The Book of Masks (Vol. 5)

Question With No Answers

Previously: "What Adam Knows" 

Fourth period is Adam's lunch period, but he has a study hall fifth, so that's when he eats. Fourth is when he typically hangs out with a dozen other seniors out by the portables.

It's quite the cross range of people there. Sports is represented by the swimmers Michael Wilson and Christine Coolidge, and by second baseman Noah Baker; the cow-fuckers (Adam's bullying term for the agricultural students) by Tyler Purvis, Faith Becker, and Molly Shaw; the weed-smokers by Adrian Semple and Dean Stratton; the skanks by Brianna Gould and Rebecca Sykes; fashion by Mia DeWitt; and Adam's own personal posse by Ben Gunnison. Not everyone is always there every day—the girls tend to rotate in and out, depending upon what crisis they are having, with each other or with one or another of the boys—but more often than not there's more there than are not.

Today looks like a light day, with only about half the usual crew laughing in a circle when you come stalking out. There are quick greetings all around, for this is the first that you've seen any of them today, and Ben Gunnison—a roly-poly kid with short, dark hair and the face of a satirical cherub—lights up when he sees you coming. He scoots over a little so you can flop down next to him.

"How was the show last night," he asks with a giggly leer.

"What show?" You're hardly paying attention to him, for had your phone out even before you sat down.

"You know." He giggles again. "The show. Out at the State Theater."

"Where's Tyler?" Dean asks no one in particular.

"Prob'ly beating himself off," you answer in preference to dealing with Ben. "Sydney McGlynn was wearing a skirt in Calculus today, one that came up practically to here." You slide your hand across the top of your thigh. "I nearly popped my zipper."

The guys all snigger; Rebecca and Christine offer only very tight smiles. Dean and Adrian and Noah, naturally, start talking about Sydney, and speculating about which guy on which sports squad is going to finally nail the sexy new girl at school.

Ben, though, wants to know what you're doing, for you are concentrating furiously on your phone. "Izzit about Ysleta and his bitch?" he wants to know. "I bet it's about Ysleta and his bitch."

"No." You come up for air. "Hey, anyone see or get sent a video last week, of some shit-for-brains digging up something around A wing at night?"

There's a quick silence all around before Dean asks, "Is this about that time capsule thing?"

"Yeah, I guess. It was some guys digging something up."

Furtive glances are exchanged before Dean says, "It was George Mendoza and s'mn else dug it up, but you didn't hear it from me."

"I didn't ask who dug it up, I asked if anyone's seen a video of it. Or hear about it."

A deeper and more furtive silence, this time ended by Michael Wilson. "Nobody gonna say they did, not if they don't want Mendoza—"

"Fucking sake, it wasn't fucking Mendoza in the video!" you holler as you lose all patience. "Not the one I'm talking about! Jesus!" You bend back over the phone to do a rapid search for Adam's copy of the video in question, and when you find it you thrust your phone into the middle of the circle. "Here! Do either of these jack wads look like Mendoza to you?"

Michael glowers at you before taking the phone and pushing play. Rebecca Sykes and Noah Baker lean over to study the screen while Ben and Adrian Semple glance at you warily.

"No," Michael admits, "that doesn't look like—"

You grab the phone back from him, and he jerks in surprise.

"That's what I fucking said! It's not him! So has anyone seen this fucking thing being passed around? In chats or DMs or on fucking x2z?"

You're getting some black looks by now, but Noah asks, "What's the fucking deal?" and Rebecca asks, "Was this some other guys doing something?"

"Rennerhoff and Osbourne've been stirring the shit with this thing, that's what it's about," you retort, "and I wanna know how far it's got."

"The fuck's it to you?" Adrian asks.

"'Cos I wanna know." You turn on him. "So you wanna be friendly, or you wanna be a dick?" He replies by making a face at you.

"First I've heard of it," Michael says. No one else says anything.

"Well, if any of you hear anything about it," you say as you lurch back to your feet, "I wanna know."

"Why don't you ask Spencer and Jamie?"

"'Cos they turned it loose, but I wanna how far it's got from there."

"Frickin' good luck with that," Michael mutters under his breath.

You pass Faith Becker heading out to the portables as you're heading back to the school. "Hey, where you goin'?" she asks.

"Inside. I got some stuff to do."

"Well, can I touch your hair for luck?" she asks with a sly grin. "I got a test later today."

You smile tightly, but duck your head so she can pass her palm across the side of your 'do. "Oh my God," she groans, "I wish I had hair like yours!"

* * * * *

In the library you spot Keith Tilley again, but again you ignore him and instead hurl yourself onto a table in the back, to bend over your phone and make the most exhaustive search you can online at x2z for copies of that video. After a quarter-hour you nearly give up, when you realize that if it has been posted in a thread, then literally anyone with access to the site could have downloaded and privately circulated it—in just the way that Spencer privately passed it on to Adam by DMing it to him. You must have said the bad words you thought out loud, for there was a flutter amongst the girls two tables overs.

But you push on, figuring that if you do find a copy online, you might also find some names of commenters and thereby a set of suspects. In fact you don't find a copy of the video in any of the public threads, so you take out your frustrations by posting some nasty comments of your own in various places. But how come their dykes are hotter than our dykes, you reply in a thread debating the merits of Westside's Slow Fast Hazel band against Eastman's The Hi Hats. And you're a pinhead puts his whole head up his bitch's gash and she still can't feel you lol, you inform David Scofeld when he says something negative about the last Challengers movie. Your fuckin speakinspell the cow said blow me when you were kid not moo is that how come you blow evertying in the barnyard, you tell Bradley McCollum when you spot his name in a thread you randomly opened. Obviously, you post these comments pseudonymously.

Catherine is a chalky-white when she comes out of Ms. Gambetta's classroom, and her "Hey" when she sees you is very wan. Instinct again takes over, and before you know it you have wrapped both arms around her and pulled her close. She is warm, and fits against your body as though you'd been contoured for each other.

Then you remember, and let go. "Sorry," you tell her. "Habit."

"No, it's okay," she says. "I liked it. You can— you can do it whenever you want," she stammers. So you pull her close again, and squeeze her. "Mm, that's nice," she murmurs in a voice barely audible above the chatter of the crowd. "You make me feel—" A shudder ripples through her. "Safe."

So you squeeze her more tightly to you. And yet you can't help watching and following Barbara Powell, a soccer player with possibly the best legs in school, with your eyes when she comes out of the classroom.

* * * * *

You and Laura end up behind G wing, looking out toward the baseball diamond. You didn't bring a lunch—Adam eats every day in the cafeteria—so you have to make due with some of the celery sticks and cottage cheese that Laura brought. "Maybe if this is what I ate every day for lunch," she grumbles, "I wouldn't have turned into such a blimp."

She was upset when she came out of Ms. Gambetta's, she says, because there was a pop quiz, and she wouldn't have just bombed it, she would have got a zero. "I'll just have to give you a crash course," you offer her. You are splayed on your side, and are taking advantage of her need for comfort by stroking her silky thigh up and down, just like Adam would have done with Catherine.

"That's not what I'm thinking of," she says. "I'm thinking— Well, what if we're stuck like this for a week, or a month, and then we switch back?"

"That'd be awesome. Like we got a vacation in the middle of the fucking semester."

"But our grades! My grades and Catherine's! It's all flipping fine for you! And for Adam, I guess, you and him can get through each other's classes. Like, what is up with that?" she cries. "You and him getting all the— the— the brain stuff! And me and Catherine—!"

"Maybe you'll get it tonight. Maybe it takes longer for you. Girls have more complicated brains than guys."

"Do they?" she asks, sounding dubious.

"Sure. Ninety-eight percent of a guy's brain is about only one thing." You leer at her, then lean over to wetly smack the inside of her thigh. "The other two percent's him thinking about how to get summa what he's thinking about with the other ninety-eight percent." You scoot up closer, so you can wrap your other arm about her butt and nuzzle the side of her stomach.

"Is this what Adam's like, or is it you?"

"Fuck me, it's both of us. But more him, I guess," you confess. "He's like, ninety-nine percent sex, one percent how do I get some. 'Cos he's got Catherine, he can— But me, I'm—"

"Okay, now you've made it gross. But what I'm thinking about is, what if Catherine and me flunk all our classes, and a month later things go back and we're stuck with grades the other one got for us? Fs and zeros?"

But you're wondering instead what kind of sex life Adam might have set up for you if there is a switch back.

Next: "Some Will Act Where Others Dare Not" 

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"Table of Contents (Vol. 5)" 
"The Book of Masks (Vol. 5)"