The Book of Masks (Vol. 2)

The Continuing Misadventures

Previously: "Confidence and Confidences" 

"Well, thanks for the warning," you tell Patterson.

"Just fair notice," he repeats. "Now, are you done here?"

On the way out of the gym, you ask him, "When did you see Gordon? I mean, to get these keys from him?"

"This afternoon, at work."

"How's he doing? I mean, I heard him and Chelsea, uh—"

Patterson stops to give you a very long and searching look. Maybe you got more comfortable after being with him for the last hour or so, or maybe you're just more confident on account of your own friendship with Gordon, but you return his stare with a steady one of your own.

"He's doing okay," Patterson finally says. "I'll see you around." Abruptly he turns and shambles off toward the boys' changing room.

You put the new keys on your own keyring, and after thinking about it while driving around town you go home and spend the rest of the afternoon playing video games in your room. It's the only way you know to wrap your head around the way your life is being twisted onto a new course.

* * * * *

You don't say anything to Caleb about getting keys to the gym and loft when you go over to his house at around five. Gordon's not home yet, but you and Caleb have only been joshing about this and that about school—not about magic business or anything like that—when Gordon does come trundling in.

"Hey," he says when he puts his head in through the doorway. "Supper plans made yet?"

"I think my mom's just gonna defrost some frozen dinners," Caleb says.

"Then how 'bout we get a pizza, bring it back here?"

You and Caleb look at each other. "That's sounds great," you both agree.

"I can throw in twenty," Gordon says. "You guys pitch in what you can." He goes to the toilet, and when he gets back you settle on what to get and where, and you're sent to pick it up. Afterward, you sprawl in Caleb's bedroom with the pizzas while Gordon searches out some college basketball games on YouTube

This isn't exactly to your or Caleb's taste, but Gordon is in the best mood you've ever seen him in—he doesn't seem happy, exactly, but he's mellow and relaxed and actually pretty talkative—so you don't argue. The evening turns out to be not half bad. Gordon really gets into the game as it progresses, pointing out the plays to you and Caleb, explaining them and critiquing the performance, and he gets pretty excited when talking about particular players and what they're good at. He gets very intense and focused, and you can tell that he would badly like to be on the court playing in that game, or any game.

I should know what's going through his head, you think. I was there for a couple of weeks. But you find that the memories have almost faded—except for some intense ones involving his dad ... and Chelsea—so that you have nothing to go on but his manner. Yeah, he's happy. He's into this, the way I get into it when I play a video game.

But you don't realize you've been staring at him and smiling at him, until he catches you at it. "You see something funny, Prescott?" he asks, and there's just the trace of a growl in his voice.

"No. I was just thinking—" You hesitate.

It would sound stupid, you feel, to sat it aloud—that comparison you were making between the things you and Gordon are "into." Video games are just button-pushing, but basketball is a real physical activity, and now that you think about it again, you get a bit of an empathetic rush that brings back that feeling of calm intensity you felt on the gym courts when you were playing Gordon's role at school. It's funny you didn't really notice it at the time. You were just "doing Gordon," and maybe Gordon just gets so into it when he's playing basketball that he doesn't notice that he's into it.

"I was just thinking that I wish I was good at basketball," you finally say, "so we could go out and have fun instead of just watching the fun."

You're staring at the screen when you say this, and when Gordon doesn't reply you glance back, to find him again entirely absorbed in the play on screen.

* * * * *

You were dreading the next day anyway, because of the detention you will be sharing with Kirkham, but the horror gets an early start. You are rounding your way into B wing for your shitty third-period Career Planning class—and wishing you could afford to skip it again, to hang out in the loft—when two guys appear out of nowhere and grab you from either side. Your craven instincts kick in, and you let them hustle you toward the doors leading outside in back of the school. But when they kick the doors open and thrust you through, and you see David Kirkham and Gary Chen waiting for you a couple of dozen yards off by the portables, everything Gordon had told you comes rushing back. It's almost like he's talking to you telepathically.

Hurt them, his voice says almost audibly inside your skull. Hurt them bad, as hard as you can. Hurt them even if you have to hurt yourself. Hurt them even if you hurt yourself worse.

Every limb and muscle in your frame comes to life.

You thrash and twist and pull in every direction to break free, but you are only gripped even more tightly.. Froth bubbles up around your teeth and you throw yourself back and forth, even when you feel a hard, electric spike in a back muscle, and when one of your arms bends the wrong direction. You wrench and you grind and you snap, trying to get your teeth onto something, but it's like being chained between two rocks—

Until you accidentally bash the side of your head into the head of one of the guys holding you. You see stars, and are gripped by a sickening dizziness, but you keep fighting, kicking and twisting until the hands gripping you on that side slip off. You round and slam a fist blindly at the other guy, and put a knee into something soft and mushy. There's a yelp, and then you're free, and then George Mendoza—a doughy soccer player who runs with Kirkham's crowd—is falling onto the ground.

You kick him in the stomach, hard.

You're grabbed from behind, but before you can lash out, someone looses a teeth-cracking whistle and you're released. You spin, and Joe Thomason—another one of Kirkham's cronies, this one with the look of a skinhead—falls back from you. There's fear in his eyes.

* * * * *

As far as you're concerned, he's saved only by a hoarse shout from the direction of the Agricultural Annex. Mr. Barrientos, a burly teacher with a bushy black mustache, comes charging out and collars you. He lets Thomason walk away, sends Mendoza to the nurse's office, and sends you to see Mr. Sagansky. The principal regards you from behind his desk with the expression of a man who feels a raging migraine coming on.

You give him your side of the story, but Mr. Barrientos will only say that he saw you whaling on Mendoza and kicking him in the stomach as he lay on the ground. Mr. Sagansky sends him away and gives you a week's detention, and says that he'll be calling your father. You shrug.

So you're in a bad mood when you head into English, and you irritably shake off Cassie when she comes over to talk. Indeed, you're so grumpy that you don't even bother to make nice when she retreats with a wounded expression. But you relent enough that when class is over you go over to apologize, though you also tell her that you want to eat lunch alone because you're not in the mood for company. She looks crushed, but says that she understands.

A class is starting to assemble on the basketball court when you barge into the gym at lunchtime, but you ignore it to trudge up the stairs to the loft. Normally it would give you a thrill to put the key in the lock and twist it, but you're too distracted and angry to feel anything else. But you do stop with a cold spot where your heart should be, when you see Patterson sitting in the middle of the loft with his back against the central support pillar. His eyes freeze when he looks up at you.

"Sorry," you mumble, "I didn't think— I thought you had fourth lunch."

"I do," he says. "But this is my study hall." That's when you notice the textbook open in his lap.

"Jesus, you actually study up here? But don't mind me," you add as you close the door. "I didn't come up here for anything except to get away." You drop your pack and plop down beside it.

"Huh," Patterson says after a pause. "Well, don't we all."

Minutes pass. You fall onto your back with your pack as a pillow, to stare at the ceiling and idly wonder if Patterson is shooting you hateful glances. Then the wondering becomes anxious. Not because you think Patterson will do anything to you, but because you're starting to feel like a jerk for intruding. If Patterson barged into my bedroom and flopped down uninvited, wouldn't I be pissed off? you ask yourself.

But then, this isn't Patterson's bedroom.

Still, you lug yourself up with a grimace and start to go. But Patterson interrupts your exit. "You don't have to leave, Prescott," he says. You glance back. His face is turned down into his book, but he lifts his eyes to regard you with a mild scowl. "Though I would like to know why the fuck you decided to come up here after what I told you yesterday."

Next: "Breaking Points" 

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