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“You know what?” he says. “I’m done. I’m done trying to help you.”
“Fantastic.”
“Be a bitter loveless loser the rest of your life.”
“I will.”
“Die alone in the back of a Burger King in one of your ugly plaid shirts.”
“Looking forward to it.”
He waits about five more seconds.
“You can go anytime,” I say.
He clomps out of the Sunseeker, and the door clangs shut.
He’s giving you an out, buddy. God’s working through him.
From the window above the sink, I watch him stalk through the parking lot. Bec intercepts him by a green minivan, and he shakes his head and gestures toward me before he strides off in the opposite direction.
I lift the dishes out of the hot rinse. Flecks of hot chili and salsa still cling to the plate Abel microwaved last night, the daisy-patterned one Mom used to use for our after-school graham crackers and Nilla wafers. I grab the sponge and start scrubbing again, and when that doesn’t work I throw the sponge in the sink and attack the barnacles of crud with my fingernails, scratching at them hard until the plate is smooth as Sim’s skin, and Abel’s mess is glugging down the drain.
***
“Don’t do it, Sim. Don’t you dare!”
Nighttime. While Abel chomps on ci
“Step back, Captain. I refuse to hurt you.” David Darras is amazing in this scene, so intense that his Georgia accent bleeds through and smudges the R in hurt. “Step away, and let me save myself.”
I remember the last time I watched this, two weeks before The Talk with my parents. Dad wandered into the living room with his bonsai shears, watched until Cadmus grabbed Sim’s face, and gently shook his head and walked back out.
“You made a choice!” Cadmus is yelling now, wind whipping through his spiky hair. “What about your whole ‘I-need-to-be-human’ deal?”
“No one told me what doubt was like. What fear was like. What it was like to know how much I still don’t know. It is extraordinarily difficult, Captain.”
Cadmus snorts. “You bet your ass it’s hard.” I roll my eyes. Cadsim shippers love that line. “But look: I’d rather live two minutes as a real person than a hundred years as a robot. Was it really all that perfect before?”
“I was perfect, yes. Perfect by design.”
“Someone else’s design. Someone else’s idea of perfect.” Cadmus grips Sim’s shoulders. “Now you get to find out who’s really in there!”
“Brandon?”
I jump. Bec’s cool fingertips brush my arm.
“Sorry. He’s snoring down there,” she whispers. She’s wearing a black Hello Kitty shirt with the neckband cut off and I smell her vanilla mint toothpaste. “Can I sleep here?”
I shut off Castaway and yank my earbuds out. “It’s not much quieter.”
“That’s okay.”
I shove over as much as I can, and she squeezes in next to me. We used to do this a lot. First when we were kids, curled up in her pink plastic playhouse with our stuffed-raccoon baby between us, and then when we were older and she’d make up some sleepover-at-Ashley’s story to sneak in my window and stay with me. We’d whisper forever about her sister’s creepy boyfriend and what superpower we’d want and whether Bob Dylan was amazing (my position) or overrated (hers), and then when the talking was over I’d give her a cheek kiss and fall asleep with my hand on her soft belly, and she thought I wouldn’t push for more because I was a gentleman. At least I thought that’s what she thought.
Bec’s got Plastic Lagarde with her. She’s made her a white minidress from a fast-food napkin and a twist-tie; the dress looks weird with Zara Lagarde’s buzz-cut and biceps. To the soundtrack of Abel’s snores, she hooks Lagarde’s arm through Plastic Sim’s and walks the action figures up my chest, the world’s most improbable wedding march.
“It’s cozy up here,” she says.
“I have a book light if you want.”
She smiles. “I’m not afraid of the dark anymore.”
“Right.”
Her face is so close I can see the tiny faint freckles on her lips, shiny with a clear coat of white-cherry gloss.
Go ahead. One kiss. Just keep it tame. How do you know you don’t like it if you’ve never tried?
“You can stop waiting, you know,” she says.
“For what?”
“For God to strike you down.”
“Can I?” I fiddle with Lagarde’s tiny machete. “Apparently he’s sent assassins.”
I force a grin. She doesn’t smile back.
“Abel said you had a fight,” she says.
“It was nothing.”
“You have to talk to him, Brandon. Be honest.”
“Like you’re honest with your mom?”
“That’s different.”
“What do you want me to say to him? ‘Oh, see, I have this secret tormented i
“Abel wouldn’t hate you.”
“Yes he would. Trust me.”
Below us on the couch, Abel shifts onto his back in his sleep. His knees flop open and his arm drops behind his head, exposing a slice of white belly.
“How did you get to be an atheist?” I ask her.
She snorts. “That’s a weird question.”
“I want to know.”
“Well, there was this contest to see who could not believe in God the fastest, and I won.”
“Okay.”
“They gave me a tiara and an Unbeliever of the Month plaque.”
“I’m serious.” I prop Sim’s hands on Lagarde’s shoulders. “How did you decide not to believe everything Father Mike says?”
“Like, the stuff about helping the poor and not being assholes to each other?”
“You know which stuff I mean.”
She shrugs and handstands Lagarde on my chest. “I don’t know. It was easy. I was like, skeptical in the womb.”
“But what if you weren’t? What if you start out believing it because that’s how your brain works, and then you can’t completely shut it off?”
“Oh, well, then you’re screwed.”
“Thanks.”
“Kidding.” Lagarde tips over. “I guess you’ll just have to be braver than me.”
“I am screwed.”
“Oh, stop.”
“Why do boys have to exist?”
“You could always date the Phillie Phanatic.”
“Oh my God.”
“Remember your crush—”
“Yes. Shut it.”
“That would be an abomination.” She molds Plastic Sim in an evangelical pose, both arms skyward. “An abomination in the eyes of the Lord.”
I grin. “Think of the children.”
“If everyone married a mascot, we’d all go extinct.”
“Marriage is one man and one woman,” I huff, “not one man and one phanatic.”
She erupts in quiet giggles. So do I, but I’m queasy. Her phone chirps in the pocket of her plaid pajama pants.
“That’s your mom,” I say.
“Oh, piss off.”
“She hears your ungodly—”
“—Eep! No way.” She covers her mouth.
“What?”
“It’s from that Dave guy. With the Cookie Monster shirt?”
And the stupid hair, I almost say, but I keep my mouth shut. “Why’s he texting you?”
“Because I’m awesome? Listen: ‘You definitely cool girl. Me going to Atlanta con. Me want to know if me see you there.’ That’s kind of cute. He even spelled definitely right.” She starts texting back. “Me see you there. You bring COOKIE.”
Status: System disrupted. Remove foreign object to stabilize.
“You don’t want to do that, do you?” I say.
“What?”
“Hook up with some guy you met at a convention?”
“What should I hold out for?” she teases. “A sham marriage to my best friend?”
I flick her shoulder. “Ideally.”
She presses Sim’s face to my cheek and makes a smoochy sound. I kiss the top of her head. I try not to, but I picture her in this position with that Lego-haired creep Dave, his lips lingering on her hair and his hands roaming the gentle curves of her body, doing all the stuff my hands would never do. My Bec. Not mine anymore. I guess she never was.