“Wooooo! Yeah! Dutchie is in la casa, so let the party commence!” Augie Manners lifts his arms above his head and cracks his knuckles one by one, just like he does on the show. There’s a firefly-flash of cameras. “Oh, wow, you guys‌—‌seriously, are you Castaway Planet fans, for real? I was expecting geeks out the yin-yang but you guys are hot. Lorda-mercy!”

He tosses his dirty hat in the crowd and starts in on some story about a Riverwalk bar that has eighty-six kinds of beer, and I have to smile a little. I hated the Dutch Jones character for the first half of Season 1 when he was just crude comic relief, but he got pretty interesting with the OCD and the photographic memory and the talent for peacemaking, which kind of came out of nowhere but somehow made perfect sense.

I can’t focus on him for the first five or six questions, though. Because Abel is leaning close to me, whispering Castaway Planet lines in my ear so it looks like we’ve got secrets.

“You ready to take it a teeny bit further?” he murmurs. Some girl just asked Manners about that episode where Xaarg makes Dutchie walk on his hands the whole time. He’s eagerly reenacting, his hemp sandals waggling in the air.

“Yeah,” I whisper back.

“You sure? No imminent freakouts?”

“All clear.”

“You should know the risks ahead of time.”

“Of what?”

He sighs. “My sexual charisma.”

“Give me the disclaimers.”

“Well, side effects may include dry mouth, nausea, dizziness, blood clots, cardiac arrhythmia, dia-bee-tus‌—‌”

“Only in people over fifty. I heard.”

He narrows his eyes. “Would I wound you like that?”

“You might.”

“That’s it. I’m going to whisper something highly provocative.”

I bump him with my hip. “Go ahead.”

“It may reorder your entire universe.”

“I’m ready.”

He touches his lips to the rim of my ear. “Duuude. Can I have your pickle?”

I snort. I can’t help it.

“Shh!” he hisses. “Don’t laugh!”

“Don’t make me.”

“You think retro robot saw?”

“I don’t know.” I crane my neck.

“Zzt! You’ll make her suspicious.” He wraps an arm around my shoulders and murmurs, “Just enjoy my attentions while you can.”

“Oh, so this is a privilege?”

“I’ll have you know I’m in high demand.”

“Right, right.” I flick his hair. “Who wouldn’t love the cockatoo version of Laurence Olivier?”

He giggles and pulls me closer. I tense automatically, but then I let myself relax, muscle by muscle.

It’s nice. Really nice.

“Oh by the way, guys and dolls‌—‌I brought a present for whoever’s got the best question today.” Augie Manners holds up this grubby burlap hippie sack with a happy face embroidered on it. “So lemme hear from someone sexy now‌—‌yeah! You in the Xaarg shirt.”

A chubby guy with a black samurai braid lowers his question paddle. “Yes, in your opinion, are the writers purposefully ratcheting up the tension between Cadmus and Xaarg as a commentary on the futility of prayer in the face of an indifferent god, or is the conflict actually going somewhere?”

I don’t hear the answer. Abel’s hand has slowly migrated down my back and now it’s in this scary normal teenage-boyfriend place, fingertips tucked in my back pocket. He leaves it there for one more question and then two more, adding little whispers in my ear about retro robot and great photo ops while the stubborn enemy part of my brain tries to talk my body into freaking out.

My hands stay dry. I slip one into the slim back pocket of his dark jeans.

Brandon, who are you? Father Mike, but faded now. I don’t recognize you, bud.

hey_mamacita answers for me: I’m your worst nightmare, Brandon said, waving the dagger like an outlaw. I am a VIGILANTE OF LOVE.

Father Mike tries to say something else, but I paper right over his face with hey_mamacita’s silly Father X‌—‌the craggy sunken cheeks, the feral teeth. A fun villain, the kind that’s good for cheap scares and cheaper Halloween costumes, powerless once the book is closed or the TV’s switched off.

He keeps quiet.

A giddy laugh throbs in the back of my throat. It’s like Episode 2-14, the scene where Sim first got his evolution chip. His skin went transparent; all his nerve endings crackled with white-hot sparks and his silver eyes sizzled into tropical blue and he threw his head back and let out a full-body wail I used to think was all about pain, but now I know better.

I curl an arm around Abel’s waist.

“Let me ask the question.”

My voice doesn’t sound like mine. He startles.

“What?

“The question. I’ll ask Manners.”

“You want to?”

“I do.”

Abel whistles. “Look at you, all bold and brazen.”

I grab the question paddle and wave it around. Augie Manners calls on me right away. He locks eyes with me when I ask the question about the cave episode, and I’m not even nervous‌—‌it’s as easy as a vocal warmup with the Timbrewolves, the lip trills and scales I can do in my sleep.

“Ooh, Cadmus and Sim.” Augie Manners rubs his hands together. “The bazillion dollar question. Right?”

Girly cheers clash with some baritone boos. Abel gazes at the side of my face and smooths a wisp of hair off my forehead. I catch an eyeroll from Bec. She looks away fast, goes back to her camera.

“I think,” says Manners, “that humble ole me is going to kick that question to the lovely and very intuitive ladies here in the audience. Should I?”

“Cheater,” Abel grouses, but he’s grinning.

More cheers; an awwwww yeah that was probably louder than the shouter intended. Augie Manners steps up to the lip of the stage and hunches down, hands on thighs.

“A’ight, ready? Ladies who think Cadmus and Sim didn’t do the ol’ coitus androidicus in the crystal spider cave, lemme hear you put your hands together.”

A sprinkle of claps and a low frat-boy howl.

“Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Now if you think they totally boned, make some noise!”

Full-on eardrum assault.

“Whoa nellie!” Augie Manners shouts, trying to quiet the crowd a little. “I guess that’s a yes, guys!”

“Guess so,” I say.

“Sounds clear to me,” says Abel.

“How ‘bout you two guys? What do you think?”

We glance at each other. He set us up perfectly.

“We’re‌…‌actually not sure yet,” Abel fibs.

“Yeah. We’re, uh, trying to keep an open mind, right?”

“Absolutely. Cause you know, sometimes you think you feel one way‌—‌”

“‌—‌and then something changes and you realize you might have been totally and completely wrong.”

We indulge in some moony eye contact. I hope retro robot’s filming; they’ll go nuts for this. I see Bec out of the corner of my eye, shaking her head like a mom watching her kids gorge on blueberries despite warnings of tummyaches and purple fingers.

“That is so true, you guys,” Augie Manners says. “So true. Awesome! Okay, any other questions for me before I hit the Alamo?”

Abel pinches me. “Did you see that?” he hisses.

“What?”

“His eyes, like, lingered on you!”

“They did not.”

“Did too.”

I pinch him back. “Maybe it’s my quiet yet forceful magnetism.”

“Is that from a fic?”

“Yep.”

“Whose?”

“No one’s. Forget it.” It’s weird. I can’t even say her name.

Onstage, Augie Manners shouts “Know what? You all win!” He opens up his hippie sack and flings a huge handful of Castaway Planet trading cards into the crowd, and then another and another till chaos breaks out, everyone squealing and shoving while the silver-backed cards snow down. Abel and I dive right in, trying to get our hands on the good ones: Sim in his charging dock, Cadmus brave and bloody in the Starsetter wreckage.

“Brandon!”

“What?”

He dangles a card from the cave scene.