How to Repair a Mechanical Heart - By J. C. Lillis Page 0,66
for senior class president, Michelle had to run for freshman rep too, and with this stupid Free Goldfish for All platform.” She narrows her eyes. “I guess it was a short leap from there to here.”
“Shut up, Missy,” Michelle mutters.
“Unfortunately, what she didn’t seem to get,” says Miss Maxima. “was that creating a fake fan shrine to her sister’s arch-rivals just might have larger repercussions than pissing me off.”
Under the table, Abel’s nails bite the back of my hand.
“I think you owe them an explanation, Chelle.” Maxima leans back. “Excuse me: hey_mamacita.”
Abels’ hand grips mine harder. I yank it away. This doesn’t make sense. None of it does. It’s a joke, a mean trick. She got this kid to play-act and later she’ll slip her a fifty while they snicker about our ashen faces, and when we get back to the RV the real hey_mamacita will have posted. So so sorry Abandonites, family emergency. I’m BACK! Here’s the next chapter.
“Don’t you have anything to say to them?” Maxima swirls her yogurt around. “I mean, you and your minions pretty much used these two pathetic souls like paper dolls and now look at them. They think they’re in love. See, this is why my FJ hates real-person-shipping; the fourth wall could crumble anytime, and then you’ve got a huge embarrassing mess on your—”
“Sorry,” Michelle whispers.
“That’s all?” says Maxima.
Michelle’s eyes flick up at us, just for a second.
My breath catches in my throat.
Then she shoves her chair back, throws her balled napkin at Maxima, and rushes for the exit.
“Close your mouths, you two. You’ll catch flies.” Miss Maxima licks yogurt off her spoon. “I’ve done you a service. You deserve to know the truth. Especially since you devoted so much of your valuable time to critiquing our fic this year.” She taps the spoon against her lip. “What did you say about mine again?—Oh, right: Hacky and derivative…”
She’s saying more, but I’m not listening. I’m pushing my chair back, stumbling through the maze of tables after Michelle Arnott.
***
She’s good at disappearing.
I check the gift shop, the pool, the corridors—everywhere I might hide if I had to run away. Nothing. Then I start checking stupid places. The men’s room. The slim space between the wall and the vending machine. The more places I check, the longer I can put off the full truth seeping in. hey_mamacita. Not real. Never was.
A joke.
I step up on the little wooden bridge that arches over the huge clear koi pond in the lobby. The blue and gray tiles on the floor of the pond are littered with pennies, dimes, quarters; my father would say That’s a lot of money to throw away on wishes. I’m jittering my fingers on the wooden railing, watching a pure gold koi get jostled by his big spotted pondmates, when a small dark silhouette ripples beside me. I hear the crunch of a plastic snack bag, catch a glimpse of an amber ring.
Now that she’s here, I think about running. But I don’t.
“Gummy bear?” she says.
I whisper, “How old are you?”
“Guess.”
“You look twelve.”
“I’m seventeen. But thanks. That never gets old.”
I shake my head. I can’t look at her. “Your profile picture…”
“Some random artist. I was in Baltimore last year and she let me take photos at Artscape. Gorgeous, right? I hate dreads and neck tats in general but on her…?” The bag crinkles and she says her next line with her mouth full. “If you’re going to be fake, at least be a badass, right?”
My tongue goes numb. I want to sit but my legs won’t move.
“You’re not going to sue me, are you?” she says. “I don’t think that’s legal.”
“Why would you do this?”
“You want me to like, explore my psychology?”
“Yeah. Please.”
“What am I, a Bond villain?” She drops a gummy bear into the pond and watches it sink to the bottom. “I don’t know, Brandon. It started out like, just making fun of Missy and her whole stupid shipping thing in the most ridiculous elaborate way, and then actual people started joining the community—like, who knew you had fans for real?”
“Thanks.”
“And so they like worshipped my fic and they started calling me their fearless leader and no one’s ever done that before because Missy always butts her way to the front of everything. It was like crack. Just having fans, you know?—Yeah, you do. So I just kept going bigger and bigger and deeper and deeper with it and—you know where this is going, right? Standard drunk-on-my-own power narrative?”