How to Repair a Mechanical Heart (17 page)

“Ohmygodohmygod,” he says.
“Augie Manners gave us‌—‌”

“Shhhhhh! Don’t broadcast.”

“Brandon.
Brandon
. Tell me you’re going to do it!”

“Smoke?”

“Walk back through CastieCon shirtless.”

“Well,” I spin the Augie Manners shirt on one finger. “retro robot’s probably still hanging around, right?”

“Undoubtedly, sir.”

“So let’s give her a show.”

He skids to one knee and grabs my hand.

“Brandon Gregory Page,” he says.

“Yeah.”

“Will you have my fictional space-babies?”

“What will the neighbors think?”

“Do we care?”

Brandon planted himself behind the wheel and gunned the engine,
says hey_mamacita.
He knew the torments of his past might trail them all the way west, but for now they shrunk in the rearview and he surrendered every last care.

I grab his hand and run.

Chapter Fifteen

SAN ANTONIO.
SHIRTLESS. HAND. HOLDING.
*OMG DEAD.*
(photos inside!!)

amity crashful: 
 ABANDON IS REAL OMG OMG I’M STROKING OUT

doomerang: 
 *ovaries exploding*

whispering!sage: 
 baking celebratory snickerdoodles!

sorcha doo: 
 retro robot how are u still alive

retro robot: 
 haha I don’t know! I saw them run right in front of me holding hands and I was like OMG I just wrote porn about you an hour ago‌…‌sooo surreal

a_rose_knows: 
 Can we call it official yet??!?!?! obvs something going on

sadparadise: 
 idk idk it seemed like just a joke. or a dare maybe. brandon’s way too neurotic to do that on his own.

doomerang: 
 Still, you guys. SHIRTLESS. HAND. HOLDING.

retro robot: 
 They are legit doing it. That is all.

lone detective: 
 They may be getting closer but I don’t think it’s a done deal yet. And I hate to be Debbie Downer but Disturbing Thought: ***could*** it be fanservice?

thanks4caring: 
 omg. what if Miss queen bitch Maxima spilled about us???

whispering!sage: 
 nope.
no way.
she’d never ever mention us to them. she’s uber creeped out by real-person shipping.

sorcha doo: 
 if they get together global warming will stop and wars will end and kevin will love me again.

amity crashful: 
 hey_mamacita are you here?? we neeeeeeeed you.

hey_mamacita: 
 OMG SOBBING AND SHAKING AND VOMITING RAINBOWS. LIKE WHAT IS THIS LIFE EVEN.

amity crashful: 
 your last fic made me cry like a bb

hey_mamacita: 
 LISTEN: it’s not fic anymore. okay? It is PROPHECY. i mean SHIT ON A SHINGLE, SON it is SO CLOSE to happening and I don’t give a porcupine’s bumhole what maxie & her minions at Cadsim think. anyone can see how far they’ve come. look at brandon’s body language in Photo 1: looser, more open. examine abel’s eyes in Photo 4: they have that silvery sparkle now when brandon looks at him. THINGS. HAVE. EVOLVED.

amity crashful: 
 omg I worship you. Never stop saying words.

hey_mamacita: 
 I won’t!! EVER. not until they’re together for 10000000% sure. SWEET FANCY MOSES IN A HULA SKIRT, BOYS, just freaking do it already! We are‌…‌

“‌…‌Dying
over here!” Abel rakes his hands across his chest and slowly teasingly trails them downward, his second Spaceman Straw dangling from his lips. I cough out smoke and we laugh laugh laugh and our laughing sounds huge as if there are a hundred of us in the Sunseeker, communing with the Abandon shippers and huffing in some serious wisdom.

“How are u still alive?”
I ask Abel and he giggles.

“IDK, IDK.” He flops down on the pinecone rug. “I saw you shirtless and OMG, dead! Vomiting rainbows!”

“Ooh, turn over, turn over.”

“Like this?”

“Yeah‌…‌”

“Why?”

I shake my head and whistle. “DAT ASS.”

We explode again and it hurts this time, like the laughing is turning me inside out. Bec is perched up in the loft with her ankles crossed and my Phillies shirt on and she watches us like a wise old owl in a children’s story who hoots about danger to kids who won’t listen. She stopped after a couple puffs. I probably should’ve too but oh well.

“Father Mike would be
so
disappointed,” she tsks.
“Your bodies are temples, guys‌…‌”

She says his name and my memory strains; he’s a book I read once in first grade and can only remember part of a picture, a snippet of a sentence. Snippet. Is that a real word? I lean my head back and swivel in the desk chair and feel like I’m falling but gently, like a million dandelion seeds after someone puffs them free.

“Oh babe‌—‌look look!” Abel pokes my ankle with the head of Plastic Sim. I’m in his red SEX BOMB shirt and it smells like his soap and sweat. “They’re already making macros from your shirtless picture.”

“Beautiful.”

“Abandon shippers are so much more awesome than Cadsim shippers.”

“We have very smart fans.” The ceiling is the most amazing shade of white.

“They love us, so they must be smart. OH! Oh, we should tell them how smart and awesome they are!”

“Shhhhhhh!” I sit up fast. The room whirs. “No no no no‌…‌”

“They wouldn’t know it was us. Bec joined with a sockpuppet‌—‌hey Rebecca? What’s our username, doll?”

Bec sighs. “brandonrox.”

“Perfecto.” Abel takes another drag and grins around a channel of smoke. He cracks his knuckles and starts typing and he’s so so fast, like I bet he’s the world’s very fastest hunt and pecker, and he reads out loud while he types.

“Dear Abandon shippers: you are the greatest! I’m friends with Bec and have met Brandon many times and you’re totally right, he is a neurotic mess‌…‌”

“Hey!”

“But hopefully soon he will see the error of his ways and let Abel get in his pants‌…‌
Is that right? Is that even English?”

“So to speak.” I get down on the floor and crawl over to him.

“Are these words supposed to be moving?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Ugh. No more Spacemen.”

Bec turns over in the loft and switches my book light on and it glows like the pale third moon of Castaway Planet. Abel stabs out the Spaceman Straw and replaces it with a red lollipop from the bag of junk food we got at the 7-11. I unwrap my second cupcake and take a huge messy bite and oh God, I’ve never tasted anything so good. We bought so much incredible food. In the lobby at CastieCon we sold the signed action figure and the sweaty Augie Manners shirt to some trembling superfan who kissed us both on the lips and gave us a trading card of Cadmus and Sim on the mountaintop, so at this moment we are also five hundred dollars richer in addition to being high as the sun.

Abel refreshes the page.

amity crashful: 
 OMG do you still talk to them??

lone detective: 
 Are you for real?

retro robot: 
 *HEART. ATTACK. IMMINENT.* Do they know about us?

sorcha doo: 
 if they don’t are u going to tell them? pleeeeaaaasssssse don’t!!

hey_mamacita: 
 SHHHHH BACK OFF. LET THE MAN OR LADY SPEAK.

“Our fans. Are so. Amazing.” Abel flexes his fingers over the keyboard.

“Don’t be mean to them.”

“Are you kidding? They’ll
love
this.”

They don’t know. And I won’t tell. I’m sort of a shipper myself, to be honest.

sorcha doo: 
 lol what do u know about Brandon. can u give us more details

whispering!sage: 
 yes please. insider details. we will venerate you forever and bake you snickerdoodles. from scratch.

lone detective: 
 IF you’re legit. Ha.

Oh, I’m legit. Let’s see‌…‌

Abel looks me up and down.

Brandon’s eyes, close up, are the deep and mysterious blue of an ocean at midnight. His hair smells intoxicating, like freshly mown grass and dryer sheets. He is a man of exquisite intelligence and sensitivity, as evidenced by his music collection which is crammed with Dylan and Jeff Buckley and Elliott Smith and a buttload of other dead or half-dead singer-songwriter types. He irons his shorts, he reads vintage Ray Bradbury, and he likes plates with compartments because he can’t stand when food touches other food, which could be annoying but is actually kind of adorable.

Plus‌…‌he secretly thinks Cadmus is H-O-T-T.

He taps
post comment
and cringes. “Don’t kill me!”

I don’t care about the Cadmus thing though, the room is spinning and why why why did he type
adorable,
like, you wouldn’t type that about someone unless you thought it on some level, right?

“Does my hair really smell like grass?”

“And Bounce. I wouldn’t lie about something so important.”

He aims a sparkly shivery grin at me. I lean over him and refresh the page.

hey_mamacita: 
 I choose to believe you, mysterious stranger.

sorcha doo: 
 me too me too me toooo omg 5 million goosebumps rte now

lone detective: 
 Sounds a little too breathless for me, tbh.

thanks4caring: 
 what about Abel? Do you know him too?? DETAILS.

I drag the laptop up on my knee.

“What’re you doing?”

“Shh.” I’m already typing.

His shoulders bunch and he fakes a shudder. “Should I be scared?”

I narrow my eyes. “Terrified.”

I don’t know Abel as much as I know Brandon. However, I can tell you that he smells like cinnamon soap, he has beautiful greenish eyes like old bottles you find on the beach, and when he makes Mac-in-a-Minit it comes out extra cheesy. He gets excited about everything remotely cool or interesting, even a dumb belt buckle with a rooster on it, and he makes you excited about it too. He’s a great hugger and a compulsive matchmaker and he loves karaoke even though he can’t sing and he’s sweet and patient with his friends, even when they’re hopelessly screwed up. And reportedly Brandon thinks he looks amazing in his new snakeskin bomber jacket, even though he kind of made fun of it at first.

ALSO, here’s a scoop for those of you attending the Castaway Ball in Long Beach. THEY’RE GOING. Together. I heard Abel bought the tix before the trip even started.

“Wowww.”

Abel’s chin is on my shoulder and his finger is tracing my words in the comment box and the room is seriously tilting, his warm breath prickling my neck and setting off tiny electric shocks all through my arms and legs. My knee is touching the wreckage of a WordWhap game from earlier; the tiles are all jumbled now except for Abel’s winning word: R-A-P-T-U-R-E.

I tap
post comment
.

The community goes ballistic.

amity crashful: 
 I am smiling so hard I literally cannot feel my face now

sorcha doo: 
 i squeed so loud my mom came running she thought i was dying lol

hey_mamacita: 
 HOLY MOTHER OF PEARL EVERYONE PAINT YOURSELF A TECHNICOLOR PICTURE OF THE GLORIOSITY THAT AWAITS AT THE CASTAWAY BALL. IT IS JUST EXACTLY WHAT I PLANNED FOR THEM. i’m not even kidding you guys. chapter 18 of “how to repair a mechanical heart,” verbatim from my outline:
Brandon and Abel attend the ball together at the Long Beach con. By now Brandon has fully connected with his inner Cadmus and Abel has embraced his inner Sim, so they show up dressed as each other’s ultimate fantasy. Hot Abandon action on the dance floor ensues.

retro robot: 
 OMG mamacita that is eerie. I love you so much.

sorcha doo:
  mamacitaaa u give me life.

hey_mamacita: 
 THIS HAS TO HAPPEN. WE WILL WRITE IT INTO BEING.

We can’t stop giggling. I shove the laptop off me and Abel takes its place, he twists around and drops his head in my lap and laughs through his fingers and wow his head is heavy and beautiful, like some sort of ancient stone that glows inside and holds all the secrets of the universe. He clasps Plastic Sim to his chest. I pluck Plastic Cadmus from my neckband. I walk him down my arm, hop him lightly over Abel’s smooth forehead, nose, chin, throat. I tap his clavicle with Cadmus’ tiny boot.