The Book of Masks (Vol. 4)

A Second Chance at Leah Simmons

Previously: "A Fairy Tale for Jack" 

You hesitate at Cindy's question. You feel less stressed now than you did earlier, but you are also less worried about Gordon. You're pretty sure that he'll be able to make it to the morning okay, when he should get the memories he's now lacking. Besides, it's not like you need to switch with Leah tonight for any reason.

But it still seems like a good idea to get it done.

So you tell Cindy to call the betas back, to get them to bring you the stuff you need, while you yourself DM Leah through the x2z social media app.

* * * * *

You wake to darkness. The air is stuffy, and your skin is scratchy, like you're wrapped in an itchy body stocking. You gape at the blackness above you and struggle to place yourself.

Jenny Ashton. I got a text from Jenny Ashton. You remember that much, at least, though you struggle with the uneasy sense that even that's not quite right. And I had to come up to the school even though it was getting on toward ten o'clock in order to meet some guys because Jack was in trouble.

Jack.

You bolt up with a stifled cry, and nearly brain yourself on the roof of the car. You nurse the bruise while cussing softly to yourself.

Faces and memories come crowding in, suffocating you. Most prominent are the faces of Will Prescott and Jenny Ashton and Leah Simmons—me, myself and I, you mutter to yourself—and they dance in your mind's eye as you you squeeze your head between your palms. Make it stop, you hiss to yourself. Make it stop spinning so I can remember who I am and who I'm ... supposed to ... be!

You draw a shuddering breath as the world slows and rights itself, but your brain still feels very tender, and you dance away from memories that almost painfully vivid. Memories of pulling up in front of the school and getting out to be met by Philip Fairfax and Jenny Ashton—Philip looking sober but Jenny with a queer, almost gloating smile on her face—and of being grabbed and smothered in the face with a ... thing. Memories too of waiting in the dark for Leah to show up, and smiling warmly at her as she hopped out of the cab with a chirpy "Hey, so what's going on?" only to be grabbed and held by beta-Philip as you smashed a mask into her face. And memories of crawling into the backseat of a car and stripping your clothes off, and gripping your temple in the way that beta-Philip showed you, and muttering the strange words that he made you repeat and practice while waiting for Leah to show up.

You roll your head on your neck until the bones crack.

You still feel grimy, as though you've peeled yourself out of clothes that you've worn for several days straight on a backpacking trip, though you are in bare skin. Tentatively you run light fingertips over your arms and the top of your breasts. Leah's body doesn't feel much different from Jenny's. Skinny, even a little bony, with tight skin and little in the way of muscle.

You feel a little better after you've dressed, in jeans, a t-shirt, a long-sleeve shirt over that, and boots and socks. You palm the sides of your head, missing Jenny's long hair, then scramble feet first out of the back seat and into the night air.

Two figures look over from Fairfax's car: beta-Philip and ... beta-Jenny. The latter audibly sucks her breath in with a hiss.

"Hey!" you call out, even though they're only a few feet from you. "Here I am. One of the team, now." You put out your fist. Beta-Jenny ignores you, but beta-Philip awkwardly returns the fist bump. "So, what'd I miss?"

"Cindy took off," beta-Philip says.

"Bitch," you mutter. "Sorry," you add when he frowns. "Anything else? What now?"

Beta-Philip pitches an uneasy glance at beta-Jenny. "You should probably give your, um, other beta some instructions."

"Right. So." You chuck your chin at beta-Jenny.

And you stop dead. Even in the dark, the loathing on the other's face is unmissable.

It startles you, this palpable hostility, and from a couple of different directions. First, there's the shock that you as Leah feel. Yeah, Jenny was never more than borderline polite any time she talked to you, and you knew she didn't much care for you. But this level of hatred? That's unreal! And second, there's the surprise that a teammate—and beta-Jenny is a teammate, isn't she?—should give you that look.

"Yeah, okay," you stammer at her. "I, uh, I guess I'll take over watching out for Jack. And you can go back to—" To what? Hating me from a distance? "To just acting like Jenny," you lamely conclude. "But come find me when I ask you to."

"Sure, whatever you say, boss" beta-Jenny mutters.

Beta-Philip murmurs something in your ear, and you pass the message along to the other beta. "And don't tell anyone about what happened here. Just be normal. Not like anything weird has been going on."

"Sure thing, boss. Can I go now?" the beta grinds out between her teeth.

You regard her, and hesitate.

It's a silly thing to say, because it's almost certainly not going to make any difference. But she's pissed you off, so you give in to the temptation.

"I'm not gay," you tell beta-Jenny. "Not even a little bit."

* * * * *

It's not something you dwell on during the drive back to Leah's house—she lives not far from where beta-Keith is sleeping these days, in a weathered but comfortable ranch house in a part of the city where the lots are small and the trees old—but that look of disgust on beta-Jenny's face (and its reason for being there) was a sore spot, given how unfair Jenny's judgement is. So faces and forms—faces and thighs, mostly, for Leah likes a strong leg on a guy—keep boiling up before your mind's eye as you navigate the darkened streets. Faces and forms like Austin Dougherty. Chris Love. Marc Garner. Alec Brown. Blake O'Brien. Brian Kelly. Cody Schaefer.

Jack Li.

Hmm.

Well, the interest there is tempered by the knowledge that Jack is gay—seriously, unapologetically, one-hundred-percent gay—so it would be ... disrespectful ... to dwell on how scrumptious he looks in shorts. But, yes, when off the leash Leah's libido will sit up and snap when Jack wanders into view.

Because Leah likes the boys, and has always liked them, and has especially hankered after them ever since—

You can't stop yourself flinching at the memory, for you haven't disappeared up Leah's 'gina that far yet.

—ever since a year ago, when Adam Dortch pushed and prodded Leah into the bathroom at a friend's house during a party, and she let him do her while standing between the toilet and linen closet. She went along with him so as to seem cool and unafraid—Adam is a very cool and knowing customer—and because she was actually curious about what it would be like.

And she found that she liked it. A lot!

And from that point on she dropped her tweenage "cute boy" crushes and got interested in men, and particularly in their length and their girth, their firmness and and their stamina.

She exercised some self-control, though. The last thing she wanted was a reputation, like Molly Shaw.

So distracted are you by these reminiscences that you hardly notice when you pull into the driveway of your new house, and you're brought up short only by the sight of Leah's parents curled up in the dark living room watching TV. The panicked thought I'm in the wrong house! blazes across your brain, followed by the somehow-even-more-alarming thought But I am in the right house! But they only react to ask if you're finally home for the night. Tongue-tied, you nod.

And after that you're too addled to do more than flee to the bedroom. Not until you're nestled under the sheets and reviewing the too-busy day do you remember that you ought to send Jack a text, to check up that he got home okay. And by then it seems too late to do any good. First thing in the morning, you tell yourself.

* * * * *

But it's not until you're in the shower that you remember your intention to reach out to Jack, and the water is pouring off you as, with no more than a skimpy towel wrapped around your torso, you scamper back to the bedroom to grab your phone. hey meet fr bfast? you text him. Ten minutes later, with no reply, you follow with wanna talk bt wkend lets have fun. And after you're dressed and wolfing down some oatmeal and there's still no answer from him, so you text him a third time: hey look fr me n park lot.

Still no reply comes, and you're packing up for class when the phone chimes. You're hoping it's Jack, but it's the last person you'd expect to hear from.

"Prescott," Chelsea Cooper says in a very clipped tone. "Is that you?"

You almost drop the phone. "Uh ... yes?"

"Well, is it or isn't it? Because I heard from someone who looks like my friend Maria, and she says she heard from—"

"Yes, it's me, Chelsea. I mean, Josiah."

There's a frosty silence. Then: "Well, where are you? We need you up at the school right away."

"What's wrong?"

"Nothing's wrong. We just need you to run interference. Jack and Gordon are both up here, and while I can handle 'Gordon'"—you can hear the air quotes around the name—"you're supposed to be the one handling 'Jack'."

"Handling them how?"

Another frosty silence. "To keep them from talking and comparing notes."

Yikes, you think. Yes I should get up there!

But then you think: Shouldn't we just be observing, not interfering?

Next: "Practicing Deceptions" 

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"Table of Contents (Vol. 4)" 
"The Book of Masks (Vol. 4)"