The Book of Masks (Vol. 5)

Meet Cuties

Previously: "A Yumi Afternoon Cordial" 

"That's what Kim said," you blurt out before you can stop yourself. "Kim Walsh," you explain as Yumi lifts her face to frown faintly at you. "That's how I wound up at the Warehouse last night."

Yumi only stares at you, and under the pressure of her gaze you start to dart your eyes. When the awkwardness become unbearable, you bend pretend to resume reading.

"You don't get to say something like that, Will," Yumi says, "without explaining what you meant."

"Oh. Well, I ran into Kim yesterday morning, and she said something about Lisa and getting back on the horse. Except she didn't say that exactly, just the idea. So I wound up at the Warehouse," you conclude in a rush as that hot blush begins to come back.

"Do you go out there a lot? To the Warehouse?"

"No. I mean—! No. Last night was my first time."

Yumi says something under her breath, which sounds like jumping into the deep end.

"I went out there with some guys," you say. "Um, Patrick— Someone. We had him in English last year, I think. And some of his friends. Also, I hung out with Carson and James. Mostly with them."

"Yeah, I saw them out there," Yumi says, "though I didn't talk to them."

"What were you doing out there?"

She stares at you.

"I went out there to have some fun," she says. "Dancing, a little drinking, hanging out. Cindy and Seth were going out there, Cindy asked me to come along." She returns to her homework.

For a very long few minutes you burn some holes in the pages of your English book without seeing, let alone reading, the words. When you have worked up the nerve, you blurt out a question that has been slowly boiling up in the back of your brain, and coalescing into grammatical form.

"Yumi, if I wanted to 'get back on the horse', how should I do it?"

Not until you see Yumi raise her face to look at you do you lift your eyes to look at her over the top of your book.

Her expression is guarded, and it remains guarded even after a look of thoughtfulness has invaded it.

"Well," she says, "how did you start going out with Lisa?"

"We just started hanging out together."

"Oh. You mean you just kind of ... drifted together."

"Right. At least, I thought that's what we did." You can't stop yourself from making a face. "Except Lisa says we didn't even do that."

"Yeah, I heard there was some kind of, um, misunderstanding about that." Her eyes dart.

"Well, it's not hard, Will," she says. "Or it shouldn't be hard. You just talk to someone you think you like. After you talk to them for a little while, if you still think you like them, if you think they like you, you ask them to go do something with you."

"Is that what you do?"

She looks a little askance. "It's a little different with girls," she says, and bends over her work again.

It occurs to you that you've never seen Yumi with a guy, or heard about her dating anyone in particular. She's a cheerleader, so you'd expect her either to have a guy, or to be dating a lot of them serially. Or, at least, to have test-driven some.

But she seems to have shut you down—or at least this conversation—and you only glance over at her from your own reading when, about ten minutes later, she picks up her phone. Must be doing something with Cindy, you decide. Or Jessica or Eva Garner. One of her sexy friends that will have nothing to do with me.

But when your own phone buzzes shortly after that, it's some kind of social media invitation from her.

* * * * *

"Meet Cuties" is the name of the app, and it's part of the x2z.com family of social media. You study it at home, while propped up on your bed, with a feeling that mixes, in equal measure, anxiety, horror, anticipation, and lust.

It's like an ice breaker, Yumi told you when you asked her what it was. You input a place and time you're going to be, what kind of person you want to meet, and then you go there.

How do I recognize the person I'm supposed to meet? you asked.

You don't. You don't even know if they're there. They don't even know for sure that you're there, but you'd be an asshole—like the worst dick on the planet—if you don't show up. The idea is that you go there, to where you said you want to be or where you saw that someone else is going to be, and then you just kind of casually bump into them and maybe talk to them.

But you don't even know if it's them?

No. Though you usually have a pretty good idea if it is them. But the idea supposedly is that there's someone there who has said they'd be interested in someone like you, and that gives you the confidence to talk to whoever actually is there, whether it's them or someone else. You're not supposed to say, either, that you're looking for someone from Meet Cuties. That just sounds desperate.

Have you used this app?

A couple of times. She started to make a face, but caught herself. It's easier on the guys than on the girls, she said. Guys are so freaking casual about this stuff anyway.

Speak for yourself. (You didn't say that aloud, though.)

Now here you are, at home, scrolling through the "Meet Cutie" possibilities. You are frozen all over, except for the thumb that is rhythmically flicking across the screen of your phone.

* Baskin-Robbins on Fillmore at 8. Guy who likes mint chocolate-chip ice cream.

* I'll be doing homework at the Sunshine Diner from 9 until 11. Guy who is good at Algebra II and likes to help others with it.

* Shooting hoops at Clevenger Athletic with my boys. Girls into guys who look good with their shirts off.

(That last one gives you what feels like a hairball in the back of your throat.)

There are a lot more in spirit mostly identical to these, though once you scroll forward into the weekdays you see a lot more which propose "meet cuties" at one of the high schools during the day. There is something both enticing and soul-killing about these posts. On the one hand, they whet the appetite that has been growing in you since Saturday morning, because there is practically a cafeteria of girls advertising their desire for company, companionship, and maybe a little love (or more). On the other hand, it is hard not to miss a feeling of desperation beneath, and of loneliness. Surely these girls should have found, or been able to find, someone to eat ice cream or do math homework with long ago. So what are they doing here? Did they not find anyone? Or have they found only disappointment after disappointment? And what would that say about them?

You try to picture yourself appearing at the Sunshine Diner, or the Baskin-Robbins, or the art book section of the WHS library, at the requested time, and seeing a girl there. You picture her looking sidelong, furtively, at you and asking herself Is he here for me? Is he looking to "meet cutie" with me?

And what would make you feel worse? If she turned away and fled rather than give you a chance to "meet cutie" with them? Or if you passed her by, leaving her to feel rejected and ignored?

It's for that reason that, when you break down and decide to use the app, just once, that you compose your own "meet cutie" moment, and post it. I won't run away if I don't like her looks, you promise yourself. And I won't take it personally if she runs away when she sees me.

Because "cope" seems to be the selling point of the app.

* * * * *

Of course you don't say anything about this to any of your friends on Monday morning, and you don't even tell Caleb (when you see him first period) that you met up with Yumi. And he doesn't ask you anything about the weekend either, but only asks (as you return from the front of the classroom) what you gave Mr. Walberg for the time capsule. "A bottle of aftershave and a bottle of perfume," you tell him, and you don't add that these were Yumi's idea.

The day passes with increasing anxiety, until the final bell, and only Yumi's warning that you'd be an "asshole" to skip out on your own meet-cutie moment gets you to keep the appointment you advertised. But your heart is thumping hard when you walk into the used book store.

* Trading a book back to Arnholms' after school Monday. Girls who like to read and hang out at coffee shops.

That was as low-stress as you could manage. And you were very conscious of the contrast it made to the jumble of meet-cuties from guys promising "hot times" to girls who "like to ride it." It made you wonder if you were more likely to meet girls sick of that kind of hot-dogging shit, or to get a wedgie in the store restroom.

You don't have the book with you that intend to trade—it's that goofy book you bought last Thursday—when you walk into the book store. That will come later after you've scoped the place out. You are instantly crushed when the store looks practically empty as you walk in.

But you find people as you move deeper in.

The first are a pair of girls in the children's section: pretty brunettes wearing plaid skirts that show lots of thigh. One of them glances up briefly at you as you pass.

The second is a Hispanic girl with flowing brown hair, in the romance section. She looks over at you with a much longer, much more appraising glance, and for a moment you think she's going to speak to you.

And the last, to your astonishment, is Kim Walsh. The girl who indirectly sent you spinning outward on this quest.

That's all for now

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