The Book of Masks (Vol. 2)

Too Many Tasks

Previously: "More Help Than You Know What to Do With" 

"Oh, shit," Leah says, and she looks around. "Look at the time. We need to get back to—"

"I think I do have a secret admirer," you blurt out. Leah does a double-take at you. "I think do have a—" you start to repeat, then correct yourself. "Except she's not really a secret admirer, 'cos I know who she is. But she wants it to be a secret from, uh, everyone else."

Leah is looking at you like you've gone crazy.

"Wow," she says, though there's a tentative note inside her voice. "So is this something you want to talk about?"

You can barely look her in the eye. "Well, if you don't mind," you stammer. "It's a friend of yours."

That does get her attention, and her eyes brighten. She takes your arm in hers, and questions you as you lead her back to your truck.

* * * * *

You wind up missing the meet-up at Cherry Brook Bakery, and go to a donut shop instead, to talk about Elle over cheap coffees and a shared stale donut. Leah is frankly incredulous, but you insist that it's all true. "I don't know what I did," you tell her. "But I'm telling you, she grabbed me and kissed me and then rode off and asked me not to tell anyone about it."

"But you're telling me now," Leah says with a skeptical lift of the eyebrow. "And you told Jack."

"'Cos I don't know what to do! I don't know whether to talk to her or ignore her or—"

"Didn't you say she wanted to go off with you alone when we went frisbee-golfing the other day? So why didn't you?"

Her tone is accusing, and you wince. "I didn't know if I wanted to," you confess. "I mean, I like her, but it's all so confusing—"

"So you do like her?" There's now a shadow of hostility in Leah's voice.

"Well, I don't know if I do! I mean, I like her as a person! As a friend." Except you don't know her well enough to be a friend. "I think."

"So are you interested in her? Do you want to—?"

"Jack asked me that."

Her eyebrows go up. "What did you say?"

"I said I don't know." You suck in your lips. "She freaked me out that night!"

"Yeah, I can tell," Leah says. "You seem to get in trouble when you go out at night, Will," she says "Running into girls, digging up school property and getting yourself recorded. Is Clover Mystery's texting you about Elle, too?"

"No! Wait. Do you think Elle could be Clover Mystery?"

Leah's mouth falls open. But then she turns thoughtful, and your heart begins to thump with anticipation.

"I dunno," she says. "Maybe. No. Except—" She squints out the plate glass window into the strip center parking lot. "Well, she is friends with Jamie."

Now you're definitely not interested in her, but you say nothing.

"But I don't know," Leah says. "I don't think so. It doesn't seem like something Elle would do." She turns another skeptical look onto you. "And her coming on to you the other night, that doesn't sound like her either."

"I don't know what she's like," you admit. "But all I know is she—"

"Yeah yeah." Leah waves a dismissive hand. "But if you're not into her, don't lead her on. She had kind of a bad break-up last year."

"Uh huh?"

"She was going out with Mitchell Belz. You know Mitchell? Don't bother," she says when you shake your head. "I thought he was okay before the he did the thing to Elle."

"What did he do?"

"Meh, never mind. But she took it hard." Leah's brow furrows, and she falls silent.

Then she dismisses her thought—whatever it was—with a shrug. "If you're not into her, just wait for her to text you, call you, whatever. Then you let her down." She kicks you under the table. "Be careful when you do," she says.

* * * * *

You like the advice—it lets you off the hook of having to do something—and as you've finished your coffees and the donut by now, you end the afternoon by taking Leah home, then going back to your own place. It's later than you thought it was, and you barely make it back in time for dinner.

So it's not after you've eaten and helped clean up that you are able to check some messages that have been piling up on your phone all afternoon. You checked them as they came in, long enough to see who they were from, but you hadn't read them. You're not used to dealing with so much social interaction, and it's a chaotic hour you pass—while trying to do a little homework on the side—as you juggle half a dozen conversations.

You reply first to Laura MacGregor, who texted to say that she spotted you in the theater with Jack, and asks what you did after you left. She also asks if you liked what she was doing onstage. You reply, briefly, to tell her that you liked her performance, and that you went off with Leah. Did u make out? she reply with a teasing emoji. No just talked, you type, and hope that will be the end of that. But Laura insists on knowing where you went and what you did, so you tell her that you went to Potsdam Park, and that you talked about some stuff going on your life. This naturally inspires her to ask about what that stuff is. You wind up having to shut her down with a brb and then a gtg when the other conversations heat up.

Caleb wanted reassurance that you're not going to do anything stupid about Jamie and "Clover Mystery." Between texts with Laura, you tell him that you won't, and that you now think that Clover is actually a secret admirer trying to tease you and wind you up. You ignore his reply—U r so delusional—to tell him that you think there's another guy out there that you can pretend is in the video. When he asks who, you again have to curtail a conversation with a brb while you send Leah an x2z DM for that photo and the name of that guy.

Meanwhile, Jack has tagged you into an x2z thread about a weekend camping trip out to Russian Lake. The plan includes a Saturday night sleepover, which would interfere with church the next day, so you doubt you can go, but you tell Jack that you'll ask your parents.

While you're doing that, Leah DMs back that she doesn't remember who you are talking about, and asks you to jog her memory. You describe the guy, and are even able to summon up the name that she so casually dropped—Eric—then duck into another thread (this one posted by Brianna Kirschke showing off the items that she and Genesis Lee picked up that afternoon. You congratulate her and her partner on their win, which gets you a DM from Susan Lekuawehe asking where your scavenger hunt thread is. Your reply—Dont have one—sparks a brief back-and-forth that ends on your side with you admitting that you spent the afternoon with Leah instead of on the scavenger hunt, and on her side with her LOLing and mentioning that she saw the two of you hanging out together at lunch, and that she thinks you're a cute couple.

You then get a DM back from Leah, linking to some threads that contain pictures of the guy you were asking about it. Judging by the photos he seems to be a party-hearty social butterfly, constantly posting selfies of himself, usually with his arm around a girl.

With this, you are able to tell Caleb that if anyone asks about the video, you should be able to blame it on this "Eric Murphy" guy. He retorts that he's not going to blame anyone else for anything, and that if you don't want to get in trouble you just need to keep your mouth shut and not cause trouble. You try explaining that you don't want to frame the guy, you just want to create doubt about who it is in the video, and that your resemblance to Eric Murphy can help create that doubt. Caleb again tells advises you to just STFU about the whole time capsule thing.

Then he asks if you've written your paper on it yet.

You bolt upright with a groan. The paper is due tomorrow, and you haven't given a single thought to it. You hurl your phone back onto your bed, and turn to your computer.

It doesn't take long, though, before you realize that you're completely stuck for words. You gave Mr. Walberg a package of cupcakes for the capsule, and you have no idea why you picked it. Or, rather, you know exactly why you picked it—you were desperate, and there was nothing else around—but you can't say that, unless you want to flunk the assignment.

So you're chewing your fingernails with worry and frustration when your phone buzzes with another text from Laura. She wants to take a nighttime bike ride, and wants to know if you'd like to go along with her.

Next: "Feminine Wiles and Feminine Denials" 

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"Table of Contents (Vol. 2)" 
"The Book of Masks (Vol. 2)"