The Book of Masks (Vol. 3)

Checking Out What's In the Library

Previously: "How to Replace an Absent Friend" 

You quickly thumb in a text to Keith, telling him to come meet you at the city library for a study session. He doesn't reply until you're on the road.

Nah, he says. Just stane in.

Surprise guest at lib, you promise. When he asks who, you tell him, Girl.

Nah dont want get w u n rachel.

Not rachel.

Dude u cheat on her already

No tutor thing. U come so no cheating, you add.

There's a very long pause, time enough to reach the library itself. Then Keith says, Ok c u n ten.

You can't wait to see the expression on his smug face when he finds you at a table with Chelsea Cooper!

* * * * *

Except it takes you awhile to find her. She's not in periodicals and she's not in any of the reading rooms. At first you tell yourself she's just late, but you're starting to panic—I will look like such a loser if I can't show Keith who I've got here with me—by the time you text her to say that you're at the library.

She tells you that she's back in the stacks, and gives directions.

She's in a far corner you hardly knew existed, a little cubbyhole tucked into the deepest part of the library, with about a dozen bookshelves screening you off from the rest of the building. There's a small table tucked into this corner, and Chelsea is huddled at it. She looks up from her phone with a glower as you appear, then quickly recomposes her features into a very blank smile.

"Hi, Will," she says. She shoves her bag out of the way so you can set yours on the table. "Thanks for coming!"

"Thanks for asking me. Er, um."

Your tongue suddenly freezes to the top of the roof of your mouth when it sinks in that you're actually talking to Chelsea Cooper, for a second time in your high school career. There's a golden radiance that seems to pour off her, and a sexy good health. She is small but compact with a good shape—large but firm boobs—and clear skin and silky golden hair that bobs gently in loose curls. You have a quick vision of yourself, scooping her up into your arms, burying your face in hers, and making a snack of her mouth. A hot sweat breaks out all over your body.

"I, uh, I'm sorry for blowing you off this morning," you say as you fall into the chair opposite her. Her expression turns puzzled. "Gordon told me you wanted to see me?"

"Oh that!" She laughs, but it's unconvincing. "That's okay! A big lummox like Gordon, he messes things up all the time. But now we're here and—"

You phone chimes, and you jump. It's Keith, telling you that he's arrived. Your text to him suddenly seems like a bad idea. You'd like Chelsea all to yourself, and what will she think of you inviting a friend along to ogle her? Almost you decide to blow Keith off.

Fortunately, you're stress-nauseated brain is able to vomit up an alternative.

"Oh, um, I got a friend meeting us up here too," you stammer at Chelsea as you tap in a reply telling Keith where to find you. "I, uh, we were going to meet to study anyway, up here. That's how come— Well, that's one reason I, uh, said I'd come out here. I mean, I would've come anyway!" you hurriedly add. "If it was just, um, going to be us." Your face starts to burn. "But he was coming anyway. Um. You mind if he joins us?" The scalp under your hat is itching and burning with sweat.

"Sure," Chelsea says. Her smile is very fixed and has nothing to do with her eyes. "The more the merrier." She leans across the table, her grin fixed and glassy. "Is he going to be tutoring me too?"

* * * * *

You can only stare in horror as the implications of her question sink in. She heard the rumor that you started—that you are tutoring her in math and other subjects. Is this a sick joke on her part? you wonder. Is Gordon going to pop out from behind the shelves, haul me off, and beat the snot out of me for making up lies about his girlfriend?

"Erm," is all you can say as you stare back at her with goggle-eyed fear.

She titters, and leans back in her chair. "Well, I could use the help anyway," she says.

So that's the scene when Keith swaggers out from behind a bookshelf and stops dead with shock when he sees you. His jaw drops, and he sways on his feet. The sight of him so gloriously wrong-footed fills you with a gleeful courage.

"Hey, Keith," you say. "Chelsea says she's up for both of us tutoring her. This is my friend, Keith," you tell Chelsea. She giggles and grins at him.

Keith stares at her, flicks a quick glance at you, then staggers over to flop like a gutted fish into the chair next to you. His jaw remains anchored to his chest as he stares at Chelsea. Her eyes drop, and she says, "Um."

You jog Keith in the arm. "Man up," you growl. "It's a study session. Get your math out." Keith bolts upright and fumbles at his pack.

The whole point of inviting Keith out, of course, was to "prove" to him that you are so tutoring Chelsea. Even better, this might be a chance to establish an actual, real, honest to goodness business relationship with her, one that ...

Okay, it feels very silly as the fantasy runs away with you, but you follow joyfully along as one fancy trips over another: Chelsea being impressed with your tutoring skills. Chelsea wanting to make this a regular thing. Chelsea inviting you over to socialize with her friends. Chelsea's friends being charmed and attracted to you. You becoming a casual, cool, and comfortable member of her gang, giving friendly hugs to Kendra Saunders and Gloria Rea and other cheerleaders, and fist bumping with Gordon and Steve Patterson and other alpha jocks.

"Okay, so what math class are you taking?" you ask Chelsea as you pull out your own calculus book. "I mean," you correct yourself, "what's your assignment today?"

* * * * *

Well, it turns out that she's not taking a math class, that she's taking classes like Interior Design and Dance II and Marriage and Family Life. In fact, the only "real" classes she seems to be taking are a French class and English, and the latter is an AP class. But she plays along with your pretense anyway, clearly improvising a line how she "doesn't have a head for math" which is why she didn't put a math class on her schedule, but how she now "regrets" not signing up for calculus, and how she wants some "private lessons on the side" for when she has to take the SATs. It's all very bright and unconvincing, even though she says it with an eager and ingratiating smile. You can feel Keith bristling all over with skepticism.

But you play along by trying to explain the basics of calculus—though you barely get them yourself—and she struggles to maintain a glassy-eyed interest in the topic. You expect her at any moment to call an end to the charade, but she insists on watching you do your own homework, and on trying to follow as you do it. "It's so amazing," she keeps saying.

Her phone keeps going off while you work, and she is constantly checking it, but an hour and a half pass before she gets a text that causes her to declare that she has to go. "But you guys stay and finish up," she says as she gathers her stuff and departs.

Keith gives you a long, steady look after she's gone. "What?" you finally demand.

"That wasn't Chelsea Cooper," he says.

"What do you mean?"

"Oh, I know it looked like Chelsea Cooper," he says, "and it talked like Chelsea Cooper, and it smelled like Chelsea Cooper—"

"How do you know what Chelsea Cooper smells like?"

"But it wasn't Chelsea Cooper."

"So who was it?"

He mulls the question, then says, "It was some kind of hypnotic hallucination that you manifested with the raging boner you have for her." He leans forward. "Teach me how to do it too!"

* * * * *

You don't linger at the library after Chelsea has gone—Keith insists on being pestilential—and go home. Your dad glances away from the TV as you pass through the living room, long enough to grunt, "I'm gonna want those things dry-cleaned before he gives them back."

"What things?" you ask.

"The suit your friend Caleb borrowed."

You have no idea what he's talking about, but you assume it is something to do with Salopek, so you tell him you'll pass the message along. You do, in a short text you toss at Caleb after you're upstairs. You also ask where he was today. He just answers, Will do.

But you hear a lot more from him the next morning. You're loping your way across the parking lot toward school when your phone rings. It's Caleb, calling direct. "Man, I need a huge favor from you," he says in a guarded tone. "Can you call your dad, get him to come out to the school? Tell him there's something wrong with your truck? Like it won't start?"

"What's going on?" you ask.

There's a pause. Then he says, "Look, I'll explain it all when we get together after school. You want in on this? Do me this favor."

"Want in on what?" you ask. He's making no sense.

"You said you wanted in on this. Now's your chance."

You don't remember telling Caleb you wanted in on anything. In fact, you haven't seen him since Monday morning, when he freaked out after you told him about that weird meeting with Chelsea.

Next: "Double, Double, Toil and Trouble" 

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