Текст книги "How to Repair a Mechanical Heart "

Автор книги: J. Lillis

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Chapter Five

“Fellow Casties: We have arrived.”

We stand on the amazing technicolor carpet of the Fairlee Hotel in Cleveland, in front of a life-size cardboard cutout of Bree LaRue and a pull-down screen with a fanvid flickering on it. Abel’s costume of the day: Cadmus shades, skinny jeans with sky-blue hightops, a red puffy vest over a tight black shirt he stole from Kade.

Bec’s camera is rolling.

As more fans in costumes and logo shirts flood the Q&A room, Abel motormouths about some tragic new Cadsim fic called “The Passion of the Droid.” I’m only half listening. We’re here. And when you’re a weird and awkward and paranoid person at all times, CastieCon is the happiest place on the planet.

It’s like, a baseline level of freakiness is expected here, right? So unless you’re disemboweling goats in the vendor hall, no one gives a damn who you are or what you’re doing. You want to spray your hair blue like Sim’s? You’ll fit right in; ten others beat you to it. You want to dress like Xaarg at a biker bar? Girls will take photos with you, fondling your black studded jacket. You can talk to vendors about bad paint apps on action figures; you can openly geek out when two writers sign your second-season finale script; you can join a panel debating if Castaway Planet is a real place or all in their head. And when you’re waiting for a Q&A and you see a fanvid on the screen‌—‌set to “Hallelujah,” for crap’s sake‌—‌no one will judge you if you get a tiny bit choked up.

“Bran.” I jump. Abel’s poking me. “What do you think?”

“About what?”

“We’re taking bets on why Bree LaRue’s late to her own Q&A.”

“She burned her hand on her curling iron,” says Bec.

“She couldn’t find the down button on the elevator,” says Abel.

“She’s pissed she got no screentime in this fanvid,” I grin.

Abel glances up at the pull-down screen and glares at the clip they’re showing. It’s from this season’s cliffhanger. Ed Ransome as Cadmus, bloodied and bitten, buckling beside the giant spider he’s just killed. Sim runs over in slo-mo, drops to his knees to check the fresh bite marks on Cadmus’s neck. The music fades slightly to lift up the line: If I die, Tin Man, you’re the new me. Promise. Abel performs a shudder and screws one eye shut.

“I can’t look,” he groans. “This whole scene like, wounds me.”

“Whatever. Xaarg’ll save him‌—‌”

“DON’T EVEN.”

“‌—‌because he’s his daa-aad.”

Abel facepalms. “I hate that theory.”

“We know.”

“Super-lame. Super-derivative.” He vacuum-breathes like Vader. “Cadmussss‌…‌I am your fatherrrr‌…‌”

“It’s foreshadowed, though.”

“Don’t you dare bring up 2-17.”

“Xaarg’s been watching him his whole life?”

“Clearly a lie! Intimidation tactic.”

“I dunno.” I shrug, basking in the indignant-fanboy back-and-forth. “I’d be happy if my TV boyfriend was a possible demigod.”

“He’s already a demigod. FYI.”

Abel sticks out his tongue and we bust out laughing like a pair of fourth graders. Onscreen, Cadmus is using the spider corpse as a grim translucent footrest, telling Sim knock-knock jokes about Xaarg and his henchmen to prove he’s totally fine and definitely not at all almost-dead. Ed Ransome’s great in this episode, so great I almost get why Abel loves him.

“Brandon?”

“Yeah.”

Abel blinks at the vid. He leans in and whispers, “I don’t really love cinnamon jellybeans. I just eat them to, ah‌…‌feel like him.”

“You do stuff like that?”

“Kinda sorta constantly.” Abel peers down at the smiley face doodled on his left shoe. “Sometimes when I do something brave I feel like I’m cheating because I was being him in my head the whole time. I get so into it that I’ll catch my reflection in a window and for a second I’m surprised I look like me instead of him.” He side-eyes me. “Did I say that out loud? God, I swear I’m not a nutbar!”

I nod with quiet reverence. It’s like when I was five and found out Danny Zurick liked peeling glue off his hands, too. “S’okay.”

“You won’t tell?”

“I’ve got four Sim playlists on my phone.”

“Dork.” He smacks me, laughing. “You know, I had this horrible dream the rumors were true and they killed off Cadmus.”

“Don’t even worry.”

“But just the idea.”

“I’m the same. Like in 3-11, when the Henchmen took Sim apart‌—‌”

“‌—‌and he kept saying Status: All systems destabilized in that creepo Exorcist voice? Oh babe. I know.”

“I needed counseling. Ask Bec.” I turn to her, but some jerk in a Cookie Monster t-shirt is chatting her up. He has these super-sincere liquidy blue eyes and his dark hair is flat and shaggy at the same time, like the plastic hair on those Lego people. I want to step in and save her but then Abel’s hand is squeezing mine and I have to keep my face Sim-still and pretend I’m a regular human who has tons and tons of casual palm-to-palm contact with guys who share my specific fanboy neuroses.

“Bran.” Abel smiles sideways like Cadmus.

Smile back. Don’t be a freak.

“Yeah‌…‌?”

“Dude in the TEAM ANDROID shirt is eyeing you up.” He leans close and cups my ear. “Glance to the left and be subtle!”

“I‌—‌”

Some guy in a dark suit saves me, shoving through the crowd with headset clutched to ear. People start whispering. The weird Hell Bells thing makes a sinister ting in the back of my mind. I try to breathe myself calm. We’re not assassination candidates. No one takes shipping that seriously.

Right?

Father Mike, tossing me marshmallows at the youth group campfire. Okay, poll time, guys: If you died today, do you think you’d go to heaven?

The worried guy’s onstage now, hands locked behind him, introducing Bree LaRue with a film of sweat on his forehead. Everyone’s chattering, grumbling, pulling out cameras. Abel grabs Bec’s cam from her and hits record.

“Okay, people! This is it.” He holds the camera too close. “Cadsim ladies, hold your gloating till the end, mmkay? I know Bree-Bree’s on record as a shipper, but it’s not over till we get her on video, and plus she’s all moony-eyed over that Cash Howard guy from Husband Hunt so she’s not exactly the brightest bulb on the‌—‌”

“People!” Worried Guy makes a time-out gesture. “Here she comes, okay? Let’s be a little quiet for her.”

The pull-down screen rolls up, and someone female comes stalking out from behind the black curtain when the audience cheers and hoots for Bree LaRue, but for a good ten, fifteen seconds my brain thinks there has to be a mixup.

Because the person onstage? That can’t be her.

***

Bree LaRue plays Defense Officer Leandra Nigh, and if you’ve ever seen an episode of Castaway Planet, the thing you remember about her is her hair. It’s shiny and blond in a synthetic, display-only kind of way, like the loose curls presented for worship in shampoo commercials. The person onstage has something entirely different on her head. I’m not sure how to describe it. Did they ever make black shag carpeting back in the seventies? It’s like someone cut a circle out of that and made themselves a skull cap.

Abel pokes me, his mouth an O.

“I think it looks kind of good,” whispers Bec.

Bree LaRue is wearing wrinkly jeans and tall black boots and a St. Tropez t-shirt with an orange stain on it. Her eyes are bloodshot. She steps up to the lip of the stage, yanks the mike off the stand, and starts twisting the cord around her wrist.

“Heyyy, kids,” she mutters.

No one breathes.

“So what’s new?”

Silence.

“I got a haircut. Like, obviously.” She ruffles it with one hand. “Certain people aren’t gonna be happy with me, but I say fuck it. You know? Wigs exist.”

Worried Guy edges closer to Bree, rubs his thick hands together. “Okay, guys, let’s start with some questions. Who’s got a good one for Miss LaRue?” He turns to her. “Is that okay? If they ask?”

“That’s why I’m here.”

A whisper runs through the audience. Then a red question paddle goes up, slowly, to the left of the stage.

“What’s your favorite color?” some girl says.

Bree LaRue stares at the base of the mike stand. She screws up her mouth and hocks a wad of spit at it.

“Blue,” she says. “That’s as good a color as any, right?”

“Yeah. Definitely‌…‌” The girl’s wearing an electric blue jacket like Leandra Nigh’s. She looks like she wants to disappear. I want to hug her, even though Nigh is like my eighth favorite character on Castaway Planet and the person onstage bears zero resemblance to her. I glance at Bec and we shake our heads.

Question paddles pop up faster.

Fiftyish guy in Xaarg hat: “If they killed you off, how would you want your character to die?”

Bree LaRue swigs from her steel sport bottle. “Spontaneous combustion sounds good.”

Pink-haired girl in black halter top: “How are you different from Nigh?”

“Uh, I guess because she’s always an optimist. Even when it’s incredibly, unbelievably stupid to be.”

“Who does Nigh belong with: Cadmus or Dutch Jones?”

“Whoever doesn’t dick her over.”

“What’s your favorite episode?”

“Eh. What’s the one where Xaarg sends that swamp monster after us and I almost die?”

Someone yells out, “3-16!”

“Yeah, that one. I got to scream a lot.” She throws back her head and releases an unholy screech, loud enough to chill the collective blood of the Social Media conference two ballrooms over.

Everyone freezes. The guy chatting up Bec breathes holy shit.

Abel leans close. “Omigod,” he hisses.

“I know.”

“We were there, Bran. We were there when Bree LaRue melted down in Cleveland. Historic.” He puts his hot hand on my back and my body goes stiff, like metal bolts are tightening all my joints.

Onstage, Worried Guy’s talking to Bree in the low soothing tone that cops use when someone’s about to jump off a ledge. His hand reaches out for her mike. She snatches it back, squints into the crowd: “More questions! Cough ‘em up, come on! How much did you guys shell out for this?”

“Should I ask?” Abel mutters.

“Just wait.”

“Come on, pry me open, people!” Bree LaRue crows. “I know stuff, okay? Tom Shandley has a third nipple! David Darras fucking hates Lenny Bray! The writers stole the whole plot of the season finale from a fanfic writer and didn’t give her credit!”

Someone behind us whispers career suicide. I just stare. I can’t close my mouth.

Abel grabs the question paddle.

“Not yet!” I tug his sleeve.

“They might shut her down, Bran.”

Worried Guy points. “Guy in the vest. Go!”

Abel touches his chest. “Me?”

“Yes. Come on.”

“He’s cu-ute.” Bree LaRue stumbles sideways, shielding her eyes with one hand. “Aww, look at his hair. And the chin! He’s like Laurence Olivier, and a cockatoo. Like if they had a baby?”

“Hurry it up,” Worried Guy tells Abel.

Abel clears his throat a million times. Bec leans closer with the camera. His hands quiver, just a little. Stage fright? Unexpected.

Sort of cute.

“Hi Miss LaRue I’m Abel and this is Brandon and we’re here representing the Screw Your Sensors fan vlog at screwyoursensors.blognow.com?”

“Super, honey. Ask the question.”

“Okay, so we’re having this debate with some other fans‌—‌”

“Oh. Perfect.”

“‌—‌and we wanted to ask you.” He takes a deep breath. “That scene in the season finale where they’re trapped in the crystal spider cave and Cadmus is like ‘it’s so quiet in here it could swallow up all your secrets’ and Sim is like ‘yes Captain‌…‌quite’ and then Cadmus puts his hand on his arm and they look at each other and it fades out, do you think they did anything in the cave for real or is it all just fanwank?”

I have this sudden sick vision of losing the bet with the Cadsim girls; Abel’s lips coming at me with a camera pointed at us. I cross my fingers tight.

Bree LaRue cocks her head. “Cadmus and Sim.”

“Yes.”

“Were they‌…‌” She claps her hand to her heart and bats her eyes. “‌…‌together.”

A female voice in the crowd goes, “So cute it hurts!”

“I said that once, didn’t I?” Bree LaRue shoots the girl a rueful smile.

“Yeah.”

I scan the crowd. The girl’s wearing a fake sunflower in her hair and a homemade Cadsim shirt, a manip of them holding hands above the words YES, CAPTAIN‌…‌QUITE. Bree LaRue rolls her eyes and makes a jacking-off motion. Abel jabs my ribs.

“You think it would work? Like for real?” Bree scratches the back of her head like she’s trying to make it bleed. “’Cause here’s what I’m thinking would happen, like, it looks good on paper ‘cause they’re both beautiful and everyone loves to see pretty with pretty, but then Sim wouldn’t know what to do like, mechanically or anything, and Cadmus would get bored in five seconds because that’s who he is and guys like that never ever change and one day Sim would be at some stupid convention at some stupid hotel and Cadmus would call him up at six a.m. and say hey, you know that girl I said was just a friend? Yeah, well, we’re in Barbados right now drinking rum-frickin’-swizzles in a hammock, and when we get back can I come by and pick up my things? Sorry baby. You knew this would happen.”

I see this is all about Cash Howard dumping Bree LaRue and I should be sad for her, but I picture him shirtless in a hammock and oh God. Once I was watching his Husband Hunt season with Mom, tuning out his dumb words and staring at his abs. They were almost obscenely gorgeous in a soft and classical kind of way, like he’d just touched fingers with God and waltzed off the Sistine ceiling. Mom was knitting pink and blue blankets for the Genesis Pregnancy Center. Her needles stopped clacking and I caught her watching me watch him, and then her ears turned pink and she said Sweetie, why don’t we watch Cooking with Carlene instead?

“I’m really sorry,” Abel says.

“Aren’t you sweet,” Bree says.

“It sucks. Happened to me once, too.”

She leaps off the stage when he says that. Like literally leaps, the way a jungle cat would, and lands hard on her feet right in front of us. The crowd hushes. She steps closer and brushes her hand across Abel’s cheek. Cameras flash and I start to absorb it: Bree LaRue is twelve inches away from me. She’s a real person, with farm-girl freckles peeping through her face powder and a Band-Aid on one finger.

“Why can’t I just be with a guy like you?” she whispers.

“I’m gay,” says Abel.

“Exactly.”

She smiles sadly. More camera flashes. Then Worried Guy steps down, helps her back onstage. She wobbles when she stands. The spindly heel of her left boot has snapped right off. We glance around and Abel spots the heel on the floor, a few feet in front of us. I grab it and hold it up, but she just gives a shrug and a vague wave: What’s the point? Hopelessly broken.

“Miss LaRue?” Abel calls.

“Yeah.”

“That was a no‌…‌right? To the Cadsim question?”

“Step back,” Worried Guy says. “She has to go to her room.”

“Yes it was a no, honey. God. Sim is completely asexual.” She’s being escorted out now, limping with dignity like crazy Blanche DuBois in that Streetcar play our school did last spring.

Over her shoulder, she adds: “And he’s frickin’ lucky!”

Chapter Six

We settle the Sunseeker at tonight’s free campsite, the parking lot of a 24-hour SavMart a couple miles outside Cleveland. I crank the old generator and Abel whips up Mac-in-a-Minit and canned chicken, crooning I miss yous to Kade on speakerphone while he arranges food on paper plates and snips fake parsley sprigs from one of Mom’s wall wreaths. While we scarf down dinner, we upload the Bree LaRue video evidence for the Cadsim girls, with a header that’s maybe more gleeful than necessary: BRANDON & ABEL = 1, CADSIM SHIPPERS = 0, in sparkly purple text.

Then Abel’s like, “Change your shirt. I’ll call the cab.”

“We’re going out?”

“What’d you think we were going to do? Play WordWhap?”

“Where are we going?”

“We have to celebrate. Victory Number One!”

“Isn’t that kind of ghoulish?”

“Uh, no. Trust me, this’ll be the turning point of Bree LaRue’s career. She should thank Cash Howard for making her interesting.” He unzips his bag, chucks a shirt at me. “If they write her off the show she’ll be in some Lars von Trier film within a year. Guaranteed.”

“I was just going to‌—‌”

“Stay here, stagnate, watch Castaway on your phone. Forget it.” He pulls on a Blondie t-shirt and zips up his fake python cowboy boots. “We’re gonna stir shit up. You and me.”

I know what he’s up to. I scramble for brilliant excuses. Migraine. Tainted cheese powder.

“Jesus, will you relax?” he says. “I’m putting your boy renaissance on hold. You don’t have to talk to anyone but me.”

I don’t trust him. “Bec, will you come?”

“Nope.” She has her flip-flops kicked off and she’s eating rice crackers and reading Blankets again. “Too hot. You’re on your own.”

“What if someone breaks in?”

“I’ll blind them with spray cheese.”

I uncrumple the shirt Abel threw me. It’s hot-pepper red with SEX BOMB on the front in army green. The O is a grenade at a jaunty tilt, the sex bomb in mid-hurtle toward its target. It’s so ridiculous I have to smile.

“I wore it the night I met Kade.”

“At that astrophysics lecture, right?”

“Put it on.” Abel gives me a shove. “You dress like you want to disappear.”

Don’t do it, says Father Mike.

What if I did?

That isn’t you. I know you better.

I close my eyes, dig my nails into my palm until it hurts.

“I’ll go,” I say.

But I don’t put on the shirt.

***

The sign on the red door says THE EDGE OF HEAVEN in chipped gold curlicue letters. Underneath is a ragged flyer for the Cleveland OutPride Film Festival, stapled over a mural of two male seraphim doing something distinctly unholy.

I think of Bec white-robed and pink-haired in her punk-angel costume two Halloweens ago; Mom with cat ears stuck in her mess of blonde curls, snapping pics in our front hall. Closer, you two! How about a hug?

“This okay?” Abel taps the door. “It’s not too cheesy, is it? Guy at the hotel said it was chill.”

“I’ve never been in a bar,” I blurt.

“Seriously?”

“I mean, yeah, I have. Just not this kind.”

“I know, right? Poor you. Zero gay bars in Blanton.” Abel sticks his hands in his hair and expertly messes it up. “Whatever; it’s not like Rocky Horror. They don’t harass virgins.”

My face gets hot, but then I realize he means bar virgins, not actual virgins. I make a big show of opening the door. “Shall we?”

Inside, dim rosy light and that sad-sweet smoke machine smell I remember from our freshman-year production of Godspell. The bartender is short with a wiry gray mustache and he’s got on one of those cowboy shirts with pearly snaps instead of buttons. White Christmas lights frame the bar in back of him, which is decorated with a dirty rainbow flag, vintage seashore postcards, a little kid’s card that says I love grampa in green crayon, and some gold-framed photos that confuse me. Guys dancing shirtless with glow sticks, wagging huge fake penises on parade floats, singing karaoke in sequins and wigs‌—‌should I like this stuff too? Take it seriously? I’m supposed to belong here. I should at least smile and not stand here like an idiot in my flip-flops and cargo shorts.

But you don’t like that stuff, do you?

Abel gets us two brown-bottle beers with a fake ID and we snag a table in the corner, near a red velvet couch where a skinny guy in a tank top is chatting up a hot guy in a suit. The jukebox plays that tinny old song Abel loves about riding on the metro. He cracks our bottles open with his keychain and slides one over.

“It’s Hammerclaw.” He starts tapping at his phone, shoulders perking to the music. “You’ll like. Trust me.”

I check the room for cops and take a sip. The beer tastes different from Dad’s; it’s thick and smoky and makes me think of beef jerky, though it’s probably not supposed to.

“To Bree LaRue.” I lift the bottle.

“To Bree LaRue, and her beautiful bitterness, and the sound of a hundred Cadsim shippers sharpening their pitchforks.” He clears his throat and reads off his phone. “Bree LaRue’s stupid opinion should be disqualified immediately, as she was clearly under the influence of illegal substances.”

“Oh Lord.”

“droidluv95 responds with a drabble, in which Sim rips off Cadmus’s shirt and moans hotly in his ear, ‘Captain: rumors of my asexuality have been greatly exaggerated.’”

“Ha!”

“Our good buddy Miss Maxima adds, Keep the faith, true believers. She may be lying on purpose! Odds are they’re planning the first Cadsim kiss for sweeps week. God, they’re a special kind of stupid, aren’t they?”

I get an idea. I arrange my best heartbroken-cynic face, which is kind of like my Sim face but with broodier eyebrows.

“You know,” I say, “what Bree said is totally true.”

“Meaning‌…‌?”

“Asexual people are the lucky ones.” I shrug with careful nonchalance. If I deliver this just right, he might leave me alone for the rest of the trip. “Sim’s got the right idea, you know? It’s just easier if you never have to think about it. Plus I already lost the only romantic gay guy in Pennsylvania, so I’m screwed anyway.”

“Uh-huh. Nice pose.” He takes a swig of Hammerclaw. “Don’t hold it too long or you’ll freeze like that.”

“It’s not a pose.”

“Then that’s just sad.”

“Makes sense to me.”

“Right. ‘Cause everyone else is all meaningless random hookups in men’s rooms.”

“Maybe not everyone, but‌—‌”

“Ew. Brandon. Do you write NOM propaganda in your spare time?”

“Look at you, though.”

“What about me?”

“What’s your number? Like, fifteen? Twenty?”

He straightens and flutters his eyelashes. “Five, since you asked so politely, and I was safe every time, and three I actually dated. And FYI, asshole, I never once cheated.”

“Right.”

“I haven’t!”

“You’re a unicorn, then.” I shrug and take a pull of Hammerclaw, the way tough guys are always taking pulls at their beers in the detective novels Dad reads. I’m coming off like a jerk, but it’s too late to backtrack. “Just think I’m better off alone.”

“Don’t be a doof. Think of everything you’ll miss! Don’t you want someone to mock bad movies with? And like, skinny-dipping and diner eggs at midnight and snowball fights and come on: first kisses? How great are they, right?”

I peer in my bottle and wish I was a genie who could vaporize and hide inside. Ryan Dervitz. His moonface pale against the school’s dark brick. The shock of his soft lips brushing my skin. The little-kid crack in his voice when he yelled after me‌—‌Hey! I’m sorry!‌—‌and I just kept running and running.

“Can we not talk about that?”

Abel looks surprised. “Why?”

“It’s too‌…‌um.”

“What?”

“Sacred.”

“Effing Zander.” He shakes his head. “That guy. The sex must’ve been‌—‌”

“Spectacular.” My leg jitters. Can he tell I’m lying? I picture it with Sim, how it would be to lie with him under cool white sheets. “Like, intergalactic.”

“Did you kiss him first or did he kiss you?”

“I don’t‌—‌”

“I’ll tell you about my first time with Kade. We were at his parents’ pizza place at two a.m., and they have one of those kiddie rooms with the plastic balls, and‌—‌”

“I don’t want to know.”

“Whatever! Just tell me one place you did it.”

“In the silken softness of beach sand, under three alien moons.”

He squints. “Is that from a Cadsim fic?”

“Yep.”

“You asshat.”

He cracks up and kicks me under the table. Abel has perfect teeth, which is annoying, and now I can’t unsee the Olivier/cockatoo thing. He does kind of look like an old-timey movie actor. Broad rounded shoulders, strong straight nose, subtle chin divot, green-gray eyes that are probably capable of smoldering under the right circumstances. And the white hair does look feathery. I never looked at it for this long. I wonder what it feels like. If it’s soft and floaty or stiff with mysterious product. If I touched it‌—‌

“Oh my God.”

He’s staring at the bar. His jaw cranks open.

“Ohhhhhhh, shit.”

Hell Bells.

My skin prickles. I keep my eyes on my beer.

“What?” I whisper.

“This is it. It’s fate, Brandon.”

“What’s fate?”

“Don’t. Look.”

“Who is it?”

“That guy.”

“Who?”

“Him. Team Android Shirt! From the Q&A.”

“Ugh, you scared me.”

“You should be scared. He could be your destiny‌—‌don’t look!”

“You said we’d forget that stuff tonight.”

“Yeah, but this is too perfect!‌…‌Omigod. Omigod, he sees you.”

“So?”

“You have to talk to him.”

“I don’t, actually.”

“Yes. Yes. After the Bill Debacle? Prove you can do this.”

“My knee hurts.”

“What are you, eighty? Here, drink the rest of this. It’ll help your personality.”

“I’m going to the bathroom.”

“Don’t do that! He doesn’t want to think about you peeing.”

“I don’t care what he thinks!”

“He’s getting his drink‌…‌Oh, Brandon, a Kamikaze? He’s a total Cadmus.” He drains the beer, slams the bottle down. “Trust me, Tin Man. You need this.”

Abel gets up and cracks his knuckles. I say no, I feel like I say it a hundred times but he isn’t hearing. He’s loping to the bar with that casual Cadmus swagger and lighting up a smile and the guy in the black Team Android t-shirt‌—‌cute, with wavy blond hair and multi-pierced ear‌—‌smiles back right away. I watch them talk, my heel hammering the floor. It’s so stupidly easy for him. He could do this any day of the week. Maybe he’ll change his mind, keep this one for himself.

The guy looks over. He nods and gives me a little wave. I wave back. I’ll kill Abel. Absolutely murder him.

Team Android starts over to the table. Status: All systems destabilized. Meltdown approaching.

Bree LaRue cries, Sim is completely asexual! Father Mike opens to Chapter 3 of Put on the Brakes!: When you feel “temptation devils” dancing on your shoulder, just imagine a life alienated from God, full of cheap, temporary pleasures that leave you more and more hopeless and empty. Is that what you really want?

“Are you Brandon?”

I open my eyes.

Say something. Be calm. Be Sim.

“I am. Yes.”

“I’m Ian. Saw you at the Q&A.”

He holds out his hand and gives me a big friendly smile. A real flesh-and-blood boy with kind eyes and a Celtic cross necklace and really, really nice forearms. His presence thrums through me. If I wanted to, I bet we could be kissing in an alley before the next jukebox song is done.

“Mind if I sit down?”

“Yeah‌…‌”

I feel my back against a brick wall, my shorts unsnapping.

“Yeah you mind, or yeah you don’t?”

“Um‌…‌”

Ian blinks twice, waiting. His eyes are gray, almost Sim-silver. The back of my throat goes sour.

“You okay?” says Ian.

“Yeah. Sure. I just‌—‌” I feel myself blushing again, which makes me blush more. His weirdo-detector starts pinging, you can tell.

“What’s wrong?” he says.

At the bar, Abel raises a bottle and an eyebrow. I want to explode his head, burn his $600 fake python boots and his cheap Cadmus shades. I hate Cadmus. Hate.

“Look, I’m really sorry,” I blurt. “My boyfriend’s twisted.”

“Your‌—‌him? That Abel guy?”

“Yeah.” I aim a glare at the bar.

“He said you weren’t together.”

“Well, we are, but I don’t know why.” What am I doing? “He’s pretty rotten. He loves seeing other guys flirt with me, and he knows I get embarrassed, but he does it anyway. It like, turns him on.”

“Ew.”

“I know.”

“So he set me up?”

“He set us both up. It’s one of his sick little power games.”

“Wow. Uh‌…‌okay. Sorry.” He shoots a dark glance in Abel’s direction. Abel gives him a goofy thumbs-up. “’Scuse me.”

I’m not proud of myself while Ian’s bitching out Abel. I thought it would be more satisfying, but instead it just feels like that time in the sacristy when I blamed Pete Mertz for knocking over the Communion wine. The more Abel protests, all cartoony wasn’t-me flailing, the more pissed off Ian gets. He finally leaves the bar, slamming the door behind him.

Abel clomps to our table. Tank Top Guy smirks.

I get a whack on the head with the heel of his hand.

“That was mean, Brandon!”

“Ow.”

“Listen, toolbox: I don’t know what head games you and Zander used to play, but I don’t do that shit. C’est compris?”

“Yeah‌…‌” Cartoon stars, little birdies of pain. I deserve them.

“What kind of person are you? Seriously?”

“I don’t know.”

“I mean, what‌—‌you get your heart smashed one time by one loser and you think you get to be Mayor of Doucheville the rest of your life? Because let me tell you something, absolutely no one’s going to‌—‌oh, shut up!”

He yanks his buzzing phone from his pocket. Beer sizzles in my stomach; I’m not used to making people mad. Get out of this place. Say three Hail Marys and ten Our Fathers.

“Oh.” Abel’s mouth drops open a little. “Oh my.”

“What?”

He taps the phone screen. “Nothing.”

“Tell me!”

“We got a text. From Bec.” He sighs. “Don’t freak, okay?”

He turns the screen around.

NEW HELL BELLS POST @CADSIM COMM

OMG FREAKY

HURRY B4 THEY DELETE IT