The Book of Masks (Vol. 4)

A Guy for Sydney

Previously: "Like a Boss" 

I miss him, Will, Sydney said. It gives you a pang.

"Well, he misses you too," you say, and reach across to clasp her hand between yours. "So if we wanna go off, you and me, like we did yesterday—"

"That's not what I meant," she says, and pulls away. "Unless you're talking about going somewhere and taking off that mask and being yourself again, for a little while."

"We could do that," you say. Your heart leaps up.

"That doesn't fix the problem with him." she snaps. "With the guy we left back in your place. I wanted him and that girl to go out together, Will! So, you know, when we took the masks off and would be ourselves, we'd still be together."

"Well, why can't we?"

She gives you a look, and starts scrolling through her phone. You suspect what she's going to show you long before she finds it. "It must've been your asshole buddy Chen," she says when she shows you the x2z thread that is exploding with news that Will Prescott and Sydney McGlynn were going out but have just busted up. "I don't know why he cares so much, but who else knew that would say anything? It wouldn't have been, um, me who said anything about the break up. Would it have been Will who said something?"

"No." You glower at the screen. "God damn it. I'll find out from Chen what the fuck he was thinking."

"That still won't solve our problem about what we're going to do about them. The other 'us'."

Except it does solve it, doesn't it? In the sense that there is no solution—Will Prescott and Sydney McGlynn are now busted up—so why worry? What you and Sydney should be worrying about, it seems to you, is where to put her so that you and she—that is, she and David Kirkham—can start fucking each other blind.

You're about to broach the topic when Kelsey, her eyes flicking over at something behind your shoulder, go wide. She raises a warning finger, and you tense.

"Hey Kelsey," a familiar and loathsome voice says. "We were actually talking about whether we'd run into you here."

You glance up and over, and your toes curl. It's Geoff Mansfield, and Lisa Yarborough is with him.

* * * * *

You had no idea that you still harbored such hard feelings against them. You saw them every day at school, and gradually you had put them out of your mind, and had totally forgotten them after things got exciting with the grimoire and with Sydney. But seeing them together now, here, with her leaning up against his shoulder, and him with his arm around her waist, you feel a boiling resentment. The cocksucker stole my girlfriend. And the cunt went off with him.

So you didn't stick around long. Kelsey had tried inviting Mansfield and Lisa to join you and her, but you'd quickly told her that you were done talking and would talk to her later, and got up and trudged out. You couldn't help bunching your hands up into fists as you went.

You go straight home from the coffeeshop, where you whip up a quick and dirty chicken salad for your mom for when she gets off work, but are too angry to have any for yourself. As you're fixing dinner, you get a text from Mindy, reminding you that the two of you were supposed to get together (Weren't we? she asks; you can hear the mewling tone in her question) but you ignore it and instead text Gary Chen.

It's Thursday, so he isn't working at the country club (where he busses tables three times a week), and you invite him over to do schoolwork together. Not that you want to see him—if anything, you'd like to punch him—but you've got a character to play, and you feel even less like being alone with your dark and angry thoughts. Besides, you can always find a way to get back at him by being an asshole to him from within the purported friendship.

And you start in on him almost right away, when he hops onto the arm of the sofa—you're working in the living room—and shoves a cigarette and a lighter into his face. "Take it out on the back porch if you're gonna smoke that shit," you growl at him.

"Whatsa matter?" he asks, the flame of the lighter burning only an inch from the tip of the cigarette.

"The matter is you fucking stink the place up when you smoke one of those things. My mom's been bitching about it."

"So what, we s'sposed to do our math out on the back porch?"

"You can do it wherever the fuck you want. I'm tellin' you, you're gonna smoke out there or not at all."

"Fuck." He hesitates, then trots over to the sliding glass door. You glower at his back (but inwardly smile) as you open up your math and start to do your homework in Kirkham's neat, precise handwriting.

You let Chen stew sullenly as you each work separately on math and science. (You're both taking AP Statistics, but you're taking AP Calculus in addition, and AP Physics II as compared to his regular Physics II class.) Then after a break for dinner (some leftover lasagna that Kirkham made the last night that he was himself) you and he sit down to practice on the cello and viola respectively. It's an arrangement of a Bach trio sonata (lacking the third instrument, of course);.Chen himself doesn't care for it—he plays an instrument only because he's got a "tiger mom"—but he and Kirkham regularly tackle as a way of giving him a workout. You are more appreciative of it, having Kirkham's own musical predilections alongside your own, and you prod and poke a lot of holes in his interpretation of the music, passively intimating he's simply not good enough (both intellectually and musically) for it.

"The fuck is your problem tonight?" he finally explodes.

"I don't got a fucking problem, you're the one with the fucking problem with that passage you keep fucking up."

"No, the fuck is your problem?" He glares at you with his mouth torn into a ragged snarl. "Is it your time of the fucking month?"

You hold his eye, then stand up, still clenching the neck of the cello, even holding your fingering there. He leaps up too.

The bow waggles in your hand, for you're starting to tremble all over, but you steady yourself by touching him on the chest with the tip of the bow. "You been on fucking x2z today?" you demand.

He blinks. "Yeah."

"You make any fucking posts about our little conference out at the portables at lunch?"

Puzzlement clouds his anger. "Yeah."

"Thought so." You bite the tip of your tongue, as though scraping something distasteful off it. "I want you to take your fucking viola home, and I want you to fuck yourself up the ass with it."

"The fuck?"

"Yeah. What fucking business was it of yours to go on fucking x2z and—?"

"The fuck is your problem?"

"My fucking problem is what fucking business it was of yours. I didn't ask you to fucking come along with me—"

"I was just—! You wanted my fucking help or not?"

"Not!"

"Fine! Fuck you, man!" He fumbles his viola back into its case, and makes a mess of his homework as he gathers it up. "I just fucking thought— I don't get— So what was that all about with that cocksucker if you didn't—?"

"It was about teaching him he's not good enough to be fucking that girl!"

"Yeah, and now he isn't and everyone knows it!"

"How does that fucking help me, you gaping cunt?"

White spots show in his cheeks and on his forehead. "Because what the fuck good is it if he tells you he's gonna take his dick outta the girl, but no one knows he said it? So I made sure everyone knows!"

"Yeah, and that's what I'm fucking pissed off about."

"How come?"

"Because I don't need your fucking help to make it stick!"

"Oh, fuck off!" He storms out.

* * * * *

It's only after he's gone, and you're in your bedroom on your bed with your shorts open and nursing an erection that you realize why you acted as you did. Tonight was your "farewell" to David Kirkham.

Oh, it's been fun, and you can see yourself returning to the mask. But you're too angry now with yourself, with him, and with his asshole friend to enjoy it now. You need a new home.

But it's got to be one where you can date Sydney. And not just the girl that she's going to be. You want an identity that can sweep in and scoop up the fake one, the "Sydney McGlynn" whose romance you so ham-handedly busted up.

The obvious candidate there is Blake O'Brien, who has also been chasing her. Or maybe Erik Carstairs, another football player, and one with a reputation for being a player in other senses of the words. Or, of course, the guy who really would suit Sydney—an alpha who would most plausibly be able to sweep her up—would be Steve Patterson, one of the star basketball players.

But the afternoon's events have actually bestowed two alternate, intriguing options. The first is ... Geoff Mansfield! What better way to get back at him and Lisa than by stealing his body and locking him away (as you've done Kirkham), and then dumping her as she dumped you, to take up with a glorious creature like Sydney McGlynn?

The other choice really comes out of left field, and you wouldn't have thought of him except his name came up while you were practicing with Chen: Preston Spinks. He's a pianist who has actually been to national competitions. He's smart and handsome, like Mansfield, but isn't a jerk; and he is ... friendly, if not exactly friends, with Kirkham. He would also be a plausible but totally unexpected boyfriend for Sydney McGlynn.

That's all for now.

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