The Book of Masks (Vol. 4)

The Tracker, Trapped

Previously: "On the Outside, Peering In" 

Sunday night. Ten o'clock. You're just pulling into the driveway at home when you get a text from Steve Patterson. Hey lil girl, u doing any thing? Cum up to school let me introduce myself.

You spend two minutes hunting for the vomit emoji before giving up and replying with Yuk no. You quickly follow with, How u get my number?

Ur friend cindy I think u n me n her can all be good friends wat u say?

Fucker. Why did Tilley have to wait until he got himself Steve Patterson's body before volunteering to get "friendly" with you? Even the thought of having Cindy around doesn't make Patterson's sausage any more enticing.

Talk u later, you reply, but not at school too weird there.

Cool wanna get alone time w u anyway. Steve closes with a grin-emoji. You bang your head against the steering wheel a couple of times.

* * * * *

Monday morning brings thunderstorms. They augment your mood—the air feels charged with thunder. You go looking for Jack early, in his first-period classroom.

It's an AP Physics class, and you do a little double-take when you spot some of your old friends—Caleb, Carson Ioeger, and James Lamont—in there, huddled up in a corner and talking quietly to each other. They don't notice you, though, as you stalk over to hover over Jack at his desk.

"What did you do last night?" you ask.

He looks up from his phone. "Oh, hey. I stayed in and watched a movie."

"Alone?"

He shifts a little to glance past you. You're just turning to see what he's looking at when you're pressed from behind and almost pushed into Jack's lap. You catch yourself and look around to see Steve Patterson brushing past. He glances back at you with a heavy smirk, and chucks his chin at you. You flush and—

And you catch the look on Jack's face. It's the very definition of "poker face." A gleeful bit of malice suggests itself to you, and you poke him in the shoulder. "Come on," you tell him, "I wanna talk to you out in the hall."

"What about?"

"About Olivia. And something else, you'll wanna hear. Come on," you insist when he doesn't move. "You'll kill yourself afterward if you don't let me tell you about it now."

Jack sighs and levers himself to his feet.

"I didn't have anyone over," he says when you've got him in the hall, which is packed with crowds of students meandering along like a muddy river. "It was just me and the movie I was streaming. I haven't even texted Olivia if—"

"Fuck that. I wanted to tell you about Steve Patterson."

"Steve?" His brow furrows.

"Yeah. I didn't know you had a class with him. The big, stupid dick. What's he even doing in an AP class? Does he even know how to count to twenty-one without unzipping his pants?"

Jack's lips disappear into a prim frown.

"Oh God," you cry, "he's not your secret crush is he? Is he?"

He flushes—an angry color—and his eyes glitter. "That is so not funny, Simmons, in so many ways."

"Alright, alright! But I wanted to tell you he texted me last night. Oh, God, it was that bitch Cindy's fault. She gave him my number and he texted me and—" You glance past Jack, into the classroom. Steve, who is six-feet-five at least, is sprawled in a desk that looks like it was built for a ten-year-old, reading his cell phone. "And basically," you finish, "he asked me up to the school for a ride on his—" You catch yourself. "Well, he invited me up here to have some fun!"

Jack is giving you a very level look. You recognize it as the kind of look he gets when he is searching for something very withering to say. Gordon's probably about to burn out a ball bearing, you think.

"So. Did you hook up with him?"

"No! Don't be gross!"

"What's gross? I hear he's pretty impressive. I thought you liked that kind of thing."

"I thought you did too! Shit, I'm sorry," you add as Jack flushes even more deeply. "I didn't mean that. Don't be mad at me."

"I'm not mad at you," he says, but the ropes of saliva now forming between his teeth suggest that he is, "but only because I don't believe you."

"You think I'm lying?"

He puts out his hand. "Show me the texts, or it didn't happen."

Before you can stop yourself, you haul out your phone, scroll to the offending messages, and slap it into his hand. He studies them with an expression that's like a mask.

But a trickle of sweat is beading on the back of your head even before he asks, "What's this about meeting up with him outside school?"

"What? I didn't—" You grab at the phone, but Jack yanks it away. "Where does it say—?"

"'I'll talk to you later but not at school too weird there'," he reads off your phone.

"Because I don't want to see him at school!"

"But you'll see him outside of school."

"No!"

"But you said—"

"Okay!" you holler. "Maybe I do want to see him outside of school! Because I hear he's really impressive"—you grapple with Jack, and manage to pry your phone from him—"and I'm really into that kind of thing!"

Your face feels like it's going to burn off the front of your skull as you storm away.

Jack never once smiled or grinned or leered at you, like he was enjoying a joke. And that, somehow, is even worse than the way your prank at Gordon's expense—making him feel awkward by pushing his oblivious best friend in his face—went sideways.

* * * * *

You are so embarrassed by it all, in fact, that you skip having lunch with him and Parker and the girls. But he texts you just before the start of last period, to ask you to meet him in the student parking lot when classes are out.

"So, I'm sorry I got you mad this morning," he says when you catch up to him. He is looking very tall, cool, and poised, and not at all abashed or apologetic. "Friends?"

"Sure. Of course."

He lowers his face, and touches his forehead to yours. "Mean it?"

You can't help feeling a thrill. "Always, Jack!" you assure him.

"Cool. So, can we hang out tonight, get some studying done together?"

"Sure! You want me to get Wendy and—?"

"No, just the two of us."

Really? you wonder. Jack usually likes to do his studying in big groups. Jack likes to do everything in big groups.

"Yeah, okay. Um, where do you want to—?"

"I'll call you, come pick you up. Round about eight or so. We'll go off and—" He brushes a loose lock of hair from your eyebrow. "And we'll figure some hard problems out together."

"Okay." That last line sounded like code. But Jack doesn't elaborate, and gives you a quick, quizzical smile before sauntering off. You stare after him as he goes.

He looks good from any angle, but his ass is one of his best features.

* * * * *

Jack's invite has left you completely flustered, so flustered that you can only smother it by actually concentrating on your schoolwork when you get home. Of course you're distracted a dozen or so times by texts from your girlfriends, and by some pestering from Steve, who won't be put off until you promise to meet up with him on Wednesday night at the gym, but you manage to finish all your school work by suppertime, which leaves you anxious and twitching until Jack finally pulls up in your driveway at a little before eight.

You try making small talk on the drive into town, but Jack hardly replies, and only nods when you confess that you actually got all your school work done already. You don't ask where he's taking you, but you're not surprised to find yourself up at the municipal library again. Nor are you surprised when he leads you out onto that dark and deserted balcony-patio—the scene of that earlier confession.

He drops his backpack onto a table and drops his lovely butt into one of the wrought-iron chairs. You sit opposite him, expectantly. He smiles at you, then pats his lap. "Come here," he says. "I want to talk to you." So you move over and sit on his lap, straddling him and looking him in the face. He rests his hands on your hips.

"You don't like the idea of me and Olivia, do you?" he says.

"No. I mean—!" You were already flustered with anxiety, but his blunt manner has you completely baffled. "It's your business, Jack, I—"

"But I could tell. And I think you're right. You told me I had all kinds of girl friends already, I didn't need to make a new one if I wanted to, uh—"

"To what?" you prompt him.

He seems to wrestle with himself, looking for the right words.

"I told you what I wanted," he finally says. "A soul mate. Or a special someone, if 'soul mate' is too much. But, the thing is, I don't think I can be that with someone if I can't— Um— Express it," he stammers. "Physically."

"Okay," you say. "I think you said something about that too."

"Right. And I'm serious. I want to be able to— But the thing is, I really don't know if I can. I mean, I don't know that you know this, Leah, but I'm gay."

Then why is your dick nosing at me? you want to ask.

Jack sighs. "I was going to tell all this to Olivia, but I've been thinking about what you said. And you know, Leah, you and me are friends. About as best friends as we can be. We're already ninety percent of the way to being, you know, special someones with each other. But the other ten percent—"

Finally he blurts it out. "I have to know that I can satisfy you. I'd have to try it with you."

That's all for now.

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