The Book of Masks (Vol. 1)

The Inside, Looking Out

Previously: "Chang and Change" 

Too much of a good thing is wonderful, they say, but you can't help feeling like you've run enough risks for one afternoon and evening. Besides, the text from Cassie has given you an out.

"Shit, it's a text from my mom," you tell the girls. "I gotta go." Groans and arguments break out all around, and you feel almost drunk with pleasure as Mindy and Melissa and the others try to block you from leaving. "We got other people coming!" "Tell her you'll be late!" "You don't have to go, not really!" they cry. But with vast (and real) reluctance you gradually worm your way out, promising to get in touch with them in a day or two so you can talk about where they'll take you for the weekend. They're already talking about dragging you out to a couple of parties, or to the Warehouse or dancing or ...

You are able to snatch a little pleasure of your own on your way out, though. Mindy tries to block you, and you maneuver around her by putting one hand on the side of her hips and the other on her elbow, and pivoting her out of the way. Her scent envelops you, and before you can stop yourself—you are intoxicated by this rare sensation; what's it called? oh yeah, being popular—you peck a little kiss onto the side of her jaw. Then with a wave past her shocked but blushing face at the rest of the table, you scoop up the bags with your new clothes and beat it to the exit.

* * * * *

It's thirty minutes later, in your old face and your clothes, when you return to the restaurant, right after text Cassie to say that you've arrived at the mall and asking where in particular she is. The party has moved to a larger, circular table in the corner, where the original gang of five girls—Cassie, Mindy, Melissa, Molly, and Faith—have been augmented by half a dozen more. Four girls are piled into the table next to them, leaning over the partition and over each other to hear the conversation from the next table, and a girl and a guy have shoved into the original table. You stand awkwardly for a minute or two, trying to catch Cassie's eye, before you are noticed.

"Will!" Cassie calls, and almost every head swivels in your direction, looking excited. It pains your heart to see the disappointment when they see it's only "Prescott" and not "Chang" standing there. But Cassie pushes and prods her way out of the circular booth in order to join you. You get a jolt when the guy turns around and you momentarily mistake him for Gary Chen. But though he's Asian-American, he's much nicer looking, and dressed up in a preppy fashion.

"Yeah, hey, glad you came out," Cassie squeals as she pulls you over to the other table. The girls there give you a casual glance as you slide in with Cassie, then go back to listening to the other table. "God, it's turning into a giant party, isn't it?" she gushes. "Do you know anyone who wants to come out? We've got some more people coming out supposedly, and I know it's a Monday, but it's almost like a Friday and—"

You let her run on until she's lost her breath, and then you ask, "What's the occasion?"

"What occasion?" Cassie asks.

"This." You gesture at the crowd. "Why you're all out having a party."

"Not a party. Just happened!"

She almost instantly gets drawn back into a conversation with her other friends, leaving you on the outside, listening in. Only they're not talking about "Will Chang." They're gossiping about some other people, whose names you catch but can't identify, who are caught up in stuff you can't follow. The best you can decipher is that a guy and a girl have started going out, and bets are being laid on how long it'll be before he dumps her after she fails to put out for him.

You've got your phone out and are distractedly fooling around online—Some great plan this turned out to be, you snort to yourself; maybe I should leave and come back in as the other guy—when you feel a couple of kicks under the table. You look up, and realize the "Hey! Hey!" you heard were directed at you. It's only of the girls sitting across the table from you. "What's your name?"

"Will."

"Any relation to the other one?"

Huh? "What other—"

"You on x2z?"

"Kristin!" Cassie squeals. "Will doesn't hang out in the gutter!" She briefly squeezes your arm. The girl shrugs, but continues to stare at you. But she looks away when you shake your head.

x2z is a social media site, a melding of Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, Tumblr, and every other site with some kind of "sharing" feature that hasn't been nailed down with patents and trademarks. Its own special quirk is that it's possible to set up wholly separate and unrelated micro-sites, so that smaller communities can form instead of everyone in the universe being crowded onto one. Most schools, including Westside, have their own dedicated set of x2z "streams," as they are called. You've gone in to look at it a couple of times, but your life doesn't seem interesting enough to record with selfies, posts, or video snippets, and you've been put off by the casual cruelties you've seen there.

But it gives you an idea of how to keep in touch as "Will Chang" without having to buy a burner cell phone. You scroll over to the site, look around, and finally find a way of registering an account there. You're stymied, though, when you discover there's a required field for a Westside High student ID. You could enter your own, of course, but suppose someone asked "Will Chang" where he got the ID to set up a WHS account?

You're still mulling how to set up an account for your alter ego when another small crowd of people show up. You recognize a handful of people, but in the general reshuffling that occurs, you wind up at a table of strangers, including the Asian-American guy.

They're already making plans for Friday. Or maybe they are telling some of the newcomers about plans that have been decided for Friday. At any rate, there's a general consensus that they're all going to do something at the Warehouse, a notorious party spot. You're only half listening your attention is caught by something one of the girls says: "We're trying to set Jack up with a new boyfriend."

"You better not be," the Asian-American guy growls.

"New?" says one of the other girls. She laughs. "Who was your old one?"

"Shut up."

"Who's the guy?" asks another girl.

"Someone Melissa and them met today." She cranes her head to look over at the table where some of the girls you hung out with are sitting.

"They don't even know if he's gay," says the Asian-American guy. His only reply is more laughter—teasing or serious, you can't tell.

Talk ping-pongs across the table, with stories about the new guy bouncing around with other shots of gossip. It's hard to get a bead on what exactly the consensus is about him, save that—

Everyone's convinced that he's gay!

* * * * *

That mostly kills your interest in hanging around, especially since you're sitting with people you don't know, and you slip out.

You drive around for a little while, trying to figure out where you went wrong. How did they get the idea that I'm gay?

From there you wind up knitting a daisy chain of futile questions. Do I hang out with them again, and set them straight—that I'm straight? Do I go out in the mask again, but try to find some new people to hang out with? Maybe I should make a new mask, and try again with a new face? Or should I just keep digging into the book, find out what other spells there are.

Your mom wants to see your new clothes when you get home. You hide the more outrageous items in your closet and only show her the "nice" ones that you picked up. She likes them, but you can tell she's disappointed that you didn't pick up any more. At least she's understanding when you tell her that you spent quite a bit of money on the girls that you went shopping with, to express your gratitude to them for helping you out. She asks if you'll be seeing more of them. Well, that's the night's question in another form, isn't it?

You get onto your homework after that, and it's quite late before you knock off and go to bed. In part that's because, on a wild hunch, you text Carson Ioeger to ask how one might go about setting up a fake account in the WHS-x2z system. Talk to knouse, he texts back. That would be Christian Knouse, one of the computer-literate nerds at school. But Carson also wants to know why you want to set up a fake account, and it takes awhile for you get Ioeger, who is clearly skeptical of your profession that you're just "curious" if it can be done, to stop pestering you.

You're still uncertain the next morning about what you're going to do about your alter ego. It would be easiest to abandon "Will Chang." It's proven harder—and more expensive!—to keep him alive and in circulation that you anticipated. Not to mention that this "gay" thing (Really? WtF?!) has complicated things. On the other hand, it sounds like he's a hit, and you have invested money in him.

If you are going to keep "Will Chang" in circulation, you have to get him online, and the only way to do that (it seems) is through social media. You'll have to talk to Christian Knouse about getting a fake account. If you don't do that, you might as well just put that mask away and go do something else.

Next: "More Pieces for a Homemade Puzzle" 

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"Table of Contents (Vol. 1)" 
"The Book of Masks (Vol. 1)"