How to Repair a Mechanical Heart

by J. C. Lillis

  “Our fans. Are so. Amazing.” Abel flexes his fingers over the keyboard.

  “Don’t be mean to them.”

  “Are you kidding? They’ll love this.”

  They don’t know. And I won’t tell. I’m sort of a shipper myself, to be honest.

  sorcha doo: lol what do u know about Brandon. can u give us more details

  whispering!sage: yes please. insider details. we will venerate you forever and bake you snickerdoodles. from scratch.

  lone detective: IF you’re legit. Ha.

  Oh, I’m legit. Let’s see‌…‌

  Abel looks me up and down.

  Brandon’s eyes, close up, are the deep and mysterious blue of an ocean at midnight. His hair smells intoxicating, like freshly mown grass and dryer sheets. He is a man of exquisite intelligence and sensitivity, as evidenced by his music collection which is crammed with Dylan and Jeff Buckley and Elliott Smith and a buttload of other dead or half-dead singer-songwriter types. He irons his shorts, he reads vintage Ray Bradbury, and he likes plates with compartments because he can’t stand when food touches other food, which could be annoying but is actually kind of adorable.

  Plus‌…‌he secretly thinks Cadmus is H-O-T-T.

  He taps post comment and cringes. “Don’t kill me!”

  I don’t care about the Cadmus thing though, the room is spinning and why why why did he type adorable, like, you wouldn’t type that about someone unless you thought it on some level, right?

  “Does my hair really smell like grass?”

  “And Bounce. I wouldn’t lie about something so important.”

  He aims a sparkly shivery grin at me. I lean over him and refresh the page.

  hey_mamacita: I choose to believe you, mysterious stranger.

  sorcha doo: me too me too me toooo omg 5 million goosebumps rte now

  lone detective: Sounds a little too breathless for me, tbh.

  thanks4caring: what about Abel? Do you know him too?? DETAILS.

  I drag the laptop up on my knee.

  “What’re you doing?”

  “Shh.” I’m already typing.

  His shoulders bunch and he fakes a shudder. “Should I be scared?”

  I narrow my eyes. “Terrified.”

  I don’t know Abel as much as I know Brandon. However, I can tell you that he smells like cinnamon soap, he has beautiful greenish eyes like old bottles you find on the beach, and when he makes Mac-in-a-Minit it comes out extra cheesy. He gets excited about everything remotely cool or interesting, even a dumb belt buckle with a rooster on it, and he makes you excited about it too. He’s a great hugger and a compulsive matchmaker and he loves karaoke even though he can’t sing and he’s sweet and patient with his friends, even when they’re hopelessly screwed up. And reportedly Brandon thinks he looks amazing in his new snakeskin bomber jacket, even though he kind of made fun of it at first.

  ALSO, here’s a scoop for those of you attending the Castaway Ball in Long Beach. THEY’RE GOING. Together. I heard Abel bought the tix before the trip even started.

  “Wowww.”

  Abel’s chin is on my shoulder and his finger is tracing my words in the comment box and the room is seriously tilting, his warm breath prickling my neck and setting off tiny electric shocks all through my arms and legs. My knee is touching the wreckage of a WordWhap game from earlier; the tiles are all jumbled now except for Abel’s winning word: R-A-P-T-U-R-E.

  I tap post comment.

  The community goes ballistic.

  amity crashful: I am smiling so hard I literally cannot feel my face now

  sorcha doo: i squeed so loud my mom came running she thought i was dying lol

  hey_mamacita: HOLY MOTHER OF PEARL EVERYONE PAINT YOURSELF A TECHNICOLOR PICTURE OF THE GLORIOSITY THAT AWAITS AT THE CASTAWAY BALL. IT IS JUST EXACTLY WHAT I PLANNED FOR THEM. i’m not even kidding you guys. chapter 18 of “how to repair a mechanical heart,” verbatim from my outline: Brandon and Abel attend the ball together at the Long Beach con. By now Brandon has fully connected with his inner Cadmus and Abel has embraced his inner Sim, so they show up dressed as each other’s ultimate fantasy. Hot Abandon action on the dance floor ensues.

  retro robot: OMG mamacita that is eerie. I love you so much.

  sorcha doo:   mamacitaaa u give me life.

  hey_mamacita: THIS HAS TO HAPPEN. WE WILL WRITE IT INTO BEING.

  We can’t stop giggling. I shove the laptop off me and Abel takes its place, he twists around and drops his head in my lap and laughs through his fingers and wow his head is heavy and beautiful, like some sort of ancient stone that glows inside and holds all the secrets of the universe. He clasps Plastic Sim to his chest. I pluck Plastic Cadmus from my neckband. I walk him down my arm, hop him lightly over Abel’s smooth forehead, nose, chin, throat. I tap his clavicle with Cadmus’ tiny boot.

  “Hey. Tin Man.”

  Abel closes his eyes and grins. “Yes, Captain.” He gets the Sim voice just right: smooth and clipped, like a sexy GPS.

  “Got a proposition for ya.”

  “I shall look forward to receiving it.”

  I draw a slow circle around Plastic Sim with the head of Plastic Cadmus, skimming the center of Abel’s chest. I pretend it’s my finger there, tracing and retracing a ring around his heart.

  “We should do it,” I murmur.

  Abel’s eyes fly open wide and I see Bec sit up in the loft.

  “No. No no, not that.” I pat his hair. It’s so soft, like fresh cotton candy. “I mean we should give the fans what they really want. At the nerd prom.”

  “I should deflower you under the disco ball?”

  “Nooo‌…‌But what about a kiss?”

  He lifts his head off my lap.

  “For serious?”

  “Why not? We’re the creators.”

  “Like, full-on‌—‌”

  “Full-on fanfic fantasy. We’ll dress like Sim and Cadmus. Plan the whole thing out this week. Their heads will explode.”

  “What about you?”

  “What about me?”

  “I mean‌…‌” He picks at the pinecone rug, biting back a smile. “Can you handle that?”

  I quote hey_mamacita’s new chapter. “I’m ready for anything.”

  “Brandon?” Bec’s shimmying down from the loft. “Can I see you a second?”

  “What’s up?”

  “Outside. It’s about Dave.”

  “Sure‌…‌”

  She hurries me outside to the kiddie playground two RVs over and it’s so so beautiful, it’s like a snapshot of every summer we RVed together as kids, the same creaky swings and dented slide and monkey bars curved in a rainbow arch. You can almost taste the juice boxes and smooshed PBJs. She sits me down on the rusted merry-go-round and claps her hands on my shoulders.

  “Remember that time‌—‌”

  “‌—‌we exploded marshmallows in your mom’s microwave? Yes.”

  She sighs. “Remember two years ago, when Nick Fazzolari wanted to take me to Burning Man and when I told you about it you just did this with your eyebrows and then the next day I backed out?”

  “Yeahhh‌…‌”

  She gives me the eyebrows.

  “Aw, what?”

  “I’m ready for anything?”

  I tamp down a laugh. “So?”

  “This is quite the turnaround.”

  “Yeah, well, it happens.” I stretch out on the merry-go-round platform. “Sudden conversion. Road to Damascus. Bam!”

  “Uh-huh.” She climbs up next to me. “Tell me you know what you’re doing.”

  “It’s all fake. Relax.”

  “Fake.”

  “Yes.”

  “A hundred percent fake.”

  “Yes.” I think about Abel’s head in my lap. “‌…‌Eighty-five percent.”

  “Brandon!”

  “What?”

  “Just‌—‌proceed with caution.”

  “It’s Abel.”

  “Hence my concer
n.”

  “He’s awesome.”

  “Yeah, but‌—‌”

  “I thought you wanted me to find someone. You were like, ‘you can’t stay fucked up forever’‌—‌”

  “I know! I do. I want you to. Just‌…‌”

  She sighs and leans her head back on the metal bar, like she used to during our late-night campground games of Truth or Dare.

  “Just be careful,” she says. “Don’t lose yourself in this too fast.”

  “Whatever. Old Brandon was nothing but‌…‌tin and bones.” I crack up at my own stupid joke. “Who cares about him?”

  “I do,” she says softly.

  I feel a distant twinge because I’ve made her sad for some reason I can’t grasp but really I just want her to worship the stars with me which are bigger and brighter than I’ve ever seen, I guess because we’re deep in the heart of Texas like that song from freshman chorus said. I lift my finger to the sky and play connect the dots. “Becky,” I say, because I haven’t called her Becky in forever, and I love her and her hair is so pretty in the lavender light of the bug zappers.

  “Yes, Brandon.”

  “Father Mike was right.”

  She lifts her head. “Huh?”

  “God works in very, very mysterious ways.”

  “Oh boy.”

  “Every world, even this one, has its unexpected mercies.”

  “Easter sermon?”

  “Episode 1-16.”

  “Okay, weirdo.” She kisses me on the forehead. “Clearly you’re hopeless tonight.”

  She swings herself off the merry-go-round and gives it a shove before she scuffs away. I always forget how strong she is. The platform spins and rattles and the stars whirl into streaks and if hey_mamacita were writing this she’d say it was like the crash of the starship in the Castaway Planet pilot, the last thing they saw before they all clasped hands and said their brave goodbyes, and then woke up bloody and alive on a whole new planet.

  I picture hey_mamacita crosslegged on the platform beside me, the red heart on her ragged t-shirt flickering like a hundred tiny votives. Her dreadlocks are streaked with gray and she smells like clean dirt and salt water and her knife halo glints, ready to defend me. She rests her rough hands on mine like a different kind of mother, the kind who roller-derbies and lives in an electric blue cottage and writes campy redemptive porn about you, and she leans close and whispers in my ear: Don’t worry, she says. Even God ships Abandon.

  I wait for Father Mike, for a random earthquake to hit or an airplane part to fall from the sky and crush me but nothing happens, nothing nothing nothing and I feel pure liquid freedom shoot through all my veins at once.

  It’s set.

  Six days. First kiss. A fake kiss, but whatever. It’s a start.

  SWEET BABY MOSES ON A MOTORBIKE, says hey_mamacita.

  And I’m like, What have I done?

  hey_mamacita: THE CASTAWAY BALL CREED. a communal prayer by the church of abandon.

  sorcha doo: omg lol

  hey_mamacita: O MY FELLOW DISCIPLES

  i call on you now, as our blessed boys

  tango straight to the edge of their incandescent fate

  FOR THE LOVE OF ST. IGNATIUS LET US GIVE DESTINY A RUTHLESS FREAKING TURBOCHARGE

  sorcha doo: let us hold nightly abandon prayer circles lol

  a_rose_knows: Let us create a new Abandon playlist: 1. “Strange Powers” ~ Magnetic Fields 2. “Heartbeat Song” ~ Futureheads ‌…‌

  retro robot: Let us assail the universe all week long with the hottest dancefic our giant intellects can produce.

  whispering!sage: we shall make them make out on the dance floor like whoa

  amity crashful: omg to “such great heights.” that song is everything they choose to be.

  hey_mamacita: YEA, VERILY I SAY UNTO YOU, they shall dress up like sim and cadmus and give each other overpowering hotpants as they do each other’s makeup and sensuously button each other’s buttons.

  sorcha doo: **dead**

  retro robot: May our words take wing and lead them ever closer to each other as their wheels roll closer and closer to Long Beach. May they lock eyes over Ramen noodles in the RV and waltz in a Laundromat as their clothes entangle in the dryer.

  hey_mamacita: we ask this in the name of the Captain, the Android, and the Holy Spirit of One True Love.

  amity crashful: amen!!!

  retro robot: Amen.

  hey_mamacita: AMEN.

  CastieCon #4

  Long Beach, California

  Chapter Sixteen

  “Fellow fans and devoted followers,” Abel says to the camera, “welcome to Room 809 of the Long Beach Monarch Inn. Where right now, right in front of your very eyes, Brandon and I will perform an act of unprecedented intimacy.”

  “I found the mascara,” I say.

  “Perfect. Sit down, love. So tonight, obviously: the Castaway Ball. Which will change our lives forever, since the ballroom stage eight floors below us is now prepped and ready for two very very special guests‌—‌Sim and Cadmus themselves, David Darras and Ed Ransome. Bran‌…‌you okay?”

  I’m fanning myself. “Whew. Just feeling faint.”

  “You and every Cadsim shipper in this freakin’-damn hotel. So anyway, a sad and little-known fact about me and my friend here is that both of us missed our respective proms: Brandon tells me he was huddled miserably in his room, listening to Season 2 commentary tracks and nursing a pint of Cherry Garcia, while I on the other side of town was swearing oaths of eternal devotion in the blacklit basement of my ex-boyfriend, who in retrospect was so not worth it. So tonight we both get a do-over. And to make our evening an extra-large slice of teen-geek heaven, we’ve decided to give each other a little gift.”

  “Yep. So stay tuned, to this space‌…‌”

  “‌…‌because in less than a half-hour we’ll post again, and you’ll see exactly what happens when two ordinary queer boys from central PA become each other’s‌…‌” He swoops close to the camera. “‌…‌ultimate fantasy.”

  I say, “You first, Tin Man.”

  He says, “It will be my honor. Captain.”

  ***

  This is how you turn a boy into an android.

  First, on the long road from San Antonio to Long Beach, you read a half-dozen fics about this exact moment: when you’re in your hotel room and the Castaway Ball is a half-hour away and you’re standing in front of his black leather swivel chair, a confusion of dollar-store makeup pots and brushes spread out on the table. You act out details from the best stories. The way you dip the largest brush in the silvery powder and smooth it across his cheeks, and then lean in just a little to blow stray flecks off his nose. The way you gloss the comb with Amp-U Electric Blue gel, just enough to streak his white hair Sim-blue. You’re so gentle with the comb, it makes him think of when he was five and his mom would detangle his wet head while she told him his favorite bedtime story.

  Then it’s your turn.

  He’s faster with the hairspray and makeup brushes, just like the fics predicted. He makes your face a screenshot of Cadmus from the season finale’s last scene: bloodied and triumphant, right before he collapses from the crystal spider bite. Red lipstick blends with brown mascara for authentic blood spatters; he tousles and soft-spikes your hair to perfection and mists it with a spray that smells like apples. Then he swoops in close to draw the spider bite on your neck with an eyebrow pencil, like he does in this week’s installment of “How to Repair a Mechanical Heart,” except in the fic he’s also shirtless and his pecs are like a love poem engraved on his torso. Your heart whirs faster anyway.

  Time to get dressed.

  You both turn your backs, though you’ve spent the whole week fine-tuning these details together while you drove and cleaned the RV water tank and cooked franks and beans over an Arizona campfire. How many strategic rips to make in your tight black Cadmus t-shirt (four), how to make a Sim collar for his shirt (a strip from a white plastic butter tub
and two silver buttons), how to flip his six-dollar Goodwill wingtips from black to white (five coats of spray paint and a Hail Mary). You draw a breath and put on Cadmus. You shrug on Abel’s snakeskin jacket and buckle on the big fake-leather replica boots he bought at the Cleveland con, hoping he can’t hear the rustle of the newspaper you had to stuff in the toes. You listen to him curse his floppy collar and hum a Goldfrapp song while he yanks on his pants, and you think there’s no way he’ll transform his huge undeniable self into the trim elegant machine who makes your blood buzz in your veins.

  Then he turns you around, and wow.

  It’s perfect. The slicked blue hair. The shiny shoes. The fitted white pants and slim jacket he paid too much for at that fancy mall in Tucson. All of it = perfect.

  He. Is. Sim.

  And I’m in trouble.

  Abel looks at my boots‌—‌his boots‌—‌and scratches the back of his neck. “You, uh, look great,” he murmurs.

  “You too.”

  “Nah.”

  “No, I mean, the costume is‌—‌” Flawless. Revelatory. “Actually not too bad.”

  “Just put on my corsage,” he says. “Okay?”

  He reaches in his pocket and pulls out a small pod of white frosted plastic. He flips a tiny switch on the side, and a cool blue light glows off and on inside it.

  I brush my fingers across the plastic. “You bought a mechanical heart?”

  “At the Cleveland con. I was going to give it to you, but‌…‌”