Текст книги "How to Repair a Mechanical Heart "

Автор книги: J. Lillis

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Текущая страница: 7 (всего у книги 15 страниц)

Chapter Twelve

Bec pours us some tea and leaves us alone. We sit at the Sunseeker table with Abel’s laptop, twin plumes of steam curling from our Grand Canyon mugs.

There are seventeen members. Sixty-five fics. Dissections of every single one of our vlog posts, starting with the very first one when I joked about the sandstorm CGI in Episode 4-05 and Abel “lovingly” punched my shoulder.

The most recent post is by a_rose_knows. She has a photo of herself as her icon. We recognize her right away from the coffee shop. The tinfoil Xaarg hat, the pink-rimmed glasses.

“A freaking spy,” Abel breathes. “Good. Lord.”

The post says:

*Ahem.* Fellow Abandon Shippers:

HELL BELLS IN ATLANTA.

SPOTTED ~AND~ DOCUMENTED IN COFFEEHOUSE!!!!!!!!!!!!

Ear-flicking. Whispering. Sharing of snickerdoodles.

FULL-ON LIP-TO-EAR CONTACT.

[clicky here for photographic evidence!!]

“I might actually die,” says Abel.

“Click it,” I tell him.

The photos under the cut aren’t the posed ones Annie took. They must’ve snapped these from across the room with some kind of evil zoom lens that incriminates the innocent. In photo #1 Abel’s talking to me with his arm draped across the sofa back, leaning closer than I remember. In #2 he’s passing me the snickerdoodle half, and our fingers are brushing each other slightly. Then there’s #3, where‌—‌what?‌—‌I’m making a weird cupping gesture with both my hands. The last one contains the most damning piece of evidence: Abel’s leaning in and murmuring to me, probably about Kade or the stupid cave scene, and the angle makes it look like his lips are on my ear. Like, nibbling it or something. To underscore the significance of this imaginary gesture, a_rose_knows has blown up that part of the picture and circled my pixelated ear in red. This has made all the other usernames dementedly happy.

doomerang:

omg you guys. I CAN’T EVEN.

amity crashful:

rosey you are a heroic stalker, please have my babies

retro robot:

They are flawless. That is all.

sadparadise:

MY BRAIN JUST LEGIT EXPLODED

whispering!sage:

snickerdoodles. the official cookie of us.

thanks4caring:

lol @ brandon’s “cupping hands.” like, “abel baby, back yo ass up into these”

sadparadise:

can you blame him? DAT ASS.

lone detective:

Question: Is Brandon, in fact, wearing Abel’s shirt?

a_rose_knows:

Yes, it looks that way, but I can’t confirm 100%. all I can say is, the convo they were having? INTENSE. You could tell.

doomerang:

Rosey what were they doing when they left??

a_rose_knows:

They looked close. I mean, Abel held the door for him and kind of put his hand on his back a little. Abel totally smells like cinnamon. Also? Brandon at one point said “we’re just friends‌—‌RIGHT NOW.”

sadparadise:

OMG “RIGHT NOW.”

retro robot:

right now right now right now right nowwwwww <3

thanks4caring:

mamacita? where is our fearless leader??

hey_mamacita:

JESUS HORATIO CHRIST ON A MOTORBIKE WITH A DIME-STORE UKULELE AND A RASPBERRY BERET, CAN YOU BELIEVE THIS UNBEARABLE WONDERFUL MADNESS???? ugh, rosey, you are queen of everything. miraculous pics of our boys; they look so effing precious I could eat them both like tiny perfect gingerbread men. BRB, writing fic all night! CURSE YOU.

“Click off.” My mouth is dry. “I can’t‌—‌”

“Let’s read the manifesto.”

Abel’s face is pink. I’ve never seen him blush. Through the fingers over his face, I think he might be smiling a little.

“What manifesto?”

“There was a link on the main page‌—‌here. Oh. God.”

There’s a manip. Of course there is. I’ve seen them all over the Cadsim fanjournal‌—‌horrible fakes of Cadmus and Sim kissing, holding hands, cradling adopted alien babies. This one is like, intergalactically worse. They’ve shopped my head onto Sim’s body and Abel’s head onto Cadmus’s, smushed our hands together, and stuck us on top of a wedding cake. ABANDON is scrawled on the side in blue icing.

“The hell is ‘abandon’?” I say.

Abel smirks. “Our portmanteau.”

I lay my head on the desk.

“Better than ‘Brabel,’ no?”

“Don’t talk to me.”

“It’s just getting good, though.”

THE MANIFESTO OF ABANDON

by hey_mamacita

“True Love is kinda like Xaarg’s Hell Bells‌—‌it comes when you least expect it, and it torments you until you give in!”‌—‌Abel McNaughton, from recap of Castaway Planet, Episode 4-16

once upon a time there were two boys with a vlog. the cute short one loved an android, and the cute tall one loved a space captain. the boys also loved each other in a completely repressed and thoroughly maddening kind of way, but instead of admitting it and having lots of blazing hot toe-curling bonobo monkey sex, they spent all their time bitching about Cadsim shippers and how the android and the space captain should never ever get together, like, JESUS MARY AND JOSEPH ON A UNICYCLE WITH X-RAY SPEX AND SARAN WRAP, could you boys be any more transparent??

anyway. the logical outcome of this delicious little story should be abundantly obvious to anyone with an internet connection and a basic knowledge of how romantic comedies work, but until abel smartens up and brandon gets over his tragic religious paranoia as detailed in his sister natalie’s awesome but defunct blog (screencaps here !), we at the abandon community are fully committed to‌—‌*ahem!*‌—‌lubing things up. we send good vibes. we catalog Hell Bells (i.e., indicators of true love). we conduct official events such as our BellFic Challenge (BFC), where NC-17 plots thicken biweekly. and we firmly believe that when the scales fall from their eyes and all obstacles are removed, these boys will GET MARRIED IN SOME WINDSWEPT MOUNTAINTOP PARADISE and roses and unicorns will spontaneously generate and glitter will rain from the clouds and God herself will smile a giant rainbow across the heavens and say “ohh, yeah, baby. It. Is. GOOD.”

Abel pushes his chair back. Ten seconds click by on the wall clock.

“Holy cow,” he says.

I can’t talk.

“I don’t even remember saying that Hell Bells line,” Abel says. “Did you know your sister had a blog?”

I shake my head.

“Go ahead,” I say. “Click the link.”

“Are you sure?”

My hands make a whatever gesture.

He hesitates, but he clicks the screencap link. This page pops up with a blog entry titled “Okay, so my little bro FINALLY came out‌…‌” I peek at it through my fingers. It’s Natalie, no question. Her username is Vashta and she makes halfhearted stabs at concealing identities‌—‌”B” for me, “Father X” for Father Mike‌—‌but the story’s all there. How my mom let the leftover meatloaf sit on the counter and spoil that night. How my dad kept saying but how can you be sure, as if it was a diagnosis that needed a second opinion. How I sat on Nat’s bed and cried about the sermon Father Mike had given two weeks earlier, the one where he held up a picture of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph and gently explained the “true definition of family.” Poor little nerdling, Nat wrote. I nagged him into this coming-out drama and maybe he wasn’t ready. He was a Father X fanboy as a kid and now he’s so terrified of his real self I just want to smack him. I think it’s his destiny to be fucked up his whole entire life unless he gets serious help.

I go lie down on the couch. I think of Sim on the Henchmen’s operating table, his chest pried open and his cold organs clicking and whirring out of sync. Abel takes another minute with Nat’s blog entry, and then he comes over and kneels down beside me.

He’s quiet for a minute. Then he reaches out and pats my hand.

I don’t know what about that sets me off. It’s kind of a neutral gesture, something Sim would do, and maybe that’s part of it. Or maybe it’s just that it’s so unlike Abel, or maybe my nerves are rubbed raw right now and any little touch would have done this, make my sore eyes fill up and spill over.

“It’s okay.” He squeezes my hand. “Seriously.”

I drape my arm over my eyes.

And I tell him everything.

I tell him about Father Mike. I tell him about Put on the Brakes!, my three awkward months trying to date Bec, my parents and the sad looks they shoot me when they think I won’t notice. I even tell him about the Ryan Dervitz kiss and the Dairy Queen freakout. When I lift my arm off my eyes I see him watching me like I’m some TV show about one-legged orphans with Olympic dreams, and it kind of makes me want to smack him but it feels so good to tell him that I keep going and going until the cut on his lip opens up again, and I remember what happened outside.

He grabs three tissues from the box on the desk. One for his lip, two for me.

“I’m so sorry,” I whisper.

“Just forget it.”

“What I said‌—‌”

“Forget it, Brandon. All that shit in your head‌—‌”

“I’m used to it.”

“And I’m such an idiot, I kept shoving boys at you.”

“Only two.”

He glances over his shoulder, as if someone’s watching at the window.

“So‌…‌” He lowers his voice to a stage whisper. “Do they really tell you all that?”

“All what?”

“Like, you have a ‘special calling’ to be celibate?”

“Pretty much.”

“’Cause if you believe that you should totally talk to my dad’s friend Mitch, he’s this Unitarian minister or whatever and he’s on his third husband so maybe he can help you‌—‌”

“I don’t believe it. Not anymore.” I sigh and stick my hands in my hair. There’s no way I can explain this logically. “It’s just hard to turn it off.”

“Why?”

I pick at the hem of my shorts. “There’s still this little part of you that’s like ‘what if they’re right?’ What if there is a hell and you’re like gambling with eternity just because you want a boyfriend, so you get terrified and think it’s not worth it, I’ll suck it up and be alone forever, but then on the other hand what if it turns out there is no God or he’s up there shaking his head because people keep twisting the Bible around, and you wasted your life being alone and miserable for nothing, and then‌—‌” I’m babbling like a freak. “Stuff like that. You know.”

Abel lifts the tissue off his lip and runs his thumb over the splotch of blood. “That Father Mike guy never‌…‌like, tried anything with you, did he?”

“No! No. Never. He just has really specific ideas about God.”

“You believe in God?”

“I’m‌…‌confused.”

“That wasn’t my question.”

“I left my church.”

“So? You can believe in God without church. I do.”

I blink at him. I would not be more surprised if David Darras pulled up in a white limo with two dozen blue roses and begged me to elope with him. I’ve consistently shut up about religion around Abel; he talks so much crap about it I just assumed he was like Bec. “You do?”

“I believe in something, yeah. I just think the world’s too complicated and amazing not to.” He’s folding the tissue into a lopsided rose. “I mean, I don’t believe in a big bearded badass on a cloud throne, but I can buy a loving creative higher power that wants everyone to be happy. Something that roots for us. Like, the anti-Xaarg.”

I shake my head. “I have no idea how to think that way.”

“Why not?” He lobs the tissue rose at me. “I mean, if no one knows for sure what God’s like, then why don’t you just believe the people who think he’s all rainbows and sunshine and loves you no matter what?”

“Because it’s too easy.”

His eyebrows steeple.

“Suffering’s supposed to be valuable.” Abel opens his mouth but I cut him off. “I’m just saying. That’s what they teach you. They tell you when you suffer you share in the passion of Jesus and so God doesn’t save us from suffering because‌…‌” I glance up at him and let out a long sigh. “Forget it.”

Abel leans forward, elbows on knees. Probably trying to gauge the depth of my mental disturbance, so he’ll know how far to sit from me.

“I totally want to hug you,” he says.

“You do?”

“We wouldn’t piss off Worst-Case-Scenario-Angry-God if we hugged, right?”

“Nope.” I gulp. “Probably‌—‌”

His arms are around me before I can finish. He still smells like popcorn and cotton candy and he feels so warm it’s like diving under an electric blanket after midnight Mass on Christmas Eve. I try to melt into the hug, the way Cadmus and Sim are always melting into hugs in Cadsim fics, but my nose is running and leaving horrifying wet spots on his army-green t-shirt and I’m positive I smell like sweat‌—‌not the clean I’ve-been-working-out kind but the toxic nervous kind I specialize in. It figures. My first lingering hug from a cute guy, and I’m too screwed up to enjoy it.

“God‌…‌” I murmur.

“I know. I’m a great hugger.”

I pull back, hold him by the shoulders. “Abel.”

“Brandon.”

I take a deep breath. “I am so fucking ready to be normal.”

“Fun normal or boring normal?”

“Fun normal.”

“Congratulations. How can I help?”

I just look at him. My lips vibrate from spitting out the f-word. He freezes in the Empathy Position, head cocked and one hand resting on my knee, like an action figure of a perfect boyfriend. I know exactly what I want. To be able to hug him over and over again, to sling my arm around his waist in public, to feel his warm reassuring hand around mine on a regular basis, without any real sex stuff ever getting in the way. I know that’s about as realistic as Cadsim fic.

And then a second later, I know how to make it happen.

I sit back down at the desk, in front of the laptop screen with its orderly selection of Brandon/Abel makeout fantasies. Plastic Sim and Plastic Cadmus lie flat on their backs in a scatter of cinnamon jellybeans, like they’ve both been struck dead from secondhand embarrassment. I stand them back up. Scroll through the fic titles. “Whispers of All Our Tomorrows.” “Anatomy of a Saturday.” “How to Repair a Mechanical Heart.”

“Uh, Brandon‌…‌?”

“Hm.”

“What are you thinking?”

I tap the wedding cake manip. I blurt it before I lose nerve.

“You want to have some fun,” I say, “with the Church of Abandon?”

A complicated smile flits across his face. I get a nervous thrill, like when Cadmus got Sim to jump into the Red River with him to escape the Henchmen. C’mon, Tin Man, he’d shouted above the wind, the two of them clutching arms on the cliff like a romance-novel cover. You haven’t lived till you’ve done something really stupid!

Not the best philosophy, bud, says Father Mike.

Shut up, I tell him simply, and turn back to Abel.

“What’d you have in mind?” he says.

CastieCon #3

San Antonio, Texas

Chapter Thirteen

Abel and I sit side by side on the concrete edge of our campground pool, dipping our feet in. He is shirtless. Leaning back on both arms, he holds his pale soft stomach taut, trying to forge a six-pack. He grins at the fake hickey on my neck, courtesy of some blue and purple eyeshadow we bought on the road in an Alabama dollar store. I held still while Abel brushed it on, his breath tickling my cheek and smelling of cinnamon. It was safe, and incredibly fun.

The San Antonio sun breathes biblical heat on us. My Castaway Planet shirt roasts on my back and the cool clear water sparkles temptation as I swirl my toes through it. I want to jump in, all the way in, but there’s something we need to do first.

“You sure about this?” Abel murmurs.

I nod. “Totally.”

“You don’t want to take your shirt off? They’d flip.”

I cringe. “I’m really pale‌…‌”

“That’s fine. Yeah. You’re a man of mystery. I might put my hand on your knee, is that cool?”

“My leg is your leg.”

Bec clears her throat. “Can we get this over with?” She’s bobbing chest-deep in the water with her camera, shivering a little.

“Sorry,” says Abel. “Rebecca, what do you think? Is my hand on his knee too much?”

“Don’t pull me into this. I’m just the cameraperson.”

Abel nods. “We’ll play it by ear. See what happens.”

“Fantastic.” She rolls her eyes and hits record.

“Salut, dear Casties!” Abel says. “My partner and I are coming at you poolside from the, ah, Longhorn Campground in San Antonio, where we have been staying in all our carefree, half-nude glory for three days.”

“Three lonnnng, hot days.”

“They have been especially hot, haven’t they, Bran?”

“Scorching.”

“Miss Rebecca, by the way, is looking stunning today in her bangin’ new halter bikini.”

“It’s just a two-piece.”

“Whatever. Dave, if you’re watching, it was between this one and some striped tankini disaster. You’ll thank me when you see her in Long Beach.”

I break in, as scripted. “Ahem.”

Abel’s like, “Ye-es?”

“You have yet to comment on my new swim trunks.”

“I think that’s best reserved for a‌…‌” He leans in, stage-whispers. “Private moment, don’t you?”

I giggle; I can’t help it. “If you say so.”

“Aaanyway, guys: Two o’clock today, Q&A with Augie Manners, who for the past four seasons has infused the character of Dutch Jones with a complex blend of angst, dopey hotness, and nine other exotic spices.”

“Hmf.”

“Yes, dear? What is it?”

I feign a pout. “If you love him so much, why don’t you marry him?”

“Mm-mm. Not my type.”

“No? Who is your type?”

“I think you know, Brandon.” He rests a hand on my knee. A tiny spark dances up my thigh. “I think. You. Know.”

***

The second Bec snaps the camera shut, Abel grabs my elbow and hauls us both underwater. The blue shock of cold hits me hard‌—‌I’m not ready‌—‌but then I open my eyes and he’s making this face that makes me forget, crossing his eyes and puffing out his cheeks. His white hair billows around his face like the manes on Bec’s old Rainbow Ponies when we’d take them in her mom’s pool. For a long time we stay like that, in a safe underworld where our bodies stay light and dreamy. Five seconds. Ten seconds.

We come up laughing.

“’Best reserved for a private moment’?” I splash him.

“Did I go too far?”

“No! It was brilliant.”

“Um, so‌…‌”

“What?”

Abel bats his eyes. “Why don’t you marry him?”

“Ugh! I’m a horrible flirter.”

“No, no, no. You’ve gotten loads better since Saturday.”

“Really?”

“When you said scorching?” He taps his heart, smirking. “I felt it right here.”

Bec bobs by on a clear inflatable raft. She looks all patriotic: navy blue bikini, white belly, sunburn on her round freckled shoulders. She peers at us over cat’s-eye shades.

“You guys,” she tsks, “are mean.”

Abel’s eyes go wide and innocent. “How are we mean? It’s what they want!”

“But it’s not real.”

“So? They love fiction. Right, Brandon?”

“They do seem to enjoy it.”

He swims close to me, his chin skimming the water. “What’s your favorite fic?”

I peel my wet shirt away from my chest and pretend to think. I have a real answer to that question, but I can’t get into that with Abel. As far as he knows, the Abandon fic we’ve been reading for the past five days has been 100% pure comedy, something to giggle over in greasy diners and campgrounds while Plastic Sim and Plastic Cadmus perch on opposite corners of the laptop, watching us blush and bump elbows.

“I like doomerang’s stuff. And sadparadise. The Castaway Planet crossovers,” I lie.

“Yeah? Not a fan, actually.”

“How come?”

“They’re like, good writers.” He makes a blech face. “Well-written fanfic is no fun whatsoever. I loooove thanks4caring’s high-school-angst.”

“’The Locker Said FAG?’”

“OMG. The ultimate.” We’re bobbing in a circle now. “Brandon’s sea-blue eyes exploded into desolate tears.”

I grin. “He felt his tater tots rise up threateningly in his throat.”

“He raced breathlessly‌—‌Breathlessly?”

“I think.”

“‌—‌down the school hallway and stumbled falteringly into the men’s room to call the one and only person who would ever understand him fully:” He strikes a pose. “Abel!”

“The next part is best.”

“What part?”

“What the men’s room smells like.”

“Adverbs?”

“No.”

“I’m blanking.”

“Urine and boys.”

“Urine and boys!” He snaps his fingers. “Straight girls really do their research, no?”

“You don’t read the NC-17 ones, do you?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know.”

“Oh, jeez.”

He clasps his heart. “Abel’s piercing green eyes danced impishly as he unbuckled Brandon’s‌—‌”

“Stop!”

“His eyes roved hungrily over the smaller boy’s body‌…‌”

I plug my ears and la-la-laaa.

“‌…‌and he thought, For such a short boy, he certainly had a long‌—‌”

“Oh my God!”

I heave a shelf of water his way and he yelps and pulls me under again. I used to hate when I was a kid and things would get rough at the pool‌—‌the big Tortelli boys sneak-attacking in the deep end, yanking us down by our feet like Jaws and holding us under until we kicked and flailed. But with Abel it’s different. He lets me push back, only touches my safe parts‌—‌my elbow, my shoulder. And way before things get scary, he hooks my wrist gently and pulls us both up to the surface.

We stand there, chest-deep, smiling and shivering. The air is full of happy smells: snack-stand lemonade, soft pretzels, pina colada sunscreen. I almost strip my wet t-shirt off. Right now, right this second, if we were on Castaway Planet and Abel said hey, let’s check out this crystal spider cave, I think I’d go with him. I’d be scared, but I’d go.

“Abel,” I say.

“Yes, my pseudo-darling.”

I grin. I’m brave as ten Cadmuses. “Never had so much fun,” I say. “With anyone.”

He looks down, swirls a finger in the water. “Pas de quoi, cutie.”

“‌—‌Okay, you horndogs.” Bec’s standing on the lip of the pool, wiggling into her polka-dot flip-flops. “You want to eat something before the Q&A?”

Abel’s face gets kid-on-Christmas bright. “The Double T?”

“I think the lunch special’s fried meatloaf.”

“Sold.” Abel grabs the ladder and hoists himself out of the pool. There’s all kinds of dripping and glistening going on. I try not to look. “You in, Bran?”

I think it over. On one hand, it’s been great this week; flirting lightly and safely for the cameras, hanging out and playing five thousand games of WordWhap with a cute nonthreatening guy who knows how screwed up I am and still wants to be my friend. On the other, there’s something I desperately have to do back at the Sunseeker, and I need to be alone.

“Bring me back some cheese fries,” I tell them.

***

I pull down the Sunseeker shades. Lock the door.

Bec gave me the camera before they left, so I take a second to upload our poolside escapade to Screw Your Sensors. While it’s loading, my phone goes off. HOME CALLING. I pick it up, all relaxed and friendly. I wow-mm-hmm politely through the latest on the new-parish-hall saga and update Dad dutifully on my RV maintenance. Yes, I cleaned the fresh water tank, sanitized the hose.

When I hang up, I go straight to the Church of Abandon.

I know what’s going to happen there in the next ten minutes. Someone will link to our new post, and there’ll be OMGs and trembling-Spongebob gifs and dissections and debates over every little thing, from the sincerity of Abel’s dear to the way my eyes lingered on his wet swim trunks. Abel and I will soak it up later, and laugh.

Right now I have a new chapter to read.

It’s normal to feel tempted, Father Mike tsks. Just distract yourself with other things. Get out in the sunshine and go for a walk‌…‌

My fingers hover over the keyboard. Plastic Sim stares at me, tipped over on Abel’s box of Ho-Hos. I straighten his legs and stand him up in my new Castaway Planet mug, beside Plastic Cadmus.

Then I find hey_mamacita’s latest post and click her name.

Her personal fic journal pops up. I click User Info, just to see her photo again. Nose ring, thick dark dreadlocks, bold Celtic-cross neck tattoo; everything says I’m brave. She’s standing in front of the neon-green Virgin Mary statue in her overgrown front yard, opening her scruffy leather jacket and showing off what’s underneath: a tight tattered t-shirt, its big red sequined heart shooting off tiny light beams like a superhero insignia.

The bio underneath is just one line:

SENT BY GOD HERSELF to make Abandon happen.

I’m not dumb enough to think that’s likely. I mean, last year when Aunt Meg met a guy in the Target returns line and Mom said “God made that sweater too small for a reason,” I rolled my eyes so hard I think I sprained an optic nerve. If God exists, there’s no way he bothers with matchmaking.

It’s eerie, though. Right?

I keep asking for signs. And here she is. Someone who prays to a neon Virgin Mary and lives her whole life in all-caps and thinks God and my happiness go together just fine. I don’t think she was sent. Not in a literal Biblical-prophet way. But the fact that hey_mamacita a.) exists and b.) found me? It just seems like some power somewhere in the universe is maybe on my side.

I click the fic tab. Right up top I see the little green “NEW CHAPTER!” burst and my heart jogs faster. Most of the other Abandon girls write us into the Castaway Planet universe‌—‌I’m an android, Abel’s a studly ensign‌—‌or concoct these high-school melodramas where I get a beatdown from some closeted quarterback and end up in the ER and then Abel brings me a giant teddy bear and we do it in my hospital bed. hey_mamacita is the only one writing her vision of this trip we’re on, a crazy, sprawling fourteen-chapter epic called “How to Repair a Mechanical Heart.”

I grab a can of BBQ chips from the food bin, pop the top, and read.

Just as their lips were about to finally touch with a lovely trembling sweetness, a pair of headlights sliced across the parking lot and locked on the two boys like a tractor beam. They saw the black Cadillac creep toward them in the dark with sinister sharklike intensity, the blood-red rosary swinging from the rearview and the license plate blaring the grim heavy sledgehammer words Brandon could never forget: I-JUDGE.

The car shuddered to a stop.

“Get in the RV, Brandon,” Abel murmured.

Brandon shook his head. “I won’t,” he replied, raking up all his courage. “This is my fight, too. I know that now.”

Out of the shadows clacked the heavy black boots of Father X, his craggy face glowering with malevolence and his silver crucifix clutched in a fist that was ancient and bony but could still crack a sinner’s arm in half. His grease-slick hair swung like blades across his face. He crushed his cigarette out on the inside of his palm and his mouth cracked open in a twisted smile that showed his gray and rotting feral teeth and prickled the hairs on Brandon’s neck. He LIKED THE PAIN. That much was clear. Brandon thought, God, that must be why he wants us all to hurt.

“So this is where you go to practice your DEPRAVED FORNICATIONS,” Father X snarled, pointing the cross at them. His red eyes glowed in the blackness and the cross spat hot electric bolts of silver light. “In the NAME OF HEAVEN, I command you, Brandon Page, to cease this charade of sin and misery! Return at once to the blessed desolation of the chaste and celibate life God created you to lead!”

Brandon, in reply, brandished a dagger. It was a letter opener from the CastieCon souvenir stand, but Father X didn’t have to know that. He strode up to Father X like a cowboy at high noon and‌—‌

I crack up laughing. I always do when I read her fic, but I mean it as a compliment. The more awesomely campy it is, the better I feel. I grab a sharp-tipped pencil from the Cape May mug on the desk; practice brandishing and pointing it.

“It ends here,” Brandon rasped. “All my life I’ve been your robot. Wind me up and my heart has done your will. Believe this, sacrifice that. Accept that God created you to be alone. Tick tick tick, yes master, I believe. Well, guess what? I’m done. I met someone who fixed my heart. And you can’t do anything about it.”

He slipped his warm hand into Abel’s. The next thing he heard was‌—‌

Sirens.

Sirens outside, off to the west, straight in the direction of the Double T. I run to the window, scissor open the blinds with two fingers. I picture Abel on a stretcher. Blood on a white sheet. A crumpled fender, some girl sobbing God, I never even saw him while someone’s cell shrills over and over, sad and steady and unanswered.

It’s mine. My phone. It vibrates across the desk and I catch it just before it goes over. Father Mike? The weird thought clutches me. Just for a second. Then I pick up and hear: “OMG MY VAG IS ON FIRE!”

I giggle. “What?”

“Sweet merciful baby Moses, San Antonio is the city of magical love witchcraft!” A big knot loosens inside me. I drop back down in the desk chair. I picture Abel reading off his phone in a corner booth while Bec snort-laughs and stirs her iced tea. “I legit peed myself you guys and my heart went supernova and how do these boys even exist??”

“I take it they liked our pool video?”

“You haven’t checked?”

I glance at the screen. “Been busy.”

“doomerang already coughed up a flashfic called ‘I Think You Know.’”

“Can’t wait.”

“amity crashful counted how many times we’ve called each other ‘baby’ this week‌—‌did you know we hit 15 already?”

“Impressive.” I lick BBQ dust off my fingers. “We must be in love.”

“Then Miss Maxima and a couple of her minions came over from the Cadsim fanjournal to bitch about how disgusting and intrusive real-person shipping is, and they all got banned, it was hilarious‌…‌OH! And.”

“Ye-es?”

“There’s a San Antonio spy now.”

“Who?”

“retro robot. I love her! She wrote that one where we’re nineteenth-century vampire hunters? She’s driving all the way from Tulsa so we have to ramp it up at the Augie Manners Q&A.”

“Okay.”

“I’m warning you now: There might have to be back-rubbing.”

“Maybe even a public hug.”

He gasps. “I’m shocked, Tin Man. Shocked. What’s next?”

“Depraved fornications.”

“You know what?”

“What?”

“I like this new Brandon.”

I blow crumbs off the keyboard and scroll up to the start of hey_mamacita’s chapter, so I can read it all over again.

“Me too,” I say.