How to Repair a Mechanical Heart (4 page)

“Sim scanned the room, rusty heart creaking in his plastic chest,”
Abel narrates, reading off his phone.
“Before him, men flirted in the shadows, their nuances painfully foreign‌—‌”

“What is that?” I know I’m blushing. I’ve read this one at least three times.

“’Sex and the Single Droid’ by cavegrrl94. It’s relevant.” He exchanges five dollars for a packet of jellybeans. “Carry on.”

“Let’s find a table,” I tell Bec.

“As he roamed the crowded room, he realized he was ill-equipped to choose a man for himself, at least from the selection before him. He turned to Captain James Cadmus, who blazed with raw masculinity in his tight black t-shirt and aviator shades.”

I tilt my head at Abel. He slams back a fistful of jellybeans.

“’Captain,’ Sim said. ‘Help me choose a male with whom to converse.’”
He pecks my shoulder with his index finger. “That’s your cue, Tin Man.”

I pick a table in the corner made from parts of a theme-park rocketship, painted retro-aqua to look like the U.S.S. Starsetter. There’s no chance I’m talking to a guy, but I scan the room to humor him. Few dozen AV-club types, some with gawky girlfriends.
Castaway Planet
is supposed to have a big gay following, but none of them seem to be here tonight.

“Captain: clarification.” I eyebrow him. “I should flirt with a random straight guy?”

“No! No flirting. Just talking. I mean, look at these sweet untainted boys, they sleep on
Star Wars
sheets. What could be less intimidating?” He elbows Bec. “Rebecca: can he handle it? Yea or nay?”

“I’m pulling for him.”

“All right, Mr. Roboto.” He bangs Plastic Cadmus on the table like a gavel. “Put your antenna up.”

My stomach crackles.

“You find an appropriate specimen,” I stall, “and I
may
oblige.”

Abel surveys. Disgustingly, he cracks an ice cube between his teeth. “Him,” he points. “With the blue Chucks.”

“Unacceptable.”

“Pourquoi?”

“He’s barn owl-y.”

“Fine. Inkblot T-Shirt?”

“Pretentious.”

“So? I love pretentious people!”

“Why?”

“They try so hard to be interesting, you don’t have to do any work.”

“Next.”

“Argh! Fine. Mr. Sensitive Ponytail. Reading
Ender’s Game
.”

“He looks weird.”

“He looks awesome. Go talk to him.”

“About what?”

“Keep it show-related. Talk Season 5 rumors. Bitch about the cliffhanger. Bet he thinks Cadmus is really dead.”

I shoot Bec a
save me
look. She shrugs.

“All right,” I say. “I’ll talk to
him
.”

Abel brightens, until he sees where I’m pointing. The guy’s got on polyester pants the color of gravy, glasses thick as a telescope lens, and a baggy blue t-shirt with the
Castaway Planet
logo on it. I’d put his age at sixty, maybe sixty-five.

“Outstanding,” Abel says. “You think you’re funny? Grandpa it is.”

Old Guy weaves between tables with two white cups on a red plastic tray. He sets it carefully on the two-top in the corner, where a white-haired lady in a matching
Castaway
shirt waits for him. The little gold cross around her neck glints in the red light of the bookstore’s OPEN sign. He pours two creamers in one cup, stirs it, and presents it to her with a flourish. They smile at each other. Their smiles are the same. They look like my parents will in about twenty years.

That’s what a real marriage looks like,
says Father Mike.

“Aww. Ancient fandom geeks.” Abel melts, clutching his heart. “I shall name them Lester annnnd‌…‌”

“Gladys,” Bec says.

“Perfect. Lester and Gladys.” Abel shakes his head. “Wow. That’s what I want someday. Don’t you guys?”

Yes yes yes,
I want to say. The yeses gather thick in my throat; I swallow them down and blink up at a string of stuttering star-lights.

“Not really,” I shrug.

“
Look
at them! They’re like little salt and pepper shakers. One breaks and the other’s useless.”

“’Scuse me.” Bec hates soulmate talk; has since her dad left. She gets up from the table. “Bathroom.”

“Brandon‌—‌”

“Shh! Look.”

I point to the stage. Someone’s at the mike: this doughy college-age guy with kind apologetic eyes, thinning blond hair, and a black t-shirt printed with constellations. He looks familiar. I don’t like to stereotype since I’m probably a bigger
Castaway Planet
nerd than half the room, but I can almost see his high school notebooks, and the margins are filled with sketches of supergirls in metal bikinis.

“Hey there, Casties.” Sheepish nice-guy wave. “I’m Bill. Welcome to the CastieCon Kickoff Party.”

We clap. Abel kicks me under the table.

“So‌—‌ah.” He takes out some inkstained index cards and clears his throat. I flash back to traumatic oral book reports in grade school. “Four seasons ago, a crew of misfits on the run crashed their spaceship on a tiny unknown planet and became the unwilling lab rats of a merciless and childish omnipotent being known only as Xaarg. Since then,
Castaway Planet
has captured our imagination and sparked debate week after week. From the rash bravery and grim humor of Captain Cadmus to the, um, deeply human struggles of the elegant android Sim, these characters have become our second family. Good thing we don’t have to spend Thanksgiving with them, though. Right?” He looks up like he expects a laugh. When he doesn’t get one, he clears his throat again and shuffles the cards.

“He’s kind of adorbs,” Abel whispers. “Don’t you think?”

“No.”

“C’mon, he’s all awkward-turtle.”

“Sh.”

“Like he just won a tech award at the Oscars‌—‌”

“I’m trying to listen.”

“So anyway, guys,” Bill taps the last index card. “There’s a trivia contest in twenty minutes, 30% off DVD sets and novelizations, and don’t forget to partake of the goodies at the snack bar or we’ll have to, ah,
cast
them
away
. Any questions, I’m your go-to guy. Yes? You sir.”

He’s calling on Abel.

“Can you come to our table? We have a question.”

“Sure thing.”

I smack his arm. “What’re you
doing
?”

“Talk. Just chat a little. You need your wheels greased.”

“I told you‌—‌”

“Heyyy, Bill!”

Abel makes introductions. Bill smiles and shakes his hand. I hide mine under the table; they’re already slick with sweat.

“What can I do for ya?” he says.

“Brandon, tell him your question.” He whispers to Bill across the table. “It’s a really good one. We wanted a
Castaway
expert to weigh in.”

“Wow! Well, I’m flattered. Shoot.”

Bill turns his postcard-pool eyes on me. I get that hot sick feeling I got at Abel’s birthday party in March, when his spinning bottle stopped at me and I feigned a speck in my contact lens. I know who he reminds me of. Ryan Dervitz. Sci-Fi Club treasurer, Timbrewolves tenor, my first and only near-kiss. I see him in his sweaty white dress shirt and khakis, behind our school after we sang “Life Is a Highway” for Parents’ Night. One second he was smiling like normal, flicking a lightning bug off my collar, and the next he was filling my whole field of vision with his pale freckled moonface. His lips only made it to the corner of my mouth before I shoved him away, leaving him limp and baffled against the brick wall while I booked it down the street and shut myself in the Dairy Queen men’s room, Father Mike muttering in my ears the whole way.

Bill smiles politely. “So‌…‌ah, what’s your question?”

I can’t talk. My clothes feel see-through.

“It was about Sim.” Abel jumps in, shooting me death rays. “We’re debating if he should’ve stayed human after he got his evolution chip in Episode 2-14.”

“Whoo, excellent question. Hmm.” He bongos the table. “What do you think, Brandon?”

Ryan never looked me in the eye again. We used to talk baseball and debate classic
X-Files
episodes in sixth-period study hall, but he suddenly had reams of algebra homework that required total concentration. I’d watch him scritch his pencil nub across his notebook, factoring quadratic trinomials with dark broody passion. I never knew I wanted to kiss him back until it was way too late.

“Brandon.”
Abel kicks my shoe.

I know what’s happening. Red splotches spreading, one on each cheek. I want to vanish.

Abel glares. “I’ll tell you what I think,” he says. “I think when Sim was ‘human’ it was one freaking excuse after another. That whole arc was one long whine about how inconvenient feelings are and how it sucks to know you’ll never know everything, like,
we get it.
Stop being so emo about it and get on with things, you know?”

“I guess,” Bill says. “I thought it was sad, though. How he went back to being‌—‌”

“A total bore?” Abel stiffens his shoulders and tilts his head. “Captain Cadmus, might I suggest some seventeenth-century poetry to distract your mind from existential torment?”

His robot voice is still dumb, but the dim lights here contour his face in Simlike angles and shadows. I get this quick fanfic flash: his strong hands gripping my wrists, slamming me up against a spider-cave wall.

Put on the Brakes!,
Chapter Five:
Ask God for the strength you need to flee temptation. And then don’t walk away‌—‌run!

I try to shoo the words away. They scuttle into unreachable corners of my mind, prodding me with tiny sharp claws.

Don’t run, I tell myself. You idiot.
Don’t listen.

My chair’s already screeching back.

“Brandon?”

Abel charges after me. Grabs my arm by the bakery case. He does it like it’s nothing, like he doesn’t even realize his hand is there, and meanwhile my arm is zapping hot panicked messages to my brain:
he’s touching me I’m being touched don’t move don’t breathe act normal be Sim.

“What is
with
you?” says Abel. “You can’t string two words together?”

“I‌—‌”

“Practice! You need practice!” He shakes my shoulders. “What happens when we’re at the Castaway Ball and you see a flawless guy in a Sim suit and he starts walking over? What then?”

“I run from the weirdo.”

Abel gives me a
why-must-you-be-you
sigh. Whatever. Used to those. I got them a lot from my parents after The Talk:
Why him? Makes no sense. He likes the Phillies. He can tie twenty-six different kinds of knots.

“We’ll get you back in the saddle. You
may
require more intensive intervention than anticipated.” Abel plucks a free lanyard from the basket on the bakery case and hangs it around my neck ceremonially, like we’re in a Hawaiian airport. “By nerd prom night, you’ll be ready for greatness again. Trust me.”

He gives me a kiss on one cheek and goes for the other but I jump back. I can’t help it.

His eyes narrow.

“You okay?” he says.

“I‌—‌You smell weird.”

“I do?” He sniffs his pits and shrugs. “I like it.”

Across the room, Bill drums the table and drifts away, probably wondering what kind of curricular adaptations I needed to graduate high school. I touch the spot where Abel’s lips brushed my cheek.

Careful,
says Father Mike.

Then I see Bec.

She’s standing by the DVD display, holding up her phone and giving me The Look‌—‌the same one she gave me the night her sister and mine got in a parking lot catfight at the DQ. Teeth clenched together, eyebrows bunched. Our standard code for
something’s really wrong.

Chapter Four

Bec pulls us down a quiet aisle. My insides rumble. What if Dad looked up
Castaway Planet
and found our vlog? He’d know Abel was here. He’d know I lied, and he’d flip in that scary-calm way I can’t handle at all. Bec’s dad used to roar like a chainsaw; mine makes tiny snips that bleed you so slowly you don’t notice until you’re weak.

I picture him on the deck he and Mom built together, adjusting his brown plastic eyeglass frames and depositing guilt in my voicemail.
Lying, huh? You know, you might not believe this anymore, but there’s actually this crazy thing called ‘right’ and ‘wrong.’”

“Okay.” Bec holds up the phone. “So I was reading the Cadsim fanjournal‌—‌”

“‌—‌And someone hates us,” says Abel. “Boo hoo, like that’s even‌—‌”

“Just look!”

We huddle on either side of her. The little screen shows a post with two words:
HELL BELLS
in red all-caps. She taps it and a blurry picture of Abel pops up. Not a regular photo. A screencap from the post we put up on our vlog this morning. He’s holding our action figures up to the camera and whoever capped it took a lot of care to catch him in an ugly moment, with his open mouth looming over the head of Plastic Sim.

Abel lets out a cartoon gasp and clutches my arm. I yank away and lean closer.

Under the Abel picture is a comment from the person who posted it. I don’t recognize the username.
hey_mamacita.
Her icon freaks me out: a statue of an angel with a halo made of knives.

She says:

tick‌…‌tick‌…‌
*BOOM.*
brandon & abel: we see you boys.
operation hell bells has begun.
any Cadsim girls wanna get nasty?
YOU KNOW WHERE TO FIND US.

“Whaa‌—‌?” Abel shakes his head.

“You don’t know her?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Read the comments.” Bec scrolls down.

cavegrrl94: 
 JFC NOT AGAIN.

illumina: 
 OMG batshit hell bell creepers. someone should warn A&B, for real

simbeline: 
 mamacita u guys are out of ur minds. u crossed the line like a hundred miles back. it’s not cool when it gets so personal