The Book of Masks (Vol. 3)

Fun and Games

Previously: "The Sapper" 

"I think I want to be a guy again," you tell Chelsea. Your heart is in your throat, but somehow you get the words out.

Jessica gives you a look of surprise.

"A male cheerleader?" she says. "That's— I—"

"No, not a male cheerleader. Not a cheerleader at all." You hate the way your voice is coming out as a gasp. "Just ... a guy."

She gives you a long look. Her lips come together into an amused smirk.

"Oh, have you started to miss your—? You really want to have one again?"

"Chelsea!" You pinch the bridge of your nose.

"Well, that's fine, Will. I told you, I get it. It's fun having—"

"Yeah, you told me! You had one while you were wearing Gary's mask, and you—" You frown at your fake sister as she titters. "Yeah, okay, I miss it, and—"

"I told you, that's fine, Will. So who do you want to be? I do owe you a mask."

Now it's your turn to give her a long look, which she returns with a serene one of her own, as you struggle to figure out how to ask her what feels like a cosmically important question.

"Can it be someone who has a girlfriend?" you ask. Her eyes widen fractionally, but she doesn't answer. "Would you be okay with that?"

"Why—?"

"Would you be jealous?"

"Jealous, Will?" she exclaims. The expression on her face tells you that it's a question that's never occurred to her. "Well," she stammers, "I just, um, we've been doing things together, uh, with these— these—"

"What if I was someone who could be your boyfriend?"

Her jaw drops a little.

"It's not like we haven't been doing something like that already," you remind her. "You and me. Yumi and Gary. When we were being them, we were—" You find you can't finish that sentence. "Why can't we be like that again? But instead with me, um— And you—"

"Oh! Now I get it, Will," she mutters and looks away. Her face has gone chalky, and your stomach contracts into a pit of misery. "But I want Seth as my boyfriend! As Jessica's boyfriend! That's the plan!"

So why can't I be Seth? The question forms in your throat but gets no further.

Jessica glances away, then jumps in her seat as her phone goes off. She snorts when she looks at the screen.

"It's our darling little brother," she says, "reminding us we need to have the car back by six-thirty."

* * * * *

Texts from friends have piled up while you were at Catherine's, and you check through them (and through Jessica's texts) on the ride home. You rattle the contents off to Chelsea. There are plans to go to the Warehouse, to a dance club, to the river, to a movie, to this party at that person's house and to that party at this person's house. None of them really excite you, and Jessica only grunts at them as well. But you want to do something—it's a Friday night, and you're a sexy ex-cheerleader—so after turning the car keys over to Marc you text Jenny Ashton, to ask for a ride out to the party at Mackenzie Fuller's house. Chelsea is still acting distracted, but she perks up, like a German Shepherd that's picked up a new scent on the breeze, when you tell her the plan.

"It's not going to be a hot scene or anything," Jenny tells you after you're in the car with her. The caution is redundant, as she already said as much in her texts. "It's just going to be, like, a board game night or something."

"That's fine," you assure her. "That's about the speed we want to run at tonight."

Jenny gives you a querying look. "You know Mackenzie?" she asks. "She's a junior," she continues when you shake your head, "I know her from the marching band—"

"You're not in the marching band, Jenny," Jessica interrupts from the back seat.

"I know people in it," Jenny retorts. "That's, like, who's going to be out there."

"I should'a brought my ocarina," Jessica mutters.

"Never mind her," you tell Jenny, and turn halfway around to shoot Chelsea a dark look, which is probably lost in the dimness inside the car cabin. "Who's going to be there?"

Jenny rattles off some names, most of which Eva knows even you don't. All of them sound solid, respectable, even a little boring.

And so it proves. Half a dozen kids are splayed in the den of the large, plush house you come to rest at, in a development south and west of town, near the river. Mackenzie is a short girl with dark, thick hair and a wide but near-sighted smile. She seems pretty excited by your arrival, and exclaims over you and Jessica, and can't seem to stop touching you on the arm and at the elbow, and introduces you to everyone. It's not really necessary, as most of them are seniors that you and or Eva have shared classes with since you were a freshman, but you get a lot of friendly smiles and nods, and gameplay stops dead for about a quarter hour as you and Jessica get some refreshments and catch up with everyone.

There's only two games going when play resumes: a poker game which Jenny joins, and Settlers of Catan. Neither is much to your taste, so you perch on a chair between Jenny and a dark-haired boy in a black ball cap to watch the betting action.

"Whaddaya think?" the guy asks, and shows you his hand. It contains two red Jacks and mess of number cards.

"Don't ask me," you shrug.

"What's Jenny got?"

"Hey!"

"A ten of clubs, a seven of diamonds, a—" Jenny slams her hand face down before you can read the rest of her hand. "A bunch of other cards."

The guy—his name is Nicholas Gray, and Eva would remember him from an AP English class last year—tosses a chip into the center of the table. "That's to you, Ashton," he says. The other two guys at the table—a senior named Randy Hodges and a junior named Brian Something-or-Other—exchange hooded grins. Both of them have already folded.

"Well, what's he got?" Jenny demands of you.

Nicholas says, "I raised you and I'm not bluffing."

"He's bluffing," you tell Jenny.

"What's he got?" Jenny repeats.

"A six of spades, an eight of hearts, a—" You sigh as Nicholas lays his own hand flat on the table.

The upshot is that Jenny calls. Her pair of sixes loses to his pair of jacks.

"That was great what you did back there," Nicholas tells you a few minutes later, after he's followed you back into the kitchen for a refill.

"Don't ask me to do it again."

"We made a great team."

"I was just messing with Jenny."

"We still made a great team."

You pause as you're refilling your cola, to give him a direct look.

Nicholas Gray is a good-looking kid, with regular features in a square face. He has a strong brow and chin, and a direct, confident gaze. He's dressed in a bright white t-shirt under a dark, bluish-green short-sleeve button up. He's a little on the short side, and he doesn't look very strong, but he's well-shaped and handsome.

A little of the hunger you felt earlier comes back, and you idly wonder what it would be like if he put put one arm around you, laid his hand on your back, and smiled knowingly into your face.

But after a minute of this, he drops his eyes, and his expression tightens.

"Are there any team games we could play in there?" you ask.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, games where it's one team against another. We could be a team."

Nicholas thinks a moment. "Mackenzie has a railroad building game in the stack. Great Lakes Rail, or something like that. I don't think it's got teams in it, but—" He rolls the tip of his tongue over his bottom lip. "We could join up anyway, take out the other players, before turning on each other." His mouth twitches into a smile.

"You're on." You give him a long stare over the top of your glass as you knock back your cola.

* * * * *

"God, Nicholas is cute, isn't he?" Jessica teases you at home, as you're getting ready for bed. "You two were like a thing all night long!"

It's true. You and he badgered Randy and Jenny and Brian into tossing away the cards in exchange for Empire of the Great Lakes, and you and he openly conspired to stomp the others flat, then arranged a stalemate that left each of you with monopoly ownership of half the board. After that came a fast game of cut-throat Monopoly where the two of you traded cash and mortgaged properties back and forth in a bid to keep each other in play while ruthlessly crushing the others. Again, play ended when you and he were the only ones left, with him resigning the game to you. He tried to give you the Park Place and Boardwalk property cards as a trophy, but Mackenzie primly snatched them back.

"I was having fun," you admit with an exhausted sigh. "I didn't know girls had so much fun when a guy flirts with them."

"Depends on the guy," Jessica retorts. "Some are just gross."

You've slithered in between the sheets and are about to put out the lamp by your bed when Jessica plops onto the bed beside you, and stretches out by your side. Her bright, fresh-scrubbed face is close to yours when she says, "If you want to be my boyfriend, Will, you have to turn yourself into Seth. Or," she continues when you say nothing, "we could be two new people? You could pick yourself out a guy, then pick a girl for me. Or," she drawls, "you could let me pick a girl, then pick out a guy for you."

That's all for now!

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