by J. C. Lillis
“OMG. The ultimate.” We’re bobbing in a circle now. “Brandon’s sea-blue eyes exploded into desolate tears.”
I grin. “He felt his tater tots rise up threateningly in his throat.”
“He raced breathlessly—Breathlessly?”
“I think.”
“—down the school hallway and stumbled falteringly into the men’s room to call the one and only person who would ever understand him fully:” He strikes a pose. “Abel!”
“The next part is best.”
“What part?”
“What the men’s room smells like.”
“Adverbs?”
“No.”
“I’m blanking.”
“Urine and boys.”
“Urine and boys!” He snaps his fingers. “Straight girls really do their research, no?”
“You don’t read the NC-17 ones, do you?”
“Wouldn’t you like to know.”
“Oh, jeez.”
He clasps his heart. “Abel’s piercing green eyes danced impishly as he unbuckled Brandon’s—”
“Stop!”
“His eyes roved hungrily over the smaller boy’s body…”
I plug my ears and la-la-laaa.
“…and he thought, For such a short boy, he certainly had a long—”
“Oh my God!”
I heave a shelf of water his way and he yelps and pulls me under again. I used to hate when I was a kid and things would get rough at the pool—the big Tortelli boys sneak-attacking in the deep end, yanking us down by our feet like Jaws and holding us under until we kicked and flailed. But with Abel it’s different. He lets me push back, only touches my safe parts—my elbow, my shoulder. And way before things get scary, he hooks my wrist gently and pulls us both up to the surface.
We stand there, chest-deep, smiling and shivering. The air is full of happy smells: snack-stand lemonade, soft pretzels, pina colada sunscreen. I almost strip my wet t-shirt off. Right now, right this second, if we were on Castaway Planet and Abel said hey, let’s check out this crystal spider cave, I think I’d go with him. I’d be scared, but I’d go.
“Abel,” I say.
“Yes, my pseudo-darling.”
I grin. I’m brave as ten Cadmuses. “Never had so much fun,” I say. “With anyone.”
He looks down, swirls a finger in the water. “Pas de quoi, cutie.”
“—Okay, you horndogs.” Bec’s standing on the lip of the pool, wiggling into her polka-dot flip-flops. “You want to eat something before the Q&A?”
Abel’s face gets kid-on-Christmas bright. “The Double T?”
“I think the lunch special’s fried meatloaf.”
“Sold.” Abel grabs the ladder and hoists himself out of the pool. There’s all kinds of dripping and glistening going on. I try not to look. “You in, Bran?”
I think it over. On one hand, it’s been great this week; flirting lightly and safely for the cameras, hanging out and playing five thousand games of WordWhap with a cute nonthreatening guy who knows how screwed up I am and still wants to be my friend. On the other, there’s something I desperately have to do back at the Sunseeker, and I need to be alone.
“Bring me back some cheese fries,” I tell them.
***
I pull down the Sunseeker shades. Lock the door.
Bec gave me the camera before they left, so I take a second to upload our poolside escapade to Screw Your Sensors. While it’s loading, my phone goes off. HOME CALLING. I pick it up, all relaxed and friendly. I wow-mm-hmm politely through the latest on the new-parish-hall saga and update Dad dutifully on my RV maintenance. Yes, I cleaned the fresh water tank, sanitized the hose.
When I hang up, I go straight to the Church of Abandon.
I know what’s going to happen there in the next ten minutes. Someone will link to our new post, and there’ll be OMGs and trembling-Spongebob gifs and dissections and debates over every little thing, from the sincerity of Abel’s dear to the way my eyes lingered on his wet swim trunks. Abel and I will soak it up later, and laugh.
Right now I have a new chapter to read.
It’s normal to feel tempted, Father Mike tsks. Just distract yourself with other things. Get out in the sunshine and go for a walk…
My fingers hover over the keyboard. Plastic Sim stares at me, tipped over on Abel’s box of Ho-Hos. I straighten his legs and stand him up in my new Castaway Planet mug, beside Plastic Cadmus.
Then I find hey_mamacita’s latest post and click her name.
Her personal fic journal pops up. I click User Info, just to see her photo again. Nose ring, thick dark dreadlocks, bold Celtic-cross neck tattoo; everything says I’m brave. She’s standing in front of the neon-green Virgin Mary statue in her overgrown front yard, opening her scruffy leather jacket and showing off what’s underneath: a tight tattered t-shirt, its big red sequined heart shooting off tiny light beams like a superhero insignia.
The bio underneath is just one line:
SENT BY GOD HERSELF to make Abandon happen.
I’m not dumb enough to think that’s likely. I mean, last year when Aunt Meg met a guy in the Target returns line and Mom said “God made that sweater too small for a reason,” I rolled my eyes so hard I think I sprained an optic nerve. If God exists, there’s no way he bothers with matchmaking.
It’s eerie, though. Right?
I keep asking for signs. And here she is. Someone who prays to a neon Virgin Mary and lives her whole life in all-caps and thinks God and my happiness go together just fine. I don’t think she was sent. Not in a literal Biblical-prophet way. But the fact that hey_mamacita a.) exists and b.) found me? It just seems like some power somewhere in the universe is maybe on my side.
I click the fic tab. Right up top I see the little green “NEW CHAPTER!” burst and my heart jogs faster. Most of the other Abandon girls write us into the Castaway Planet universe—I’m an android, Abel’s a studly ensign—or concoct these high-school melodramas where I get a beatdown from some closeted quarterback and end up in the ER and then Abel brings me a giant teddy bear and we do it in my hospital bed. hey_mamacita is the only one writing her vision of this trip we’re on, a crazy, sprawling fourteen-chapter epic called “How to Repair a Mechanical Heart.”
I grab a can of BBQ chips from the food bin, pop the top, and read.
Just as their lips were about to finally touch with a lovely trembling sweetness, a pair of headlights sliced across the parking lot and locked on the two boys like a tractor beam. They saw the black Cadillac creep toward them in the dark with sinister sharklike intensity, the blood-red rosary swinging from the rearview and the license plate blaring the grim heavy sledgehammer words Brandon could never forget: I-JUDGE.
The car shuddered to a stop.
“Get in the RV, Brandon,” Abel murmured.
Brandon shook his head. “I won’t,” he replied, raking up all his courage. “This is my fight, too. I know that now.”
Out of the shadows clacked the heavy black boots of Father X, his craggy face glowering with malevolence and his silver crucifix clutched in a fist that was ancient and bony but could still crack a sinner’s arm in half. His grease-slick hair swung like blades across his face. He crushed his cigarette out on the inside of his palm and his mouth cracked open in a twisted smile that showed his gray and rotting feral teeth and prickled the hairs on Brandon’s neck. He LIKED THE PAIN. That much was clear. Brandon thought, God, that must be why he wants us all to hurt.
“So this is where you go to practice your DEPRAVED FORNICATIONS,” Father X snarled, pointing the cross at them. His red eyes glowed in the blackness and the cross spat hot electric bolts of silver light. “In the NAME OF HEAVEN, I command you, Brandon Page, to cease this charade of sin and misery! Return at once to the blessed desolation of the chaste and celibate life God created you to lead!”
Brandon, in reply, brandished a dagger. It was a letter opener from the Casti
eCon souvenir stand, but Father X didn’t have to know that. He strode up to Father X like a cowboy at high noon and—
I crack up laughing. I always do when I read her fic, but I mean it as a compliment. The more awesomely campy it is, the better I feel. I grab a sharp-tipped pencil from the Cape May mug on the desk; practice brandishing and pointing it.
“It ends here,” Brandon rasped. “All my life I’ve been your robot. Wind me up and my heart has done your will. Believe this, sacrifice that. Accept that God created you to be alone. Tick tick tick, yes master, I believe. Well, guess what? I’m done. I met someone who fixed my heart. And you can’t do anything about it.”
He slipped his warm hand into Abel’s. The next thing he heard was—
Sirens.
Sirens outside, off to the west, straight in the direction of the Double T. I run to the window, scissor open the blinds with two fingers. I picture Abel on a stretcher. Blood on a white sheet. A crumpled fender, some girl sobbing God, I never even saw him while someone’s cell shrills over and over, sad and steady and unanswered.
It’s mine. My phone. It vibrates across the desk and I catch it just before it goes over. Father Mike? The weird thought clutches me. Just for a second. Then I pick up and hear: “OMG MY VAG IS ON FIRE!”
I giggle. “What?”
“Sweet merciful baby Moses, San Antonio is the city of magical love witchcraft!” A big knot loosens inside me. I drop back down in the desk chair. I picture Abel reading off his phone in a corner booth while Bec snort-laughs and stirs her iced tea. “I legit peed myself you guys and my heart went supernova and how do these boys even exist??”
“I take it they liked our pool video?”
“You haven’t checked?”
I glance at the screen. “Been busy.”
“doomerang already coughed up a flashfic called ‘I Think You Know.’”
“Can’t wait.”
“amity crashful counted how many times we’ve called each other ‘baby’ this week—did you know we hit 15 already?”
“Impressive.” I lick BBQ dust off my fingers. “We must be in love.”
“Then Miss Maxima and a couple of her minions came over from the Cadsim fanjournal to bitch about how disgusting and intrusive real-person shipping is, and they all got banned, it was hilarious…OH! And.”
“Ye-es?”
“There’s a San Antonio spy now.”
“Who?”
“retro robot. I love her! She wrote that one where we’re nineteenth-century vampire hunters? She’s driving all the way from Tulsa so we have to ramp it up at the Augie Manners Q&A.”
“Okay.”
“I’m warning you now: There might have to be back-rubbing.”
“Maybe even a public hug.”
He gasps. “I’m shocked, Tin Man. Shocked. What’s next?”
“Depraved fornications.”
“You know what?”
“What?”
“I like this new Brandon.”
I blow crumbs off the keyboard and scroll up to the start of hey_mamacita’s chapter, so I can read it all over again.
“Me too,” I say.
Chapter Fourteen
Augie Manners plays the lovable stoner every single time he’s onscreen—from Castaway Planet to those old burger commercials where his catchphrase was “Dude, can I have your pickle?” When he scuffs onstage for his Q&A there are zero surprises. Surf-shop t-shirt, sleepy smile, dumb fisherman hat hiding raggedy red-blond hair. His cargo pants look slept in and his weird rope sandals are almost certainly made of hemp. If he was in a comic strip, squiggly lines of visible weed fumes would follow him everywhere.
He throws his arms wide open. “Hel-loooooooo San Antonio!”
Cheers and wolf-whistles from the girls. Abel and I shoot we’ve-got-a-secret looks at each other.
“Wooooo! Yeah! Dutchie is in la casa, so let the party commence!” Augie Manners lifts his arms above his head and cracks his knuckles one by one, just like he does on the show. There’s a firefly-flash of cameras. “Oh, wow, you guys—seriously, are you Castaway Planet fans, for real? I was expecting geeks out the yin-yang but you guys are hot. Lorda-mercy!”
He tosses his dirty hat in the crowd and starts in on some story about a Riverwalk bar that has eighty-six kinds of beer, and I have to smile a little. I hated the Dutch Jones character for the first half of Season 1 when he was just crude comic relief, but he got pretty interesting with the OCD and the photographic memory and the talent for peacemaking, which kind of came out of nowhere but somehow made perfect sense.
I can’t focus on him for the first five or six questions, though. Because Abel is leaning close to me, whispering Castaway Planet lines in my ear so it looks like we’ve got secrets.
“You ready to take it a teeny bit further?” he murmurs. Some girl just asked Manners about that episode where Xaarg makes Dutchie walk on his hands the whole time. He’s eagerly reenacting, his hemp sandals waggling in the air.
“Yeah,” I whisper back.
“You sure? No imminent freakouts?”
“All clear.”
“You should know the risks ahead of time.”
“Of what?”
He sighs. “My sexual charisma.”
“Give me the disclaimers.”
“Well, side effects may include dry mouth, nausea, dizziness, blood clots, cardiac arrhythmia, dia-bee-tus—”
“Only in people over fifty. I heard.”
He narrows his eyes. “Would I wound you like that?”
“You might.”
“That’s it. I’m going to whisper something highly provocative.”
I bump him with my hip. “Go ahead.”
“It may reorder your entire universe.”
“I’m ready.”
He touches his lips to the rim of my ear. “Duuude. Can I have your pickle?”
I snort. I can’t help it.
“Shh!” he hisses. “Don’t laugh!”
“Don’t make me.”
“You think retro robot saw?”
“I don’t know.” I crane my neck.
“Zzt! You’ll make her suspicious.” He wraps an arm around my shoulders and murmurs, “Just enjoy my attentions while you can.”
“Oh, so this is a privilege?”
“I’ll have you know I’m in high demand.”
“Right, right.” I flick his hair. “Who wouldn’t love the cockatoo version of Laurence Olivier?”
He giggles and pulls me closer. I tense automatically, but then I let myself relax, muscle by muscle.
It’s nice. Really nice.
“Oh by the way, guys and dolls—I brought a present for whoever’s got the best question today.” Augie Manners holds up this grubby burlap hippie sack with a happy face embroidered on it. “So lemme hear from someone sexy now—yeah! You in the Xaarg shirt.”
A chubby guy with a black samurai braid lowers his question paddle. “Yes, in your opinion, are the writers purposefully ratcheting up the tension between Cadmus and Xaarg as a commentary on the futility of prayer in the face of an indifferent god, or is the conflict actually going somewhere?”
I don’t hear the answer. Abel’s hand has slowly migrated down my back and now it’s in this scary normal teenage-boyfriend place, fingertips tucked in my back pocket. He leaves it there for one more question and then two more, adding little whispers in my ear about retro robot and great photo ops while the stubborn enemy part of my brain tries to talk my body into freaking out.
My hands stay dry. I slip one into the slim back pocket of his dark jeans.
Brandon, who are you? Father Mike, but faded now. I don’t recognize you, bud.
hey_mamacita answers for me: I’m your worst nightmare, Brandon said, waving the dagger like an outlaw. I am a VIGILANTE OF LOVE.
Father Mike tries to say something else, but I paper right over his face with hey_mamacita’s silly Father X—the craggy sunken cheeks,
the feral teeth. A fun villain, the kind that’s good for cheap scares and cheaper Halloween costumes, powerless once the book is closed or the TV’s switched off.
He keeps quiet.
A giddy laugh throbs in the back of my throat. It’s like Episode 2-14, the scene where Sim first got his evolution chip. His skin went transparent; all his nerve endings crackled with white-hot sparks and his silver eyes sizzled into tropical blue and he threw his head back and let out a full-body wail I used to think was all about pain, but now I know better.
I curl an arm around Abel’s waist.
“Let me ask the question.”
My voice doesn’t sound like mine. He startles.
“What?
“The question. I’ll ask Manners.”
“You want to?”
“I do.”
Abel whistles. “Look at you, all bold and brazen.”
I grab the question paddle and wave it around. Augie Manners calls on me right away. He locks eyes with me when I ask the question about the cave episode, and I’m not even nervous—it’s as easy as a vocal warmup with the Timbrewolves, the lip trills and scales I can do in my sleep.
“Ooh, Cadmus and Sim.” Augie Manners rubs his hands together. “The bazillion dollar question. Right?”
Girly cheers clash with some baritone boos. Abel gazes at the side of my face and smooths a wisp of hair off my forehead. I catch an eyeroll from Bec. She looks away fast, goes back to her camera.
“I think,” says Manners, “that humble ole me is going to kick that question to the lovely and very intuitive ladies here in the audience. Should I?”
“Cheater,” Abel grouses, but he’s grinning.
More cheers; an awwwww yeah that was probably louder than the shouter intended. Augie Manners steps up to the lip of the stage and hunches down, hands on thighs.
“A’ight, ready? Ladies who think Cadmus and Sim didn’t do the ol’ coitus androidicus in the crystal spider cave, lemme hear you put your hands together.”
A sprinkle of claps and a low frat-boy howl.
“Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Now if you think they totally boned, make some noise!”
Full-on eardrum assault.
“Whoa nellie!” Augie Manners shouts, trying to quiet the crowd a little. “I guess that’s a yes, guys!”
