Super Fake Love Song - David Yoon Page 0,69

like?” I said.

Gray looked bemused. “Like young Trent Reznor meets old Trent Reznor.”

“Does every band base themselves on another band?” I said. “Is any band truly unique?”

“The only way to learn who you are is by copying someone else first,” said Gray.

“That makes no sense,” I said.

“It doesn’t,” said Gray with a big open laugh. “But also it does.”

I could’ve asked Gray questions all night. Maybe it was because we were outside of familiar Rancho Ruby. Maybe it was seeing Gray where I’d always only imagined him, deep in the gullet of Los Angeles, witnessing with my own eyes how he was so at home here in the dank, sour dark of a rock club.

“Was the plan to get signed to a big label?” I said.

“You know?” said Gray, searching for words. “I didn’t even care about playing stadiums or becoming famous. I just wanted to make music and have a place to live and be happy on my own terms. Like, be my own boss, not get stuck in a suit like—”

Gray paused. He took a sip. “Like Mom and Dad.”

He was growing heavy, so I changed the subject. “Why music, specifically?” I said. Why not, say, fantasy props?

“Why music,” said Gray.

“Nn,” I said, and sipped more of my club soda, which was quickly becoming my favorite beverage ever. Onstage, the Repugnants were getting set up again. The crowd began to stir with hoots and chirps.

Gray thought. “You can really be yourself onstage. If you don’t like that self, you can try on some other one. It’s really freeing. But also limiting, but in a good way? Plus dangerous, but at the same time weirdly safe. I’m not explaining things well.”

“You’re really not,” I said, with a laughing sputter.

“Why do you make your videos?” said Gray.

My belly quivered. Because I’ve been bullied. Because it’s easier to hide behind a computer screen.

Because my big brother hasn’t been there to protect me.

“Because,” I said finally, “like the rest of humanity I’m just another pathetic soul scrounging for likes in a world deadened to all sensation?”

It was a cop-out answer: one of my cynic’s prefab proverbs.

My cynicism, I realized, was my way of removing myself from the equation so that I could not get hurt.

The band began a slow dirge—a wall of sonic sorrow.

Gray had to shout. “Everybody’s a pathetic soul. But when you put yourself out there, and the audience responds, we’re no longer pathetic. I think that’s why you make your videos. That’s why I did music.”

I blurted out an awkward laugh, because I had never heard Gray talk like this before.

Gray continued in a kind of dream. “Our audiences would respond to our performances, and it was this amazing feeling of, like, I see you.”

“I see you,” I said.

“I really see you,” said Gray. His aura grew so thick, I could smell stargazers.

“Cool,” I said, using the word as nonchalantly as possible.

“You’ll see once you’re up there,” said Gray. “It’s the best high. Better than any drug.”

I regarded Gray for a moment. No matter how old you got, your eyes stayed the same.

Me and my brother turned to watch the band together, without a word.

Eucalyptus

I woke from another one of my dreams. This time, I was paddling to keep afloat a raft made out of a giant crispy marshmallow square. The faster I paddled, the faster the square dissolved. Meanwhile, a nimble mermaid flashing scales of silver-black named Cirrus peered at me from the water and asked me why I even needed a raft in the first place since I could just swim with her.

It was a super-obvious dream.

Come over, wrote Cirrus. I sprang out of bed and got dressed.

But at Gray’s closet, I stopped. I felt tired. Tired of changing in the dirt by the junipers, doing laundry in secret, putting clothes back where I found them, leaving no trace for Mom or Dad to find.

After the talent show, I wouldn’t be able to just go back to being Old Sunny, like flipping a switch. I would have to keep up the disguise for a while. I would have to gently dial things back from Rock Star to Super Mega-Nerd, where they originally belonged.

Which was ridiculous, because I wasn’t even that person anymore. I was more confident. Even my body moved differently. I wasn’t sure if I still even liked all the old things in my closet: the criminal cargo shorts, those dot-com-era tees that were really an exercise in obtuseness born of insecurity. Honestly, who on earth