My Favorite Band Does Not Exist Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Table of Contents

  Copyright

  Dedication

  One: Idea

  Two: Idea

  Three: Youforia

  Fireskull's Revenant-Chapter 39

  Five: Reacher

  Six: Idea

  Fireskull's Revenant-Chapter 40

  Eight: Reacher

  Nine: Idea

  Ten: Reacher

  Eleven: Idea

  Fireskull's Revenant-Chapter 41

  Thirteen: Reacher

  Fourteen: Idea

  Fireskull's Revenant-Chapter 42

  Sixteen: Reacher

  Fireskull's Revenant-Chapter 43

  Eighteen: Idea

  Nineteen: Reacher

  Twenty: Idea

  Twenty-one: Reacher

  Fireskull's Revenant-Chapter 44

  Twenty-three: Reacher

  Twenty-four: Reacher

  Twenty-five: Reacher

  Twenty-six: Reacher

  Twenty-seven: Reacher

  Fireskull's Revenant-Chapter 45

  Twenty-nine: Idea

  Fireskull's Revenant-Chapter 46

  Thirty-one: Reacher

  Fireskull's Revenant-Chapter 47

  Thirty-three: Idea

  Thirty-four: Reacher

  Thirty-five: Idea

  Thirty-six: Reacher

  Thirty-seven: Idea

  Thirty-eight: Idea

  Thirty-nine: Reacher

  Forty: Idea + Reacher

  Forty-one: Reacher + Idea

  Fireskull's Revenant-Chapter 48: Reacher

  Fireskull's Revenant-Chapter 49: Idea

  Fireskull's Revenant-Chapter 50: Reacher

  Fireskull's Revenant-Chapter 51: Idea

  Fireskull's Revenant-Chapter 52: Reacher

  Fireskull's Revenant-Chapter 53: Idea

  Fireskull's Revenant-Chapter 54: Reacher

  Fireskull's Revenant-Chapter 55: Idea

  Fireskull's Revenant-Chapter 56: Reacher

  Fifty-one: Idea

  Fifty-two: Reacher

  Fifty-three: Idea

  Fifty-four: Reacher

  Fifty-five: Idea

  Fireskull's Revenant-Chapter 57: Reacher

  Fireskull's Revenant-Chapter 58: Idea

  Fifty-eight: Reacher

  Fireskull's Revenant-Chapter 59: Idea

  Fireskull's Revenant-Chapter 60: Reacher + Idea

  Fireskull's Revenant-Chapter 61: Idea + Reacher

  Fireskull's Revenant-Chapter 62: Idea + Reacher

  Fireskull's Revenant-Chapter 63: Reacher + Idea

  Fireskull's Revenant-Chapter 64: Idea + Reacher

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  CLARION BOOKS

  215 Park Avenue South, New York, New York 10003

  Copyright © 2011 by Robert T. Jeschonek

  All rights reserved.

  For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book,

  write to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company,

  215 Park Avenue South, New York, New York 10003.

  Clarion Books is an imprint of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.

  www.hmhbooks.com

  The text was set in Platin Std. and Coldstyle.

  Book design by Sharismar Rodriguez

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Jeschonek, Robert T.

  My favorite band does not exist / Robert T. Jeschonek.

  p. cm.

  Summary: Sixteen-year-old Idea Deity, who believes that he is a character in a novel

  who will die in the sixty-fourth chapter, has created a fictional underground

  rock band on the internet which, it turns out, may actually exist, and whose members

  are wondering who is broadcasting all their personal information.

  ISBN 978-0-547-37027-9

  [1. Fantasy.] I. Title.

  PZ7.J55312My 2011 [Fic]—dc22

  2011008150

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  DOC 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  4500297703

  TO WENDY,

  MY FAVORITE REALITY

  WHEN Idea Deity first met Eunice Truant, he thought that the back of her head was the front of it.

  He saw her while trying to escape the men who were chasing him on the Canadian side of Niagara Falls. Idea was pushing through the crowd of cheering tourists gaping at the fireworks going off on the American side. After squeezing past a fat man in a red T-shirt, Idea found himself staring at what seemed to be a dark-haired girl in black coveralls.

  In that first glimpse, he got an impression of narrow green eyes with long dark lashes ... a thin angular nose ... sharp cheekbones and chin ... and full red lips ... all of it framed by jet black shoulder-length braids.

  A heartbeat later, Idea realized that the face in front of him was not three-dimensional. He was actually looking at the back of someone's head, on which a girl's face had been painted or tattooed. Only the black braids were the real thing.

  As much of a hurry as he was in, Idea couldn't look away, the sight was so weird. Lifting his shiny black bangs from over his eyes with the edge of one hand, he leaned in for a closer look. Then someone pushed him from behind.

  Idea stumbled forward. He bumped into the person with the painted face, who turned around, giving him a look at another face altogether.

  This face was real. It had all three dimensions.

  Like the face on the back of the head, this was also a girl's face. However, other than sharing the same head, the two faces had nothing in common.

  The three-dimensional "front" face had wide blue eyes, an upswept nose, round chin, and thin pink lips. This face was framed by silky blond hair, which fell freely to chest level, accented by a single skinny braid on one side, threaded through beads of alternating black and white.

  Idea also noted another big difference in the two faces: the one on the front of the girl's head was smiling, and the smile was beautiful.

  It was a crooked little smile with a double dimple to the left side but none to the right. It was kind of snarky, almost a smirk, but the gleam in the girl's eyes was pure gold.

  As Idea drank it in, the girl flared red in the light from a burst of fireworks.

  "There you are!" The light faded, leaving her standing before him in pink coveralls. "Fancy meeting you here!" When she spread her arms, he saw the coveralls were pink on one side and black on the other.

  Idea frowned. "Huh?"

  The girl threw her arms around him and gave him a hug. "It's great to see you!" she said. "It's been too long."

  Idea took a long look at her. He guessed she was seventeen or eighteen, just a year or two older than he was, but he didn't recognize her.

  The one thing he was sure about, however, was that the men who were chasing him were still on the move. They wouldn't give up easily, and they couldn't be far away, either.

  "Gotta run." Idea broke free of the hug and pushed past the girl to continue through the crowd.

  As fireworks whistled and boomed in the sky, Idea weaved his way between the tightly packed spectators. He didn't realize that the girl was following him, until she spoke.

  "It just occurred to me that I might have gotten you mixed up with someone else," she said. "Let me introduce myself. I'm Eunice Truant."

  Idea glanced back at her and frowned. "My name is Idea Deity," he said, continuing to press forward.

  "Are you a good Idea or a bad one?" Eunice said playfully.

  "Depends on your point of view, I guess," he replied.

  "
When you have an idea," Eunice continued, "do you say, 'I've just had a great me'?"

  "Look," Idea said over his shoulder. "I really can't talk right now, okay? I'm in the biggest hurry ever."

  Idea's stomach twisted. He had a feeling that trouble was near. Nervously, he rubbed the three moles arranged in a triangle on his left cheek.

  Craning his neck, he scanned the surrounding crowd. In the yellow light of another bursting shell, just as a bunch of people raised their hands to applaud, he caught sight of a familiar face.

  Idea saw brown skin and thick black hair slicked back with what looked like motor oil. He saw a nose like the beak of a cockatoo, and an Adam's apple that was more like a gourd.

  As soon as he spotted that face, Idea ducked down. He was pretty sure that his pursuer hadn't seen him, but he didn't want to give the guy a second chance to catch sight of him.

  "What's the big idea?" Eunice said with a chuckle. "Either that last firework scared you, or you don't want someone to see you."

  Idea decided it wouldn't do any good to lie to her. "He's just a few people back from us."

  The crowd cheered as a series of booms and flashes rocked the street. "Come on." Eunice grabbed him by the hand and pulled him away from the gorge.

  They kept going till they reached a cobblestone plaza where the crowd was thin. Most people were passing through on their way to the rim.

  Eunice stopped in front of a cement bench, one of several arranged in a ring around the plaza. "Now, just stand here." She yanked a folded-up circle of yellow plastic from the pocket of her coveralls.

  Eunice shook out the folded circle, which became a big, round sheet, held taut by some kind of flexible frame. Idea saw that a huge smiley face had been painted on it.

  He also quickly realized that the giant smiley was two layers, as Eunice pried the rim apart at the bottom, raised the whole circle over Idea's head with both hands, and pulled it down over him with a single tug. It covered him from his head to just above his knees.

  "Over here." Eunice guided him by the frame of the circle two steps to his left. "Get up on the bench."

  Idea bumped his leg into the seat of the bench. He fumbled around for a moment until Eunice grabbed hold of his arm through the plastic sheet.

  "Step up," she said, and he did. His toe found the edge of the seat, and then he slid his foot onto it and boosted himself up to a standing position. Eunice steadied him, then let go.

  "Don't move, Movie," she said. "Not till I tell you to."

  The thin yellow sheeting was smack against Idea's nose. Fortunately, a pair of pinprick eyeholes had been cut in the vicinity of his eyes, and he could look through one at a time with little shifts of his head.

  Peering down through one of the eyeholes, he saw Eunice pull on a curly green wig and giant red-framed glasses. Next, she pointed a finger directly at Idea, opened her mouth wide as if gaping in surprise and wonder ... and froze.

  Shifting his head the tiniest bit, Idea looked out over his surroundings. From his vantage point atop the bench, he had a good view of the passersby. Those who were closest shot looks of annoyance or amusement in his direction, or else they ignored him.

  Further away, he spotted his pursuers.

  The two men were walking away from the rim, straight toward him. The brown-skinned man with the motor oil hair was Bulab Magnificat. The other man, Scholar Wishburn, had wavy silver hair, chiseled features, and an expensive-looking business suit.

  Bulab and Scholar crossed the plaza, looking grim ... and then they caught sight of him. They stopped about twenty feet away and stared at him in the flashing light of the fireworks, eyes focused like laser beams on his disguise.

  As Idea squinted at them through an eyehole, he had the urge to run. Then he remembered that although they were looking right at him, they couldn't see who he was through the yellow smiley face.

  For a long moment, Bulab and Scholar stared up at him. Scholar pointed at him and said something. Bulab laughed and nodded.

  Then they moved off through the crowd.

  Minutes later, when his pursuers were blocks away, Idea told Eunice that he thought it would be safe to move again.

  Eunice was still holding the same pose that she'd assumed when Idea had stepped up onto the bench. She was still pointing at him, with her mouth open in surprise; as far as Idea could tell, she hadn't moved a muscle.

  For a moment, he thought that she wasn't going to move one anytime soon, either. Eunice remained perfectly frozen, as if she were a mannequin.

  Then, she returned to life. With the hand that she'd used to point at Idea, she reached up and helped him down off the bench. As soon as his feet touched the sidewalk, Eunice lifted the giant smiley face up over his head.

  "Where did you come up with that plan?" Idea asked, patting down his black hair.

  "It's what I do for a living," said Eunice. She froze in place again for a moment, posing with the smiley face held flat overhead as if to keep off rain. Then she broke the pose and lowered the yellow circle to her side. "I'm a human statue."

  Idea smoothed out his rumpled black T-shirt with the picture of dice on the chest, one with a six facing up, the other with a five. "You really make money doing that?"

  Eunice nodded. "For stars like me, people will walk right up and drop cash in my hat." She took off the green Afro wig and monstrous red eyeglasses and shook them at him. "Good props are key."

  "I'm glad you had those props handy," he said. "I'm lucky I ran into you when I did. Thanks."

  "De nada." Eunice stuffed the wig and glasses down the front of her coveralls. "Just try to remember my Christmas card this year, okay?" With practiced movements, she twisted the frame of the huge smiley face, folding and compressing the plastic sheeting until it was reduced once again to a yellow disk about the size of her hand.

  "Well, I'd better get going," said Idea. "Thanks again. Goodbye." He turned and started walking, eager to get moving now that he'd ditched Bulab and Scholar.

  Ditching Eunice, however, wouldn't be so easy. When Idea stopped at the edge of the street to wait for traffic to pass, she appeared alongside him.

  "So where are we going, Go-Go?" she asked casually.

  "Huh?" Idea frowned.

  "I'm guessing you could use some more help," said Eunice. "Unless there's nothing but totally blue skies in your world from now on."

  Idea looked at her. Though he'd only known her for a half-hour or so, he didn't seriously consider telling her to get lost.

  She was on the odd side, but other than the face on the back of her head, she was pretty hot. Plus, Idea hadn't been having much luck eluding Bulab and Scholar on his own, and Eunice seemed to have some good tricks up her sleeve. He would have to be a complete moron, he thought, not to let her come with him.

  "San Diego, California," he said.

  "Cool," said Eunice. "And why are we going to San Diego?"

  "To stop my mom and dad from killing themselves on the Internet."

  AT a coffee shop in Buffalo, New York, where Idea and Eunice stopped after escaping Niagara Falls, Idea tinkered with the website that he was using to hoax the world.

  "Any news on your parents?" Eunice asked between gulps of black coffee.

  "That's not what I'm working on." Idea didn't look up from the screen of his smartphone. He was trying to get as much done as he could, as quickly as possible. Buffalo was still awfully close to the last place he'd seen Bulab and Scholar. Idea and Eunice had crossed the border only an hour ago, in Eunice's green vintage Volkswagen Beetle.

  "So what's with the killing themselves on the Internet bit?" asked Eunice.

  Idea glanced up at her. "Have you ever heard of Vengeful and Loving Deity?"

  Eunice thought for a moment, then shook her head. "Not that I can remember ... and I'd definitely remember names like those."

  "They're my parents." Idea returned his gaze to the phone's screen. "Vengeful Deity is my father. Loving Deity is my mother. They set up an e-ligion site that to
tally took off. Tons of hits and millions of dollars—all tax-free, since they have nonprofit status as a church."

  "Sounds like they have a lot to live for," said Eunice.

  "But they let the religion stuff go to their heads." Idea furiously thumb-typed on the phone's onscreen keyboard. "They started believing they could die for the sins of the world."

  "On the Internet," said Eunice.

  "Yeah," said Idea. "And maybe they will save the world. You know they'll get the most hits ever in the history of the Web."

  Eunice gulped some more coffee. She drummed her fingers in high-speed rhythms on the tabletop in counterpoint to Idea's typing. "So why are you in Buffalo, New York, if your parents are about to kill themselves in San Diego, California?"

  "They knew I'd try to stop them, so they sent me away to a camp of followers in Newfoundland. I escaped not long before you met me. The guys who are chasing me have orders to stop me from going west and to take me back to the camp."

  "Cool," said Eunice. "You're a fugitive."

  "Pretty much," Idea agreed, typing away.

  Eunice got up from her chair and circled the table to look over his shoulder. "Whatcha doin'?"

  "It's a website I created." He nodded at the flashing screen. "A home page for a rock band that's really taking off right now."

  "What band?"

  Just then, a skinny twenty-something guy paused on his way past. "Hey, it's Youforia!" He pointed a finger at the phone. "I hear those guys are awesome."

  Idea flashed Eunice a smirk. "Me, too," he said. "I would kill for a download of one of their songs."

  "I thought I downloaded one last week." The twenty-something guy combed his fingers through his shaggy blond hair. "It was supposed to be a copy of 'Corpuscle Porpoise,' but it turned out to be a three-minute broadcast of the Emergency Alert System."

  Idea shook his head sympathetically. "Keep trying. I hear there are Youforia song files out there somewhere."

  "There'd better be," said the guy. "Otherwise, there're gonna be a lot of pissed-off people around." He snorted, then headed for the door of the café.

  As he walked away, Eunice tapped a fingernail on the screen of Idea's phone. It was then that he noticed her nails were painted with the Chinese yin-yang symbol, a circle with a curved line down the middle, one half black with a white dot in the center, the other half white with a black dot. On the nails of her right hand, the black half was closest to the tip, while the white half was closest on her left hand.