A cloudbank swallows the sun and the harbor cools and darkens. I keep my eyes on the shifting sky, like Sim in the operating room getting prepped for Lagarde’s silver chip. I think of him three weeks post-chip, shouting on the mountaintop with Cadmus: No one told me what doubt was like. To know how much I still don’t know. I used to feel every syllable of that line. Almost nothing hurt worse than doubt. Now it’s feeling almost comfortable, like this too-big shirt of Abel’s that I’ll probably wear until it frays and the stitches start to unravel.

The harbor breeze rustles my shirt. I pull it tighter. I tell everything bad inside me, everything I’ve outgrown, to go play somewhere else for a while. I picture them all wriggling out of my head, groaning and grumbling. The clean blond boy from Put on the Brakes! The chalupa guy from the laundry room. Tom Shandley and Miss Maxima and my angry bearded Ben Kingsley God. Father Mike is the last to go, toting his battered guitar and an armload of little black words.

They all crowd around me. What now?

I close my eyes on them.

You can go anytime.

I think it softly, without anger. After a minute, I feel them shuffle off into shadows, like when Dad and I used to catch and release sunfish up the street at Tanner’s Pond. They’d hover in the shallows for a second, stunned to be free, and then they’d struggle away and vanish in the murk.

Not forever, I warn myself. They’ll be back, and soon. But I’ll be ready.

I send a tentative prayer to my vague new idea of the maybe-God: featureless and formless, a light warm and yellow as my kitchen at home. The anti-Xaarg, like Abel said. Help me be ready, I say to him. Or her. If you exist, please help.

If you don’t, I’ll do it on my own.

Bright heat washes over my face. I open my eyes. The sun’s shaken off the clouds again. Two kids with rocket pops are spinning themselves dizzy in the grass and Dreadlocks Girl is still hunched on her concrete smile with her blue guitar, tuning up for another song. The harbor hums with happy busy holiday noise. Alone in the midst of cute families and throngs of friends, I feel empty in the best way, cleaned out and ready to fill up on new thoughts and words.

I rest my cheek on the warm upturn of the smile, and listen.

***

Brandon set the sunflowers on the table. He took another step closer to Abel, who fixed him with a wary gaze that Brandon totally and completely deserved.

I come back to the Dorchester with my brain buzzing and my fingers itching. I call Bec and tell her I need a little more time. I don’t tell her anything else. Not yet. I find a quiet corner in the coffee shop, slide my laptop out of my bag, and type for my life.

“Look, I’m probably going to be pretty screwed up for a while,” Brandon admitted, his voice deep and confident. “There’s a lot I haven’t figured out yet. But we’ve got six weeks left of summer, and I think we owe it to ourselves to be screwed up together.”

Brandon waited for a verdict. He braced himself for Abel’s back turning on him, for the sick rumble of sunflowers in the garbage disposal.

“Is it okay to kiss you?” Abel asked.

Brandon stepped forward first. They met in the middle of the room, and their lips acted out a string of impressive adjectives as they came together.

I hop on the hotel wifi, consult thesaurus.com.

Gingerly, haltingly at first. Then ecstatically, jubilantly, hopefully.

When I’m finished with the whole scene, I don’t go back and change stuff; maybe it’s cheesy, but the words are all true. I address an email to amcnaughton128@gmail.com. I add a note:

See attached for the last chapter of “How to Repair a Mechanical Heart.”

What do you think?

***

I find Bec sprawled on a blue plastic beach chair by the pool, her sandals kicked off and a gift-shop true-crime novel in front of her face. I sit down, pull her feet up on my lap, and dangle a big white bakery bag from the shop I passed on the walk back.

“What’s this?” she grins.

“Red velvet cupcakes.”

She gasps. “Why?”

“For being a good friend. Putting up with me. Having cute toes.”

“You are an admirable young man.” She tears the bag open. “So this text from you. Explain.”

“It was a mysterious mission.”

She takes a big bite of red velvet. “So you said.”

“You won’t believe it.”

“Okay.”

“I mean, you really won’t.”

“Tell me!”

I pull my phone out of my pocket, call up the Lenny Bray shot. Bec’s mouth drops open.

“Is that‌—‌”

“It is.”

“Oh. My God.”

“That was just the beginning.”

She grabs my wrist. “Start talking. Now.”

“I’ll tell you on the road.” I pull her to her feet. “Assuming you’re fine with missing the 2:00 panel on ‘The Ethics of Redemption in Castaway Planet.’”

She grins and tosses me the keys. “Let’s go home, cupcake.”

Home

Chapter Thirty

The annual St. Matt’s Fourth of July Funfair is the year’s third biggest deal, after the Christmas Eve Mass with the kiddie pageant and the May Procession where the Mary statue gets crowned with fake flowers and we pray for a thousand years in the hot church and one kid always passes out. My parents have been all about the Funfair since Nat and I were kids. Dad helps hammer all the game booths together and Mom decorates and arranges the food tables. The center table always holds three giant platters of her famous angel eggs, which are basically deviled eggs with cream cheese whipped into the filling and a name that won’t make the organist boycott them. Every year I stuff myself with angel eggs and fried chicken and try to beat Bec at ladderball and volunteer in the dunking booth, and then we all watch the fireworks over funnel cake and frozen lemonade and Dad and I throw a ball around behind the karaoke stage.

Every year except this one.

It’s after 4:00 by the time I park the Sunseeker back at my house, swap it for Mom’s old Jetta, drop Bec off at her place, and make the short trek to Donovan Street. The cars of the devoted already dot the St. Matt’s parking lot. Mom and Dad’s Ford Focus, Mrs. Heffler’s silver SUV, the Donnellys’ new Camry, the beatup blue Saturn Father Mike’s had forever. I slot myself into a spot surrounded by empty spaces. I check my email for a response from Abel, like I did every five minutes on the trip home.

Nothing.

I tap my shorts pockets. Plastic Sim in the right, Plastic Cadmus in the left. The Mom-and-Dad reunion looms like a one-on-one with Xaarg; I’m in no hurry.

Plus there’s one last thing I need to do.

I haven’t walked through the front doors of St. Matt’s in over five months. I clutch my breath as the door creaks open, as if a horde of crystal spiders might be sleeping in the shadows inside. But when I tiptoe up the three carpeted steps, it’s the same old church, everything familiar and summery. Red, white, and dyed-blue carnations on the altar, the faded tang of incense and sweat, a warm breeze wandering in through a few open windows and swaying the felt dove banners Mom helped sew.

I wander up the aisle, the same path my parents took on their wedding day. I trace a beam of light from the stained-glass Holy Spirit window to the bronze-and-oak font where I was baptized. Three tiers of red votives flicker next to it, each tiny light connecting a problem with a prayer. I’m surprised by what I don’t feel, standing here alone. A rock in my stomach, a hand around my throat. Father Mike would say that this isn’t peace, that I’m empty in a bad way. Spiritually flatlined, like he said once in a sermon. But no one’s behind the altar now, and I don’t have to listen.