I dropped the spoon in and slid the drawer shut.
Who knew what Gray was up to these days? I imagined him on a stage bathed in light. I imagined him in a slick studio booth, transfixing a team of producers with his rock star magnetism.
Gray had been in a few bands in high school—pop, rap, folk, whatever was trending at the time—but the Mortals were my favorite. They were dark. They were metal. Gray played a growling dropped D, as metal demanded. They had played the legendary Miss Mayhem on Sunset; Gray was only eighteen at the time.
We are mere Mortals, Gray would boom into the mic. And so are you.
Behind an amp head I spied a royal-yellow club flyer taped to the wall.
THE MORTALS—OCTOBER 15—FINAL NIGHT OF THE 2ND ANNUAL ASIAN AMERICAN AND PACIFIC ISLANDER ROCK AND ROLL FESTIVAL SPONSORED BY KOREATOWN AUTO MALL—AT THE WORLD-FAMOUS MISS MAYHEM ON SUNSET STRIP IN HOLLYWOOD, CA
It had been torn; a corner dangled.
I looked in Gray’s closet. I pushed aside a bulging cardboard box full of unsold Mortals merch: tee shirts, lighters, stickers. I found a thermal long-sleeve shirt adorned with skulls. I slam-danced out of my loathsome blazer and tie and put it on. Was it still cool?
Felt cool to me.
I turned, brushing against a guitar that chimed with dissonance. One of these days I should teach myself how to play beyond the six chords I already sort of knew.
Atop an amp sat a darkly glittering thing.
Gray’s Goat of Satan ring.
Metal cool and fantasy nerd, forged as one into a chrome-plated steel homage to Baphomet himself.
When the Mortals were active, Gray’s two bandmates would bring their matching rings together in a sacred fist bump and growl the prayer:
To metal.
I put the ring on, relished the weight of the thing.
Elf shot the food! said my phone. It was a ringtone from an early primitive arcade role-playing game. I peered at it, wondering if Gray had felt his ears burning miles from here.
It wasn’t Gray. It was Dad, texting me from downstairs.
Cirrus Soh is here!
Immortals
I made my way downstairs, where the front door was already open. Beyond where Dad stood, I could see a ghostly girl straight out of a Japanese horror movie lurking in the dark beyond. Instinctively I clutched at the banister with both hands.
“Hello?” I said.
Dad gestured, and the girl-ghost slowly stepped in. She turned out to be a real girl: heavy charcoal eyeliner, blue lips, in white jeans and a white tee shirt with the words I NO KUNG FU and an illustration of a hand with two fingers—middle and index—held straight up.
Her gaze traveled around the house slowly, as if she had just emerged into a crypt, and came to rest. On me.
“Hey,” she said, as if perplexed by my existence.
I relaxed my grip. I approached. I kept a good eight feet away from the girl. “You’re not a ghost.”
She cocked her head. “Are you?”
“And we’re off and running!” cried Dad with a hand clap. He glanced at my shirt Gray’s shirt, blinked, then moved on, oblivious. “Cirrus, this is Sunny, Sunny, this is Cirrus.”
My palms immediately grew hot and moist, like they did whenever I was confronted by a pretty girl.
You just said she was pretty.
Well, she is.
I never said I thought she wasn’t.
We’re actually all in violent agreement.
Cirrus let out a huge moan of a yawn.
“I’m just in from London,” she said, “so I’m good and knackered.”
“Great,” I said. What was naccud?
“So it’s Sunny,” said Cirrus, nodding seriously at Dad. “I thought you were calling him sonny.”
“Yeppers, Sunny Dae,” said Dad with a sideways laugh. He turned to me. “Sunny, Cirrus is—”
“Daughter of Jane and Brandon Soh,” I said, like an automated information kiosk. “They are our new neighbors. You are old friends.”
“Your name is Sunny Dae,” said Cirrus, thinking. “And your brother’s name is Gray Dae. Sunny day. Gray day.”
“You were named after a variety of cloud,” I said. I added a smile to make that statement seem less whiny, but it did not help.
Dad stared at his son and this girl, waiting to see what happened next.
Cirrus seemed to relax a millimeter. “It’s nice to meet you.” She stuck out a hand.
I lunged to receive it. “Nice to meet you, too.” Then I lunged right back.
“Intros made!” shouted Dad to himself. He turned to Cirrus. “Anything you need, any school intel, fun hot spots around town, you just ask Sunny.”
“Everything here is so foreign and exotic,” said Cirrus, peering around with mock theater. She smiled. “But really. Thank you, Mr. Dae. Thank you, Sunny.”
The way she said my name was as shocking and brilliant as a thousand diamond beams of white starlight all converging at once on my dumbstruck face.
“Yeah of course you got it hurr,” I said in a single breath.
“Sunny’ll take good care of you,” said Dad, who gave my back an irritating forehand and then vanished.
We stood in our socks in the foyer.
“Great,” I said to Cirrus.
“Yow,” Cirrus said, jumping at a buzzing phone in her pocket. She smiled at it, and began typing. “Sorry, it’s AlloAllo. Are you on AlloAllo?”
“No, yes, I used to be, not that much,” I said, fairly certain she was talking about an app. I suddenly felt intensely stupid for not knowing what AlloAllo was, and fervently promised myself I would sign up as soon as possible even if it meant relinquishing all my privacy and basic human rights in the process.
I knit my fingers at my quaking belly. Just above Cirrus’s collarbone I noticed a tiny triangle of skin, pulsating at a rate definitely slower than my own heartbeat.
“Looks like my friends in Zurich are up,” said Cirrus. She finished up, put the phone away. “They’re such morning people over there.”
“I know,” I said.
I know?
“You’ve been?” said Cirrus.
“Not for a while,” I said.
What was I saying? I had never left Southern California in my entire life.
Moths were batting away at the porch lanterns, so I shut the front door. “How long you in the States for?” I said, marking the first time I’d ever referred to America as the States.