How to Repair a Mechanical Heart

by J. C. Lillis

  “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

  mrs.j.cadmus: whatever its what they deserve!!!

  murklurk: Maxie, do your job. Ban her already.

  Miss Maxima: hey_mamacita, this is your FINAL warning. Not to defend the horror that is Brandon and Abel, but this Hell Bells thing is hella creepy and you know it. I know where you live and if you and your minions don’t stop cluttering my community with your utter psychosis I swear I WILL MURDER YOU IN YOUR SLEEP.

  “Oh my fucking goodness,” says Abel.

  A shiver slides up my spine.

  “What is this?” says Bec.

  Abel explains the reference. The ring of silver bells Xaarg rattles when he’s launching a new nightmare for the castaways doesn’t technically have a name, but most fandom geeks call them the Hell Bells. “I don’t know what it has to do with us, though,” he says.

  “You’ve never seen them talk about it?” I scan the comments again.

  “Nope. Why would I?”

  “You’re on here more than I am.”

  “Just to laugh at the fic. Never seen word one about this.” Abel taps his lip and studies the screen. A slow smile stretches across his face. “I don’t want to alarm you guys, but this might be awesome.”

  “I don’t like it,” I say.

  “Why not? I bet it’s a secret snark community with some hilarious vendetta against us.”

  “God, no.”

  “Virtual voodoo dolls. Desperate plans to overthrow us. ‘We’ll blow up the RV! Assassinate them at the ball!’”

  “Don’t say that.”

  “Relax. It’s a joke.”

  “Then how come they’re freaking out?”

  “They’re being drama queens, I guarantee you. It’s fandom, Bran. Getting butthurt over nothing is practically a sacrament.”

  It’s a sign, says Father Mike. God’s telling you something.

  “It’s probably nothing.” Bec touches my arm.

  “Yeah, I mean who cares if they’re talking shit about us?” Abel pops more cinnamon jellybeans. “Least we got ‘em talking.”

  “Right. Yeah.”

  “We should get in on the trivia game or something.”

  Pearl is over; a new album starts. The Beatles. The party’s loud and the music wafts in and out of my consciousness, like in the morning when the song on your alarm clock drifts into your dream.

  “Bran,” Abel says. “You want to be on my team?”

  The aisle feels hot and narrow. Rubber Soul. I’m ten again, riding home from Disney in the Sunseeker, sitting up in the cab with Dad while Mom reads an Agatha Christie with her Mickey ears on and Nat broods in the loft scrawling postcards to potheads. Dad’s St. Christopher medal dangles from the rearview, scattering splinters of light on the ceiling. Somewhere in North or South Carolina the CD changer calls up “In My Life” and Dad turns all sad and tender like when he watches Field of Dreams or drinks too much Miller Lite at the Donnellys’ Super Bowl party. “Someday you’ll be sitting here behind a wheel, and your family will be back there,” he says to me, just the thought of my future making him smile, “and you’ll feel like this, like everything is exactly the way it’s supposed to be.”

  I look up. Bec and Abel are staring.

  “I don’t feel good, you guys,” I say. “I think I need to go.”

  ***

  I sit in the Home-N-Garden lot where we’re stealth-parked for the night, sipping Dad’s generic antacid on the pull-out metal steps of the Sunseeker. A warm wind sifts through my hair and skips a crushed beer can across the empty parking lot; in the distance, it rustles the tarp on the garden center’s koi pond and the white rose bushes that look like my father’s.

  On the ride back from the bookstore I made my first I’m-fine call to Mom and Dad.

  Liar.

  Down the street, a church points its sharp white steeple at the moon. I’ve never been inside it, but I know what it smells like on a summer Sunday‌—‌old-lady perfume and new-baby powder and the sweet creamy scent of memorial carnations. I miss a lot of stuff about church. Strumming “Morning Has Broken” at the 6:00 Folk Mass, flipping pancakes with Dad at Sunday socials, laughing with everyone at the jokes Father Mike would crack as he read off the weekly announcements. I feel bad that the stuff I miss doesn’t have much to do with God, that I don’t miss the prayers or the psalms or that quiet time after Communion when Father Mike said the Big Guy Upstairs could read our hearts. I never liked that idea, even when I was younger and the idea of God seemed simple. I’m not optimistic enough to trust in a kind and merciful higher power like my mother does, so it’s almost more comfortable to doubt one exists at all. In my strongest moments I become Sim. Programmed for poetry and logic, destined for a scrap heap, no Bible verses rattling out of context in my head and no possible reckonings or afterlives to worry about. And then I pass a church or see a priest on TV and I’m back where I was when I was twelve, sweating every swear word and boy crush and offering up a guilty rushed prayer. Just in case.

  “The android felt himself slowly awaken.”

  Behind the RV door, Abel’s reading Bec a bedtime story.

  “Desire surged through him, flooding his processors. He remembered the day he and Cadmus jumped into the Red River, the current making helpless marionettes of their bodies.”

  “That’s‌…‌actually not bad,” I hear Bec say.

  “It’s murklurk,” Abel says. “So tragic, when bad pairings happen to good writers. Listen to this‌…‌”

  I make my arms a nest and rest my head inside. Father Mike finds me in the dark, like he did when I was thirteen and he caught me and Mark Tarrulo coughing on cigarettes in the church basement. He’d pull out the same I-am-calm-yet-concerned voice he used on me then.

  You’re worried, aren’t you? Operation Hell Bells? C’mon.

  Abel reads, “Cadmus released the remnants of his fear. He pulled the android close in the dim amber light of the cave, searching his face for the sign that said yes, our time is now, I want you too.”

  Brandon, God sends us signs. It just takes courage to read them.

  “Sim felt his features respond, arrange themselves into the happiness he had seen so often on the faces of others‌…‌”

  Do you really think He’s happy with you? You spend all year doubting Him, and then you run off to nowhere with a boy?

  “’I want to stay here with you,’ Cadmus whispered. ‘The two
of us. Here together. Alone.’”

  Come home, bud. Just come home.

  I choke down the last swig of antacid. It tastes like chalk and the cherry cough drops at the bottom of Gram’s purse. I think about Lester and Gladys. What their house must look like, a queen-size bed that’s always made and a dinner table with a clean white tablecloth and walls hung with history: science fair ribbons, woven crowns from old Palm Sundays, framed photos of their sons at every age.

  You won’t have that now, says Father Mike. Don’t kid yourself, kiddo.

  I go into a windup with the drained antacid bottle, aim at a wood-slat wastecan. I want contact, a Louisville Slugger crack.

  I miss by a mile.

  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 mak
e 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?”