The Book of Masks (Vol. 3)

New Friends

Previously: "Odd Man Out" 

"I got rid of that thing because I didn't want to get mixed up in it," you say. "Not so you could treat me like a fucking guinea pig."

Caleb steps back as though slapped. "If you don't trust me--"

"I don't trust that book!" you exclaim. "Look, Caleb, dude, buddy. I'm not going to put my head in a fucking guillotine just because you think it's a nifty contraption."

"I tried it, and it's okay," he protests as he holds the metal strip out to you.

"You said you didn't even know if it worked! Maybe it's safe with you, but what about with me?"

"Fine," he says, and grabs up his back pack. Something inside it clinks. "I'll talk to you tomorrow. If I haven't chopped my own head off," he adds sarcastically. You lean back, feeling very tired, but he pauses at the door. "Do you still have the key to that place? The basement at the old school?"

"Huh? Oh, that." He's referring to the old elementary school near your house; a little over a year ago you had broken into its basement--accessible through an outside door--and then attached your own padlock to it. "Yeah, why?"

"Can you let me have it?" he says. "I need someplace to, you know, carry out these experiments."

"What's wrong with your house? If you burn that school down--"

"You'd rather I burn down my own house? Anyway, I'm not gonna set anything on fire. I just don't want my mom finding this stuff."

You snort, but dig through your sock drawer. "I don't even know if my lock is still on it," you say as you toss the key to him. "Ten to one the maintenance guys found it and took it off. I haven't been out there in months."

"Well, no harm, I guess, if they have," he says. He thanks you for the key and leaves.

* * * * *

Life continues. You try once again to forget about that crazy book, and about Caleb's request, but your refusal seems to have dropped a shadow between you. All that week he is distant and uncommunicative, and when the weekend comes he is nowhere to be found when you call him up. On Monday he mutters that he was working on "that stuff" and couldn't be bothered. You ask him if he found someone else to help, and he shoots you a sharp glance before shaking his head.

And you find your own attitude toward him cooling. Resentful son a of a bitch. So you didn't do him a favor. It was a wackadoodle thing for him to ask of you, and it's not hard to hold it against him that he seems to hold your refusal against you. Another week passes, and when the weekend comes you don't even bother calling him.

Instead, you start to hang out with other people.

* * * * *

"Can I see that paper you wrote for Walberg?" James Lamont mutters to Carson Ioeger.

"Why would you want to copy from a guy who's dyslexic?" Jenny Ashton waspishly asks. "Yeah, Carson, you talking about I'm. Get a C- on last your essay you didn't?"

"A cucumber suck go on, Jenny," he retorts. "A mark of exemplary intelligence it is to be able to craft in non-standard word order sentences."

"I'd copy down half the words you use so I could look them up later," Yumi Saito says as she swirls her smoothie. "But I wouldn't know how to spell them, and you probably don't either. I think you're making them up." She sucks noisily on her straw.

"B-I-T-U-M-E ... N," Carson says to her as he hands a sheet of paper to James.

"Way to be a rude asshole," Paul Davis frowns.

"I wasn't being rude," Carson says. "I was just spelling for your not-girlfriend the kind of asphalt she can go suck on." Paul turns quite red.

"Yeah, well, it's not like you're going to get a girlfriend by being such a jerk," Jenny says.

"It's not like I'm going to be getting a girlfriend period," Carson says serenely as he scratches under one of his pits. "It's tremendously freeing."

The harsh words notwithstanding, the tone around the group of five--six, including yourself--is quite mellow. Only Paul seems to have taken Carson's insults badly, though you do notice that Yumi is rather pointedly not looking in Paul's direction. The mellowness may be because the lot of you are sitting at one of the tables in the courtyard of the municipal library for a supposed study session, but you've known these guys since middle school, and know that the barking is all for show, and that none of them really have any teeth.

"What about you, Will," Jenny asks. "You're the only guy here who's had a girlfriend. Is it really better being outside a relationship than in one?"

You can't help cringing a little, even though you can tell by the glint in her eye that Jenny means the question kindly. You hesitate, because it's a question that has naturally been preying on you. Before you can speak, Carson jumps in. "Come on, Prescott, back me up," he chortles. "It's better to have loved and lost than never to have lost that love at all."

"I didn't lose it if it was never there," you snap. The silence that ensues only confirms that the banter had no meanness in it, for eyes fall in embarrassment. "Oh, what's the point," you shrug. "You don't want to hear about it again, and I'm sick of thinking about it."

"I'm sure it was there, Will," Jenny says gently. "Lisa wouldn't have led you on."

"Oh, that makes me feel better. I guess I fucked up with her."

"No, she fucked up with you," Carson says, and again it's not a surprise that he'd so quickly back Jenny up once the conversation turned serious. "Sometimes girls let guys get away, if they're too stupid to know what they had or could have had."

Silence falls, or maybe you just don't notice any talk as you begin again to muse about Lisa and what you had with her. Soft afternoons and soft hands and soft glances and-- Well, not all of it was soft; part of you got pretty hard. Tingly. That's what it was, the soft parts and the hard parts all of them were tingly. Like everything had been sprinkled with pixie dust. You don't emerge from the reverie until you hear yourself murmuring, "It was like magic."

"There's nothing magic about love," Carson sneers. "It's just body chemistry Darwin invented to fuck us up so we'd fuck each other. There's nothing more embarrassing than acting like a person in love."

Weirdly, instead of leading into a discussion of love, Carson's comment provokes a discussion about magic--and even more weirdly you find yourself hotly exclaiming that you know a little bit about it: "I found a book of magic a few weeks ago."

"Yeah, that occult stuff is all over bookstores like shit on a stable wall."

"No, I mean a real, old-fashioned grimoire, like something out of Harry Potter." That provokes hoots of laughter even from the girls, and you feel yourself turning very red as you insist on what you'd found at Arnholm's. When James demands to know what happened to this "grimoire," you have to admit that you don't have it any more.

"I would pay five bucks just to look at something that actually looked like a grimoire," Carson says.

"Have it ready, dude," you exclaim as you jab a finger into Carson's bemused face. "Have. It. Ready."

* * * * *

"Can I borrow that book from you," you ask Caleb the next day. Your feel your eyes crinkle, for after the bad words that have passed between you on the subject, it's damned awkward to ask him for it. "You know the one I'm talking about."

His glance at you is hooded, even suspicious. "How come?"

"I just want to show it to someone," you shrug.

He shoves a book into his locker and tugs two more out. "It's not something that should be getting any publicity."

"I'm not gonna try anything with it. I'm not even gonna tell them that it's, you know, magic," you lie. "I was just talking about old books with someone, and that's the oldest book I know of. It's gotta be, what, a coupla hundred years old?"

"I don't know anything about that," he says. "Maybe it's a fake, done up to look old."

"Still, come on. Can I borrow it?"

He closes the locker and looks you up and down with a frown. "I'll think about it."

Well, it was worth asking about. But "I'll think about it" is one of the English language's many synonyms for "No."

So imagine your surprise when he calls you up Saturday morning and cheerfully asks to meet you at the elementary school. He's in a bright mood when you find him, though you can't miss the satire in his smile. "Wanna borrow the book, huh?" he says mischievously. "Change your mind about coming in as a partner with me?"

"No," you say through gritted teeth. "I just wanna borrow it."

"Well, thing is, I'm not gonna loan it to you unless you give me some security. You know, a deposit."

"I haven't got any money."

"I don't want money. I want you to put this on." From his bag he pulls out an oval object. It shines a deep and brilliant blue, and as he holds it up you see that it resembles one of those old-fashioned tragedian's masks.

Again with the creepy things. You draw back. "What is it?"

"I told you, it's security. You let me put this on you, and you can borrow the book. When you return the book, you can have this thing. I keep it until then."

* To continue: "A New You" 

*
"Table of Contents (Vol. 3)" 
"The Book of Masks (Vol. 3)"