Super Fake Love Song - David Yoon Page 0,2
week’s track meet with Montsange High.”
A football jock in the distance cupped his hands to his face and juked an imaginary blitz. Gunner.
“Give us the dope, Coach!” said Gunner. Then he gave a crouched Neanderthal glance over to the girls’ track-and-field team to see if they noticed. They did, spasmodically flipping their long flawless locks of hair in autonomic limbic response.
Track was what mouth-breathing football cheerleaders did to ensure they remained visible to donkey-brained football players for every possible minute of every day.
I sat up. “I’m not sure our performance will be significantly enhanced by your dope.”
Finally Coach’s smile fell. “Your friggin’ loss.” He stalked away.
“Final grades are decided by attendance, not performance,” I called.
“Friggin’ nerds,” muttered Coach Oldtimer.
“We’re not nerds,” I whined.
“Okay, nerds,” said Gunner.
“Nerds,” said some of the girls in the distance.
“Nerds,” whispered the wind.
“Why does everyone keep calling us nerds?” said Milo, and made a worried face that asked, Did someone find out about DIY Fantasy FX?
He was referring to our ScreenJunkie channel, where for three years we had been posting homemade videos showing how even the most craft-impaired butterfingers could fashion impressive practical effects from simple household materials for their next LARP event.
LARP, or live action role playing, was when people dressed and acted like their Dungeons & Dragons game characters out in real life.
We did not LARP. We could never. In this temporal plane, we would only get discovered and buried alive under a nonstop torrent of ridicule. As it was, we made sure to never show our faces in our videos—my idea.
Jamal leaned in. “So there’s some pretty exciting audience activity on our channel.”
“Give us the dope, Jamal!” yodeled Milo, and gave an ironic glance over at the girls’ team, who glared back at him like tigers in the sun.
“We finally broke a hundred,” cried Jamal.
Me and Milo exchanged a look. One hundred ScreenJunkie followers. One step closer to advertisers and sponsorships.
“And,” said Jamal, with a wild smile, “we sold three tee shirts! Three!”
Me and Milo exchanged another look, this time with our mouths in twin Os.
“And finally,” said Jamal, hiding his glee behind his very long fingers, “Lady Lashblade liked our ‘Pod of Mending’ episode.”
“She liked my glitterbomb,” I said.
“She liked your glitterbomb,” said Jamal.
I gripped the turf like it had just quaked.
Everyone knew how influential Lady Lashblade (best friends with Lady Steelsash (producer of What Kingdoms May Rise (starring actor Stephan Deming (husband of Elise Patel (head organizer for Fantastic Faire (the largest medieval and Renaissance-themed outdoor festival in the country)))))) was.
“That is huge,” said Milo.
I hugged Jamal, who recoiled because physical contact was not his absolute favorite, before hugging Milo, who was big on hugging as well as simply big.
“We gotta keep going with new episodes, you guys,” I said.
“Heck yeah we do,” said Jamal, with a grin as wide as his neck.
“We gotta brainstorm our next custom prop,” I said.
Milo pushed up his glasses. “Right now?”
“Right now,” said Jamal.
“So, I was thinking, what if we made a—” I was saying when a football glanced off my temple.
“Catch,” said Gunner.
“Asswipe,” I muttered.
“What?” said Gunner. “What did you call me?”
Coach Oldtimer reappeared upon a fetid cloud of menthol rub. “Ladies, take a powder.”
“He started it,” I said, instantly wishing I hadn’t sounded so whinging. I pointed at my temple and the football on the grass.
“I don’t care who started it,” said Coach Oldtimer. “Warm-ups, let’s go.”
“Coach said warm-ups, nerds,” sang Gunner, who caught up with Coach Oldtimer to share a side-hug and a laugh.
I heaved myself up. “Right as I was pitching my idea.”
“Asswipe,” said Milo, loud enough to make Gunner glance back and make Milo cower. This made as much sense as a pit bull backing down to a Chihuahua—Milo was big and strong enough to easily kick Gunner back into first grade if he wanted.
“To be continued, you guys,” I said. I broke into the world’s slowest jog, still rubbing my temple. “To be continued!”
I ran my long jumps and averaged three meters, a new personal low.
Milo threw the shot put n meters, n being a number Milo neither remembered nor cared about, because shot put meant about as much as playing Frisbee in the dark with a corpse.
Jamal got the high bar stuck between his legs while midair and abraded the groin muscle next to his right testicle.
But who cared? Who cared about track, or Gunner, or his football? What was important was that DIY Fantasy FX had reached some kind of tipping point. Its next phase was about