How to Repair a Mechanical Heart (2 page)

I spot Abel as soon as the house comes into view. The fourth wall of his bedroom is one big window, so it’s like I’m seeing him on a giant TV. Black silk robe, pajama bottoms with neon squiggles, white hair a spider-plant mess. When we did our season finale recap three weeks ago he’d just re-bleached it; he used too much gentian violet and loved the surprise purplish tinge. “It’ll fade in a day, but whatever,” he’d said, shrugging on his vintage
Purple Rain
shirt to match.

I shift the Sunseeker into park by his mom’s neglected petunia bed. Abel doesn’t notice me. He’s standing in the doorway of his walk-in closet tossing clothes at a huge black bag, and the fact that this is probably the first and only packing he’s done all week makes me want to deliver an athletic kick to the seat of his pajamas. He’s talking to himself. At least I think he is. Then I see this big tanned hand shoot out from the closet, wagging Abel’s acid-yellow Jesus vs. Mothra tee. Abel grins and yanks the guy into view‌—‌tan and tousled, shiny green shorts, a bad bicep tat I guarantee says something stupid in Chinese. Of course they start kissing, because even though Abel and I are just business partners I know exactly the kind of business he gets up to when I’m not around, and now they collapse on the closet floor and all I see are four feet nuzzling and I know they’re whispering sexy things I can’t imagine without feeling unzipped and turned inside out.

HHREEEEAAOONNNNK.
Crap.
I lift my elbow off the horn, but it’s too late.

Here comes Abel. He’s creeping up to his window like Elmer Fudd hunting wabbits, shading his eyes in the late-morning sun. He points down at me, and then he rips his robe open and does a goofball shimmy, pale belly pressed to the glass. My eyes squinch shut. I see the cover of the book Father Mike gave me, the clean blond boy thrusting a fist in the air:
Put on the Brakes! The Cool Kid’s Guide to Mastering Sexual Temptation.

Come in,
Abel mouths. He makes a frantic camera-cranking gesture.
Vlog post. Now!

I gesture back.
Aren’t you busy?

He wiggles his fingers above his head and patters them down on his shoulders. Greenshorts is getting in the shower, I guess. I climb out of the Sunseeker, hoping that wasn’t some obvious sex code for
five more minutes.
I don’t want my cover blown.

Abel and I met last October in a
Castaway Planet
fan forum. I was
shytown
with the Sim-in-the-snow icon, he was
x_offender
with the shopped icon of Cadmus in a Speedo. This was right after I had The Talk with my parents and word spread at school; I hadn’t gotten any black eyes or hot-pink FAGs on my locker, but guys I’d known since kindergarten were suddenly keeping their distance or talking to me in a weird stilted way, as if I were an alien whose friendliness might just be a cover. Nights when I wasn’t on Bec’s couch picking at popcorn and snickering at telenovelas with her, I was shut up in my room, hiding out in the forum with other Casties. The Abel thing happened fast. I wrote a rant about the “deep and irrefutable stupidity” of Cadsim fanfic after Episode 4-14, he thought it was funny, we spent a few days chatting about
Castaway Planet
and old sci-fi B movies, and then we figured out we lived twenty minutes from each other and he asked me to co-run his vlog with him. He sent an actual invitation to my house on cream stationery with a plea in fancy script:
Abel McNaughton requests the honour of your collaboration on “Screw Your Sensors,” the Internet’s third most popular Castaway Planet fan vlog. Please please please be my awesome business partner!!!

No guy ever called me awesome before, so the lies started pretty much the second I hopped up his marble front steps. I told him I’d been out for six years instead of two weeks. My parents were one hundred percent fine with me, just like his. Aftershocks from twelve years of Catholic school? None at all, and I’m certainly not a freak who has panic attacks in Dairy Queen bathrooms after a guy tries to kiss me. I even invented a tragic heartbreak to shield me from his matchmaking: some pre-med sex god named Zander, who had me dreaming of a picket fence and two adopted kids before he dumped me for a bartender and ruined me indefinitely for all other men.

If Abel found out about the real me, he’d start gazing down from a lofty throne of pity, so I have to be careful every second I’m around him. I keep it cool and mysterious, like Sim. His dry little comments. His ease in his own synthetic skin. His decision to cut out his evolution chip, so he could enjoy nice safe friendships without all the terrors of falling in love.

I wind my mechanical heart and open his door.

***

“You ready, partner?” he says.

“We’re unveiling now?”

“We
have
to. The girls’ve been trolling us all morning. Wait’ll you see.”

Abel and I hunch in front of his laptop at the glass kitchen table, next to a stack of cruddy glasses and plates I very much want to scrub. He’s crunching Cookie Crisp from a china bowl that probably cost more than my car. His limited-edition Plastic Cadmus grips the pocket of Abel’s robe with his super-ripped hero arms and I side-eye him; even three inches tall, Cadmus is a smug bastard. No one’s home besides us, as usual. Abel’s dad’s at Mercy fitting someone with a new heart, his mom and little sister are in Boston on their book tour, and his brother Jacob’s at some school in New York for musical geniuses with bad attitudes.

“Don’t worry. You look
lovely
.” Abel slides on his shades with the red steel frames, an exact replica of Cadmus’s. “You’ve got that cute all-American khakis-and-flip-flops thing going on. You’re like Volleyball Ken.”

I sip my water. “Now with Eye-Rolling Action.”

“Do I have sex hair?”

“Ew.”

“Brandon, seriously. Wait’ll you meet Kade. Best five days of my life!”

“Please spare every detail.”

“Cynicism gives you blackheads. Studies show.”

I tip my chin at the laptop. “Let’s
go
.”

He grins and hits record.

“
Bonjour,
fellow Casties.” He musses his hair and turns on his best news-anchor purr. “It’s your two favorite recappers, coming at you live from my kitchen on May the twenty-ninth, a day that will forever live in infamy. Say hello to my distinguished fellow commentator, Brandon‌—‌”

“Hi guys.”

“‌—‌currently obscuring his cute little abs with the
baggiest Castaway Planet t-shirt
in recorded history.”

“It’s comfy.”

“What are you hiding under there?”

“Secrets. Many secrets.”

Abel rips off his shades and cocks an eyebrow. I let out a snort. I picture a handful of strangers watching this at home, thinking my secret is cool and mysterious like a jagged scar across my chest, and not dull and heavy like
I gave up church but not the angst.

“Anyway, guys.” Abel pops one last Cookie Crisp. “Today we unveil that Super-Secret Summer Spectacular we’ve been teasing y’all about, ‘cause we know how our fifteen fans like, follow our every move and have shrines and shit.”

“My shrines are bigger,” I grin.

“Whatever. Here’s the deal. You real fans who come here and watch our episode recaps every week are A-plus, right, ‘cause you love
Castaway Planet
as much as we do and you’ve got more than ten brain cells to your name. But as we all know, there’s one faction of the fandom‌…‌”

“One very vocal faction.”

“‌…‌that is, and we say this with love, STONE COLD CRACKERS WITH A SIDE ORDER OF CRAZY FRIES. I am referring, of course, to‌—‌”

He plunks Plastic Cadmus in front of the camera. I do the same with Plastic Sim.

“‌—‌Cadsim shippers.”

I perform a cartoony shudder.

“Guys, I don’t know if you’re following our ginormous flamewar with Miss Maxima and her minions at the Cadsim fanjournal,” sighs Abel. “The slash fiction was bad enough, but these rejects have been calling it canon since the crystal-spider-cave episode, and that we
cannot
abide. Look, maybe it’s semi-tempting to think they had secret sexytimes when they’re stuck in the cave and there’s that ‘meaningful look’ and the fadeout, but people? Captain James P. Cadmus is a blazing hot male specimen who can kill a sixty-pound alien spider with his bare hands, and Sim is a freakin’-damn ANDROID‌—‌”

“Who’s way too good for Cadmus.”

“That statement is too ludicrous to acknowledge,” Abel huffs, petting Plastic Cadmus’s plastic head. “Anyway, our feud with the crazypants Cadsim girls? Officially ends this summer. We at the Screw Your Sensors vlog have made a wager. Hold up the CastieCon tickets, Bran.”

I fan them out. Abel explains the bet, which basically goes like this: we hit the five tour stops the
Castaway Planet
convention makes this summer, go to the Q&As with all five main cast members plus the showrunner, and ask them what they think Cadmus and Sim did in the cave scene after the fadeout. If a majority of them agree that no hookup happened, the Cadsim girls have to run an all-caps disclaimer on every one of their fanfics,
forever
.

“Brandon, tell them what it says.” Abel slides me a printout.

“PLEASE NOTE: A legitimate Cadsim hookup has been definitively disproven by the cast and creator of Castaway Planet, as well as professional Internet gods Brandon Page and Abel McNaughton. I freely admit I am a dingbat with zero respect for canon or for Cadmus or Sim as characters; I just want to see hot boys get it on. Read at your own risk.”

“That’s right. However, on the extreme off chance we lose? Miss Maxima, the Queen Bitch mod of the Cadsim community, will select a scene from one of their rotten little fanfics and we’ll act it out
on camera
‌—‌”

“‌—‌Within. Reason.” Why did I say yes to this?

“Right. Strictly first base, pervs. We’re gay but not for each other.” He scrolls through the Cadsim fic archive on his phone. “For instance, we won’t do the one where Dr. Lagarde plants a ‘sex chip’ in Sim’s brain and he and Cadmus do it in a hammock.”

“For crap’s sake.” I facepalm.

“Nor will we perform the futurefic where they’re back on Earth and get
stuck in an elevator
during a blackout.”

“Or any other elevator fic.”

“Or hurt/comfort fic.”

“Or alternate-universe steampunk fic.”

“So we better make
damn
sure we come out on top.”

“Sim likes the top.”

It just shoots out. I feel my ears redden; when I slip and say something flirty, it sounds like an elephant trying to bark.

Abel cracks up and stops the recording right there. He hits
upload
before I can object.

“On that note, Tin Man,” he says. “I have a little‌…‌
surprise
.”

He reaches in his robe and rummages. My left leg starts jittering. Last time Abel surprised me it was my birthday, and he slipped a special card under my windshield wiper: Sim’s head taped to a cutout of a gym rat in a leopard thong.

This time it’s just a small silver envelope.

“Open it,” he sings.

“What is it?”

“A lock of David Darras’s hair.”

“Wha‌—‌”

“Open it,
doof.”

I unstick the flap. Inside are three more tickets on heavy silver paper. Two robots waltz in silhouette between an embossed P and F.

“What’s this?”

Abel bounces in his seat. “I totally splurged,” he squees. “You, me, and Bec have VIP tickets to the 4th Annual Castaway Ball! At the Long Beach con!
With special guests David Darras and Ed Ransome!”

My stomach twists. The thing about Darras barely registers. Stories from the Castaway Ball pop up in fandom all the time. Dance-floor dramas, bathroom gropings, afterparty orgies in smoky hotel rooms.

“Why‌—‌”
I force a Sim face. Indifferent, slightly amused. “Why would we do that?”

“Well, clearly we’re going to win the bet, so you won’t be making out with me anytime soon.
However
, I thought a whole ballroom of hot dorks in cosplay would be a lovely consolation prize.” He presses Plastic Sim to my lips, making a loud smoochy sound. “We’re going to find you a Sim, my dear. And get you over that Zander douchelord, like
finally
.”

“Oh.” Panic flushes through me. I knew he’d pull something like this; he’s tried to set me up with three different guys since January. “That’s‌…‌nice, but‌—‌”

“Nope! No more excuses.” Abel waves Plastic Sim like a magic wand. “Befoooorrre the stroke of midnight at the nerd prom, yoooooou, Brandon Gregory Page, will meet a beautiful boy on the dance floor and break the sinister spell of celibacy with the Kiss of True Love. Or True Lust. Whatever.”

Put on the Brakes!,
Chapter 4:
Celibacy and happiness‌—‌can they go together? You bet! You can still have a full and fulfilling life while obeying a special call to abstinence‌…‌

“Thus it has been decreed,” Abel proclaims, “and therefore on this life-altering journey, you, Brandon, will be my project, and I shall help you‌—‌”

“‌—‌Stop dressing like a frat boy?”

Abel and I turn around. Bec’s grinning in the doorway with her suitcase and the bowling ball bag she keeps her camera equipment in. Just seeing her makes me exhale. She looks pretty and practical: cargo pants, blue tank top, no makeup on her round freckled face. Her curls are forced into two stumpy braids, and she’s got on the faded rainbow friendship bracelet I gave her when we were fourteen. Her Zara Lagarde action figure clutches her belt loop, little plastic machete tight in one fist.

“
Mon petit pamplemousse!
Love the braids.” Abel blows her a kiss. She blows one back on her way to me and we fold into a hug. It’s so easy. We look like brother and sister‌—‌some brown-haired blue-eyed Dick and Jane in a kids’ book from the fifties‌—‌and she feels soft and friendly as Mr. Quibbles, my old stuffed penguin I would die if she told Abel about.

She tosses an arm around my neck. “So what’s Abel decreed for you?”