How to Repair a Mechanical Heart - By J. C. Lillis Page 0,52
let’s just keep it that way…
He’s already gearing up for it. I can tell. He can’t even look me in the eye.
“Brandon?”
Bec’s voice, muffled behind our door. Her room is down the hall. I lunge for the doorknob, relieved for something neutral to do. Abel retreats to the bathroom and turns the water on, full blast.
Bec is dressed in a way my parents would fully approve of (on this trip, anyway): hair twisted up, siren-seductive in the slinky black ‘70s number she picked up on Wednesday at a vintage shop in Phoenix. “This says I dance with gay boys, and possibly try to convert them,” Abel had grinned, holding the dress up to her chest as I admired his profile in the shop’s dim Tiffany lamplight. He picked great: I’ve never seen her look so comfortable in a dress. It’s nothing like that night at my house, when she stopped by post-prom in that stiff pink thing her mom had bought her and we ate Ben & Jerry’s and bitched about boys until two a.m.
“Wow.” She appraises my Cadmus transformation. The wow sounds complex.
“Look, I don’t need a lecture because nothing’s going to—”
“I don’t lecture. Since when do I lecture?”
“Never. But I know you think—”
“I’m the sidekick.” She fiddles with a pin in her hair. “Doesn’t matter what I think.”
“You’re not.”
“It’s okay. I just came to give you something.” She pulls me out in the hall with her and digs in her black sequined bag. Her eyelids are brushed with silvery shadow. I’m thinking a mini Sim bobblehead from the souvenir stand, or a funny haiku like the ones we used to make up together during study hall.
Instead, she pulls out a little foil packet.
“What’s this?” I back up.
“It’s a lubricated, extra-large, glow-in-the-dark—”
“I know what it is.”
“Just in case.”
“No. There’s no way.”
She slips the condom in my jacket pocket and gives it a pat.
“If your heart gets broken tonight,” she says, “I’m just down the hall.”
“Won’t you be…busy?”
“Oh no. As I found out today in the autograph line for the Henchmen, Dave is saving himself for marriage.”
“Really?”
She points a gun-finger at her head and blams. “I’m finally hundreds of miles from Mom and it’s like she picked him out.”
“Sorry.”
“He’s still adorable. Ugh!”
Our talk is all wry and surfacey and I kind of want to grab her by the shoulders, dare her to tell me what she thinks will happen tonight if I go through with the plan and kiss Abel on the dance floor.
But I don’t want her answer. Not really.
Dave comes loping around the corner. He’s got on a fashionably small brown suit and a Where the Wild Things Are t-shirt, and he’s crunching on cheddar popcorn. Bec elbows him playfully and grabs a handful. They look good together, friendly and fun and equal. Not like her parents; they’d make you tense, like a grizzly bear glowering at a crow that won’t stop cawing. I like Dave better now that I know he won’t be having sex with Bec tonight while I brood alone in the hotel room we splurged on, Abel snoring obliviously one bed over.
“Great costume, man,” Dave says. “You look intense.”
“Wait till you see Abel,” Bec tells him. She lands a soft punch on my shoulder. “Go get him.”
Chapter Seventeen
As soon as the four of us hit the lobby, we hear the Castaway Ball: thudding electro-pop, the din of half-drunk fans. I swallow hard, adjust my Cadmus shades. It’s like in the movies when someone’s about to be hanged in the square, and he hears the drums and the bloodthirsty crowd in the distance.
Forward march.
Abel jabs me with an elbow. “Ready for muchas smooches?” he snarks.
“Don’t sound so excited.”
“We’re going to make it a quick kiss, right? Leave the fans wanting more?”
“Sure.” I nod fast. “Right.” What does that mean?
“How many Abandon spies here tonight?”
“Um, three. At least.” A couple girls in Henchman robes giggle past us. “whispering!sage, amity crashful…hey_mamacita.”
“Aw. Your favorite.”
She could be in there already. She could be right on the other side of the ballroom door. I try to message her telepathically. Please please send me good vibes. Help tonight not be a total spacewreck.
My phone goes off. HOME CALLING. Not now. I wait till it stops and then I text back: ALLS WELL WILL CALL 2MORROW LOVE U.
Abel slips our silver tickets to a girl in a red-and-black striped suit and red Henchman contacts. She geeks out over our costumes, winds on our glow-in-the-dark wristbands, and passes us the question paddle Abel