barely eight,” I said.

“Said the boy in love,” said Milo.

“Bring it in,” said Gray. “Excellent work today. You remind me of me when I was your age.”

“Stop being momentous,” said Jamal.

We brought our hands together, lowered them, and thrust them skyward with the help of our voices uttering in unison:

“To metal.”

Four of us, four devil horns now held high.

* * *

—

At home, Gray ran interference with Mom and Dad while I scampered upstairs to change back into my Sunny-garb. I flopped onto my bed, exhausted.

My phone buzzed, and my heart flipped.

Come down and hang out man, wrote Gray.

I stared at the phone. Gray was inviting me to his basement lair.

Ok, I wrote.

I headed down, and the air grew thick with the smell of food as I approached the game room door.

“Just made some frozen samosa things,” said Gray.

There was a small fridge in the basement now, and a microwave. The piles of clothes were put away; the luggage was gone. A little candle waved hi from the room’s single windowsill. The place looked tidy, bordering on cozy.

I sat on the plush carpet—freshly vacuumed into neat Ws—and dug my fingers in.

My phone buzzed. I looked. Everything went soupy as blood suddenly pounded in my ears.

Guess what came in the mail today, wrote Cirrus.

There was a photo of a cardboard box bursting with brand-new black cloth.

Shirts.

Shirts bearing red letters artfully formed from razor slashes:

THE IMMORTALS 2020

ONE NIGHT ONLY

SUNSET STRIP, HOLLYWOOD

There was even a logo: the ring of Satan.

I ordered a hundred, wrote Cirrus.

A hundred tee shirts. A hundred people wearing a hundred tee shirts. A night at Miss Mayhem in front of an audience of a hundred people wearing a hundred tee shirts. Me onstage with a mic performing at night at Miss Mayhem in front of an audience of a hundred people wearing a hundred—

“You all right, dude?” said Gray.

“Everything’s fine,” I said.

You are amazing, I wrote, flubbing every word along the way. Thank you.

I’m your number one fan! wrote Cirrus.

I could not think of what else to write, so I sent a few emojis panic-chosen at random. Emojis were the makeshift poetry