A&b

by J. C. Lillis

  She pauses.

  “Yes?” I say.

  “Do you…want to eat together tonight?” She quickly adds: “To celebrate the song.”

  “I thought you guys weren’t allowed off campus.”

  “We’re not. But we could vidchat. Later, when the kitchen’s empty.”

  Evil B makes muffled shouts in her basement. I’m not listening, but it’s probably stuff like What is it with this girl and How many things will she get you to say yes to before she’s done with you?

  I don’t know the answers. But I say yes to this too.

  “Around nine o’clock,” she says. “I’ll call you.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  I head back to the house all set for solitude with my whirling thoughts. I do not expect the following: Abel in a white suit that makes him look like an anime ice cream man, frying two salmon fillets and humming “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough.”

  He freezes mid-song when he sees me, extra-virgin olive oil paused in his hand. I squeeze Rosalinda.

  “Major Barbara.”

  “You’re home early.”

  “Kira’s covering for me.” A helpless smile lights his face. He turns the flame down on the salmon. “It’s happening. Tonight.”

  “You and Brandon?”

  “Who else?”

  “What about his Year of Productive Celibacy?”

  “It lasted like, sixteen and a half hours.” He pulls the lid off the trash can and grabs the UnMated book off a squashed pizza box. “He got to the chapter on Restocking Your Emotional Kitchen and decided the guy was a crackpot.”

  “Can I have it?”

  “You want it? Suit yourself.” He tosses it to me. “So today after you left, he stops by St. C’s for a beer, right, and he loved the Starsetter replica, and we got to talking about the CastieBall which is where we had our first real kiss when we were fanboy babies—”

  “What’s the CastieBall?”

  “Nerd prom for Castaway Planet fans. He dressed as my obsession, I dressed as his.” He pets the front of the suit.

  “So, ah, this is what you wore. When you kissed the first time.”

  “And did other stuff.”

  “Oh man.”

  “I made a very fetching android.”

  “I’m sure you did,” I say carefully. I am a staunch romantic but even I can see the potential pitfalls here. “So then what happened?”

  “So he showed me what he found in Santa Monica today…” He waves a DVD box with gold lettering. “Deluxe, multi-autographed tenth anniversary edition of the Castaway Planet movie. Three new cast commentaries, plus a deleted scene where Sim and Captain Cadmus play chess in the Grimgem Desert.” He taps the back of the box, which features a small photo of White-Suited Android and Hot Bomber Jacket Guy gazing at each other. “He was all, ‘hey, let’s watch it tonight when I’m back from my haircut,’ so I figured I’d…”

  “…Make it a completely no-pressure, non-date-type situation.”

  He looks down at himself. “Is the suit too much?”

  “Do you want him to think you’re proposing?”

  “Fuck. I thought I could pull it off, like ‘hey, isn’t this hilarious, look what I found in the closet.’”

  I quote Ava: “Subtle is better.”

  “You’re right. You’re right. Shit, why am I making salmon? It’s like, transparent date food.”

  “It is?” There is so much I don’t know about dates.

  “Reboot, reboot.” He takes the salmon off the flame and dumps the fillets into Tupperware. “Takeout instead?”

  “Much better.”

  “Jeans and black t-shirt?”

  “Perfect.”

  “Music. Help me. What should be playing when he gets here?”

  I think as he de-suits himself and pulls on jeans. “Something playful and fun. Not aggressively romantic. Maybe something with a sci-fi twist, as a lead-in to the movie…” I flip through my mental archives. “B-52’s. First album. The one with ‘Planet Claire’ and ‘Rock Lobster.’”

  “You should really start a service.”

  “Someday. When I’m old.”

  “Talk to me, Lady B. Tell me about your day. You write a good song?”

  I’m pawing through my duffel for something to wear. “I…did, actually.”

  “Awesome. Where you headed tonight?” He puts the white suit on a hanger and shoves it in the back of the hall closet. “I mean—not to be rude, but you gotta scram for a goodly portion of the evening.”

  “I’m, ah…going out to dinner.”

  “Woo-woo! With?”

  “No one.” Why why why are all my clothes sequined or bedazzled? “Figured I’d treat myself a little.”

  “Go to Amazeus. Trust me. They have truffle mac and cheese—you will die, and then resurrect yourself so you can eat it again.” He fishes in his wallet and slips me fifty bucks.

  “I can’t—no. You already pay me.”

  “C’mon. Gotta keep the entertainment happy.” He stuffs the money in my jeans pocket. “Besides, it’s all the way in Silver Lake. You won’t be back for hours.”

  I grin. “Right.”

  “You can borrow my car.”

  “Nah. I enjoy buses.”

  “Three of them?”

  “Even better.”

  “Weirdo.” Abel darts back in the kitchen and resumes puttering. He’s one of those people who talk to themselves out loud when they’re nervous. I hear him say Wine glasses…need glasses that say “this is not a date”…

  I retreat to the bathroom to change. I am faintly stinky from a full day of sweating and creating; I know Ava can’t smell me through the phone or anything, but I give my pits a scrub in the sink and glide on two coats of my PowerUP! Citrus Zing invisible deodorant. I keep my jeans on but exchange my G-clef t-shirt for a faux-chiffon red tank top with a neckline I sequined myself. I top it off with ivory lace fingerless gloves (they’re A-plus at hiding the sores from my bracelet) and the pink curly bob I bought at the beauty shop today.

  YOU LOOK LIKE A VALENTINE, Evil B spits.

  I enjoy red and pink together, I respond.

  DID I SAY YOU COULD DATE YOUR NEMESIS?

  Okay, now she’s being ludicrous. This is not a date, I inform her. This is a celebratory business meal.

  ***

  Oh my God, she’s so hot.

  Now, it’s fine to admit this even though we’re not on a date, because objectively it is true, and I am nothing if not an honest and observant person. Ava is on my vidchat screen, dressed up for our dinner in a silky pale-blue tank top, red lipstick, and the pig scarf she wore when we met. Her hair is piled on top of her head, with a few loose curls dangling on either side of her tortoiseshell glasses. Her eyes, if I may state this factually, are the deep amber-brown of a broken beer bottle, and if you don’t think that’s beautiful you have clearly never seen a broken beer bottle glinting in Sunday-morning sun.

  “Show me the restaurant,” she says.

  I part the burlap curtain of the private nook I requested and make sure no one’s looking. Then I hold the phone out and rotate it so she can see the dining room of Amazeus, which is weirdly rustic for an expensive place. The tables are rough wooden planks and the water comes in jelly jars. I was thinking there’d be white tablecloths, maybe napkins folded like bishop hats.

  “Disappointing,” she pronounces with a grin.

  “Right? Now you. Show me the kitchen.”

  She offers me a slow 360-degree pan of the giant empty kitchen in the mansion, all gleaming marble counters and stainless-steel appliances. God, how many times have I wanted to be there, kneading pizza dough beside Tera or baking sugar cookies that look like suns?

  “So you’re alone?” I confirm.

  “Yeah. Most of them are outside at Tera’s bonfire. A few are off practicing.” The camera bobs and weaves. I catch a glimpse of her hand grabbing a bunch of big green bananas.<
br />
  “What are you making?”

  “Mangú.” Her face comes back onscreen, sadness shining in her eyes. “My father’s favorite.”

  “What is it?”

  “Smashed-up boiled plantains, basically. It’s like Dominican mashed potatoes, but ten times better than actual potatoes.”

  “How do you make it?”

  “I’ll show you.” A pot clanks down on the stove. “How about you? What’d you order?”

  “Truffle mac and cheese.”

  “That sounds disturbing, and maybe revolting.”

  “You don’t like mac and cheese?”

  “Ehh.”

  I open my mouth, about to challenge her heresy, and then shut it fast.

  “We have cups of it here…see? Ugh.” She pulls a cardboard cup of instant mac and cheese from the cabinet and shakes it at me. “This is scary, FARG. Nothing you eat should be neon orange.”

  “We only fear what we don’t understand.”

  “I don’t want to understand this. It’s like food of the future that people only eat because the real food’s all dead.”

  I give her a one-shouldered shrug. “It has its place,” I say airily. “Sometimes you want instant cheesy goodness. Sometimes you want…complex spices.”

  She zooms the phone close to her face. “I see what you did there,” she murmurs.

  I grin. “I am not known for subtle metaphors.”

  The evening lilts along, easy and sweet as a lullaby.

  She shows me how to mash the plantains with olive oil to make mangú, holds the phone close to her bowl so I can see the smooth creamy texture and the onion garnish glistening on top.

  I tantalize her with a forkful of my truffle mac and cheese, which is also super-creamy and must contain actual gold flakes considering how much it costs.

  She sings me a snippet of the first song she ever wrote, a broody ballad called “Imprisoned by Your Love.”

  I sing her the chorus of my own first song, a Tera-brewed cup of cheer called “Music Sets Me Free.”

  She tells me about her favorite music, about Neko Case and Janelle Monaé and the Mountain Goats and indie bands with random-word-association names. She even breaks her no-talking-about-my-family rule to tell me about her father’s hands guiding hers on the guitar strings, and her grandfather’s old-school bachata music, which she says Evil B would like because bachata was once called música de amargue. The music of bitterness.

  I tell her about teaching myself piano via Dave Handley’s YouTube tutorials, how I drilled myself for hours with his finger-strength and accuracy exercises, hoping my hands would someday mirror his fluid acrobatics. I tell her about writing songs in study halls and dancing in my room to my synthpop playlists and my whole entire History of Tera.

  “You really love her, huh,” says Ava.

  “She saved my life.”

  “Maybe you saved your own life, and she was just the soundtrack.”

  “No, it’s more than that. She’s said stuff that completely changed my thinking. About how everyone has equal potential, equal value. About how music’s a calling. A way to serve the world and not just entertain it.” I feel myself blush. “I…am pretty much convinced I was put on this planet to work with or for her.”

  “You know she’s a regular lady, right? Like she poops and everything.”

  “Please don’t say that.”

  She giggles. “I mean, I think her toilet has an English accent, but—”

  “Stopppp.”

  “You have now evacuated your bowels,” Ava says. “Allow me to—hey!”

  I am giving her the bird, which is a very un-me thing to do, but then again so is eating twenty-dollar mac and cheese while vidchatting with a girl who’s like a whip-smart Disney princess with musical superpowers.

  MOVE THIS ALONG, says Evil B.

  I believe I’ll have dessert, I tell her.

  “You’ll never guess,” I say to Ava. “Look what’s on the dessert menu.”

  I turn the card around and point to line three: DECONSTRUCTED S’MORE 12

  “Sounds like a Björk song.”

  “I think 12 is the price.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “It’s fine. I’m splurging.”

  “Okay, I’m gonna make one too,” she says. “A less fancy one.”

  “I guarantee yours is better.”

  She opens the kitchen cabinets, which are fully stocked with every kind of brand-name treat you could possibly want: Pop-Tarts in all flavors, cans of cashews and honey-roasted nuts, fancy organic chocolates, those strawberry-jam Pepperidge Farm cookies I used to beg Ma for. She holds up the phone and gives me a long lingering pan, filling my envy bank for later. Ma’s cupboards back home always look like the Whoville Who cabinets after the Grinch has gotten to them.

  “Graham crackers—yes.” She holds up a blue box.

  “Honey Maids. Excellent.”

  I order my la-di-da twelve-dollar s’more while she finds some marshmallows and chocolate bars. I walk her though it: the optimal amount of chocolate, the proper positioning of the marshmallow, how many seconds to punch in on the panel. She presses START and grins into the phone as the microwave roars to life.

  “Keep an eye on it,” I tell her. “Watch—this is the best part.”

  “AHHHH. It’s blowing up!”

  “Take it out quick! Now put the other cracker on top—don’t press too hard or the s’more will…”

  “Shit.”

  “Kind of.”

  “No, someone’s—”

  The screen cuts to black—I think she’s stuffed me in her pocket—and a deep, distinctive voice goes “Whassup, chica?”

  My heart seizes. It’s the rumble of Caleb Matthews, he of the backwards baseball cap and the country-pop skeeze anthems and, according to Ava, the Texas-sized ambition.

  “Not much,” she says.

  “Late-night s’more? Sweet.”

  “My first one.”

  “They don’t have s’mores where you’re from?”

  “There’s no gravity on my home planet, so the pieces just float around.”

  “Ha! That’s good.” He snickers. He sounds close, way too close. “Hey, so, ah…you weren’t on your phone right now, were you?”

  A chill darts down my back.

  “What? No,” says Ava.

  “Okay. ’Cause you know we’re not allowed to vidchat on our Pop U phones.”

  “Everyone knows that, Caleb.”

  “I mean, look, I think you’re hella talented. You deserve to go far. I’d feel really bad if you were cheating or something, and someone turned you in.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “But like, at the same time, rules are rules,” he says. “You know what I mean?”

  Silence. Oh God. The tension is horrific. Then Caleb’s like “Ava? Hey…um…”

  “If you must know…” Her voice is thick and swervy. “I was talking to a video of my ex. I know it’s bizarre, but it helps me get the words flowing. Because the wounds…” She sniffles deeply. “The wounds are still so fresh.”

  “Oh—oh jeez. Okay. Sorry.”

  “It’s fine. You didn’t know.”

  “Do you need a tissue?”

  “I need so many things!” She sounds exactly like Medora now. “I need my confidence back. I need to look into my future and see something more than emptiness and despair. I need to believe I can love again, someday.”

  “Aw, hey…”

  “This is so embarrassing. Ugh, I can’t—Don’t tell anyone we had this talk, all right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Promise!”

  “Yeah, no, I won’t! You want me to—”

  “I have to go, Caleb. Thanks for listening. But I—I have a chorus to work out.”

  I hear a sliding door squeak open and a click-clack-click—boots on a path, I imagine—overlaid with breathless giggles. My deconstructed s
’more comes in a mason jar and I nudge it with my spoon as I wait for her to reappear, a sour wobble in my stomach. This isn’t good. Even if she did play Caleb like a violin, she’s still playing fast and loose with the Pop U phone rules. How can she think this won’t catch up to us?

  I ask her that when she pops onscreen again—back in the ocean-themed cottage, bathed in shimmering blue light that makes her look like a naughty mermaid.

  “What kind of dodo do you think I am?” She laughs and takes a big bite of s’more. “I use my own phone for our chats. I smuggled it in and stuck the Pop U case on it.”

  “How’d you smuggle your own phone in?”

  She takes off her Vassal boot, holds the wide stacked heel up to the camera, and removes a neat window of rubber to reveal a secret phone-sized compartment.

  “Ava!”

  She cracks up. I stifle a grin. In an official sense I am shocked, but I have to admire her moxie. “That’s dedication.”

  “Yep.” She crunches into her s’more again. “Proper strategizing requires the necessary tools. Plus my phone has all my pictures of Danny; how could I write without those?”

  The name Danny gives my heart a strange pinch. I stab my s’morelike thing, the head of my spoon sinking into triple-churned graham-cracker ice cream. “Don’t you feel guilty, though? Breaking so many rules?”

  “Sometimes. But let me tell you.” She pushes up her glasses and gives me a look that could scare a prairie dog back in its hole. “I’ll do anything to become who I’m meant to be.”

  “Me too. Well, almost anything,” I say. “I feel like…”

  The graham-cracker ice cream melts on my tongue, leaves a sweet uncomfortable grit behind.

  “Yeah?” she says.

  “Well, you helped me become that. The artist I was meant to be.”

  Oooooh, I didn’t plan to say that.

  “I did, didn’t I?” she says softly.

  Keep it light, Barrie. “Totally.” I put a dramatic hand on my heart to say hey, I’m only half serious. “I never saw the value of my own nastiness until you came along.”

  “Aw,” she says. “That’s so nice.”

  “I never would have made friends with Evil Barrie. Or rhymed moth with fuck off. Or written a whole one-woman show in a week.” I pick at a sequin on my jeans pocket until it comes loose. “You changed me, lady.”