Super Fake Love Song - David Yoon Page 0,79

one. That means I must be being made a fool right now, because I really thought for sure I had it right this time around. You asked me all those questions like you really wanted to know the answers. I’d never had that before.”

Her face crinkled as she sneered at her own oncoming tears. She gave the fence another kick.

“And then I told my parents I wanted to stay,” said Cirrus. “Because I have this super-great boyfriend who I super-much love, and these super friends, and a super life. But none of it was super, because none of it was real. It was all super fake.”

A fresh horror dawned on Cirrus’s face as she opened her eyes wide enough to set her twin black irises jittering.

“Gunner was in on it, too, right in my own house,” said Cirrus. “Plus his sidekick. The whole school.”

“It wasn’t the whole school,” I said.

“That makes everything better,” said Cirrus.

I made those hands you make when a lion is about to charge. “It was my idea,” I said.

“I sat there grinning like an idiot,” said Cirrus. She held her chin, fascinated. “Just happy to be there.”

“I made them do it,” I said. “They’ve got nothing to do with my mistakes.”

“I showed you my tin,” said Cirrus to herself, as if in a dream. “That guitar pick should go, shouldn’t it.”

“This is super real, I promise,” I said. But I could feel her slipping away from me.

“I don’t know who you are,” Cirrus finally concluded.

I took a deep breath. This was my last chance to make a statement.

“I did this because you were so cool and you traveled the world and knew everything and I’m a loser who hides away in his room with a bunch of childish nerd toys and I wanted to impress you,” I said.

“Sunny,” said Cirrus, crumbling a little now. “You did impress me.”

I stepped into a beam of sodium vapor lights to expose my streaked and ruined face. “Did I, though?”

Cirrus reached out to me, stopped, and hugged herself instead. “In the first sixty seconds.” Her face had reached its melting point and now dripped with bitter tears.

I held my hands out. “What I mean is, was it Real Sunny who impressed you? Or Fake Sunny?”

Cirrus let her arms fall. “It was you, Sunny. Don’t turn this around.”

“All I’m saying is you really, really liked Fake Sunny,” I said. “And I liked being Fake Sunny. But the whole time I was petrified, because in the back of my mind I was wondering if you would’ve liked Real Sunny, warts and all.”

Cirrus stared hard at me, her face a mixture of anger and confusion, but also pity. “What are you saying?” she said.

“I am a super-huge mega-nerd,” I said. “I have been uncool ever since middle school. I have been bullied ever since middle school. I like to dress up and pretend I am living a fantasy adventure. I spend my weekends making fake magic weapons. What I’m saying is, would you have liked that Sunny?”

“Of course I would’ve,” said Cirrus, but her pensive squint told me she couldn’t know for sure.

She would never know for sure.

Because I’d been Fake Sunny for so long that Real Sunny no longer existed in his original, pre-Cirrus form.

And now it was all moot anyway.

Around us, the lights of Sunset bloomed cyan and tangerine and magnesium. A rowdy cheer rose from the street and was drowned out by a fleet of rumbling Harleys.

“Heyyyy,” said a voice. “There you are.”

Gray came toward us with the careful catwalk of the inebriated. He found a pole to lean on.

“Look,” said Gray to Cirrus. “If you wanna blame someone, blame me, ’kay?”

Cirrus could only stare, and I couldn’t blame her.

Go away, Gray, I willed, but it didn’t work.

Neon blinked red overhead, and Gray smiled at it.

“I’m the fake one here,” said Gray. “Not Sun. My little brother, Sunny Dae, played the one song big brother Gray Dae never had the guts to perform in public. ’Cause I’m a no-good piece of crap failure.”

“Go away, Gray,” I said, aloud this time.

“I mean, he might’ve started out by faking it,” said Gray. “But he turned out to be the real deal. All for you. I feel like most girls would think that’s kinda sweet. Whoo, gotta sit.”

Gray slid down to the ground.

I watched as Cirrus’s eyes puzzled between these two brothers before her.

More motorcycles shattered the sky: dr-r-room!

“It was nice knowing you,” said Cirrus, and walked away.

Cirrus was gone.

“You’ll get her back,”