How to Repair a Mechanical Heart - By J. C. Lillis Page 0,36

shoves me back a little. “Do it! Get it all out, baby. Maybe then you’ll‌—‌”

I don’t hear the rest. I run right at him, ramming him with my whole upper body until his legs give out and we’re falling together and when his back hits the pavement it sends a rude jolt through my body: oh God I’m on top of him what do I do? How do I fight? I’ve only seen it on TV. I don’t want to punch him, Dad says one punch can kill someone if you know the right spot and I don’t but what if I hit it by accident? Abel lets out this nasty snicker then, like I’m some pathetic little kid, and my whole body lights up with rage and I feel my hand shoot out and Abel grabs his face, twisting away from me.

“Owww!” He shouts at the pavement. “Son of a bitch!”

My hand tingles. Blood trickles between his fingers.

“You slapped my nose, dipwad!”

“I‌—‌”

I made someone bleed.

“Son of a bitch!”

He kicks my leg with his heavy boot, hard. I kick him back. He lunges at me and we roll over and over, scratching and pulling, a cartoon cloud of elbows and hands and knees. He won’t give in and neither will I so we scuffle like that on the pavement until we hear the Sunseeker door swing open somewhere behind us, and Bec yells: “Guys. GUYS.”

I roll off him. He shoves me once more. I spit out gravel.

“What’re you doing?” Bec says.

“Nothing,” he says.

“Nothing,” I say.

We glare at each other.

Bec studies us, shaking her head. She’s changed: cutoffs and a red soccer shirt. She sits down on the bottom step and crosses her legs sloooowly, like she’s teaching a preschool class how it’s done.

“In case you’re interested,” she says, “I know what that Hell Bells thing is.”

The fight blips out of my head. We scramble over, attack her with what and how.

“Dave and I did some research after dinner. He was really sweet and concerned, Brandon, so I think you can cross him off the America’s Most Wanted list.” She takes out her phone, starts navigating. “Membership’s closed right now. I had to write to this hey_mamacita woman to join. I convinced her I had inside information on you. My icon’s your senior picture, Brandon; do you think that’s too on the nose?”

“Bec,” I say.

“Yes, Brandon.”

“Tell us.”

Her eyes flick across the little screen. “What would you like to know?”

“Are they just hating?” says Abel. “Or are they like, actively plotting?”

“Neither, you idiots.”

She holds the phone out to face us. I see the Gothic header first‌—‌THE CHURCH OF ABANDON‌—‌and then a tagline that says “Because love is like the Hell Bells: it comes when you least expect it.” Between the header and tagline is a doctored screencap from one of our first vlog posts. Abel’s hand is on my shoulder and we’re gazing at each other, halos bursting saintlike from our heads and a blue heart blinking between us.

“They’re shipping you.”

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