Time to get dressed.

You both turn your backs, though you’ve spent the whole week fine-tuning these details together while you drove and cleaned the RV water tank and cooked franks and beans over an Arizona campfire. How many strategic rips to make in your tight black Cadmus t-shirt (four), how to make a Sim collar for his shirt (a strip from a white plastic butter tub and two silver buttons), how to flip his six-dollar Goodwill wingtips from black to white (five coats of spray paint and a Hail Mary). You draw a breath and put on Cadmus. You shrug on Abel’s snakeskin jacket and buckle on the big fake-leather replica boots he bought at the Cleveland con, hoping he can’t hear the rustle of the newspaper you had to stuff in the toes. You listen to him curse his floppy collar and hum a Goldfrapp song while he yanks on his pants, and you think there’s no way he’ll transform his huge undeniable self into the trim elegant machine who makes your blood buzz in your veins.

Then he turns you around, and wow.

It’s perfect. The slicked blue hair. The shiny shoes. The fitted white pants and slim jacket he paid too much for at that fancy mall in Tucson. All of it = perfect.

He. Is. Sim.

And I’m in trouble.

Abel looks at my boots‌—‌his boots‌—‌and scratches the back of his neck. “You, uh, look great,” he murmurs.

“You too.”

“Nah.”

“No, I mean, the costume is‌—‌” Flawless. Revelatory. “Actually not too bad.”

“Just put on my corsage,” he says. “Okay?”

He reaches in his pocket and pulls out a small pod of white frosted plastic. He flips a tiny switch on the side, and a cool blue light glows off and on inside it.

I brush my fingers across the plastic. “You bought a mechanical heart?”

“At the Cleveland con. I was going to give it to you, but‌…‌”

This is better.

He hesitates a second, and then he quickly undoes a few of his shirt buttons. Now he’s staring past me, at the framed ocean painting on the wall behind us.

“Just hook it to the undershirt.” He blinks fast. “Actually, it’s tricky. If you can’t get it I can‌…‌”

“I got it.” I catch the little metal hooks into Abel’s shirt and button him back up, which is the exact opposite of what I want to do with those buttons right now and oh God why did I suggest this?

Stupid Augie Manners and his stupid Spaceman Straws.

We can’t go through with this. We can’t fake-kiss on the dance floor tonight like we planned all week. He’ll feel me melt into his embrace and hungrily devour his lips like in fic, and when we break apart under the swirls of disco starlight he’ll know it’s not fic for me, not anymore. And everything will be ruined. He’ll tilt his Sim head with lighthearted pity and I’ll get one of those sweet and mortifying speeches about how someday, I’ll find a guy who really appreciates me and how I’m such a great friend, let’s just keep it that way‌…‌

He’s already gearing up for it. I can tell. He can’t even look me in the eye.

“Brandon?”

Bec’s voice, muffled behind our door. Her room is down the hall. I lunge for the doorknob, relieved for something neutral to do. Abel retreats to the bathroom and turns the water on, full blast.

Bec is dressed in a way my parents would fully approve of (on this trip, anyway): hair twisted up, siren-seductive in the slinky black ‘70s number she picked up on Wednesday at a vintage shop in Phoenix. “This says I dance with gay boys, and possibly try to convert them,” Abel had grinned, holding the dress up to her chest as I admired his profile in the shop’s dim Tiffany lamplight. He picked great: I’ve never seen her look so comfortable in a dress. It’s nothing like that night at my house, when she stopped by post-prom in that stiff pink thing her mom had bought her and we ate Ben & Jerry’s and bitched about boys until two a.m.

“Wow.” She appraises my Cadmus transformation. The wow sounds complex.

“Look, I don’t need a lecture because nothing’s going to‌—‌”

“I don’t lecture. Since when do I lecture?”

“Never. But I know you think‌—‌”

“I’m the sidekick.” She fiddles with a pin in her hair. “Doesn’t matter what I think.”

“You’re not.”

“It’s okay. I just came to give you something.” She pulls me out in the hall with her and digs in her black sequined bag. Her eyelids are brushed with silvery shadow. I’m thinking a mini Sim bobblehead from the souvenir stand, or a funny haiku like the ones we used to make up together during study hall.

Instead, she pulls out a little foil packet.

“What’s this?” I back up.

“It’s a lubricated, extra-large, glow-in-the-dark‌—‌”

“I know what it is.”

“Just in case.”

“No. There’s no way.”

She slips the condom in my jacket pocket and gives it a pat.

“If your heart gets broken tonight,” she says, “I’m just down the hall.”

“Won’t you be‌…‌busy?”

“Oh no. As I found out today in the autograph line for the Henchmen, Dave is saving himself for marriage.”

“Really?”

She points a gun-finger at her head and blams. “I’m finally hundreds of miles from Mom and it’s like she picked him out.”

“Sorry.”

“He’s still adorable. Ugh!”

Our talk is all wry and surfacey and I kind of want to grab her by the shoulders, dare her to tell me what she thinks will happen tonight if I go through with the plan and kiss Abel on the dance floor.

But I don’t want her answer. Not really.

Dave comes loping around the corner. He’s got on a fashionably small brown suit and a Where the Wild Things Are t-shirt, and he’s crunching on cheddar popcorn. Bec elbows him playfully and grabs a handful. They look good together, friendly and fun and equal. Not like her parents; they’d make you tense, like a grizzly bear glowering at a crow that won’t stop cawing. I like Dave better now that I know he won’t be having sex with Bec tonight while I brood alone in the hotel room we splurged on, Abel snoring obliviously one bed over.

“Great costume, man,” Dave says. “You look intense.”

“Wait till you see Abel,” Bec tells him. She lands a soft punch on my shoulder. “Go get him.”

Chapter Seventeen

As soon as the four of us hit the lobby, we hear the Castaway Ball: thudding electro-pop, the din of half-drunk fans. I swallow hard, adjust my Cadmus shades. It’s like in the movies when someone’s about to be hanged in the square, and he hears the drums and the bloodthirsty crowd in the distance.

Forward march.

Abel jabs me with an elbow. “Ready for muchas smooches?” he snarks.

“Don’t sound so excited.”

“We’re going to make it a quick kiss, right? Leave the fans wanting more?”

“Sure.” I nod fast. “Right.” What does that mean?

“How many Abandon spies here tonight?”

“Um, three. At least.” A couple girls in Henchman robes giggle past us. “whispering!sage, amity crashful‌…‌hey_mamacita.”

“Aw. Your favorite.”

She could be in there already. She could be right on the other side of the ballroom door. I try to message her telepathically. Please please send me good vibes. Help tonight not be a total spacewreck.

My phone goes off. HOME CALLING. Not now. I wait till it stops and then I text back: ALLS WELL WILL CALL 2MORROW LOVE U.

Abel slips our silver tickets to a girl in a red-and-black striped suit and red Henchman contacts. She geeks out over our costumes, winds on our glow-in-the-dark wristbands, and passes us the question paddle Abel prepaid for and our VIP goodie bags.

Then the double doors swing open.

I’m like‌…‌swept away. It sounds like fluttery fanfic but there’s no other way to describe it. Entering the ball is like crashing on a planet where no one cares how you dress or how you dance or who you love. Everywhere you look there’s a beautiful weirdo: the guy gyrating on stilts in a homemade Xaarg cape, the chubby tattooed girl twirling in a skirt made of glow-sticks, the pale androgynous couple in matching Lagarde black leather. Beyond a cluster of small tables with glowing centerpieces shaped like Xaarg’s hat, there are even two girls dressed like Cadmus and Sim, holding hands on the edge of the dance floor.