No guy ever called me awesome before, so the lies started pretty much the second I hopped up his marble front steps. I told him I’d been out for six years instead of two weeks. My parents were one hundred percent fine with me, just like his. Aftershocks from twelve years of Catholic school? None at all, and I’m certainly not a freak who has panic attacks in Dairy Queen bathrooms after a guy tries to kiss me. I even invented a tragic heartbreak to shield me from his matchmaking: some pre-med sex god named Zander, who had me dreaming of a picket fence and two adopted kids before he dumped me for a bartender and ruined me indefinitely for all other men.
If Abel found out about the real me, he’d start gazing down from a lofty throne of pity, so I have to be careful every second I’m around him. I keep it cool and mysterious, like Sim. His dry little comments. His ease in his own synthetic skin. His decision to cut out his evolution chip, so he could enjoy nice safe friendships without all the terrors of falling in love.
I wind my mechanical heart and open his door.
***
“You ready, partner?” he says.
“We’re unveiling now?”
“We have to. The girls’ve been trolling us all morning. Wait’ll you see.”
Abel and I hunch in front of his laptop at the glass kitchen table, next to a stack of cruddy glasses and plates I very much want to scrub. He’s crunching Cookie Crisp from a china bowl that probably cost more than my car. His limited-edition Plastic Cadmus grips the pocket of Abel’s robe with his super-ripped hero arms and I side-eye him; even three inches tall, Cadmus is a smug bastard. No one’s home besides us, as usual. Abel’s dad’s at Mercy fitting someone with a new heart, his mom and little sister are in Boston on their book tour, and his brother Jacob’s at some school in New York for musical geniuses with bad attitudes.
“Don’t worry. You look lovely.” Abel slides on his shades with the red steel frames, an exact replica of Cadmus’s. “You’ve got that cute all-American khakis-and-flip-flops thing going on. You’re like Volleyball Ken.”
I sip my water. “Now with Eye-Rolling Action.”
“Do I have sex hair?”
“Ew.”
“Brandon, seriously. Wait’ll you meet Kade. Best five days of my life!”
“Please spare every detail.”
“Cynicism gives you blackheads. Studies show.”
I tip my chin at the laptop. “Let’s go.”
He grins and hits record.
“Bonjour, fellow Casties.” He musses his hair and turns on his best news-anchor purr. “It’s your two favorite recappers, coming at you live from my kitchen on May the twenty-ninth, a day that will forever live in infamy. Say hello to my distinguished fellow commentator, Brandon—”
“Hi guys.”
“—currently obscuring his cute little abs with the baggiest Castaway Planet t-shirt in recorded history.”
“It’s comfy.”
“What are you hiding under there?”
“Secrets. Many secrets.”
Abel rips off his shades and cocks an eyebrow. I let out a snort. I picture a handful of strangers watching this at home, thinking my secret is cool and mysterious like a jagged scar across my chest, and not dull and heavy like I gave up church but not the angst.
“Anyway, guys.” Abel pops one last Cookie Crisp. “Today we unveil that Super-Secret Summer Spectacular we’ve been teasing y’all about, ‘cause we know how our fifteen fans like, follow our every move and have shrines and shit.”
“My shrines are bigger,” I grin.
“Whatever. Here’s the deal. You real fans who come here and watch our episode recaps every week are A-plus, right, ‘cause you love Castaway Planet as much as we do and you’ve got more than ten brain cells to your name. But as we all know, there’s one faction of the fandom…”
“One very vocal faction.”
“…that is, and we say this with love, STONE COLD CRACKERS WITH A SIDE ORDER OF CRAZY FRIES. I am referring, of course, to—”
He plunks Plastic Cadmus in front of the camera. I do the same with Plastic Sim.
“—Cadsim shippers.”
I perform a cartoony shudder.
“Guys, I don’t know if you’re following our ginormous flamewar with Miss Maxima and her minions at the Cadsim fanjournal,” sighs Abel. “The slash fiction was bad enough, but these rejects have been calling it canon since the crystal-spider-cave episode, and that we cannot abide. Look, maybe it’s semi-tempting to think they had secret sexytimes when they’re stuck in the cave and there’s that ‘meaningful look’ and the fadeout, but people? Captain James P. Cadmus is a blazing hot male specimen who can kill a sixty-pound alien spider with his bare hands, and Sim is a freakin’-damn ANDROID—”
“Who’s way too good for Cadmus.”
“That statement is too ludicrous to acknowledge,” Abel huffs, petting Plastic Cadmus’s plastic head. “Anyway, our feud with the crazypants Cadsim girls? Officially ends this summer. We at the Screw Your Sensors vlog have made a wager. Hold up the CastieCon tickets, Bran.”
I fan them out. Abel explains the bet, which basically goes like this: we hit the five tour stops the Castaway Planet convention makes this summer, go to the Q&As with all five main cast members plus the showrunner, and ask them what they think Cadmus and Sim did in the cave scene after the fadeout. If a majority of them agree that no hookup happened, the Cadsim girls have to run an all-caps disclaimer on every one of their fanfics, forever.
“Brandon, tell them what it says.” Abel slides me a printout.
“PLEASE NOTE: A legitimate Cadsim hookup has been definitively disproven by the cast and creator of Castaway Planet, as well as professional Internet gods Brandon Page and Abel McNaughton. I freely admit I am a dingbat with zero respect for canon or for Cadmus or Sim as characters; I just want to see hot boys get it on. Read at your own risk.”
“That’s right. However, on the extreme off chance we lose? Miss Maxima, the Queen Bitch mod of the Cadsim community, will select a scene from one of their rotten little fanfics and we’ll act it out on camera—”
“—Within. Reason.” Why did I say yes to this?
“Right. Strictly first base, pervs. We’re gay but not for each other.” He scrolls through the Cadsim fic archive on his phone. “For instance, we won’t do the one where Dr. Lagarde plants a ‘sex chip’ in Sim’s brain and he and Cadmus do it in a hammock.”
“For crap’s sake.” I facepalm.
“Nor will we perform the futurefic where they’re back on Earth and get stuck in an elevator during a blackout.”
“Or any other elevator fic.”
“Or hurt/comfort fic.”
“Or alternate-universe steampunk fic.”
“So we better make damn sure we come out on top.”
“Sim likes the top.”
It just shoots out. I feel my ears redden; when I slip and say something flirty, it sounds like an elephant trying to bark.