How to Repair a Mechanical Heart

by J. C. Lillis

  Bree LaRue cries, Sim is completely asexual! Father Mike opens to Chapter 3 of Put on the Brakes!: When you feel “temptation devils” dancing on your shoulder, just imagine a life alienated from God, full of cheap, temporary pleasures that leave you more and more hopeless and empty. Is that what you really want?

  “Are you Brandon?”

  I open my eyes.

  Say something. Be calm. Be Sim.

  “I am. Yes.”

  “I’m Ian. Saw you at the Q&A.”

  He holds out his hand and gives me a big friendly smile. A real flesh-and-blood boy with kind eyes and a Celtic cross necklace and really, really nice forearms. His presence thrums through me. If I wanted to, I bet we could be kissing in an alley before the next jukebox song is done.

  “Mind if I sit down?”

  “Yeah‌…‌”

  I feel my back against a brick wall, my shorts unsnapping.

  “Yeah you mind, or yeah you don’t?”

  “Um‌…‌”

  Ian blinks twice, waiting. His eyes are gray, almost Sim-silver. The back of my throat goes sour.

  “You okay?” says Ian.

  “Yeah. Sure. I just‌—‌” I feel myself blushing again, which makes me blush more. His weirdo-detector starts pinging, you can tell.

  “What’s wrong?” he says.

  At the bar, Abel raises a bottle and an eyebrow. I want to explode his head, burn his $600 fake python boots and his cheap Cadmus shades. I hate Cadmus. Hate.

  “Look, I’m really sorry,” I blurt. “My boyfriend’s twisted.”

  “Your‌—‌him? That Abel guy?”

  “Yeah.” I aim a glare at the bar.

  “He said you weren’t together.”

  “Well, we are, but I don’t know why.” What am I doing? “He’s pretty rotten. He loves seeing other guys flirt with me, and he knows I get embarrassed, but he does it anyway. It like, turns him on.”

  “Ew.”

  “I know.”

  “So he set me up?”

  “He set us both up. It’s one of his sick little power games.”

  “Wow. Uh‌…‌okay. Sorry.” He shoots a dark glance in Abel’s direction. Abel gives him a goofy thumbs-up. “’Scuse me.”

  I’m not proud of myself while Ian’s bitching out Abel. I thought it would be more satisfying, but instead it just feels like that time in the sacristy when I blamed Pete Mertz for knocking over the Communion wine. The more Abel protests, all cartoony wasn’t-me flailing, the more pissed off Ian gets. He finally leaves the bar, slamming the door behind him.

  Abel clomps to our table. Tank Top Guy smirks.

  I get a whack on the head with the heel of his hand.

  “That was mean, Brandon!”

  “Ow.”

  “Listen, toolbox: I don’t know what head games you and Zander used to play, but I don’t do that shit. C’est compris?”

  “Yeah‌…‌” Cartoon stars, little birdies of pain. I deserve them.

  “What kind of person are you? Seriously?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I mean, what‌—‌you get your heart smashed one time by one loser and you think you get to be Mayor of Doucheville the rest of your life? Because let me tell you something, absolutely no one’s going to‌—‌oh, shut up!”

  He yanks his buzzing phone from his pocket. Beer sizzles in my stomach; I’m not used to making people mad. Get out of this place. Say three Hail Marys and ten Our Fathers.

  “Oh.” Abel’s mouth drops open a little. “Oh my.”

  “What?”

  He taps the phone screen. “Nothing.”

  “Tell me!”

  “We got a text. From Bec.” He sighs. “Don’t freak, okay?”

  He turns the screen around.

  NEW HELL BELLS POST @CADSIM COMM

  OMG FREAKY

  HURRY B4 THEY DELETE IT

  Chapter Seven

  “I got a screencap. Don’t worry.”

  By the time we get to the Cadsim fanjournal on Abel’s phone, the Post of Doom’s been blipped into oblivion. Bec’s prepared, though. When the cab drops us off near our SavMart campsite, she’s waiting for us in the doorway of the Sunseeker with her glasses on and her hair in a she-means-business bun.

  “It was so dramatic, you guys.” She yanks us inside and locks the door. “They all attacked like, the second she posted. It was like a steak in a shark tank.”

  She points to the laptop. Onscreen is another post by hey_mamacita, featuring a brand-new photo of me and Abel. New as in taken this afternoon, at the Q&A, without our knowledge. It’s a shot of our backs. We’re standing in front of the pull-down screen, watching the fanvids. There’s a very, very creepy graphic overlay on the photo: a big circle with a cross inside it.

  Like we’re peering at ourselves through a gunsight.

  HELL BELLS ARE RINGING

  THANK YOU CLEVELAND SPY

  WE ARE WATCHING YOU BOYS!!

  (BFC = coming very VERY soon.) Under that:

  cavegrrl94: MAXIE THIS IS IT. BAN HER NOW.

  willabelle: uugggghhhhh this whole thing is SO vile and hideous. I’m actually concerned, you guys. I thought it was all a joke but now I think they’re FOR REAL.

  mrs.j.cadmus: whatever. i used to hate the hell bells thing but now I’m like screw it, have at ‘em

  willabelle: Still, guys. I know we’re all extra angry after today, but Brandon and Abel are people too.

  illumina: THEY ARE NOT PEOPLE THEY ARE HEARTLESS GOONS AND DESERVE ETERNAL FIERY TORMENT.

  Another sign. Are you listening yet? says Father Mike.

  “They took our picture,” says Abel. “Three feet away.”

  What else will they do?

  “This is hardcore. We have organized haters.” Abel clasps his hands. “You guys?”

  “What.”

  He sighs dreamily. “I’m so proud!”

  I stand without knowing where I’m going. Dishes. Perfect. They stack up so fast. I go to the sink and fill it halfway with water, hot as I can stand it, and three pumps of Mom’s lemon dish soap. Then I grab a clean sponge and start scrubbing. Hard.

  Abel stage-whispers, “What’s with him?”

  “I don’t know,” Bec says softly.

  “Brandon?”

  I don’t answer. I plunge a plate in the little basin and Abel’s disgusting chili remnants dissolve in the white cloud of suds. He’s saying something to Bec. Something I don’t want to hear, about time alone with me or whatever. I try to clearly communicate my wishes to her with the side of my head, but our telepathy isn’t what it used to be, because she gets up from the table and slips out the door.

  Abel comes over. I feel him watching me for a minute, leaning up against the counter.

  “You’re really freaked out,” he says.

  Eternal fiery torment.

  “Just tired.” I start filling the basin again. Hot rinse.

  “I’m sure it’s just a big joke.”

  “I’m sure it is.”

  He reaches over and shuts my water off. He lets his hand brush mine as he pulls it back and I get this stupid lightning-flash impulse to grab it and tell him the whole truth. Pull the plug from the drain. Tell him all about Father Mike. Fake Zander.

  “I shouldn’t have done that before,” he says. “Sent Ian over.”

  “It’s fine.” I don’t look at him. “I was a jerk too.”

  “No, you want to know why I did it? Why I care or whatever?”

  I stare into the sink, at the suds escaping down the drain. Abel picks up the silver Castaway Planet superball he bought from one of the vendors. He starts bouncing and catching in a slow clockwork rhythm: shthunk, twack, shthunk, twack.

  “Jonathan,” he says.

  “Who?”

  Shthunk, twack.

  “My Zander.”

  I’m not sure I want to hear more, but that never stops Abel, and before I can make up some excuse he’s pulled me into his tenth-grade trauma and I’m there with
him at this holy roller wedding, exchanging sultry looks with the pretty blond boy at the groom’s table. “I knew I was getting in trouble,” he says. “Everyone at the wedding had like fourteen kids with the same haircut and a Jesus fish on their car, and they all made this huge creepy deal about how the bride and groom hadn’t even kissed yet, like not even one single time. I mean, freako.”

  Put on the Brakes!, Chapter 5: Avoid “friends” who would mock the idea of a close relationship with God.

  “So anyway, Jonathan gave me a couple super-intense looks across the room and then he left, and I followed him outside and there he was all nervous and shy loosening his tie under a tree, and of course I got a total hard-on for the whole situation, like who wouldn’t want to deflower the sweet innocent closeted Christian boy who’s been force-fed poison his whole life‌—‌like, no offense, Brandon, I know you’re cool and you don’t believe all that.”

  My stomach drops. Abel goes on and on about how they snuck around that whole summer, how he was so in love, how every time they kissed or whatever it was like some time-lapse film of flowers bursting open and sunrises sprawling across the sky.

  “‌…‌And then all of a sudden, he just stopped. Stopped taking my calls, stopped meeting me. Defriended me on Facebook. So I got totally desperate, right, and I sent him this stupid ID bracelet with the date we met engraved on it, and that made him call me but instead of being like ‘oh, baby, I love you too,’ he was like, ‘I don’t identify myself with your lifestyle anymore.’ Your lifestyle. All cold and robotic, exactly like that. And he kept saying things like that, like you know he’d been brainwashed, and I started crying and yelling at him and stuff, and finally he told me his mom had read our emails and they had this huge family blowup and they were going to send him to one of those get-right-with-God lobotomy camps unless he turned his life around. So I told him they were a bunch of sick freaks, and he should lie through his teeth and do whatever he had to for now to keep a roof over his head, and he was like‌—‌are you ready for this?”

  I nod.

  “He was like, ‘But they’re right. God is more important than feeling good.’ And I said well, can’t you have both? And big surprise, he was like ‘No. I’m sorry. Not like this,’ and then bam, he hung up and that was the last time I ever talked to him.” He flings the superball across the room; it thwacks the moose pillow and rolls lamely off the couch. Abel rakes a hand through his hair. “So, but the point is‌—‌I was absolutely wrecked. I wasted six endless months brooding exclusively over this little piece-of-shit cult-member coward, Brandon. Do you believe it? Like, how many amazing people could I have met in six months? My brother had to literally kick my ass to get me over it.”

  “I’m sorry,” I whisper.

  “I didn’t tell you that so you’d be sorry! The point is, don’t be like me, okay? Because‌…‌” He sighs. “Because you’re pretty much too awesome for that, and I’m one hundred percent sure this Zander tool is not worth it.”

  He lays this open, expectant look on me, like now I’m supposed to throw my arms around him and spill the contents of my heart and mind. I dump the dishes in the hot rinse basin and turn to the fridge.

  There’s a ketchup stain by the handle where Abel tossed a French fry at Bec this morning. I scrub with my hands shaking. How much would Abel hate me if he knew what went on inside me all the time, what my brain rejected but my guts still half-believed? It would be the end for sure. No more Screw Your Sensors. No more silly photo shoots with our action figures. No long phone calls at 10 p.m. on Thursdays to pick apart the latest episode. I scrub harder, willing him to stay where he is. If he gets any closer, I feel like he’ll know‌—‌one look at me, one little touch, and my whole bad history will scrawl itself on my skin.

  “What’s the matter?” he says.

  I keep scrubbing. “I just‌—‌I think we should give each other some space this week.”

  He gasps. “Are you breaking up with me?”

  “I’m serious.” I thump my head on the fridge, right above the apple magnet holding the Castaway Ball tickets. “Just back off me for now. Okay?”

  “Brandon, what is your problem?”

  “No problems. Zero problems.”

  “Are you that mad at me?”

  “I’m not mad.”

  “All I did was try to be your friend and help you out and you’re acting like I‌—‌”

  “Will you shut up? For once? Everything’s not about you, all right? God!” I yank open the fridge and start rearranging. Juice boxes sorted by size, yogurts lined up straight. “I should be focusing on other stuff right now. College. I shouldn’t have said yes to this stupid trip.”

  “Then why did you?”

  “Because you steamrolled me.”

  “Wha‌—‌I did not!”

  “You steamroll everyone!” I slam the fridge. “All you care about is making people do what you want. It’s not even worth disagreeing with you because you just talk and talk until people give in and you think it’s because you’re so charming but really it’s to shut you up.” I swoop in for the kill. “The sad thing is, you think you’re Cadmus. When actually you’re just kind of a dick.”

  Abel’s quiet for a long time, like he’s waiting for an aw, just kidding! When I don’t give him one, he stuffs his hands in his pockets and scuffs at the kitchen mat.

  “You know what?” he says. “I’m done. I’m done trying to help you.”

  “Fantastic.”

  “Be a bitter loveless loser the rest of your life.”

  “I will.”

  “Die alone in the back of a Burger King in one of your ugly plaid shirts.”

  “Looking forward to it.”

  He waits about five more seconds.

  “You can go anytime,” I say.

  He clomps out of the Sunseeker, and the door clangs shut.

  He’s giving you an out, buddy. God’s working through him.

  From the window above the sink, I watch him stalk through the parking lot. Bec intercepts him by a green minivan, and he shakes his head and gestures toward me before he strides off in the opposite direction.

  I lift the dishes out of the hot rinse. Flecks of hot chili and salsa still cling to the plate Abel microwaved last night, the daisy-patterned one Mom used to use for our after-school graham crackers and Nilla wafers. I grab the sponge and start scrubbing again, and when that doesn’t work I throw the sponge in the sink and attack the barnacles of crud with my fingernails, scratching at them hard until the plate is smooth as Sim’s skin, and Abel’s mess is glugging down the drain.

  ***

  “Don’t do it, Sim. Don’t you dare!”

  Nighttime. While Abel chomps on cinnamon jellybeans and glares at a battered copy of Stranger in a Strange Land, I hide in the loft with my phone and watch Castaway Planet with Plastic Sim tight in my fist. When I get to Episode 2-17, I yank Nat’s old patchouli-scented quilt over my head. I need to be in my own world for this one. Especially this scene. Sim is about to destroy his evolution chip.

  “Step back, Captain. I refuse to hurt you.” David Darras is amazing in this scene, so intense that his Georgia accent bleeds through and smudges the R in hurt. “Step away, and let me save myself.”

  I remember the last time I watched this, two weeks before The Talk with my parents. Dad wandered into the living room with his bonsai shears, watched until Cadmus grabbed Sim’s face, and gently shook his head and walked back out.

  “You made a choice!” Cadmus is yelling now, wind whipping through his spiky hair. “What about your whole ‘I-need-to-be-human’ deal?”

  “No one told me what doubt was like. What fear was like. What it was like to know how much I still don’t know. It is extraordinarily difficult, Captain.”

  Cadmus snorts. “You bet your ass it’s hard.” I roll my eyes. Cadsim shippers love that line. “But look: I’d rather live two minutes as a real person than a hundred years as a robot. Was it really all that perfect before?”
<
br />   “I was perfect, yes. Perfect by design.”

  “Someone else’s design. Someone else’s idea of perfect.” Cadmus grips Sim’s shoulders. “Now you get to find out who’s really in there!”

  “Brandon?”

  I jump. Bec’s cool fingertips brush my arm.

  “Sorry. He’s snoring down there,” she whispers. She’s wearing a black Hello Kitty shirt with the neckband cut off and I smell her vanilla mint toothpaste. “Can I sleep here?”

  I shut off Castaway and yank my earbuds out. “It’s not much quieter.”

  “That’s okay.”

  I shove over as much as I can, and she squeezes in next to me. We used to do this a lot. First when we were kids, curled up in her pink plastic playhouse with our stuffed-raccoon baby between us, and then when we were older and she’d make up some sleepover-at-Ashley’s story to sneak in my window and stay with me. We’d whisper forever about her sister’s creepy boyfriend and what superpower we’d want and whether Bob Dylan was amazing (my position) or overrated (hers), and then when the talking was over I’d give her a cheek kiss and fall asleep with my hand on her soft belly, and she thought I wouldn’t push for more because I was a gentleman. At least I thought that’s what she thought.

  Bec’s got Plastic Lagarde with her. She’s made her a white minidress from a fast-food napkin and a twist-tie; the dress looks weird with Zara Lagarde’s buzz-cut and biceps. To the soundtrack of Abel’s snores, she hooks Lagarde’s arm through Plastic Sim’s and walks the action figures up my chest, the world’s most improbable wedding march.

  “It’s cozy up here,” she says.

  “I have a book light if you want.”

  She smiles. “I’m not afraid of the dark anymore.”

  “Right.”

  Her face is so close I can see the tiny faint freckles on her lips, shiny with a clear coat of white-cherry gloss.

  Go ahead. One kiss. Just keep it tame. How do you know you don’t like it if you’ve never tried?

  “You can stop waiting, you know,” she says.