The Book of Masks (Vol. 4)

A Double Game of Doubles

Previously: "Dancing Around the Issues" 

I'm sposed to do a thing w jack, you text to Maria Vasquez. (That's who Fairfax currently is.) Want me watching him and reporting or meeting w u?

It gives you a thrill when you hit "send," and you do a double-take when you catch a glimpse of yourself in the dresser mirror out of the corner of your eye. The face reflected there—Leah Simmons's—has an elfin grin, and it deepens as you contemplate it. I'm a popular girl! Everyone wants to be my friend!

Maria's reply comes twenty minutes later after you've gotten out of the shower. So when can you meet? she wants to know. You tell her you'll set up a time when you know more.

* * * * *

Jack Li whistles sharply and grins as you come hurrying up to the tennis court. "Don't your parents feed you enough?" he calls. "You're nothing but toothpicks and fishing line!"

"Oh, shut up!" you shout back. "Would you like me better if I was fat?"

"I'd like you better if you was on time." Jack shades his eyes and looks past you, up the road. "I'd like it better if Olivia was on time," he adds.

It's a little before five, so you're not actually late, but the tennis courts are only a few blocks from Jack's house, so of course he was waiting for you. There are only two courts, but they are never used, having been put in by the developer as a neighborhood amenity. It's a very nice neighborhood, being on the west side of the river and directly across Carver Road from the country club. And because the courts are a block inside the development, no one except the people who live around here know that they even exist.

"Olivia who?" you ask. "Not Olivia Byrne!"

"Sure."

"She doesn't play tennis!"

"You don't either. And how do you know she doesn't? Besides, that's my business,ou're partnered with Parker."

You glance over at the other guy, who's been silently grinning all this time.

"What's up?" you ask. You don't like the prickle that's going up your spine.

"Nothing's up," says Jack, who goes back to gazing up the street toward town. "Except a game of tennis."

No, something's up alright, and as far as you're concerned, it's that you're going to be joined by Olivia Byrne, one of the girls on the swim team. If you were in your own skin that would be great, for Olivia has a pretty face, fluffy brunette hair that trails down the back of her slim neck, and curves like you get when a body has been polished long and closely in a stream of water.

But you're not in your own skin. You're in Leah Simmons's skin, and you're thinking with her brain and feeling with her glands, and so the news that Olivia will be joining you is like a trickle of cold water dribbling down your back. Because Jack is right about your physique. Leah dresses in long sleeve shirts and jeans at school because she is extremely skinny, with hardly any muscle on her arms and legs, and her boobs— Well, far from being the kind of breastworks that can stop and hold a guy's gaze, they barely act as speed bumps to slow a glance before it's off and away and onto another girl.

Okay, sure, there are lots of other skinny girls at school, like Ella Swope and Lily Hallet, but they're on the track team so they have an excuse. Leah is not athletic. So if Olivia shows up, looking great in shorts and a sleeveless top, and turns out to be actually good at tennis ... The way that Jack, who looks totally scrumptious in his shorts, and who is also good at tennis ... Well, the headache you feel coming on is going to get a lot worse.

You know that you look unhappy, and before anyone can say anything you wheel on Parker. "What are you smiling at?" you snarl.

His grin widens. "Whoa, who says I'm smiling?"

"You are smiling! Where's Kristina?"

"She has to help her mom. Come on, let's you and me warm up."

You glance at Jack, who with a faint smile is still watching up the road for Olivia, then stomp off with Parker to the far side of the court. You drop to the ground, legs outstretched, and bend forward to grab your toes.

"So what's the deal with Olivia showing up?" you murmur at Parker.

"What's wrong with Olivia?"

"Just answer my question, Parker." You gasp. "You didn't ask her along, did you?"

"No!"

"Because if Kristina found out—"

"I didn't ask her. It was Jack's idea."

"Why her?"

"Because he wants to win at doubles, I guess. He told me you can't even hit the ball."

"I can hit the ball! Just don't ask me to hit it over the net."

Parker grunts and shifts position. "Well, all I know is I got out here and Jack told me that you and Olivia were coming, and you and me were going to play him and her."

"But why Olivia? He doesn't even know her."

"Jack knows everyone."

"But not like that. And why'd she say yes?" That, it occurs to you, is the even deeper mystery.

"Ask her yourself," Parker says. He bends forward to put his face into his knees. "There she is," he says in a muffled voice.

You glance around. A lemon-yellow Suzuki Ignis, looking like an SUV that shrank in the wash, has pulled up.

And Jack is advancing to meet it.

* * * * *

The game that follows was supposed to be "fun," but it wound up being embarrassing and frustrating, on account of you cannot get your racket to connect to the ball. You yourself aren't bad at tennis—it was the one sport you played in PE your sophomore year that you didn't hate, and you keep up a little bit in practice with friends—but Leah has no coordination for it, and you feel yourself tripped up at every turn by her body. It doesn't help that Olivia does look great in a short white skirt and sleeveless top, and she isn't so very bad. Jack and Parker are quite good at it, but you drag your partner down. It's not long before you're hot and flushed, and it's not from running after the ball, but from the humiliation.

Even worse is that everyone is so goddamned nice about it.

Parker ought to yell at you for the way you keep lousing things up, but he just keeps chirping Good try! or Now you're getting it! even when you put the ball straight into the net. The really hideous part is that you're so bad that he can't even figure out how to give you any constructive advice.

Jack, on the other side of the net, doesn't say anything, but only smiles benignly when you screw up a serve.

And Olivia— Well, at least she has the grace to look embarrassed. And after awhile, when she's stopped staring at you with a slightly aghast expression, and has started shooting Jack little covert glances, it dawns on you that the game is probably even worse for her than it is for you, because she feels bad for you but doesn't feel like she knows you well enough to say anything.

Pretty soon it's all just a grim exercise to get through—like a final exam.

* * * * *

You're relieved when play gets cut short after only forty-five minutes or so, and you're glad it's Jack and not Parker or Olivia who calls an end to things. But you're still not real happy, because it looks like he's cutting it short for Olivia's sake rather than yours. At least, that's the impression you get when he suggests "changing partners" and "doing something else," but then follows Olivia out to her car, and spends almost five minutes leaning in and talking to her through the driver's side window. Not until you catch Parker giving you a pained look do you realize you've been staring them and ignoring him while putting your things away.

And then Jack tries to sneak off without talking to you, even without telling you where he's going. You race over to catch up to him at his minivan.

"Alright, you owe me!" you snarl, and poke him in the chest. "That was fifty different kinds of awful out there, and you need to tell me what was going on!"

"We were playing tennis. Well, that's what the rest of us were doing, I don't know what you were doing, sweetheart." He tries tweaking your nose, but you brush him off.

"I mean with you and Olivia!" The retort grinds out between your clenched teeth. You jab him in the chest again.

He tenses and tenses a little. "Nothing's going on with us," he says. "At least, not yet."

"Not yet? What does that mean?"

Jack gives you a long, flinty, searching look.

Then he floors you with his reply.

"I'm thinking of asking her to go out with me."

Next: "Piled Higher, So Digging Deeper" 

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