Super Fake Love Song - David Yoon Page 0,9

eff you.”

Cirrus did this thing where she covered her mouth with the back of her hand to laugh—she had the velvet laugh of a villainess—and for a moment I stood spellbound. Finally I put my hand away like an amateur magician stashing his last, best trick.

Cirrus slowly flexed one leg after another, as if tired from standing for a long period of—

You let her stand in the foyer this whole time?

“How about we go sit in my room!” I cried, and headed up the stairs.

“Sounds great?” said Cirrus, and followed.

I reached the landing and hesitated. An image flashed in my mind: Cirrus, sitting in my room, amid my stacks of white plastic storage containers. Cirrus, opening the containers one by one. Loudly saying,

Got lots of swords and shields and nerdy stuff. Are you one of those big mega-nerds?

I halted abruptly enough to have Cirrus literally bump into my back.

“Oop,” said Cirrus, sidestepping me to slide into my room.

Except it was Gray’s room.

“Ohhhhahhh,” I began, without finishing.

Gray’s door was always open, because that’s how Gray liked things. The door to my room was always shut, because that’s how I liked things.

My door was blank and unadorned. My door could have led to anything—a linen closet, a brick wall, an alternate universe.

You only get one chance to make a first impression, Mom liked to say. It was characteristically shallow advice, but there was a truth to it that I only now realized.

I followed Cirrus, heading left into Gray’s room instead of right into mine.

Cirrus had already made herself at home in Gray’s salvaged steel swivel chair. She drummed her fingers on her thighs, as if eager to be introduced to the room’s history.

I started to say something, then stopped.

I started to say something else, then stopped.

I started to—

Cirrus eyed me with growing concern.

“So are you—” she said.

“These are guitars,” I said suddenly. I craned my neck back to look at them. I stretched, sniffed, did all the things amateurs do when gearing up for a big lie. “They’re my guitars.”

Cirrus brightened. “Wait. Are you in a band?”

“Phtphpthpt,” I said with a full-body spasm. “It’s just a little band, but yes: I am.”

Cirrus looked at the guitars again, as if they had changed. “Very cool.”

I heard none of this, because my lie was still busy pinging around the inside of my big empty head like a stray shot. Shocking, how easily the lie had slipped out.

“You’re more than cool,” continued Cirrus. “You’re brave. Most people barely have hobbies, if they bother to try anything at all. Most people let the dream starve and die in the kill-basement of their soul and only visit the rotting corpse when they themselves are finally on death’s door wondering, What was I so afraid of this whole time?”

“Jesus, you’re cynical,” I whispered.

Cirrus spotted something behind my guitars Gray’s guitars: the torn Mortals flyer. “Is that you?”

I cleared my throat, which was already clear. “That’s, uh, my old band,” I said. “We split up. I’m working on a new thing.”

“Cool-cool,” said Cirrus, nodding blankly.

Then she flashed me a look.

Not just any look.

The Look.

I recognized the Look from when Gray was still at school. The Look was a particular type of glance Gray got often—a combination of burning curiosity barely masked by bogus nonchalance. Everyone badly wanted to know Gray; everyone pretended they didn’t.

The Look was the expression people gave to someone doing something well, and with passion. It was an instinctive attraction to creativity—the highest form of human endeavor—expressed by emitting little hearts out of our eyes. It was falling a little bit in love with people who were fashioning something new with their hands and their imaginations.

I had always wondered what it would feel like to get the Look, and now I realized I had just found out.

The Look was pure deadly sweet terror, and it felt incredible.

I instantly wanted another.

Cirrus moved on, her face neutral again. She nodded at something on Gray’s old guitar amp. “What’s that?”

“My ring?” I said.

It was slightly easier this time, calling it my ring, as if lying were a thing that became easier with practice.

I let her hold the Goat of Satan ring. She leaned forward, accepted it, put it on.

“It’s heavy,” she said, amazed.

“It’s the Goat of Satan,” I said. The goat’s name was Barthomat, Birtalmont, Baccarat—

“And then you make a fist and say ‘To metal,’” I growled.

“To metal,” she growled back. Then she studied the ring with a pensive eye, as if it reminded her of something sad. She