Free How to Repair a Mechanical Heart by J.C. Lillis

fridge and start rearranging. Juice boxes sorted by size, yogurts lined up straight. “I should be focusing on other stuff right now. College. I shouldn’t have said yes to this stupid trip.”
    “Then why did you?”
    “Because you steamrolled me.”
    “Wha‌—‌I did not!”
    “You steamroll everyone!” I slam the fridge. “All you care about is making people do what you want. It’s not even worth disagreeing with you because you just talk and talk until people give in and you think it’s because you’re so charming but really it’s to shut you up.” I swoop in for the kill. “The sad thing is, you think you’re Cadmus. When actually you’re just kind of a dick.”
    Abel’s quiet for a long time, like he’s waiting for an aw, just kidding! When I don’t give him one, he stuffs his hands in his pockets and scuffs at the kitchen mat.
    “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 cinnamon jellybeans and glares at a battered copy of Stranger in a Strange Land , I hide in the loft with my phone and watch Castaway Planet with Plastic Sim tight in my fist. When I get to Episode 2-17, I yank Nat’s old patchouli-scented quilt over my head. I need to be in my own world for this one. Especially this scene. Sim is about to destroy his evolution chip.
    “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