The Book of Masks (Vol. 3)

Double, Double, Toil and Trouble

Previously: "Checking Out What's In the Library" 

You're pretty sure that someone is crazy, and you're not sure that it's not you.

"Wait, lemme understand," you tell Caleb. "You want me to call my dad, and tell him there's something wrong with my truck?"

His breathing sounds labored as it comes through the phone. "Yeah. Tell your dad—"

"No! This is stupid! Why do you—?"

"I told you, I'll tell you all about it—"

"No! Dude! He'll kill me!"

"Look, last night you—"

"If I call him away from work, he's gonna be mad, and if there's nothing wrong with my truck when he gets here he's going to murder me!"

"So what you do is—"

"No! Where are you? Are you in class already?" You squint at the school.

"No, I'm skipping. That's how come—"

"Are you ever coming to class again?"

"Who are you, my mother? Look, if you do me this favor, Will, I'll—"

"No!"

Caleb lets out a deep sigh.

"Alright, man," he says, and he sounds deeply aggravated. "I guess you weren't serious last night, or you'd do this thing for me."

"Serious about what? What are—?"

"I'll talk to you later. Maybe." The line goes dead.

You stare at the screen of the phone. What a jackass! you think. Fine, let him be his weird, stupid self. It's all okay.

Because, you comfort yourself as you hike your bag back onto your shoulders and turn toward the school, I'm pretty sure I got a girlfriend, and I'm pretty sure he don't!

* * * * *

Keith is loitering near your locker when you get into the school. "So," he says, "you gonna set up another tutoring thing with Chelsea?"

That's right! Not only do you got a girlfriend, you're also tutoring the head cheerleader! Sort of. Maybe. So you can't help preening a little when you answer, "I'll have to talk to her about it."

"Can I come too?"

It's not until after you've parted that the obvious pun on "come" and "cum" occurs to you, so when you reply it's just tell him you'll have to see. And you caution him that you probably won't be seeing that much of Chelsea. "I have to be kind of careful about that," you say. "I mean, since I've got a girlfriend and everything."

"And she's got a boyfriend," Keith reminds you with a snort.

"Well, that too."

"And who's this girlfriend you think you got?"

"Okay, it's not official, but—"

"It wasn't official with Lisa, either."

"Shut the fuck up. And would you do me a favor and go eat with Carson and them at lunch?"

"How come?"

"Because I'm gonna be eating with Rachel and them, and you're right, it's not official between us, and I don't want anything"—you poke him in the chest—"or anyone, fucking things up for me."

Keith flushes. "Then maybe you better come eat with Carson and them too! Cocksucker," he grumbles as he turns away.

* * * * *

Caleb is skipping, so there's no reason for you to stay in your seat during fourth period English, and as casually as you can manage you wander over to where Rachel is sitting. (She doesn't seem to have any friends in this class.) You start by perching on the desk in front of her, which is empty, then you slide into it. Your plan is to simply camp out there with her during class. But Ms. Gladstone makes you move back to your usual seat. It's probably your imagination, but you can't help thinking, with a blush, that the entire class is watching and snickering silently at you.

You follow Rachel to lunch, which you take with the same batch of her friends. The girls, naturally, want to know if you've had another tutoring session with Chelsea. You should probably have pretended you didn't—it would make things easier between you and Rachel—but you yield to the temptation to strut a little in front of them and the guys, so with a shrug you admit that you did. That sets off squeals and knowing looks. They ask how it went.

You feel Rachel's gaze upon you, so you decide to underplay it. In fact—

"It kind of sucked, actually," you tell them. "Like, it made me realize I don't really get this stuff as good as I think I do." You turn a hopeful face toward Rachel. Am I really about to say this? you wonder. Am I really about to make myself look dumb in front the other guys? "I think I kind of need tutoring myself. Or, at least, a really smart study partner."

Rachel's eyes narrow. "You mean the three of us? You, me and Chelsea?"

"Oo, a three-way!" laughs Mitchell Belz. Audrey punches him.

There follows a lot of laughter and teasing, which you manage to take in a good spirit. After lunch breaks up, Rachel pulls you aside. "Do you want to get together for a study session tonight?" she asks. "Seriously?"

Your "Yes!" is probably a little too excited, but she takes it with an indulgent smile, and promises to text you after supper to set up a time and place.

You're giddy the rest of the day.

But then the roof caves in.

* * * * *

It starts right after you get home. With your bag still on your shoulders, you barge into the kitchen for a post-school snack, and to ask your mom what's for dinner. She wheels on you. "Will," she says in an even but steely tone, "your father is furious at you."

The news catches you in the gut, and you stop cold with the refrigerator door open. "Wha'd I do?" you squeal.

"There was nothing wrong with your truck," she replies. "As you obviously know," she adds with a glance through the kitchen window at the driveway, where you parked.

You stare at her with your mouth hanging open. Your dad is mad at you? Because there's nothing wrong with your truck? You can only answer her frown with the protest, "I thought he'd be glad there's nothing wrong with it!"

White spots show in her cheeks. "He missed nearly two hours of work on account of it. Did you talk to him?"

"No! I—"

"Mom, what's for supper?" your little brother asks as he saunters into the kitchen.

"Robert," your mom says, "I want you to go to your room. No," she corrects herself, "I want you go over to Shawn's house, and stay there until I call you when supper's ready."

"What?" he exclaims. Then, as she frown between you and him, his eyes light up. "Ooh! Someone's in trouble!"

"Robert!"

"Okay, I'm going to Shawn's!" He quickly backpedals from the kitchen.

That's when it first occurs that you might be in the worst trouble you have ever been in your life.

It turns out that you have no idea.

* * * * *

So (your mother informs you to your utter bewilderment), your dad left work to drive out to Westside to check on your truck, to find out why it wouldn't start. And why did he do that? Because your mom called him and asked him to. And why did she do that?

Because you asked her to.

It makes no sense, and you feel like you're going crazy, when she further explains that you showed up at the house at around ten, having taken a taxi home from Westside, babbling something about how you forgot a really important assignment at home and had to skip school to come get it, and how your truck wouldn't start and that's why you had to take a cab, and begging her to call your dad so he can go out to check on what was wrong with it.

So that's what he did. He came home to get the spare set of keys to your truck, drove out to Westside, found your truck, tested it out ... and found that it started up perfectly.

And when you protest that you never came home, that you were at school all day, and that as far as you know there was never anything wrong with your truck—

Well, that's when your mom loses it and sends you to your room to wait for your dad.

And then when he gets home ...

* * * * *

The long and the short of it is, you're grounded. You're beyond grounded. Both your phone and your truck keys are confiscated, so that you will have to take the school bus to and from Westside for the next month. Your mother won't even look at you—she is so angry—because you insist against her own furious testimony that you did not come home that morning. In fact, she is so mad that your dad, who is usually the one to explode, actually winds up being the calm and conciliatory one.

"I don't know what's going on with you," he gravely informs you after sneaking up to your room just before dinner, "but you need to think long and hard about what you're going to tell your mother. I've never seen her so mad at you."

"I'm not calling her a liar!" you protest. "I just don't know why she thinks—!"

"Give it a long, hard thought, son," he says. And he actually looks a little gray in the face.

You thrash on the bed after he's gone.

Of course you connect this crisis with Caleb's weird-ass request of you before school, so you've got lots of reason to ignore him when a text from him pops up on your laptop.

Then you get one from Rachel, asking about that study session she proposed.

Next: "Schooled and Scuttled" 

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