The Book of Masks (Vol. 2)

A Study Date with Stephanie

Previously: "One Guy, Three Girls, Zero Chances" 

"Can you give me a ride home?" you blurt out before you can change your mind. "I mean, if you're leaving too, I could use a ride. I don't wanna stay either."

Stephanie shoots you a hard, hooded look over her shoulder.

"You don't have to bail, Prescott, on account of me, I told you, I'm going."

"That's why I'm asking for a ride. I came with Sean, but he's gonna be here for, like, hours. And I'm done with this thing too. And then, you know," you add when she says nothing, "you can come back here after I'm gone."

She gives you a long look, then shrugs and goes back inside. That seems like an acquiescence, so you follow her.

* * * * *

You collect your bag and give Sean a quick goodbye, telling him you're going and that you'll see him tomorrow at work. He looks a little dazed, then waves you off with a puzzled, "Sure, um, later." No one else pays any attention to you.

You have to hustle to keep up with Stephanie, who's a fast walker, as she leads you to her car. Neither of you speak until after you're inside, buckled up, and on the road. That's when she asks where you live. "Acheson," you tell her, and give her the street.

"Oh, that's close," she says. "I live in Acheson too. By the river."

"Oh yeah? That sounds nice."

"It is. Did I ever have you out to my place? Like, for a birthday party?"

"No."

"Oh. Listen," she adds after a pause, "you're not leaving Josie's on account of me, and what I said, are you?"

"No. I just— I do better at homework working by myself."

"So do I. Except I'm lousy at homework, so I like having other people around. That's the only way I can get through it."

"You're 'lousy' at homework?" you query.

Her voice sinks into a growl. "You read that thing I wrote for Astronomy."

"Well, I wouldn't call it 'lousy', I just, um—"

"You don't have to be nice, Prescott, I know it was a piece of shit."

"No it wasn't. I've written worse." You don't know why you feel the need to salve her feelings, but you do.

"That's not what Frazier says."

"Who?"

"Scott Frazier. He said you and him were partnered on a report, and you fixed up the paper he wrote real good."

"Oh, that. Well, he wrote it, I just—"

"He said you did the research too. Said it was the easiest paper he ever had to write because you basically wrote it for him with the research stuff you gave him."

"Well, we worked good as a team, I guess."

"Uh huh. But you couldn't fix up what I wrote, I guess."

"I didn't say that!"

"You were pretty fucking tongue-tied when I asked you about it."

"I told you, I'm not used to reading papers on phones!"

"It's in fucking English, like any other text you get! You get texts on your phone, don't you?"

"It's not the same kind of thing! Jesus! But you know, if you want me to take another stab at it—"

She snorts. "Forget it."

"No, I'm serious," you say, and to your own surprise you realize that you are. "If you want to go someplace, just the two of us, to work on it, I'd be up for that."

She does another one of those double-takes at you. "I thought I was taking you home."

"So take me home and I'll pick up my laptop and then we'll go to Starbucks or somewhere."

She thinks a moment, then says, "Bleh. Not Starbucks. How about The Shed?"

"Fine with me. But I thought you wanted to go home."

"I just wanted to get out of there. I'm up for going to The Shed, trying to get some work done. I just needed to get out of there."

"What was wrong with it? If it wasn't me?"

"It wasn't you, man. I just had to get out." She lowers her head and powers through a light that's turning red.

* * * * *

The Shed is a bohemian coffee shop-slash-bakery-slash-food store in Acheson's dinky downtown section—the kind of place run by old hippies and their grown-up hippy kids. There's only a few tables in the cafe corner of the shop, but except for a wrinkly couple next to the window, you and Stephanie have the place to yourself.

You picked up your laptop from home, and you tackle her paper by balancing her phone against the screen while you transcribe her texts (making spelling and grammar corrections as you go) into a word processing program. Meanwhile, she pulls out a thick textbook and, with the occasional worried glance in your direction, starts reading. Her paper, you decide after you've got it in a better-looking format, isn't too bad, even if it does still read like it was written by an over-caffeinated, over-sugared five-year-old with ADHD. You move some of the sentences around to put them in a more logical order, smooth them out so that reading them isn't as painful as stepping on a Lego, and when you're done you turn your laptop around and ask her to read it.

Her eyes go wider and wider as she scans it. "Wow, this is pretty good," she says. "This is like— Oh, fuck!" She twists her seat, as though stung by a wasp, and grabs her own face. "Sorry," she mutters at the wrinkly couple, who have glanced over, then slumps sourly in her seat. "Mr. Cash is never gonna believe I wrote that!"

"Why not?"

"It's too good!"

You shrug. "I don't know what to say, then. You asked me to fix it up."

"Hang on." She leans forward to clutch the screen by the corners as she stares hard at the words, her lips moving as she reads. It's like she's trying to burn the words into her retinas.

"Okay," she says after a minute or so of this, and shuts her eyes and digs the heels of her hands into them. "Lemme just— Don't turn this around," she says as she grabs up her phone. "Can you work on something else?" she mutters as she starts to thumb words into her phone.

"Sure. What are you doing?"

"Writing the frigging thing all over again. Now that I know what it should look like."

"Why don't you just take what I wrote?"

"I'm not copying it, Prescott," she growls, and a little froth shows on her lips. "You just showed me how to do it, and now I want to do it myself. I always want to do my own work, you know." She reddens as she concentrates even harder on her phone, and her eyes, you notice, never stray to the laptop's screen.

* * * * *

You're about a third of the way through your math when she announces herself done. She has to pore over your version of the paper again, and compare it to what she wrote, before she is satisfied, and relinquishes your laptop. "Thanks," she says. "That really helped."

"I don't see how."

"It just did. You showed me how it should go. Frazier's right, you're good."

"Pft. You should tell that my friend Caleb. And to Carson and James."

"Johansson?" she asks. You nod, and give her the surnames of the other two. "Yeah, I know them. That's who you hang out with?"

"Yeah. And I'm the dumbass of the bunch. Well, maybe my friend Keith is the real dumbass. But the others are always telling me how dumb I am. At least, compared to them."

"Tsst! I hate when people do that!"

Then why do you do that when I try throwing a football? you want to ask. But you've been getting along with her pretty well, so you don't. "Anyway," you say, "if you think I'm smart, then you really don't know very many smart people."

"I don't," she says. "Well, that's not true," she adds. "I know a couple of really smart people."

"Back at Josie's?"

She laughs. "No, not back there. No, that's not true, some of them are really smart. But I was thinking of— Well, never mind."

You nod, vacantly. Then, to keep the conversation going, you ask, "Why did you want to leave Josie's?"

"Huh?" You seem to have startled her out of a reverie. "Oh, I just got fed up with it."

"Fed up with what? I didn't see what was going on."

"Oh, just with the 'couples' thing. Which was funny, since I'm the one that put most of them together."

"What, you were playing matchmaker?"

"Sort of. I was— I don't wanna talk about it." She settles back in her chair and lets her gaze go distant.

"You don't have a boyfriend?" you ask after a pause.

"No." But she doesn't bridle, the way you were half-dreading she would. "What about you? Weren't you going with someone? I thought I heard—"

"Lisa Yarborough. Except we weren't going out. Not according to her. According me, I thought we were, but she says we weren't."

Stephanie stares at you and starts to speak. Then she shakes her head and says, "I don't get what you're talking about, but it sounds fucked up."

The silence between you lingers, lengthens, stretches and tightens.

Dare you snap it by asking if she ... wants to get together tomorrow night to study?

Next: "Fun in a Back Seat" 

*
"Table of Contents (Vol. 2)" 
"The Book of Masks (Vol. 2)"