by Emma Mills
Joydeep: I do not!
Sasha: You do too. You do. I can see it. Everyone in the studio can see it.
Joydeep: Okay, well, even the greats need inspiration sometimes. So what is it? The best advice you’ve ever gotten?
Sasha: Umm … Probably something from my mom. She’s really smart.
Joydeep: Hit us with that mom knowledge.
Sasha: Well … uh, okay, there’s this one. When I was younger, I used to get really sad about stuff ending. Like … I would go to camp in the summers—like different camps each year, usually—and I’d make friends and stuff over the weeks or whatever, and when it was over, I’d be so sad because I wouldn’t see any of the people again.
Joydeep: Camp sadness. Got it.
Sasha: I remember saying to my mom once, like, it’s totally pointless making friends at camp because even if you go back to the same one the next summer, they might not even be there, and you’re not going to see them the rest of the year anyway. They’re not going to be like your real-life friends. And my mom told me that part of growing up is just … learning that people come in and out of your life, and that there are all kinds of levels of friendship, all different types. And maybe you’ll make a friend, and you won’t see them again, but it doesn’t devalue what you had with them or the time you spent together. That’s still valid, even if it wasn’t built to last. It’s not any less … significant, you know?
Joydeep: Damn. Mama Reynolds swooping in with the sage wisdom.
Sasha: What about you? Best advice?
Joydeep: Uhh … My brother Vikrant told me that the thing on the end of a shoelace is called an aglet.
Sasha: That’s not even advice.
Joydeep: I know. I panicked. Yours was really good. Here’s a song, and that song is “Upturned Sunset” by Existential Dead …
32.
MY SEARCH OF THE STORAGE room closet for my Honey Bear had turned up fruitless, but I still had the Conrad and Mickey: The Supercut tape. What I didn’t have was anything to play it on. And what I didn’t know was why I actually cared to hear it, but I did.
I knew the editing bays at the station had tape players, but it was hard to get in there when no one else was around. I could try to stay late after our show, but I didn’t want anyone finding out why, for some reason. I didn’t want anyone asking about this.
I ended up texting Alexis:
Do you have a tape player?
Alexis had most things. And I knew she wouldn’t ask why. She was pretty easygoing, pretty carefree about stuff like that.
Mmm no but Tate might?
Alexis’s brother Tate was in his early twenties. He had finished up college at Duke and moved back home to work at their dad’s company for a bit. According to Alexis, he was “hipster to a fault.” He liked mushroom lattes and artisanal beef jerky. He’d ride one of those bikes with giant front wheels if he could, she told me once. No, scratch that—he’d go full horse-and-buggy if that was an option.
I’ll ask him, she texted.
She appeared at my locker the next day with a small, rectangular tape player. I thanked her and shoved it in my coat pocket.
Alexis smiled. “You just need some big Jamie Russell style headphones to go with it. You remember those jank ones he used to have in junior high? The cord was like six feet long?”
I did remember. Jamie always had those headphones with him back then, an old, bulky pair with a long cord stretching into his pocket. One day in particular sprang to mind—Jamie walking by the lunch table where Alexis and I and a group of other girls sat, those headphones around his neck. It was the fall of eighth grade, around the same time that our final game of Kingdom was underway.
He had glanced my way as he passed, a smile breaking his face. “Hi, Nina.”
“Jamie Russell!” Alexis had said, eyes alight. “Come sit with us.”
Jamie had hesitated, but Alexis gestured to one of the other girls to scoot over, and Jamie slipped onto the bench next to me.
“How’s it going?” Alexis said as Jamie began to unpack his lunch. That was another thing about him—he always brought lunch to school in a Velcro lunch bag.
“Good,” he replied, unwrapping aluminum foil from a sandwich. He glanced over at me, eyebrows flicking up a little in a way that said, This is weird, right? Jamie and I were friends, but he and Alexis weren’t.
“Hey, do you know Kieran Cooke?” Alexis asked, as if this was not weird at all. “He’s in your homeroom, right?”
“He is, and no, not really.”
“You don’t know anything about his girlfriend at Yeatman, do you? The one on the debate team?”
“You seem like you know more about her than I do,” Jamie replied simply.
“She definitely exists, though,” Alexis said—not a question but a statement seeking confirmation.
Jamie was good-natured as always, but under the table his leg bounced up and down. “I don’t know. You’d have to ask him.”
Alexis cut a look over at Natalie Fisher, seated to my left.
“See, I just don’t think Kieran’s a good Kiss Cam candidate, Nat.”
“Sorry?” Jamie said.
“Nothing,” Alexis replied, and a couple of the other girls at our table giggled.
I had felt supremely uncomfortable during this exchange, except for the fact that every time Jamie bounced his knee, his leg brushed against mine, and somehow that single, fleeting point of contact made me feel like there was molten hot lava at my core, radiating outward.
They had gone on talking about something else, and Jamie ate his sandwich and jiggled his leg and then the warning bell rang, signaling the end of lunch and the end of any more possible discussion of the Kieran Cooke strategy.
Jamie only asked me when we got off the bus at the Eastman that afternoon. We had spent the ride debating a hypothetical: Would you rather have a hit song that everyone knows but most people hate, or an album that a few people love but most people haven’t heard of? “Hey, what was Alexis talking about at lunch? What’s Kiss Cam?” A pause. “Besides that thing at basketball games. I figure they’re not, like, taking Kieran to a game just for that.”
“It’s a game Alexis invented,” I said, and for some reason I felt really embarrassed saying it out loud.
“What kind of game?”
“A kissing game. Sometimes they’ll play it at free period or lunch or whatever. She’ll, like, hold her hands up”—I made a rectangle with my fingers, held it in front of me, and scanned around like a camera panning across a crowd—“and pick someone random, and you have to go kiss them.”
Jamie didn’t speak, frowning down at the ground as we reached the front of the Eastman.
“Or, you know, get them to kiss you,” I added. “But you don’t just do it without their permission, that would be bad.”
“Sounds kinda bad anyway,” Jamie said. “Like kinda mean, right?”
“Why?”
He shrugged. “Just, like … the idea of kissing someone because someone else told you to. How is that supposed to make the other person feel?”
“Happy that they get kissed, I guess?” It came out sounding defensive, and I had no idea why. Alexis wasn’t mean. She was just … her. “Or they don’t kiss you if they don’t want to. You can ask or whatever, but it doesn’t mean they have to say yes. And sometimes she does research, you know, like with Kieran. She wouldn’t pick him for Nat if he had a girlfriend.”
Jamie just nodded, but didn’t speak further.
Right now, back in the hallway at Meridian North with Alexis’s brother’s tape player in my pocket, I wondered if Alexis ever thought of Kiss Cam anymore. She’d had a boyfriend for the past couple of years, but they had broken up at the beginning of senior year. What would she do if I held up my hands, scanned the hall, and picked someone? Knowing Alexis, she’d probably go right up and see if they wanted to kiss her. She was fearless sometimes. But it wasn’t just fearlessness—it was a disregard for consequences that I both envi
ed and disparaged.
She smiled at me now, gestured to my coat pocket where I’d crammed the tape player. “Hope that does the trick for whatever weird retro thing you’ve got going. It might need batteries, though.”
“Got it. Thanks.”
33.
THAT NIGHT, I CLOSED MYSELF in our room and popped Conrad and Mickey: The Supercut into the tape player, plugged in my headphones, and pressed play.
It took me … a while to realize the tape needed to be rewound. But once I figured that out, a voice—familiar but slightly altered—filtered through. It was my dad.
“This is Z 99-5, and we’ve got someone on the line here … What’s her name, Producer Shoebox?”
“Michelle.”
“Okay, Michelle. Are you there? What’s up? Or should I say, wazzup?”
[chorus of wazzups]
“Don’t do that,” the caller said. “No one likes that. Everyone is sick of it.”
“So did you call just to give us feedback, Michelle?”
“I’m calling because we’ve got beef.”
“You and me?”
“Yeah.”
“Hey, Conrad, maybe Michelle wants some of your beeeeeef.” [siren sound] [cash register sound] [woman moaning]
“No one likes you either, Producer Shoebox. Okay? I listen to this show every day, and no one likes you, just so you know.”
[sad foghorn] [high-pitched female voice saying nya nya nya]
“Do you realize how sexist your soundboard is? Like, where are the sounds for when men complain? Where are the male sex sounds?”
“I’m sorry, Michelle, Producer Shoebox can only express himself through the magic of sound and innuendo, but we will be sure to load up some male org—Can we say that, Shoebox? I’m gonna say we shouldn’t. We will load up the male happy fun time sounds just for you, Michelle. So what’s our beef about? Or did that pretty much cover it?”
“Oh, we’ve barely scratched the surface.”
“Okay. Let’s hear it. What’s your main issue? The real, uh, heart of the beef.”
“Whenever I call in for tickets, you always pick up, but then you just say keep trying and hang up on me.”
[nya nya nya]
“I swear to god, if you don’t knock that off—”
“Sorry, Michelle. Producer Shoebox, cool it, okay? For like one second?” [pause] “I see your finger on that button, and if you play a foghorn stinger, we’re not friends anymore.” [pause] “Steve.” [pause] “If you press that button, you’re leaving the booth. You won’t be allowed in here anymore.”
[pause]
[sad foghorn]
“Out. Right now. I’m not even kidding.” [scrambling] “Sorry, you still there, Michelle?”
“Honestly, whatever they pay you guys, it’s too much.”
“We got you listening, didn’t we?”
“I like the music. And the contests. Which takes me back to—”
“The beef, yes, right. Okay, but you know that’s sort of how these call-in things work, right? You gotta keep trying if you want to be the lucky caller.”
“I’m lucky enough that you pick up the phone, but not enough to be the winner! It’s rigged!”
“Rigged specifically against you?”
“Why do you always pick up?”
“Maybe I like the sound of your voice.”
“Then why don’t I ever win the tickets?”
“I mean, I can’t give tickets away to every girl whose voice I like.”
My mom made a sound like eughfhfh and hung up.
34.
I LISTENED TO THE TAPE again the next day. And the day after that. It was just the one exchange—the Supercut in the title made me think maybe there would be more, but I fast-forwarded through, stopping to play periodically, and there was nothing but silence.
I was listening to it again in the library on Tuesday during my free period when my phone buzzed with a message from Sasha in the Sounds of the Nineties group chat.
We need to meet up was all it said.
So we met at the student gallery after school.
Sasha wore an odd expression as she sat down on the bench along the wall. “So … we kind of have a problem,” she said.
“Is it Jamie’s face?” Joydeep replied.
Jamie looked hurt. “Hey!”
“Sorry.” Joydeep grimaced. “Instinct. Vikrant will get me if I don’t get him first.”
Sasha ignored the exchange. “Basically, they think that Existential Dead is our mystery guest.”
“What? Why?” I said. “Who’s they?”
“The Deadnoughts.”
“The what now?”
“It’s what their fans call themselves.”
“Dead not? Like, not dead?”
“Dead N-O-U-G-H-T, like a ship, a dreadnought.”
“It’s like a play on words,” Jamie said.
“Oh, great,” Joydeep replied. “I know how horny you guys are for wordplay.”
“Why would they think that?” I said, trying to focus on the matter at hand.
“Because we keep playing their songs, for one thing,” Sasha said.
Jamie frowned. “That was a listenership strategy.”
“Yeah, well, it worked. We got a bunch of people who love Existential Dead to listen, and now they think we’re delivering them the band live on the air.”
“Just because we played them a few times? That’s stupid.”
“Also, because there are some, uh … similarities, based on the facts that we gave about Nina’s dad.”
“What do you mean, similarities?”
“So I started looking into it once we started getting messages about it, and not a whole lot is known about these guys. Apparently they were really cryptic and under the radar or whatever back in the day, and that was a part of the appeal for their fandom. There aren’t a ton of fans these days since they never really got huge in the first place, but they’ve had kind of a resurgence online in the last few years. Like, there are Tumblrs dedicated to Tyler Bright and stuff, all this Oh, I was born in the wrong decade, heart eyes kind of stan stuff. But anyway, he’s originally from Indiana. Like your dad.”
“So?” I said. “Lots of people are originally from Indiana. We’re all originally from Indiana.”
“Actually, I lived in Illinois until middle school,” Sasha replied.
Jamie nodded. “I was born in Michigan.”
“Really?” I said.
“And I was born in India, we moved here when I was three, thanks for asking,” Joydeep said. “I win for traveling the farthest, and the prize is getting to tell Nina she’s wrong.”
“Okay, yes. Clearly we’re not all from Indiana,” I amended. “But I’m just saying—that’s not proof of anything.”
“Yes, but we also said your dad’s favorite color is yellow,” Sasha said.
“So?”
“One of their more popular songs—I mean, it’s relative since they never got super popular in the first place, but still—anyway, it was called ‘Truly Madly Yellow.’”
“Oh, we played that one!” Jamie said. “Remember?” He started mumble-grunting something that sounded like Take my hat wabababa yellow flamajamaaaaaa.
“Oh yeah!” Joydeep said. “Flamajamaaaaaaaaa eat my faaaaaaaaaaace.”
I shook my head. “That’s not anything.”
“It’s not eat my face, it’s east of fate,” Jamie said.
“What’s flamajama?” Sasha asked.
“I feel like we’re getting off track?” I said.
“Right.” Sasha turned back to me. “Also, we said that thing about how your dad’s favorite member of TION is Josh.”
“I will give you a hundred dollars if you can connect that shit together,” Joydeep said.
Sasha raised an eyebrow. “Get ready to pay up. It’s not confirmed or anything, but there’s a rumor that the bassist from Existential Dead went on to become a music producer and that he was one of the people behind TION’s f
irst album.”
“And he loves Josh?”
“I mean, it’s less about Josh specifically, and more about how we said he had a connection to the band.”
I shook my head. “This is ridiculous.”
“Agreed,” Joydeep said. “Except for one possibility.”
“What?”
“Nina, is there literally any chance that your dad is the lead singer of Existential Dead?”
I couldn’t help but sputter a laugh. “No. Literally no chance.”
“But how do you know?”
Sasha blinked at me, deadpan. “Yeah, Nina, like how does anyone really know that their dad isn’t an obscure cult nineties rocker?”
“He’s not old enough,” I replied. “Existential Dead’s first album came out in 1991, right? He was like … a freshman in high school then.”
“So?” Joydeep said. “Maybe it was like a … Bieber thing.”
“You really think that voice is coming out of a fourteen-year-old?” Jamie said, and then in a deep rasp belted, “Flamajamaaaaaaaaa!”
“I mean, sure, maybe he’s not the lead singer, but he could be one of the other guys.”
Sasha pulled up a picture of the band online. It was black-and-white and grainy, and their faces were cast in shadow, but still—four long-haired, kind-of-young-but-definitely-not-fourteen-year-old guys.
“None of those people are my dad,” I told Joydeep.
“Come on, they took that picture with a potato,” he replied. “I could be in it.”
“Why do you want it to be my dad?”
“Because it would be interesting! And anyway, what’s our other option?”
“We squash this,” Jamie said. “That’s literally it. We just tell them straight up that Existential Dead is not coming here.”
“Okay.” Sasha nodded. “Okay, yeah. Obviously, that was my thought, but I just wanted to check with you guys before I blew our secret guest thing online.”
“Well, hold on a sec,” Joydeep said. “Pump the brakes, Diana.”
“What?”
“We don’t have to ruin the mystique of the secret guest. It’s kind of the main thing we have going for us at the moment. Let’s just put something out saying it’s definitely not Existential Dead. Like, as long as we’re super definitive, I don’t know why we have to give the whole thing away yet.”
