The Book of Masks (Vol. 3)

The Coward's Way Out

Previously: "A Cry for Help" 

"I don't know what you're talking about," you gasp at Chelsea. "I don't know what you're going on about!"

Chelsea's expression curdles into fury.

"Don't be this way, you fucking—!" She chokes on her own rage. "What, do you want me to beg? I am begging!"

"No, I'm serious, Chelsea," you insist. "I'd help. Really I would! But I don't know what this is all about! What makes you think I—?"

Chelsea snatches the book from you, and wallops you with it.

"Because you're the fucker who—!" She wallops you again.

"Get out!" she screams. "Just get the fuck out! If you don't want to—! Fuck you! Fuck you fuck you fuck you!" She punches and kicks blindly at you.

So you run, down the stairs and across the gym floor and out the door. You fall into your truck cab, panting and sweating.

But Chelsea has followed, and she kicks and smacks at the nose of your truck, until you turn the motor over, slam into reverse, and peel out.

Your mind is such a whirl on the drive home that you're lucky you don't wrap yourself around a light pole.

* * * * *

You toss and turn in your bed that night, fighting off feelings of shame and inadequacy. Chelsea Cooper was asking me for help, you blush to remember. She was begging for it. And I ran away.

Well, what else could you have done? You had no idea what she was babbling on about. You still don't. Something to do with her horrible boyfriend—a man-mountain of mean muscle who runs the school's varsity basketball squad. And something to do with that book, too. How the fuck did she get ahold of it? You sold it to Caleb. Did he sell it to her or to Gordon? Or (and this is more likely) did they take it away from him?

Funny that he wouldn't have mentioned that to you, though. Unless it happened just today.

Funnier still that he would have told them that he got it from you. Funniest of all, that Chelsea would have called you instead of Caleb if whatever-her-deal-was had something to do with that book.

That's the mystery you concentrate on, in the dark, under sweaty, twisted sheets. Anything to distract you from the really ugly fact: That you had a chance to do something with Chelsea Cooper, the head cheerleader. And instead of manfully stepping up, or bravely bluffing your way through, you crumpled and ran away.

* * * * *

You text Caleb late the next morning (a Saturday), to see about getting together. Maybe if you talk to him he can clear up some of the mystery. If nothing else, he can fill you in on how that book got from him to Chelsea.

But he texts back that he's doing some extra work out at Salopek and won't be able to get with you until this afternoon. So you text your friend Keith Tilley to find out what he's up to. Movie credit for hawks, he replies. Come with?

That would be Mr. Hawks, the instructor in your Film as Literature class, which you share with Keith. You could stand to get some extra credit in there, so you agree to rendezvous with him at the Silver Cineplex up by the mall.

"Yeah, so I guess I'm turning into quite the cineaste," he boastfully informs you as you walk together to the ticket counter.

"You mean 'cine-ass,'" you correct him.

"Yeah yeah. Have your fun. Let's just see how good your paper is when you write it."

"What paper?"

But Keith has done at double-take at something behind you. "Hel-lo," he murmurs. "Look who's here."

You turn. Four classmates from Westside are approaching.

Two of them you can do without: Andy Tackett and Karl Hennepin. They're two of the "creative arts" types at school, dressed in dirty jeans and sloppy t-shirts; and Hennpin crowns his mane of poofy blonde hair with a stupid fedora.

But with them are two girls. One of them you can put a name to as well—Mia DeWitt—because she's in the Film class with you and Keith and Andy and Karl. You don't spend a lot of time scoping out Mia in class, because she usually sits on the other side of the room, a few rows behind you. But today, right now, you get an eyeful: She's dressed in skin-tight jeans and boots, and a black t-shirt that clings tightly to every curve of her hourglass torso. Her long, reddish-brown hair, which falls in gentle curves past her elbows, is kept in place by a knitted cap that she wears at a rakish angle, like a beret. A tartan-plaid ribbon hangs around her neck, at the end of which dangles a laminated card.

The other girl is tall, with a bold, Romanesque nose, and dark, straight hair that hangs to her shoulders. She's dressed in distressed jeans and a tie-dyed t-shirt, and her eye, when it fixes on you, is friendly but direct.

There's a brief exchange of greetings as you all catch up to each other while purchasing tickets and making seating choices. They're here to see the same movie you and Keith are: Quo Vadis?, an old 1950s Bible epic that's getting a special screening.

Keith tries jostling in close to Mia as you cluster at the concession counter. But, as neither Karl nor Andy seem to be paying much attention to the other girl, you sidle up to her with some small talk. You start by introducing yourself, for names didn't get exchanged.

"I'm Rachel," she replies. "I've got you for English."

You stare, trying to place her. "Do you sit on the other side of the room?"

"Yeah. But I've seen you. You sit with Caleb."

"You know Caleb?"

"I've got him for Physics. Last period."

"Huh! Well, um, I'm sorry I didn't— Haven't— Um—" You blush, and have to dig under your cap at a scalp that suddenly turned hot and itchy.

"It's okay," Rachel coolly replies. "You're probably too busy scoping out Andrea to notice me."

Andrea Varnsworth is the captain of the swim team, and probably has the sexiest body in school. Now you really do blush hard, even after Rachel adds, "I'm just teasing."

"What's going on back here?" Mia demands as she looks over her shoulder. Her jaw falls open when she sees your face. "Oh my God!"

"We're just flirting," Rachel says. You gasp in outrage, and pray for the floor to open and swallow you when Andy turns around to grin at you.

"Listen, I'm sorry I embarrassed you," Rachel says a little later, as your group, arms full of popcorn and sodas, is wending its way to the auditorium. "I don't usually have that effect on guys."

"It's okay," you assure her. "I was just— Um—"

"Yeah?"

"I guess it, um, seemed kind of rude. Me being, like, I don't know you when you, um, know me."

"I don't know you," she corrects you. "I just remember seeing you around."

I don't remember seeing you, you silently (and miserably) reply.

But now that you have seen her ...

She actually is kind of pretty. The fact is, she's got a nicer face than Andrea, whose expression can be very hard and is a little too ... Slavic ... for your taste. Rachel has a big nose, but she also has big, almond-shaped eyes, and her dark hair, though not full or fluffy, has some body.

And there's nothing much wrong with her below the nec, you decide as you give her a quick up-and-down while holding the auditorium door open for her. She's very tall—almost as tall as you—but slim, and from the way her tie-dyed t-shirt drapes off her shoulders and bosom (which has a pleasing heft) you can tell she's got an hour-glass figure. Her hips aren't noticeably wide—not the kind of wide bell-shaped bowl that you like in a girl—but her ass is well-shaped. From the way they fill out the legs of her jeans, you'd guess she has a good-looking pair.

She winds up sitting between you and Mia, and because Keith is pestering Mia from the other side, you get to chat some more with Rachel while the stupid ads and trivia slides play. She's not interested in this movie, she tells you, but came along at Mia's invite, as a kind of double date. Weird, you think, because neither Karl nor Andy seem to be paying the slightest attention to her. Her other classes, it turns out, are an intimidating mix of math, science, and engineering. I don't have a lot of time for movies or TV, she informs you.

* * * * *

You like Rachel enough that, when the show is over, you lobby for everyone to go out and get something to eat, or at least hang out afterward, but no one else is interested, and Rachel pleads that she has other stuff she has to do. But she smiles warmly when she says that she'll see you at school on Monday.

So excited are you that it drives all thought of that weirdness on Friday night from your head. Not until Monday morning, when you glimpse Caleb loping along through the parking lot as you're still looking for a space, do you remember that you were going to talk to him about that book and about what happened on Friday.

But maybe you won't now. It suddenly seems very trivial—just something weird that happened, and which will be a distraction from what you really want to talk to him about: Rachel Bell, and your burgeoning sense that maybe you've got a potential girlfriend on your hands!

Next: "Hustled and Bustled" 

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"Table of Contents (Vol. 3)" 
"The Book of Masks (Vol. 3)"