How to Repair a Mechanical Heart

CastieCon #3

San Antonio, Texas





Chapter Thirteen


Abel and I sit side by side on the concrete edge of our campground pool, dipping our feet in. He is shirtless. Leaning back on both arms, he holds his pale soft stomach taut, trying to forge a six-pack. He grins at the fake hickey on my neck, courtesy of some blue and purple eyeshadow we bought on the road in an Alabama dollar store. I held still while Abel brushed it on, his breath tickling my cheek and smelling of cinnamon. It was safe, and incredibly fun.

The San Antonio sun breathes biblical heat on us. My Castaway Planet shirt roasts on my back and the cool clear water sparkles temptation as I swirl my toes through it. I want to jump in, all the way in, but there’s something we need to do first.

“You sure about this?” Abel murmurs.

I nod. “Totally.”

“You don’t want to take your shirt off? They’d flip.”

I cringe. “I’m really pale‌…‌”

“That’s fine. Yeah. You’re a man of mystery. I might put my hand on your knee, is that cool?”

“My leg is your leg.”

Bec clears her throat. “Can we get this over with?” She’s bobbing chest-deep in the water with her camera, shivering a little.

“Sorry,” says Abel. “Rebecca, what do you think? Is my hand on his knee too much?”

“Don’t pull me into this. I’m just the cameraperson.”

Abel nods. “We’ll play it by ear. See what happens.”

“Fantastic.” She rolls her eyes and hits record.

“Salut, dear Casties!” Abel says. “My partner and I are coming at you poolside from the, ah, Longhorn Campground in San Antonio, where we have been staying in all our carefree, half-nude glory for three days.”

“Three lonnnng, hot days.”

“They have been especially hot, haven’t they, Bran?”

“Scorching.”

“Miss Rebecca, by the way, is looking stunning today in her bangin’ new halter bikini.”

“It’s just a two-piece.”

“Whatever. Dave, if you’re watching, it was between this one and some striped tankini disaster. You’ll thank me when you see her in Long Beach.”

I break in, as scripted. “Ahem.”

Abel’s like, “Ye-es?”

“You have yet to comment on my new swim trunks.”

“I think that’s best reserved for a‌…‌” He leans in, stage-whispers. “Private moment, don’t you?”

I giggle; I can’t help it. “If you say so.”

“Aaanyway, guys: Two o’clock today, Q&A with Augie Manners, who for the past four seasons has infused the character of Dutch Jones with a complex blend of angst, dopey hotness, and nine other exotic spices.”

“Hmf.”

“Yes, dear? What is it?”

I feign a pout. “If you love him so much, why don’t you marry him?”

“Mm-mm. Not my type.”

“No? Who is your type?”

“I think you know, Brandon.” He rests a hand on my knee. A tiny spark dances up my thigh. “I think. You. Know.”

***


The second Bec snaps the camera shut, Abel grabs my elbow and hauls us both underwater. The blue shock of cold hits me hard‌—‌I’m not ready‌—‌but then I open my eyes and he’s making this face that makes me forget, crossing his eyes and puffing out his cheeks. His white hair billows around his face like the manes on Bec’s old Rainbow Ponies when we’d take them in her mom’s pool. For a long time we stay like that, in a safe underworld where our bodies stay light and dreamy. Five seconds. Ten seconds.

We come up laughing.

“’Best reserved for a private moment’?” I splash him.

“Did I go too far?”

“No! It was brilliant.”

“Um, so‌…‌”

“What?”

Abel bats his eyes. “Why don’t you marry him?”

“Ugh! I’m a horrible flirter.”

“No, no, no. You’ve gotten loads better since Saturday.”

“Really?”

“When you said scorching?” He taps his heart, smirking. “I felt it right here.”

Bec bobs by on a clear inflatable raft. She looks all patriotic: navy blue bikini, white belly, sunburn on her round freckled shoulders. She peers at us over cat’s-eye shades.

“You guys,” she tsks, “are mean.”

Abel’s eyes go wide and innocent. “How are we mean? It’s what they want!”

“But it’s not real.”

“So? They love fiction. Right, Brandon?”

“They do seem to enjoy it.”

He swims close to me, his chin skimming the water. “What’s your favorite fic?”

I peel my wet shirt away from my chest and pretend to think. I have a real answer to that question, but I can’t get into that with Abel. As far as he knows, the Abandon fic we’ve been reading for the past five days has been 100% pure comedy, something to giggle over in greasy diners and campgrounds while Plastic Sim and Plastic Cadmus perch on opposite corners of the laptop, watching us blush and bump elbows.

“I like doomerang’s stuff. And sadparadise. The Castaway Planet crossovers,” I lie.

“Yeah? Not a fan, actually.”

“How come?”

“They’re like, good writers.” He makes a blech face. “Well-written fanfic is no fun whatsoever. I loooove thanks4caring’s high-school-angst.”

“’The Locker Said FAG?’”

“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 CastieCon 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.