“Abel‌…‌”

“Be logical!” He’s shoving clothes in his bag. “What happens if I stay? More awkwardness. More fights. We break up and we can’t even be friends anymore because we let things get ugly, and then I end up crying for days and calling up my exes and eating Nutella right out of the jar.” He throws his bag on the bed and yanks at the zipper. “So we make a clean break now, and this way I get to keep my dignity, right, and you get lots of time or space or whatever the hell you need to figure things out, or not figure things out, whatever works for you. Sound good?”

He grabs the bag. I know exactly what I need now. I need a Speech that Changes Everything. Like Cadmus’ quotable “Today, We Survive” speech in the pilot, or the tearful speech Abel gives me in whispering!sage’s “One Day More,” where we make up in a hospital bed before I lapse into a coma. I catch myself thinking What would hey_mamacita write?

Beware of false prophets, Brandon.

Just let him‌—‌

“No. Don’t go.” It’s all I can get out. “Please.”

“Put up a fight, then,” he says. “Convince me. Tell me exactly how it won’t end horribly.”

All the words I’ve ever learned scuttle out of my head. If I had more time I could call them back, arrange them in just the right order. But I know without looking him in the eye that I’ve already paused too long, and he’s not going to wait.

He hoists the bag over his shoulder.

“Have fun at the Baltimore con,” he says. “Tell Lenny Bray I said hi.”

***

He’s gone.

He can’t be, though.

He left Plastic Cadmus behind, face down on the Whitetail Wildlife bedspread.

He left his Sim shirt from the ball dangling damp from the doorknob and the spicy-sweet smell of his cinnamon soap hanging in the air.

He left me standing by the bed with his last kiss still fresh on my cheek and a hundred better things to say.

So I wait, because I know he’s coming back. I stand right here in the spot where he left me, rocking gently on my heels. I’ll be patient. He went for a long walk to clear his head, took a detour to a diner to sulk at a cup of black coffee, and when he’s done making me sorry, making me want him back so much that nothing else matters, the Sunseeker door will creak open again and there he’ll be.

I wait.

And wait.

Knock knock on the bedroom door; it slits open.

“Brandon?”

Bec.

Chapter Twenty-Six

Her dad left when we were twelve. I knew he was going to leave, just like she probably knew Abel was going to leave sooner or later, but we both know the unspoken rule about comforting someone. You pretend you had no clue what was coming, no privileged outsider’s view. I sat on her yellow bedspread that day with a stiff arm around her and my head bowed like people do at funerals, letting her know I was sharing her sadness. “You don’t have to stay,” she sniffled, but she knew I would. That’s what we do.

“Do you want to go home?”

“I don’t know.”

She’s running with me. We’re running to nowhere, down the wooded path that winds away from our campground.

“Do you want to go after him?”

“No.”

“Are you sure? We could find the bus station.”

The fic writes itself: I track him down at the crowded station, shout his name over the very last call for his bus. He makes me work for forgiveness when I catch up to him, but only for a minute. We fall into each other’s arms and the make-up kiss goes on and on, and all the travelers set down their suitcases to clap for the triumph of love.

I stagger to a stop by a giant cottonwood and close my eyes.

“No,” I tell her. “What’s the point?”

She watches me carefully.

“Okay, well. I’m up for anything,” she says. “Just tell me what you want to do.”

She waits in the near-dark. She’s wearing sneakers with her pajama pants and the sleeves of her black t-shirt are rolled up to her shoulders, like she’s ready for a fight. I think of Sim. Standing outside Lagarde’s hut with a knife pointed to his right temple, where the evolution chip was installed. Take it out, he’d begged Lagarde. How do people live like this?

When she refused, he’d picked up a thick long branch, like this one, and beat it against a tree until it shattered into splinters.

Like this.

Bec watches. She doesn’t try to stop me. She just lets me pummel the poor old tree like a Boy Scout gone savage, smashing one branch after another until I’m out of branches and out of breath and I give up the fight, collapsing limp against the ancient bark.

I hear a distant trill. My phone.

“That’s him,” Bec says.

She sounds so firm and hopeful that I believe it too. I yank the phone out of my pocket and answer fast, in the dark. If I’d checked the screen first, I would’ve seen the warning.

HOME CALLING.

“Brandon?”

Damn.

“Uh. Hey!” I force a smile into my voice. “Everything’s great. Can I call you back?”

“No, actually,” Dad says.

“Brandon,” says Mom, in the same tone she used when I was twelve and she found the Tiger Beat stash in my closet. “Is there something you’d like to tell us?”

Chapter Twenty-Seven

“I would like to know,” my father says, “why your mother had to find out in an email from Mary Beth Heffler that you were driving across the country with a boy we clearly do not trust.”

“What?”

“Facebook doesn’t lie, Brandon. Mary Beth’s daughter posted on Bec’s wall. Something about‌—‌you have it, Kathy.”

“’Lucky you‌…‌cross country with two hot guys! Too bad they’re both gay, lol.’”

Oh God.

I make an I’m dead sign to Bec, finger slashing throat. She cringes and makes a Should I stay? motion; my hands tell her My demise needs no witnesses. She slips away but I see her stay close, just behind a Ponderosa pine a little way back down the path.

“You lied to us,” Dad says. “True or false?”

“True,” I whisper. I rest my forehead on the cottonwood I’d just attacked.

“Tell us it’s Abel, at least. Not someone worse.”

“It’s him. Or, it was. He‌—‌” My eyes fill up. “He left.”

Dad makes a disbelieving ugh sound. “You’re coming home, in case you’re wondering,” he says. “Right now.”

“What‌—‌why?”

“Why?”

“There’s one more convention.”

“You should have thought about that before you spent five weeks lying to your parents.”

“I’m not in high school anymore,” I say. “It’s my life.”

“Well, it’s my RV, kiddo,” Dad says calmly. “And I want you to return it immediately. Where are you right now?”

I dig my fingernails into the bark. “Far away. Nebraska.”

“All right. Fine. I want you back here tomorrow night. On Friday you can help with setup for the Funfair at St. Matt’s and then you and your mother and I will have a long talk.”

“I don’t want to talk.”

“Honey. Come on,” soothes Mom.

“I’m not coming home yet!”

“Ah, okay. I see.” Dad’s voice goes low and taut, like it always did when he’d lecture Nat. “So this is what the Life of Brandon’s all about now. No, I get it. Real cool. You walk away from church, you lie to your parents‌—‌”

“Yeah, well, why do you think I lied? What if I told you Abel was coming? There’s no way you’d have said yes.”

“You’re damn right!”

“We’re just concerned, sweetie,” says Mom.

“You’re just backwards, is what you are,” I shoot back.

We all plunge into silence. The woods around me feel dark and cold and endless. I think of the old Family Game Nights in the St. Matt’s parish hall, when Dad would school everyone in Jeopardy and Mom was reigning Pictionary Queen with a 7-layer taco dip everyone wanted the recipe for. Nat would roll her eyes when they put their goofy plastic trophies on the mantel but I thought it was great, having parents who were champions and knew just about everything.