“Father Mike would be so disappointed,” she tsks. “Your bodies are temples, guys…”
She says his name and my memory strains; he’s a book I read once in first grade and can only remember part of a picture, a snippet of a sentence. Snippet. Is that a real word? I lean my head back and swivel in the desk chair and feel like I’m falling but gently, like a million dandelion seeds after someone puffs them free.
“Oh babe—look look!” Abel pokes my ankle with the head of Plastic Sim. I’m in his red SEX BOMB shirt and it smells like his soap and sweat. “They’re already making macros from your shirtless picture.”
“Beautiful.”
“Abandon shippers are so much more awesome than Cadsim shippers.”
“We have very smart fans.” The ceiling is the most amazing shade of white.
“They love us, so they must be smart. OH! Oh, we should tell them how smart and awesome they are!”
“Shhhhhhh!” I sit up fast. The room whirs. “No no no no…”
“They wouldn’t know it was us. Bec joined with a sockpuppet—hey Rebecca? What’s our username, doll?”
Bec sighs. “brandonrox.”
“Perfecto.” Abel takes another drag and grins around a channel of smoke. He cracks his knuckles and starts typing and he’s so so fast, like I bet he’s the world’s very fastest hunt and pecker, and he reads out loud while he types.
“Dear Abandon shippers: you are the greatest! I’m friends with Bec and have met Brandon many times and you’re totally right, he is a neurotic mess…”
“Hey!”
“But hopefully soon he will see the error of his ways and let Abel get in his pants…Is that right? Is that even English?”
“So to speak.” I get down on the floor and crawl over to him.
“Are these words supposed to be moving?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Ugh. No more Spacemen.”
Bec turns over in the loft and switches my book light on and it glows like the pale third moon of Castaway Planet. Abel stabs out the Spaceman Straw and replaces it with a red lollipop from the bag of junk food we got at the 7-11. I unwrap my second cupcake and take a huge messy bite and oh God, I’ve never tasted anything so good. We bought so much incredible food. In the lobby at CastieCon we sold the signed action figure and the sweaty Augie Manners shirt to some trembling superfan who kissed us both on the lips and gave us a trading card of Cadmus and Sim on the mountaintop, so at this moment we are also five hundred dollars richer in addition to being high as the sun.
Abel refreshes the page.
amity crashfuclass="underline"
OMG do you still talk to them??
lone detective:
Are you for real?
retro robot:
*HEART. ATTACK. IMMINENT.* Do they know about us?
sorcha doo:
if they don’t are u going to tell them? pleeeeaaaasssssse don’t!!
hey_mamacita:
SHHHHH BACK OFF. LET THE MAN OR LADY SPEAK.
“Our fans. Are so. Amazing.” Abel flexes his fingers over the keyboard.
“Don’t be mean to them.”
“Are you kidding? They’ll love this.”
They don’t know. And I won’t tell. I’m sort of a shipper myself, to be honest.
sorcha doo:
lol what do u know about Brandon. can u give us more details
whispering!sage:
yes please. insider details. we will venerate you forever and bake you snickerdoodles. from scratch.
lone detective:
IF you’re legit. Ha.
Oh, I’m legit. Let’s see…
Abel looks me up and down.
Brandon’s eyes, close up, are the deep and mysterious blue of an ocean at midnight. His hair smells intoxicating, like freshly mown grass and dryer sheets. He is a man of exquisite intelligence and sensitivity, as evidenced by his music collection which is crammed with Dylan and Jeff Buckley and Elliott Smith and a buttload of other dead or half-dead singer-songwriter types. He irons his shorts, he reads vintage Ray Bradbury, and he likes plates with compartments because he can’t stand when food touches other food, which could be annoying but is actually kind of adorable.
Plus…he secretly thinks Cadmus is H-O-T-T.
He taps post comment and cringes. “Don’t kill me!”
I don’t care about the Cadmus thing though, the room is spinning and why why why did he type adorable, like, you wouldn’t type that about someone unless you thought it on some level, right?
“Does my hair really smell like grass?”
“And Bounce. I wouldn’t lie about something so important.”
He aims a sparkly shivery grin at me. I lean over him and refresh the page.
hey_mamacita:
I choose to believe you, mysterious stranger.
sorcha doo:
me too me too me toooo omg 5 million goosebumps rte now
lone detective:
Sounds a little too breathless for me, tbh.
thanks4caring:
what about Abel? Do you know him too?? DETAILS.
I drag the laptop up on my knee.
“What’re you doing?”
“Shh.” I’m already typing.
His shoulders bunch and he fakes a shudder. “Should I be scared?”
I narrow my eyes. “Terrified.”
I don’t know Abel as much as I know Brandon. However, I can tell you that he smells like cinnamon soap, he has beautiful greenish eyes like old bottles you find on the beach, and when he makes Mac-in-a-Minit it comes out extra cheesy. He gets excited about everything remotely cool or interesting, even a dumb belt buckle with a rooster on it, and he makes you excited about it too. He’s a great hugger and a compulsive matchmaker and he loves karaoke even though he can’t sing and he’s sweet and patient with his friends, even when they’re hopelessly screwed up. And reportedly Brandon thinks he looks amazing in his new snakeskin bomber jacket, even though he kind of made fun of it at first.
ALSO, here’s a scoop for those of you attending the Castaway Ball in Long Beach. THEY’RE GOING. Together. I heard Abel bought the tix before the trip even started.
“Wowww.”
Abel’s chin is on my shoulder and his finger is tracing my words in the comment box and the room is seriously tilting, his warm breath prickling my neck and setting off tiny electric shocks all through my arms and legs. My knee is touching the wreckage of a WordWhap game from earlier; the tiles are all jumbled now except for Abel’s winning word: R-A-P-T-U-R-E.
I tap post comment.
The community goes ballistic.
amity crashfuclass="underline"
I am smiling so hard I literally cannot feel my face now
sorcha doo:
i squeed so loud my mom came running she thought i was dying lol
hey_mamacita:
HOLY MOTHER OF PEARL EVERYONE PAINT YOURSELF A TECHNICOLOR PICTURE OF THE GLORIOSITY THAT AWAITS AT THE CASTAWAY BALL. IT IS JUST EXACTLY WHAT I PLANNED FOR THEM. i’m not even kidding you guys. chapter 18 of “how to repair a mechanical heart,” verbatim from my outline:
Brandon and Abel attend the ball together at the Long Beach con. By now Brandon has fully connected with his inner Cadmus and Abel has embraced his inner Sim, so they show up dressed as each other’s ultimate fantasy. Hot Abandon action on the dance floor ensues.
retro robot:
OMG mamacita that is eerie. I love you so much.