The Book of Masks (Vol. 3)

The Difference Between Boys and Girls

Previously: "Garners' Night Out" 

You and Jessica and Marc have your coffees and are bent over your phones when Chen and Yumi come rolling in. They have their arms around each other's waists, and Chen sports a cocky grin. "Hey man, where's your girl?" he teases Marc.

"We're here studying," Marc says. He slips his phone into his backpack and pulls out some books.

"Yeah, I'm studying too," Chen says. "Studying this little girl." He kisses the side of Yumi's head, and she squeals.

"If you wanna get a table for yourself," Jessica says to Marc. She's on his side of the booth, squeezed between him and the wall, and she nudges him.

But Chen pushes Yumi in next to you. "Nah, there's room for us all," he says. "Getcha something, babe?" Yumi asks for a latte, and he saunters off to get it.

"He seems sweet," Marc tells Yumi with barely concealed sarcasm. "Sweet and thoughtful and sensitive."

"He is," she retorts. "No one gives him a chance."

"So what do you do when you get together?"

Yumi makes a face. "None of your business."

"You all have Stat together, right?" you hastily interrupt. "I mean," you add when all heads swivel toward you, "we're all here to study. Yumi, you got your Stat homework done yet?"

"I didn't know we were getting together to study."

You duck your head, letting golden curls fall around your face to obscure the faint blush you feel creeping up your cheeks, and dig inside your own backpack.

* * * * *

It's a rough hour that follows. Chen and Yumi haven't brought any books along, so they've nothing to occupy themselves as you try to bear down on Eva's unfinished homework, and Chen loudly prattles and brays at Marc as he tries to do his, talking about the soccer team and who's doing a good job on it and who isn't, and tossing out unsolicited advice on what Marc, as team captain, should be doing differently.

Worse, when that topic runs out, he starts advising Marc on his ganja usage. "Long as you don't let that stuff fuck you up out on the field," he tells Marc, "I don't got no objection to your using. An' I can set you up with better stuff than whatever shit you've been gettin' wherever you been gettin' it. Cheaper too." Marc thinly replies that he knows what he's doing.

But the worst part comes about thirty minutes into the session, when you feel something touch and tickle the back of your shoulder. You twitch, thinking to shake loose the fabric that has bunched up there, then with a shock realize that you're being gently probed and rubbed by a hard fingertip. You freeze in place as the fingertip strokes and massages a tiny patch of skin between your shoulder and shoulder blade, and it takes you a moment to realize it's Chen. He's got his arm around Yumi's shoulders, but he's slid his hand past her, and is finger-flirting with you (literally) behind Yumi's back.

Grimly, you lean back, pinching his fingers between your shoulder and the back of the unpadded booth. With a jerk, he pulls free, and doesn't try that slimy trick again.

"You didn't say much," Marc observes to Jessica on the drive back home. "You didn't study much, either."

"I was watching Gary and Yumi."

"Yeah? And?"

She shrugs. "They seem happy."

Marc snorts. "He's a fucking psycho, and what's wrong with her?"

"I'll talk to her."

"You fucking better. Tell her—"

"Shut up, Marc."

He jumps a little in surprise, then ducks his head to concentrate on his driving. Jessica glances back at you. Her expression is unreadable in the dark, but she says, "Me and Eva'll have a talk with them."

* * * * *

Back home, in the bedroom that the Garner girls share, you change into flannel pajamas, and show Chelsea what she needs to change into. After that, she pushes you into the chair at the dressing table and, like a hair stylist, goes to work brushing out your pale gold hair, and pushing it this way and that while you both study the results in the mirror. You ask if she's starting to get any of Jessica's memories. She says she hasn't, but you wonder. "Jessica likes to play with Eva's hair," you inform her. "Like you're doing now."

"Huh. Well, you're like a big, life-size doll," your ersatz sister replies. "You're just too tempting. And you're so easy to push around."

"I am?"

"Well, Eva is." She bunches up a fistful of your hair. "You should think about getting a permanent while you're, you know. Put a little more curl into her hair."

"Eva tried that back in middle school." The smell of the chemicals comes back to you. "It was a pain and she didn't like keeping it up."

"Tch. That's her whole problem, you know."

"What is?"

"She's lazy."

You give Jessica a narrow look in the mirror, but she's too busy playing with your hair to notice.

"Eva and Jessica," she continues, "they're both lazy. Well, Eva is. I don't know about Jessica yet, but Eva's one of those girls who thinks that because she was born with looks that she doesn't have to work any extra. Not on her looks, not on her hair, not on her figure. Sure not on her gymnastics." A sneer curls onto Jessica's lip. "She just goes along like, 'Look at me, I'm so cute, I'm so good, love me just like this.' Pfft!"

Her voice hardens. "Do you have any freaking idea, Will, how hard I work to keep myself looking as good as I do? Keeping my routines as good? Keeping my boyfriend happy?" Her brushstrokes intensify, pulling and yanking at your hair by the roots. "There's not one freaking moment I can have to myself, for myself. I put in so many flipping hours, it makes me exhausted!"

"So why don't you relax a little bit? I mean," you add as her frown hardens, "just take an extra ... five percent? For yourself?"

She doesn't answer, but only works faster and more intently at your hair, and meekly you submit. But after a few more minutes, she throws the brush down with a snort.

"Well, I give up," she says. "I guess Eva knows best what she can do with her hair, and if this what she does with it—"

"It's fine, I think," you say. Your scalp hurts from the brushing, and gently you pat the tresses back into a fuller shape from the mauling she gave you. "Really, I think I like—"

Jessica gives a start, and her eyes sharpen, as though she's seeing you for the first time. For a long moment, you hold each other's gaze.

Then Jessica's expression softens a little, and she touches a your jaw with a gentle fingertip.

"This really is something new for you, Will, isn't it?" she says. "I mean, the whole 'being a girl' thing."

"Well, I was being Yumi for—"

"But that was different, wasn't it?" She shakes her head. "That was for— Well, that was for me. I asked you to. Or—" She seems to catch herself. "It was my idea. 'Cos I thought it would help you with, um, your old girlfriend."

"Well, yeah. But I was—"

"Yumi's not much of a girl."

You feel another blush creeping up your cheeks. "I think she was. Gary seemed to think so."

"Oh, that!"

She turns away, then turns back around again. Her expression is hooded.

"But now," she says, and touches your jaw again, pushing it to tilt your head a little to the side. She ruffles and fluffs your hair. "Eva's a lot more— Well, she is like a big, living doll. You feel more like a girl this way, Will?"

You don't know what to say to that. Of course you feel more like a girl—you are a girl!—but admitting it to Chelsea would feel like you're forfeiting your masculinity. So you lower your face.

But as you lower your eyes, you catch sight of yourself in the mirror, and can't stop from looking up at your reflection.

It really is a pretty face you've stolen from Eva Garner. A soft brow over eyes that slope sleepily at the corners; a regular nose; a plump little mouth. And below your smooth throat and framed by your shoulders, rising and falling gently inside your pajama tops, are two ripe, full breasts. Their tips start to prickle as you drink yourself in.

Jessica leans down to rest her chin on your shoulder, and stare into the reflection of your eyes.

"It is different, isn't it, Will?" she says in a soft voice. "Being a girl from being a boy. And being a soft girl like Eva from being a sassy little bitch like Yumi. I really got a feel for how different boys and girls are when I was ... you know. Being Gary." She bites her lip. "I felt so powerful, but I was also so scared."

"You didn't act scared."

Gary tries not to. But he is. That's why he tries not to act like it. He's scared of what he's doing, scared of what's going to happen to him. Scared of girls." Her voice turns to a groan. "He wants so bad to be with a girl, to—" She swallows. "To ram himself up inside a girl, and then to hold her afterward, and protect her." She hesitates. "He almost would want to see her in trouble, to see her cheat on him, or to get in trouble with another guy, so he could bust on the other guy, and then go back to the girl and say, 'See what I did for you, what I'll always do for you?'"

She sighs, raggedly, as she straightens up. "It was making me crazy, because he's crazy. And then I was watching him all the time tonight, at Milagro. Thinking what an ugly, creepy asshole he was being. But I was also thinking, 'I know what he's doing, why he's acting this way.' I could almost feel what he was feeling. He was so scared being with Yumi, in front of Marc and us, not knowing how to act."

She hops onto her bed with a sigh. "But I don't know why I'm telling you all this, Will. You're a guy, you know totally what it's like."

Next: "Eva, Hot and Bothered" 

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