The Book of Masks (Vol. 2)

A Chat with Chelsea

Previously: "Laura Comes Clean" 

Jack has been texting you while you talked to Laura, and the last one fairly blistered with excited impatience: Chelsea just tot here get ur ass up here now

You don't bother to reply. But you do put the car over the speed limit as you race out to Westside.

The scarecrow figure of Will Prescott is pacing beside his truck as you pull into the mostly empty lot, and he runs over as you pull into a space a little distance away. "Where the fuck were you?" he demands as you climb out of the minivan.

"Holding one of your friend's hands," you coolly inform him. "Is Chelsea still here?"

"Lucky for us, she is!"

"Then why don't you give yourself a nice, cooling douche while I go talk to her."

"What?"

You give Jack one of his own patented steady looks. "Do you know much I hate knowing that you're acting exactly like me?"

He turns a bright pink. "Well, the feeling's mutual!"

"I like having your nerve, man," you reply. You slide on some shades. "So why don't you try remembering what it's like being Jack Li instead of—" You give him a weary look up and down. "Well, do your best with what you've got."

You can almost hear him grinding his teeth as he strides along next to you toward the gym.

* * * * *

You wouldn't know what you're doing, except that you've got Jack's memories to guide you. You're going to knock on the door to the school's fabled "fuck room."

Oh, you've known about the fuck room since your sophomore year. It's a loft up above the gym where the top athletes hang out. It's a coach who slips a key to some of his favorites—the incoming seniors who show the most promise on the athletic fields, probably.

This year it's the basketball players—Gordon Black and Steve Patterson; maybe Seth Javits; maybe some others—who have been given the place. And because Chelsea is Gordon Black's girlfriend, she will have gotten a copy of the key as well. She and some of the other top athletes also get keys to the gym, so they can go in and out for their own private practice sessions—what a racket these kids have going!—and you're counting on the gym's side door still being unlocked so that you can get in to confront her.

Chelsea's not the only one at the school. You recognize one car as belonging to Andrea Varnsworth, the achingly sexy captain of the school's swim team. She's a very cool and mysterious person, and you'd love to hang out with her and get to know her—you bet you two would hit it off—but she's friends with Charles Hartlein and his gang, and that cocksucker—

Your hands clench just at the thought of him.

You have to force aside Jack's hot resentments. Charles is gay, but for malicious and inscrutable reasons of his own has it in for Jack, and has boxed him out of the gay/bohemian crowd at Westside. But the sneers and quips, the nasty little asides, the social cuts and the snobbery come drifting through unfiltered. What it means—what's behind it—Jack can't fathom. But it has reached the point that Jack one day, almost unhinged at something Charles had done, seethed at his friend Brianna: Sometimes I wish I was straight. Sometimes I look at Charles and I hate everything about being gay! As Jack has never doubted his own sexuality, or felt the least bit ambivalent about it, it was quite an admission.

Again, you find you have to force those resentments behind you. All on account of glancing over and recognizing Andrea's car.

You wince. If you're getting Jack's emotions while looking at Andrea's car, is he getting yours? Is he fighting down the raging boner I get when I think of Andrea? you wonder with just the tiniest trace of amusement.

You enter the gym, and stride across the empty basketball court. Voices sound from the mezzanine, where the weightlifting machines are, and metal clanks against metal. You glance over. It's a handful of football players up there: Cameron Huber, Matthew McElroy, Reece Palendech. You stiffen, then let your gaze be dragged back long enough to confirm that Blake O'Brien—Jack's secret crush—isn't one of them.

Will is also raking his eyes over the mezzanine. You say nothing.

You're halfway across the court when Chelsea appears at the foot of the staircase that leads up to the fuck room. Well, that's convenient! you think. Saves us the trouble of going up and knocking.

You slow to a stop right in her path. We won't even have to say anything, you smugly congratulate yourself. She'll see us and she'll have to—

—breeze right on past without even glancing at us. You and Will wheel to stare at her retreating back in mutual consternation.

Then you exchange a glance and hurry after. Outside, you call to her.

She turns with a look of surprise on her face. "Oh. Hi. Were you looking for me?" Her tone is cool but polite.

"Yeah! Where are you off to?"

It must have been Jack's instinctive politeness that caused you to ask. So what does it say about you that your friend blurts out, "We want to talk to you about last night!"

Chelsea looks between you. "What about last night?" Then her eyes widen. "Oh! Did you—?" She covers a small smile with her fingertips, and twinkles conspiratorially at you. "Congratulations, Jack!"

You feel yourself redden. "No, we want to talk to you about last night, at the portables. When we met up."

"Really?" Chelsea sounds vastly amused. "The portables? Couldn't you afford a motel?"

"No." You feel your teeth grinding together. "Us! The three of us."

Chelsea's smile doesn't falter. "Oh? You two and who?"

"You know what we're talking about," Will fumes at her.

Chelsea gives him a look, then turns back to you.

"Can you at least try to say something that sounds like sense?" she asks.

Your fists clench, but you keep your voice low and calm.

"Last night, when you and us met up in the portables," you remind her. "You texted me and"—you glance at Will—"and Jack here, and asked us to meet you there. And we came out, and after we were there—"

You can't find the words to describe what happened. And why do you need to? She knows what happened, so you just point between you and Will.

A faint flush creeps up Chelsea's throat, and her smile freezes. But she pretends to find it funny.

"That's awesome, Jack," she says, "except I don't have any idea where you think you could slot me into whatever fun you and"—she points at Will—"could have been having. Maybe you should be talking to Jason, it'd be more believable with him as a third."

She flashes you one last, tight smile, then turns on her heel and stalks off toward her car.

"Chelsea, this isn't funny!" you snarl after her. "Hey, look at us!"

She spares you a brief, tired glance as she opens her car door. But she says nothing and just climbs into her car, locks the doors, puts on the seatbelt, and starts the engine. You and Will can only gape after her as she drives away.

* * * * *

"Well, she also says she never met up with you at the Flying Saucer the other night, to talk about the cheerleading squad," you remind Will a little later. You're at the Panera Bakery, consoling yourself with another (and much better) cup of coffee. Will is shoving a giant cinnamon roll down his gullet one heaping bite at a time. The sight leaves you wincing. I'd never eat that shit, it would go straight to my belly, you think.

Then you sigh. When you were yourself, you would think nothing of eating such a thing, and Jack must be giving in to your instincts.

Or he figures that your scrawny frame could stand to have a few pounds of padding.

"She totally didn't flinch, either," Will mumbles.

"Just an act," you retort. "Notice how fast she was with the quips? Panicked deflection."

"So what do we do now?" Will hunches over the remains of the cinnamon roll, like a mourner over a corpse. "I mean, we had her alone, if she was going to come clean—"

"Oh, she will eventually," you say with more confidence than you feel. Then: "Lemme see your phone."

Will hands it over. You search for the number that Chelsea gave you—the number that belongs to "Clover Mystery." A friend of Chelsea's whose phone Chelsea sometimes borrows? Bullshit! It's totally Chelsea, always has been.

You had tried convincing yourself that Chelsea/Clover wasn't being malicious. Now you know that was wishful thinking. What Chelsea has done to you is beyond malicious. It's cruel and depraved. But if you texted her and yelled at her, she might never reverse whatever it is that she did to you and Jack.

Next: "A Message from Chelsea" 

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