How to Repair a Mechanical Heart (11 page)

“Abel‌…‌?”

He’s not the one who answers.

Come in, Brandon.

I always hated confession. I would make up sins like swearing and shoplifting gum to hide the real ones: masturbating in the shower, impure thoughts about Luke Perry in those ancient
90210
s Bec loves.

Someone important wants to talk to you. Isn’t it time you started listening to Him?

I lock the door, latch all the windows, and pull down the blinds. I thump down in the passenger seat and dial my parents. I don’t know why. It’s not like I can talk to them about this, but I like tapping the familiar pattern of their phone number. They’re not home. Of course. Saturday dinner with the Donnellys. Mom’s curled her hair and brought her shepherd’s pie in a white casserole dish; Dad’s wearing a plaid shortsleeved button-down and his thin hair is wet and carefully combed. They’re drinking red wine and saying the words “Loyola” and “Communications major” a million times, trying to convince everyone they’re still proud of me.

I try Nat next, but who knows where she is. Her cell’s turned off and I get her message:
I’ll call you back, maybe
, over the anguished background yodels of some girl-punk band I’m not cool enough to listen to. Whatever. I don’t want to talk to her anyway. Last time I asked her for advice she lit a cigarette and said “God is like junior high, Brandon. Graduate already.” Then she told me she was thinking of moving to Kenya with some greasy philosophy major she’d known for five weeks, and possibly getting an ankh tattooed on her shoulder.

Plastic Sim is still in my vest pocket. I fish him out and spread his arms to the sides; trace a slow T across his body‌—‌wrist to wrist, chin to shin. One time when I was eleven or twelve, I was in St. Matt’s alone after serving Sunday Mass, and I sat down in the front pew and stared up at Jesus on the cross. Our Jesus was really realistic. You could count his ribs, trace the subtle definition of his muscles, gauge the strength of his legs just by the synthesis of sinew and bone. I tried to pray a decade of the rosary but the prayers never made me feel much; the
thee
s and
hallowed
be
s were too foreign and too familiar all at once, and God was probably so mad at me he didn’t want to hear it anyway. I ended up dreaming of what sex would feel like, to be so close to a man you could feel his bones with your bones. And then a shadow slanted across the pew, and a warm hand clapped the back of my neck.

“Whatcha thinking about, Brandon?”

Father Mike above me, smiling in black with a white square at his neck, boyish in a blue-and-gold St. Matt’s windbreaker.

My stomach contorted. I weighed the choices:
Confess the unconfessable. Lie to a priest.

I did the thing I do best. I ran away.

I ran to the boys’ room and gripped the sink like I’m gripping the sink in the Sunseeker now, blasting cold water and dousing my whole head. It feels fantastic and horrible. When I can’t take it anymore, I shut the water off and stand there like the world’s biggest idiot, my hair dripping puddles on the kitchenette floor.

Outside, in the near distance, gravel crunching under feet.

Here they come.

It’s not Abel. I know his footfall, like a trick-or-treater bounding up a walkway. These steps are heavy, joyless. Sinister.

Four clomps. Five. Six. Coming closer.

A pause.

Then a creak, and the Sunseeker shudders.

They’re on the steps.

We have an Atlanta spy. Plots are thickening.

Someone sits on the step with a thud and I hear a metallic clink that could be lots of things, none of them good. I see the Hell Bells post in my head, that weird “BFC” thing. Bullets From Crazies? Beat Fags Cheerfully?

My hands scrabble for weapons. Not a mop‌—‌stupid. Frying pan‌—‌no. I’ll go bold. There’s no choice.

My heart chugs wildly. I tiptoe close to the door and put my mouth right on the crack. Ragged breathing on the other side. I tighten my throat and set my jaw, shift my feet apart like tough guys in movies who say stuff like this, in exactly this booming rat-a-tat voice:

“I’VE GOT A GUN!”

“Auuugh!”

The scream scares me so much I lose my logic, fling the door wide open. Abel’s stumbling away from the Sunseeker, clutching his chest. On the pavement by the steps: his keys and a replica of Cadmus’s ray gun, still spinning where he dropped it.

He gulps in a breath. “You scared the shit out of me!”

“I didn’t know it was you!”

“Who’d you think I was?”

“I don’t know!” The door starts closing on me; I punch it back. “Where
were
you?”

“Out! Walking! Is that allowed?”

“Yeah, I just‌—‌”

“Oh my God. My heart.”

“I’m sorry‌…‌”

“Forget it. Forget it.” He snatches his stuff up and clomps into the Sunseeker, squeezing past me in the doorway. I haven’t felt this dumb since the Timbrewolves concert when I screwed up the solo on “My Girl.” His eyes are all red and I want to ask him about it, but he catches me searching his face and looks away fast. He yanks the fridge open and stares inside for a long minute. Then he slams the door.

“Why is your hair wet?” he sighs.

“Dumb story.”

“I’m sure. You want to go somewhere?”

“Where?”

He reaches in his back pocket and pulls out a bright yellow flyer. “Some coffeehouse, they’re having a
Castaway
marathon.”

“Maybe.”

I take the flyer from him and scan it. I wait for Father Mike to weigh in, but there’s nothing much in my head right now, just an ache and a dull gray hum.

“So Kade dumped me.”

I look up. Abel’s wiping his nose with the back of his hand. He doesn’t look at me.

“When?”

“Forty-five minutes ago.” He pumps some gel into his hand and starts punking his hair up. “On
Twitter
.”

“Oh my God.”

“Whatever. At least he DMed me.”

“I’m sorry. That’s rotten.”

Abel shrugs.

“Why’d he‌—‌”

“Zzt!” He holds up a hand. “Completely expected. Not a huge deal. No questions, no sympathetic looks. Them’s the rules. Okay?”

“I guess, but‌…‌”

“You call a cab. I’ll pay.”

“I saw the spies.”

He stops attacking his hair. “‌…‌What?”

“The Hell Bells spies. I think I saw them.”

“What’d they look like?”

“You know. Menacing.”

“Menacing how? Like‌—‌” He makes a bucktoothed monster face.

“Not exactly.”

“Were they goons?”

“I don’t know what a goon looks like.”

“You’d know one if you saw one.”

“I guess they were.”

“Big dudes?”

“Big enough.”

“They follow you?”

“For a while.”

Abel shakes his head. “Are you
sure
?”

“Pretty sure, yeah.”

“Wow.” He leans against the fridge and shudders. “Creepy.”

“I’m not sure we should go out. Maybe it’s too‌—‌”

“No. No, I’m calling the cab right now.”

“But they could be anywhere.”

“I’m not living in fear, Brandon. Screw it. That’s so 1952.”

“Why 1952?”

“I don’t know. Like, Rock Hudson or whatever.” He holds up his phone. “Are you coming or not?”

I fiddle with the zipper pull on my vest.

“We should stick together,” I say. “Stay in crowds.”

He smiles a little.

“Roger that,” he Cadmuses.

“We shouldn’t sit by a window.”

“Heavens no.”

“And also‌—‌”

“‌—‌you should take this off.”

He unzips my SAFE-U vest with the tip of one finger, like Cadmus undid Nigh’s jacket in the Season 1 finale. Then he crosses his thick arms in front of him and pulls his tight black t-shirt up over his head.
Crap, crap, crap.
My whole body heats up. I’ve never seen a naked torso that wasn’t on a cross, at least not so close up. I don’t know where to look. His belly button. Belly button.
Look at the belly button.

He’s holding his shirt out. “This is more you than me.”

“I don’t need to change.”

“Yeah you do.”

He grips the front of my shirt and pulls me closer, makes his voice all low and raspy like Cadmus.

“You’ll want to look sexy for Jesus,” he says, “in case it’s our last night on earth.”

Chapter Eleven

Near the mouth of the crystal spider cave, now definitively sealed by a Xaarg-generated avalanche, Cadmus and Sim huddle together for warmth. Or Cadmus huddles close to Sim, if you want to get technical about it. Sim controls his own body temperature. He turns up his own regulation switch, just behind his right ear, and then dials it back when the heat gets too much.

“Captain, I must apologize for this detour,” says Sim. “I have long suspected a malfunction in my compass application.”

“Ahhh, don’t be sorry.” Cadmus shivers. He pats Sim’s arm and gives it a squeeze. “It’s Xaarg. Either way, we were screwed.”

Some girl goes
Boom-chicka-wow-wowww,
and giggles erupt in the Lunar Rose Coffeehouse. That flyer didn’t mention this was a Season 4 marathon, or that 80% of their clientele are apparent Cadsim shippers. By the time the cave episode rolls around, I’ve already endured the full horror of hearing Sim’s best lines chanted out loud, like some kind of deluded shipper incantation, by a bunch of girls in costumes and homemade t-shirts that say TEAM CADSIM in blue glitter. Abel and I scrunch down on a battered velvet couch at the back of the room, hoping no one recognizes us from Screw Your Sensors. These girls would eat us for dinner.

I check the door every few minutes. No Hell Bells spies yet. Abel’s probably right‌—‌who would follow us here?

“This episode blows,” whispers Abel. He’s sipping a cinnamon latte and scarfing a second giant snickerdoodle, like he didn’t just show me his naked torso less than two hours ago. I still can’t look him in the eye. But at least we’re not fighting.

“I know,” I whisper back. “Terrible.”

“That speech Cadmus gives Sim about how his dad missed his graduation?”

“Shameless.”

“So out of character.”

“Sim’s
should-I-have-stayed-human
angst is a two-ton anvil, too.”

“Yeah, like, why do we need a
Breakfast Club
scene where they talk it into the ground?”

Onscreen, the arm touch segues into lingering eye contact and the girls go bananas:
Kiss, kiss, kiss!
I shake my head.

“It’s fanservice. Pure and simple.”

“It’s lazy. Snickerdoodle?”

“Just a tiny piece.”

Abel breaks a big chunk off for me and drapes his arm across the back of the couch. I move a little bit, just out of habit.

“Oh‌…‌I’m not in your
space
, am I?” he grins.

“Shut up.”

“You started it,” he says.

“Yeah, well, you disappeared on me. Call it even.”

“Sorry,” he mutters around his cookie.

“Why’d you just leave like that?”

“I dunno. Shandley was such a dicksmack, I couldn’t deal. You get in your bubble, you forget what the rest of the world’s like.”

“I don’t think he’s a bigot.”

“Self-loather?”

“Maybe.”

“Ugh. They should die in a fire.”

“Why?”

“What do you mean,
why
? Sooner they go extinct, the better. They make us look bad.”

“Don’t you feel sorry for them, though?”

Abel flicks my ear. “Quit being nice,” he says. “You make me feel like a turd.”

“Sorry.”

He takes another bite and brushes crumbs off his shirt, red with a neon old-school joystick on the front. He leans his head back and lets out a long, showy sigh. “So he hooked up with Arch.”

“Who did?”

He makes a
duh
face. “Kade.”

“Oh.”

“
Arch
. Even his stupid name tries too hard. He’s like 27 and he wears these Goth t-shirts from the mall.” Abel wipes foam off his upper lip with the back of his hand. “He met my sister once at Antonelli’s when my family was out to dinner, like right after she published the book with Mom, and he talked to her like she was a cocker spaniel. And then he was all like ‘I really
admire
people with Down syndrome,’ like he was in a stupid man-pageant and the world-peace answer already got used up. He asked her for a signed copy of
Susannah Says.
I wanted to kick him in the nuts.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I really really liked him.”

“Arch?”

“Kade.”

“I know.”

“And he was all like, ‘Uh, I’m sorry, were we monogamous? I missed the memo.’ Like it’s my fault he just couldn’t wait to fuck someone horrible.”

“That sucks.”

“Susannah didn’t like him. I should’ve known. My sister can spot a cockpunch from fifty paces.”

“Screw him.”

“
Screw
him.”

“He was too skinny anyway.”

“You think?”

“He looked like a stork.” I grab another chunk of snickerdoodle. “And that name?
Kade
?”

“Tacky. I know.”

“Kade and Abel. Like you’re reading Genesis with a cold.”

He laughs like
pffffff!
and sprays tiny crumbs. “You been saving that one?”

“Since we left.”

“Well played. Hey, can I tell him we’re doing it?”

“Huh?”

“He was jealous of you. It would make him nuts.”

“Why was he‌—‌”

“Ugh, forget it. Forget it! Why bother? I don’t care.”

Abel knots his arms and sighs at the screen, his knee leaning lightly on mine. I try to refocus on the show. Sim and Cadmus aren’t in this scene; it’s the subplot with Dr. Lagarde and Dutchie fighting over the rescue mission. Dutchie yells,
Just because you’re in charge doesn’t mean you’re right!
All I hear is
He was jealous of you.

He was jealous. Of you.

Then I get the shoulder tap.

“’Scuse me‌…‌hello? Hi-ii!”

I steel myself and turn around slowly. It’s this short girl with thick brown hair, a glee-club smile, and a tinfoil Xaarg hat. She’s got on these goofy glasses with pink plastic frames and a white tank top that spells out BELIEVER in little craft-store diamonds. She leans right over me to talk to Abel.