The Book of Masks (Vol. 1)

The Least Interesting Guy in Town

Previously: "An Unexpected Date" 

You don't see any point in sticking around either, and not long after Stephanie has gone you bolt out of the booth as well. You rode with Caleb, but the five dollars Stephanie left will pay for a cab back to the high school, so you tell Caleb that's what you're doing and leave him with a baffled look.

At home you try to leave your thoughts and self-doubts behind by throwing yourself into dinnertime prep chores. You're sufficiently distracted to get the place settings wrong, though, and you catch your dad frowning at you a couple of times over the meal. You realize you're hunching over and gobbling the food, so you sit up and slow down and make a feeble stab at conversation. Then you help clean up.

Your behavior is odd enough that your mom asks if anything is the matter. "No, just thinking about school stuff," you reply.

"It's not a math problem or an English paper. I can tell that much," she replies, and leans against the countertop with her hand on her hip. She cocks an eyebrow.

"Me and Caleb went to a place over by the university. You know, for coffee. We, uh, met up with some other people from school. One of the girls who was there -- "

You really wish now you hadn't started on this. Is there anything more embarrassing or pathetic than talking to your mom about your lack of a skill set with girls? "Well, she told me I wasn't very interested."

Your mom's face falls and her voice cracks. "Oh, honey." You cringe.

"Yeah, well, she's a basketball player, one of the girl jocks, friends with all the other girl jocks, so she's got pretty high standards for what counts as 'interesting', I guess, like unless you've been to the state championships, you're not interesting." You shift restlessly from one foot to the other and wish your phone would beep or ding or catch fire in your pocket.

"Girls who say things like that have really narrow interests themselves," says your mom. "I know that doesn't make it better. And she actually blurted that out?"

You shrug. No, Stephanie didn't blurt it out. You dragged it out of her. And she didn't say you weren't interesting, she just got up and left after giving you every chance to prove that you were.

But you're not about to admit any of that to your mom.

"Well, you can't please everyone," she says. "There's always going to be someone, some people, who just don't get you. It was just your bad luck to run into one of them when she felt like saying it out loud."

"Yeah, I know," you reply. Actually, you're not paying much if any heed to her. You just want to shut down the conversation, so you'll agree to anything she says. "I'm trying to tell myself that, but I guess it takes awhile to sink in."

She takes a few steps closer to you. You steel yourself.

She stops before she reaches you, though. "Can I give you a hug? It would make me feel better."

"Sure," you murmur, and smile feebly. She puts her arms around you and pulls you close. More for form's sake, you hug her back. She squeezes you once, twice, then lets you go. "You know, I'll always think you're interesting. I just try not to show it because I know it embarrasses you."

"Aw, jeez." You hide your face so you can roll your eyes. She laughs and slaps your skinny butt as you retreat.

* * * * *

You're not very interesting. Actually, Stephanie didn't say anything like that. It's only that she acted that way. She's always acted that way with you.

But it was still the subtext -- you realize when you're in your bedroom, propped up on your bed, holding your cell phone between your knees and staring at it with unseeing eyes -- when she challenged you to treat her like you were on a date with her.

Because that's what you do on a date, isn't it? First comes when you pretend to be interested in the girl, and she pretends to be interested in you, and then comes the touching and petting and kissing and undressing and all the other things that you fantasize about, except you'll never fantasize about them again because Stephanie Wyatt has so crushed your ego that now even you can't imagine that any girl could possibly look at you a second time ever again.

You dig the heel of your hand into an eye socket.

Okay, first on a date comes the pretending to be interested. It's easy enough to pretend to be interested in a girl. You just pretend that's she's talking about her boobs -- which would be fascinating -- when she's actually talking about her bracelet collection or pesto or what she learned from caring for her grandmother while she lay dying in a nursing home. Right?

But as for making her interested in you? Maybe if you're a star athlete (like Seth Javits) or an AP-fuck bound for Harvard (like Geoff Mansfield) or a sensitive poet with long eyelashes (like Tim Gerard) then you can be fascinating without effort. But you? What have you got?

Hell, what do any of your friends have?

A hard resolve -- a sensation of iron -- starts entering your soul. Maybe you can make yourself interesting.

Because maybe the problem is that you've done nothing that would make you interesting. What hobbies or talents do you have? You can't sing, you don't play an instrument. Every rhyme you ever tried constructing uses either "roses" or "Nantucket" in the first line. A six-year-old would be ashamed of your finger-painting skills. You don't play sports, you don't have a part-time job, you shudder at the idea of charity work, and you study only to get good grades. Politics bores you. For awhile last year you hung out on some gamers' message boards and got into arguments on Twitter about music and movies, but you gave up on those because you felt stupider for engaging the nitwits instead of ignoring them. So these days you only use the internet for school research, to find porn, and to rewatch action-snippets from recent blockbusters.

Basically, it seems like your life consists of playing video games, doing homework, watching online crap, and tramping around town with Caleb and Keith while arguing over trivial shit.

So what would you like to be doing?

* * * * *

And fifteen minutes later, after nothing comes, it's a relief when Caleb texts: wtf hapened u run off?

mad at stephnie whats deal w braydon?

nada whats deal w stephanie?

You sigh, and call Caleb directly. He picks up instantly. It's like getting electronic feedback: You both say at the same time, "What's the deal -- ?"

"Don't tell me it's nothing with Braydon," you talk over Caleb until he shuts up. "You were there with them in the middle of it. What did they want?"

"They just wanted to ask questions about, like, spells and how they work. Like, what does hair do if you include it in something, and does it matter if you burn it. They also had some symbols and stuff they'd copied down and wanted to know what they meant."

"So what did he tell them? Did they say what they wanted to know it for?"

"He just made up bullshit, I could tell, and I think they could tell too. He asked them what it was for, said he had to know if he was going to help them, but they just clammed up." He sighs impatiently. "They weren't there that long, they took off a little after you did. But what happened with you and Stephanie?" His tone turns mischievous. "Did you try flirting with her, and she shut you down?"

"No, she tried flirting with me," you retort.

"Oh, you're so full of shit, Will!"

"No, it's true! And I couldn't flirt back, so she left."

"Bullshit! In your dreams!"

"It was not fun! Okay? Like, that was the reason she tried flirting with me," you grumble, "because she knew I'd freak out."

Caleb howls. "So what did she do? Footsie under the table? Did she undress you with her eyes? Did she get all cute and -- "

"No!" You come real close to hurling the phone against the wall. "She went at me like my head was a soccer ball and she was trying to score the winning goal. She made it a challenge." You hide your burning face under your hand. "She was all, like, 'Make me interested in you, Prescott. Do something that keeps me from walking out.'"

"Bwa-ha! That's awesome! But that's not flirting, you know. That's just, uh ... "

"What would you call it if not flirting?"

"Total and perfect humiliation?"

"Exactly!" You hunch over to bury your face in your knees. "So that's how come I left."

"Went home to sulk, huh?"

"Fuck you! Fuck! You!" Your fingers tremble so hard you hit almost every spot on the pad except where you need to turn off the phone.

* * * * *

Over the next thirty minutes Caleb sends you texts telling you he's sorry, and you finally shut him down by telling him you're not mad, at least not at him.

You've gotten yourself a headache, but you've also got a plan. Maybe.

Stephanie said she and her friends were doing a project, and it doesn't sound like it's for school. So maybe that's what you need if you're going to become "interesting." If you can't come up with a hobby, maybe you can join someone else in theirs.

Unfortunately, except for Stephanie's friends -- which isn't a place to go looking -- you can only think of two groups that have something like a hobby.

The first is Mike and Carlos and the gang making the YouTube videos. They said they wanted your help on one, and you could probably parlay one cameo into joining their group, the way Keith seems to have done.

The other is Carson and James. You don't know what they're doing, but maybe they'd let you help.

* To continue: "Braydon Builds a Time Machine (Of Sorts)" 

*
"Table of Contents (Vol. 1)" 
"The Book of Masks (Vol. 1)"