out of him and for now that’s enough, making him okay with me again. “I told you, I’ll pay for it.”
“Sure.”
“Wherever you two want to go.”
“I appreciate it. Thanks.” I’m a total chickenshit in real life.
“Brandon?” says Mom.
“Yep.”
“Are you all right, sweetie? You sound—far away.”
“I am far away.”
“I know this is such a…confusing time for you, but—”
You have no idea. “I’m great, Mom. Don’t worry, okay?” She sounds so sad. “I’ll be home before you know it.”
“Maybe you’ll come to the St. Matt’s Funfair on the Fourth?”
“…Sure.” No. No.
“You’re a good kid, Brandon,” Dad says.
I’m not stupid. I hear how he says it: like a command, not a compliment. But his words work on me, independent of the tone, and I want it all back again. I want to be the good kid. I want to be the kid who never made them worry, the one who was safe in his bed while Nat was off at Rocky Horror throwing toast and making out with A.J. Brody. I want to believe what they believe, to feel Mom’s smiling eyes on me while I strum “Be Not Afraid” at the Folk Mass, to ask Dad for advice when he stops by my room to say goodnight. Except now my problem is I’m afraid I’m going to break my boyfriend’s heart. And even if I got brave enough to ask, I don’t think he’d sit down on my bed and ruffle my hair. He’d just turn off the light and walk away.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Our clothes tumble together in a dented old dryer at the Compass Creek Campground laundry room. Abel and I sit on molded plastic seats the color of pea soup and watch. I spot my Castaway Planet shirt and keep my eyes on that, watching it get tossed and battered and tossed again.
Nothing’s changed.
I tell myself that, over and over. Nothing’s changed. I’m here in a laundry room doing a quick load of darks with my boyfriend, and then we’re going to take a walk in the woods and play WordWhap with Bec and have late-night cherry Pop-Tarts in bed like we’ve done every night since Long Beach. I tell myself that, and then Michelle Arnott’s face pops up and I start breathing faster, bracing myself for all the other bad things to come back. It’s like that scene in the cave when Cadmus lit a match and the crystal spiders all started crawling out of secret dark places, hissing closer and closer.
I joggle Plastic Sim in my hand, lose myself in the machine’s warm mechanical hum. I want to disappear into Sim again. I want the simple ease of clean robot fantasies that fade out with kissing and don’t come with a crapload of complications.
“Brandon,” Abel says. “You sneaky bitch.”
“What?”
“You’re having a relapse.”
“Huh?”
“It all makes sense!” He waggles a finger at me like I’m a Scooby-Doo villain. “You were like a billion miles away at the go-kart track.”
“Sorry.”
“And I made you my world-famous kitchen-sink nachos and you completely failed to rhapsodize.”
“World-famous?”
“Well. Susannah likes them.”
I force a shrug. “Too spicy.”
“Surprise surprise.”
Five seats over, some grizzly guy in camo pants is chomping a chalupa and waiting for his afghan to dry. He gave us this look when we walked in. I think back to three or four years ago, when Dad’s remote stopped at Project Runway for five seconds. “What they do is their business,” he’d grumbled. “But why are they all so loud about it?”
“I’m okay,” I lie. “No relapse.”
“Want to talk about it?”
“No.”
“What’d what’s-her-face say to you at the hotel? Just tell me.”
“I don’t want to.” I slouch down in my seat. “I just want to forget her.”
He cracks into a two-pack of snack cakes. “It’s almost kind of funny. If you think about it. Cupcake?”
“No.”
“It doesn’t change anything.”
“Right! I know.”
“Like, have you ever seen Dumbo?”
“Uh…yeah. Ages ago.”
“Remember when he thought he could fly because he was holding the magic feather, and then one day he loses the feather and—what happens?”
“He panics.”
“You would remember that. He flies anyway, dumbass.”
“Right. The gritty realism of Disney.”
“Don’t be cynical. It’s ugly on you.” He pokes my belly button. I poke him back and then he’s tickling my ribs, swooping in to nibble a kiss on my neck.
“Abel—” I murmur.
“What?”
“That guy’s giving us looks.”
“So? He’s probably jealous.”
“He looks like a gun nut or something.”
“Oh, they’re all secretly closeted. Haven’t you heard?” He studies the guy’s profile and leans close to me, dropping his voice to a husky whisper. “Twenty years may have passed, but