The Book of Masks (Vol. 1)

The Famous Will Prescott

Previously: "The Afterglow" 

You furrow your brow at the phone. It still takes several seconds for the fact to register: The name at the top of screen is "Will Prescott," and the text balloon dude what up? is being sent from your phone.

Or at least from your account.

"What do you want me to say back?" Keith asks.

You grab the phone from him and scroll back in the messages. The previous texts you do at least recognize as ones you sent Keith on Friday in school. But this latest one? You blink at it again, and at the time: Today 8:34 AM: dude what up?

"Is it the guy who stole your phone?"

"I guess. I dunno." Your brain is too hazy to think clearly, and you tap at Keith's phone until you bring up his contact list. You don't know why there will be a clue there. And there isn't, unless it's that—

"Dude!" you exclaim. "How come you're getting messages from Jessica? And Eva?" You gasp. "And Cindy Vredenburg?"

He snatches the phone back and retreats behind the counter. "Dude!" you shout at him.

"They were asking me about you!" he snarls as he studies the phone with a bent head. "I told you to be careful about them!"

You're about to demand what the fuck and why the fuck when the bell on the door rings and a fat woman and two children come in. You glower as Keith helps them.

And as you glower your stomach starts to do queer, unhealthy things. You are definitely not drunk anymore, and your head is pounding, and when you take a sip of the now cold coffee it's like your insides have decided to do a handstand. You shove your chair away and bolt for the restroom.

* * * * *

You spend a very long time cuddling with the toilet; each time you try to get to your feet your knees fold up. But you finally work up the strength to stand and lean against the sink. With shaky hands you wash your face, and study yourself in the mirror. You don't look nearly as sexy as you were feeling a couple of hours ago.

Back outside you slump over the table and watch as Keith handles more customers. After twenty minutes there's a long enough break that he can come over to sit with you.

"So I sent some texts around while you were—" he starts to say, then breaks off. "Am I gonna hafta mop up the bathroom?"

"I put it all in the toilet and flushed lots of times," you assure him, but still he looks skeptical. "You sent some texts around?" you prompt him.

"Yeah." His glare remains dark. "Jessica says it's Carlos who has your phone. I talked to him. He was trying to text me, got mixed up and used your phone instead."

"How did Carlos get—? And how does Jessica know?"

Then it comes back to you: Jessica taking your phone last night after you told her about how your dad would try calling you. "Well, can I get it back?"

"Sure. You remember where Top Shelf Storage is?" Keith asks. You have to think a moment before you remember it as the place where you watched that long-ass desert movie with Carlos and Mike. "He's already down there, you can swing by and pick it up anytime before noon."

It's almost ten-thirty now, so although you are still feeling ill, you stumble out the door and to your truck. It does you good to be in motion, though you are very careful as you make the straight shot down Twentieth to Top Shelf. Carlos meets you out front and hands you the phone.

"Sorry about the mix up," he tells you. "Glad to get it back to you, though."

"How did you get it?"

"Jessica called me last night, I met her out by the Warehouse and she gave me the phone. I gave your dad your alibi when he called. It was about eleven-thirty, I told him you were at Caleb's."

You have a hard time buying that your dad would believe some strange kid who answered your phone, and you tell Carlos as much.

"Oh, I just pretended to be you, and he bought it," he assures you. "Don't worry, you're golden." He claps you on the arm. "What are you doing now?"

"Not sure." The world has begun to spin again. "I don't wanna go home, not feeling like this. Suppose I could go find Caleb." You weren't fishing for an invitation, but you gratefully accept when Carlos suggests you hang out with him.

"I'm doing my workout, but after that I was planning to watch a movie," he says. "I'll get Mike out here and we can watch it all together." He eyes you closely. "You'll probably like it better than Lawrence of Arabia. You, uh, don't want to do a video about that one, do you?" You shake your head. "We'll pick something you're comfortable talking about."

* * * * *

So that's where you spend most of the day. You text your mom after you're slouched in Carlos's studio to tell her you'll be spending the day with friends, and after Mike brings in some burgers you begin to feel somewhat human. Still, you half doze through the movie, even though it's one of the better Star Trek films, and only half listen as Mike and Carlos explain some of the nuances to you. By mid-afternoon, though, you are sufficiently recovered that you can go home.

Though Carlos has assured you that you are "golden," you still enter the house with a feeling of trepidation, but your parents greet you as though your night and the world are entirely normal. Upstairs you strip off your clothes—they smell pretty funky, and you hope your mom and dad didn't notice—and take a long shower. Restored and in fresh clothes you feel ninety percent human again when you go downstairs for a light, early supper. Your dad asks about the movie you were watching with Caleb, and you improvise a story about changing out movies a couple of times in order to cover your ignorance of what Carlos had told him.

Eight o'clock: You're sprawling on your bed and actually looking forward to making an early night of it when you decide to shoot Caleb a text to ask him about his night. You find that Carlos had turned your phone off, and when you turn it back on—

It takes a deep breath, then explodes with texts. You have to scroll back and back and back and back and back and back to find where they start.

The time stamp on the first is 11 PM—a text from a girl whose name you don't recognize, with a photo attached. It's dim and blurry, but you can make out the shape of the hat, and then you can make out it's a photo of you dancing with someone. Your finger numbs as you scroll down to find dozens of similar texts beneath: all from girls, some with photos attached, some that are just pictures of you, and some of them selfies of the text-senders.

The common theme is that you are found desirable. The word "fuckable" gets used a couple of times, even.

There's a morning-long lull in the texts—except for one from Caleb asking if you're awake or dead—before they resume. Photos are much fewer and far between here, and the texts are more restrained: more hey, had a great time last night! and what r u doing today? and fewer come find me and mmmmmmmmm!

And if that isn't enough, multiple people have sent you a link to x2z.com.

You don't often go onto that site. At best, you've found, it's just a lot of bragging self-aggrandizement by kids who are already socially prominent. At worst—which is most often—it's scorn and bullying and vicious memes. There's even been some talk of getting the website to suspend its Westside stream, but nothing has ever come of it. And because you don't go there often, you have a hard time navigating it and understanding what exactly you are looking at.

It's a variation on Tumblr, you suppose, except that the company itself "charters" accounts instead of letting individual users simply create one. Such charters are granted to "communities"—usually schools or clubs or churches or fan groups—and they are set up as a centralized "stream" into which people can drop pictures, notes, memes, videos, or anything else that they care to scribble or share. Hashtags can establish "sub streams" onto a dedicated topic. Posters are supposed to be registered, but there are numerous flaws that let anonymous trolls ply their usual filthy trade.

You are terrified—but also piqued—to find that #will prescott is now one of the trending sub streams. With your heart in your throat you tap the link that takes you in.

It's an endless stream of pictures of you. The most recent ones are from the Warehouse last night, some identical to the pictures you got in your texts, but many of them new to you. They show you dancing, drinking, lounging, sprawling with girls in your lap or standing with them cuddled in the crook of your arm. Some show you hanging out with guys, and you're amazed to discover shots of you with burly ballplayers by the bar, and backstage with some of the musicians. But the earlier photos in the stream are ones that Eva and Jessica took of you at the school yesterday afternoon: the "candid" shots of you in the library or at the water fountain, or posing for intimate selfies with some of the cheerleaders. With the change of outfits, they look like they were taken over the course of several days. Some are in locations you don't remember being in and having pictures taken.

Then you find some of the photos tagged with another hashmark: #overlooked hotties. You tremble as you jump to that sub-stream, to find yourself swimming in the company of guys like Chuck Johnson, Karl Hennepin, Lee Reynolds, Justin Roth, Mitchell Belz, and others you don't recognize but who can plausibly fit someone's idea of a "hottie." You're stunned to see that your pictures are getting lots of likes.

But it's the text from Stephanie Wyatt that is the night's topper: get tgther tmrrw?

* To continue: "A Consultation with an Expert" 

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