It’s mine. My phone. It vibrates across the desk and I catch it just before it goes over. Father Mike? The weird thought clutches me. Just for a second. Then I pick up and hear: “OMG MY VAG IS ON FIRE!”
I giggle. “What?”
“Sweet merciful baby Moses, San Antonio is the city of magical love witchcraft!” A big knot loosens inside me. I drop back down in the desk chair. I picture Abel reading off his phone in a corner booth while Bec snort-laughs and stirs her iced tea. “I legit peed myself you guys and my heart went supernova and how do these boys even exist??”
“I take it they liked our pool video?”
“You haven’t checked?”
I glance at the screen. “Been busy.”
“doomerang already coughed up a flashfic called ‘I Think You Know.’”
“Can’t wait.”
“amity crashful counted how many times we’ve called each other ‘baby’ this week—did you know we hit 15 already?”
“Impressive.” I lick BBQ dust off my fingers. “We must be in love.”
“Then Miss Maxima and a couple of her minions came over from the Cadsim fanjournal to bitch about how disgusting and intrusive real-person shipping is, and they all got banned, it was hilarious…OH! And.”
“Ye-es?”
“There’s a San Antonio spy now.”
“Who?”
“retro robot. I love her! She wrote that one where we’re nineteenth-century vampire hunters? She’s driving all the way from Tulsa so we have to ramp it up at the Augie Manners Q&A.”
“Okay.”
“I’m warning you now: There might have to be back-rubbing.”
“Maybe even a public hug.”
He gasps. “I’m shocked, Tin Man. Shocked. What’s next?”
“Depraved fornications.”
“You know what?”
“What?”
“I like this new Brandon.”
I blow crumbs off the keyboard and scroll up to the start of hey_mamacita’s chapter, so I can read it all over again.
“Me too,” I say.
Chapter Fourteen
Augie Manners plays the lovable stoner every single time he’s onscreen—from Castaway Planet to those old burger commercials where his catchphrase was “Dude, can I have your pickle?” When he scuffs onstage for his Q&A there are zero surprises. Surf-shop t-shirt, sleepy smile, dumb fisherman hat hiding raggedy red-blond hair. His cargo pants look slept in and his weird rope sandals are almost certainly made of hemp. If he was in a comic strip, squiggly lines of visible weed fumes would follow him everywhere.
He throws his arms wide open. “Hel-loooooooo San Antonio!”
Cheers and wolf-whistles from the girls. Abel and I shoot we’ve-got-a-secret looks at each other.
“Wooooo! Yeah! Dutchie is in la casa, so let the party commence!” Augie Manners lifts his arms above his head and cracks his knuckles one by one, just like he does on the show. There’s a firefly-flash of cameras. “Oh, wow, you guys—seriously, are you Castaway Planet fans, for real? I was expecting geeks out the yin-yang but you guys are hot. Lorda-mercy!”
He tosses his dirty hat in the crowd and starts in on some story about a Riverwalk bar that has eighty-six kinds of beer, and I have to smile a little. I hated the Dutch Jones character for the first half of Season 1 when he was just crude comic relief, but he got pretty interesting with the OCD and the photographic memory and the talent for peacemaking, which kind of came out of nowhere but somehow made perfect sense.
I can’t focus on him for the first five or six questions, though. Because Abel is leaning close to me, whispering Castaway Planet lines in my ear so it looks like we’ve got secrets.
“You ready to take it a teeny bit further?” he murmurs. Some girl just asked Manners about that episode where Xaarg makes Dutchie walk on his hands the whole time. He’s eagerly reenacting, his hemp sandals waggling in the air.
“Yeah,” I whisper back.
“You sure? No imminent freakouts?”
“All clear.”
“You should know the risks ahead of time.”
“Of what?”
He sighs. “My sexual charisma.”
“Give me the disclaimers.”
“Well, side effects may include dry mouth, nausea, dizziness, blood clots, cardiac arrhythmia, dia-bee-tus—”
“Only in people over fifty. I heard.”
He narrows his eyes. “Would I wound you like that?”
“You might.”
“That’s it. I’m going to whisper something highly provocative.”
I bump him with my hip. “Go ahead.”
“It may reorder your entire universe.”
“I’m ready.”
He touches his lips to the rim of my ear. “Duuude. Can I have your pickle?”
I snort. I can’t help it.
“Shh!” he hisses. “Don’t laugh!”
“Don’t make me.”
“You think retro robot saw?”
“I don’t know.” I crane my neck.
“Zzt! You’ll make her suspicious.” He wraps an arm around my shoulders and murmurs, “Just enjoy my attentions while you can.”
“Oh, so this is a privilege?”
“I’ll have you know I’m in high demand.”
“Right, right.” I flick his hair. “Who wouldn’t love the cockatoo version of Laurence Olivier?”
He giggles and pulls me closer. I tense automatically, but then I let myself relax, muscle by muscle.
It’s nice. Really nice.
“Oh by the way, guys and dolls—I brought a present for whoever’s got the best question today.” Augie Manners holds up this grubby burlap hippie sack with a happy face embroidered on it. “So lemme hear from someone sexy now—yeah! You in the Xaarg shirt.”
A chubby guy with a black samurai braid lowers his question paddle. “Yes, in your opinion, are the writers purposefully ratcheting up the tension between Cadmus and Xaarg as a commentary on the futility of prayer in the face of an indifferent god, or is the conflict actually going somewhere?”
I don’t hear the answer. Abel’s hand has slowly migrated down my back and now it’s in this scary normal teenage-boyfriend place, fingertips tucked in my back pocket. He leaves it there for one more question and then two more, adding little whispers in my ear about retro robot and great photo ops while the stubborn enemy part of my brain tries to talk my body into freaking out.
My hands stay dry. I slip one into the slim back pocket of his dark jeans.
Brandon, who are you? Father Mike, but faded now. I don’t recognize you, bud.
hey_mamacita answers for me: I’m your worst nightmare, Brandon said, waving the dagger like an outlaw. I am a VIGILANTE OF LOVE.
Father Mike tries to say something else, but I paper right over his face with hey_mamacita’s silly Father X—the craggy sunken cheeks, the feral teeth. A fun villain, the kind that’s good for cheap scares and cheaper Halloween costumes, powerless once the book is closed or the TV’s switched off.
He keeps quiet.
A giddy laugh throbs in the back of my throat. It’s like Episode 2-14, the scene where Sim first got his evolution chip. His skin went transparent; all his nerve endings crackled with white-hot sparks and his silver eyes sizzled into tropical blue and he threw his head back and let out a full-body wail I used to think was all about pain, but now I know better.
I curl an arm around Abel’s waist.
“Let me ask the question.”
My voice doesn’t sound like mine. He startles.
“What?
“The question. I’ll ask Manners.”
“You want to?”
“I do.”
Abel whistles. “Look at you, all bold and brazen.”
I grab the question paddle and wave it around. Augie Manners calls on me right away. He locks eyes with me when I ask the question about the cave episode, and I’m not even nervous—it’s as easy as a vocal warmup with the Timbrewolves, the lip trills and scales I can do in my sleep.