The Book of Masks (Vol. 2)

The Temptation To Be What Another Wants

Previously: "A Stolen Life" 

"I got some homework I gotta finish too," you tell the guys. It's a lie, but you don't feel much like hanging out with Caleb, not in his new persona. You can tell he's trying not to act like David Kirkham, but just looking at him gives you a bit of a shiver.

"Alright." Caleb bumps you in the shoulder with his fist. "But tomorrow, skip Walberg and come hang out at the portables with me. We'll start making it look like we're okay with each other now."

He turns to trudge up the stairs, then stops to look back when you don't immediately follow. You stir, then with a glance at Gordon, who's been silently preoccupied with his own thoughts all this time, you follow him out.

* * * * *

You wait until you get home, and are idling in the driveway, before texting Gordon, to ask if you can meet to talk. He says yes, and you suggest meeting at the municipal soccer fields instead of Caleb's house. It's not that you distrust the fake Caleb that lives there with him, but you don't want it casually mentioning to his disguised original that you cut away from him in order to see Gordon instead.

Gordon is already parked in dark corner by the soccer fields when you pull up, and sitting on the hood of his Bug. "So what's up?" he asks as you climb out of your truck.

"Oh, nothing really. Just wanted to, uh, thank you again for ... for helping out with Kirkham yesterday." You dodge his eye. "I mean, I don't think any of us, um, expected it to, uh, turn out this way—"

"Yeah. Fuck me, but Johansson seems to be having fun with it."

"Yeah, well, I didn't want to talk about that, either," you reply. "Though it seems like he's having fun, doesn't it?"

"You thinking about how you'd like to be the one having fun?"

It's a very direct question, and you don't like that he felt it worth asking. "Are you?" you parry.

"No. You think I want to swap places with that psychotic little cunt?"

"Well, don't blame Caleb if he's—"

"I'm not blaming anyone. Johansson can have fun doing whatever he wants. If that's the only way he can feel like he can get any respect—"

"I don't think that's it." You shuffle your feet, for this conversation isn't going at all the way you wanted it to. (But then, you have no idea how you wanted it to go.) "I know that's not it. We were talking last night, before he put the mask on, and he was talking about—"

You run your tongue over a very dry lower lip. Gordon patiently waits for you to resume.

"Look, I don't think you know what it's like being Caleb or me. Okay, I guess you do," you correct yourself when Gordon's eyebrows lift slightly. "You know what it's like being me. But you didn't spend any time trying to be me or acting like me. Anyway, the point is—" (But what is the point?) "The point is that I feel like I learned a lot by having to act like and pretend I was you. There's no way I could ... fucking talk to Steve or Jason now, if I didn't remember what it was like being you around them. Not that I'm trying to be like you, you know, like I'm trying to—"

"No, I get it," Gordon interrupts. "And you're wrong, I did get a different look at things while I was, uh, taking your place. Got a view on—" He sucks in his lip. "On how I could, like, adjust my, um, attitude toward things, a lot of things."

"Well," you resume, "I think it's the same with Caleb. Him and me, we played at being each other, but that wasn't a stretch. He's learning stuff from, uh, being Kirkham. Same I learned from— And you say you learned from— And I think that's what's got him, uh, kind of stirred up."

Gordon snorts softly. "You think I didn't see that's what's going on with him?"

"Well, the way you said—"

"Forget it, Prescott. I think you worry too much about what I think."

The accusation staggers you, and you cover your surprise badly with your stammer.

"Well, anyway," you resume, "you know we told Caleb we were gonna share that mask, so one of us wouldn't have to, um, be him permanently. Are we still gonna do that? I mean, you just said you don't want—"

"I don't want it, but I'll do it if we have to." He cocks his head. "But doesn't this new spell kind of change things?"

"How do you mean?"

"Because— Okay, maybe it doesn't change things. Johansson could always just hang the mask on that rock thing we made, and go back to being himself. No reason the rest of us have to put it on. But I wasn't even thinking about that until we got a look at the new spell."

"So what did you think about what Caleb said? About how— how someone, could use it to, um, switch places with someone else. Easy."

"Are you asking about ... us? About you and me, doing temporary switches?"

"No! I mean— We already did that. I meant ... other people. Like what Caleb was saying."

"I don't need to be anyone else," Gordon says in a deep rumble. Then, as a kind of afterthought, he adds, "Though a vacation every now and then might be nice. But look, I'm taking the team to state, I like who I am and what I'm doing, so why would I want to be anyone else?"

He holds your eye, and you can sense the unspoken challenge: Would you like to be someone else? And what would that say about you, if you did?

But you know you can't honestly say what he has said, and on a matter so personal as this, you don't feel like you can lie. Instead, you answer him lamely with his own observation: "Vacations would be nice."

He doesn't answer.

"I guess that means," you conclude with a sigh, "that this new spell really isn't anything we'd want to use. Is it? I mean, Caleb, like you say, can stop with the Kirkham act anytime he wants, and you and me, we don't—"

"So we'll just keep digging into the book." Gordon leans back and stares up into the black sky. "Is there anything else you want to talk about?"

"I guess not. I guess I didn't even know what I wanted to talk to you about."

"You wanted to know if I had anything I wanted to talk about."

It occurs to you that Gordon is constantly startling you with these perceptive little comments. Gordon Black looks and acts like a muscle-bound lug, but then he will say something that makes you feel like an idiot for not having the thought first. Like, yes, that you only wanted to see if he had anything to say about this new spell. "I guess so," you agree.

"Well, I'll tell you what I've been thinking," he says. "I've been spending most of my time thinking about how Chelsea is still trying to get back with me."

* * * * *

That's a surprise, and a real corkscrew turn in the conversation. You and he wind up sitting on the hood of his Bug as he tells you—very calmly and matter-of-factly—that she won't stop texting him, alternating between pleas that he give her another chance, and chatty little nothings like they never broke up. "She's really getting on my nerves," he says.

"I guess it would get on my nerves too," you agree. "She really should move on."

"No, the problem is that I feel like I'm starting to weaken." He hunches. "If she keeps up this way, I'm going to break down and go back to her. And I don't want to." He heaves a huge sigh, and hangs his head. "Steve and Jason were right," he says. "She's bad for me. But I couldn't help myself. And I'm scared I won't be able to to not go back to her."

"You just gotta be strong. And you are strong, you're the strongest—"

"No, what I need, Will," he says, "is a new girlfriend."

Okay, that's an obvious alternative, and you kick yourself again for not being perceptive enough to get the idea first. But it would have been really presumptive for you to say it.

"I guess that would work," you say. "I mean, yeah, Chelsea might finally get the hint—"

"Now, she'll never take the hint. She wouldn't even let that stop her. I need a girlfriend so I won't be tempted to go back to her."

"So get yourself a new girlfriend. You could do it. I mean, come on, man! You're the captain of the basketball squad, you were dating the head cheerleader! You'd have your pick!"

"I don't want my 'pick', Prescott," Gordon growls. "I need a girlfriend. Someone I know will stick with me. Someone who'll be good for me."

You're wondering if he's about to tell you that he wants to take Cassie off your hands—she'd be a good choice—but you almost fall off the hood of the car when he says, "Someone like Jenny Ashton."

And when you say nothing, he adds, "And if you help me get her for a girlfriend, we can get you a mask of someone you can be, you know, temporarily. Or permanently, if you want."

He holds your eye.

"Someone who can be Chelsea's new boyfriend," he says. "So we can make sure she leaves me alone."

That's all for now.

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