The Book of Masks (Vol. 3)

Date with an Angel

Previously: "The Bold and the Oblivious" 

You're in a state of shock as you walk out of school at the end of the day. Your feet drag like you're sunk up to your ankles in the asphalt—but at the same time your head feels full of helium.

You're going to meet up for coffee and conversation with Sydney McGlynn, the drop-dead gorgeous ex-cheerleader that you met through Caleb. Well, technically you haven't met her yet. You've only exchanged a few texts with her, and spoken to her briefly the hallway, just to confirm tonight's date.

And tutored her for a whole night while disguised as your best friend.

But tonight's date! The phrase, as it occurs to you, sends your ego ricocheting off the cloud banks above. I have a date with a fucking cheerleader! Your eyeballs are prickling and your head is spinning as you climb into the cab of your truck. You grip the wheel, force yourself to be calm, and turn your truck toward the parking lot exit.

You're halfway home before it occurs to you that you have no idea what you'll have to talk to Sydney McGlynn about.

* * * * *

You're scratching under your pits as seven o'clock approaches, and sweating, for you've layered up in a couple of shirts and long pants. You scratch your scalp (still wet from the shower). Your eye recurs to the paperback book on astrology by your hand, but you can't bring yourself to open it up again.

You picked it up on your way home, making a long detour over to Arnholm's to find something—anything!—that you could show to Sydney as proof that you are interested in the occult. Arnholm didn't have what you really need—Baby's First Book of Black Magic would have done nicely—so you picked up a book on astrology on the assumption that that stuff is occult and it might actually connect up with the Astronomy class you're taking.

Astronomy! Yes, you'll need to work the fact that you're taking that as your science class into the conversation.

At home you ignored your school work in favor of reading your purchase, but found it really heavy going. You'd picked it up because of the title—The Fate in Our Stars—and to your distress discovered that it was more of a history book than a practical guide to horoscopes or whatever the fuck it is that astrologers actually deal with. You got through maybe the first ten pages, on the Egyptians and the Babylonians, before it fell from your nerveless fingers. You've got it with you now, though, but it's going to have to be a prop only. Yeah, you've decided to tell her, I've started boning up on astrology. I figure it's, like, the foundation of everything, so I thought I should start with—

"Will?"

You jump so hard your knees bounce off the underside of the table.

"Sorry," Lisa says. She frowns but her eyes—those soft, violet eyes—twinkle. "I thought you saw us walking up."

Us? You swing your head five degrees to the right and lock eyes on—

Fuck! Geoff Mansfield.

Lisa has been seeing an awful lot of him lately. You've been trying to ignore them. But the cankered sore in your soul flares again at the sight of Mansfield putting his arm around Lisa's shoulder.

You wouldn't mind so much that Lisa dumped your ass at the start of the semester in the most humiliating way possible—by telling you that the two of you hadn't even really been dating over the summer—if it wasn't obvious that she'd dumped you for this asshole. Geoff Mansfield is tall, dark-haired, handsome in a well-groomed and well-tailored way, takes AP classes and is on his way to an Ivy League school, and comes from a family rich enough to belong to the country club and vacation in the Grand Caymans every winter. The asshole has every advantage that you don't, and he knows it, and he fucking flaunts it in a way calculated to make you feel small and juvenile.

Like right now. His gaze drifts from your face down to the table. You see it in his eye—he's looking at the cover of your astrology book. His lip twists into a light sneer as he looks back up at you. Helplessly, you count down the seconds until he says something arrogant and condescending. Three ... two ... one ...

"Trying to figure out why your horoscope keeps getting it wrong, Prescott?"

"Fuck you!" You pale as Lisa catches a horrified breath. "I'm sorry! I mean—!"

Mansfield laughs. "No, that's okay, I shouldn't tease you about it. Anyway, this is the place to read something like that, huh?" He glances around at the zodiac symbols on the walls.

"Why are you reading a book on astrology, Will?" Lisa asks. Her expression has turned doubtful.

"I have a date." Yeah, that's it! It's a relief and a joy to contrast what you suffered with Lisa with what you'll get with Sydney. "She's interested in this stuff, so I'm boning up on it."

"Cool," says Mansfield. "When you're done here, you can take her to a Chinese restaurant and split a plate of fortune cookies."

"Geoff," Lisa says.

"I'm just teasing again. Good luck on your date, Prescott. Though I suppose if that book is even half accurate, luck'll have nothing to do with it."

He pulls Lisa away to a table on the other side of the room, where he holds her chair out for her and kisses the top of her head before sauntering back out front to the coffee station. You lower your head and glower at your ex- from under your brows. In front of her is a little metal rack with a card on it, showing a circle sitting atop a cross. You're goddamned sure you know what it means, but you double-check in the astrology book anyway.

Yes, fuck it. They're sitting at the "Venus" table.

* * * * *

Luckily, you're not given much time to stew over Lisa and Geoff. Not after Sydney comes in.

She's dressed down in a sweatshirt and jeans, and her hair is pulled back in a ponytail. That's okay. The shapeless top—maybe it belongs to an older brother who's a football player, because it drapes around her like a tent—may hide her form, but that just gives your imagination more room to fantasize about her breasts and her tummy. The ponytail gives you a better view of her pedestal-like neck. And her face and her eyes are bright and alert, and her teeth—really, she could be a model in toothpaste commercials—gleam like alabaster.

"Hi, Will," she says as she slides into the booth opposite you. Her eye falls on the astrology book. "Hey, is this what you're into?"

All those rehearsed words and speeches fly away like startled birds, and you bite your tongue—"Gyow!"—as you try to stammer out an answer. Sydney covers her laugh with a tapering hand, then leans forward to apologize.

"Sorry, I think I startled you. Maybe we should introduce ourselves? Hi, I'm Sydney McGlynn." She extends a hand.

"Will Prescott," you croak. "Uh, I'm a friend of Caleb's. Best friend, er—"

"Yeah, you told me. You're the friend who's interested in magic?" Her eyes crinkle up with something like skepticism and you feel yourself blushing. Did you misjudge her and her interests?

"Well, kind of curious about it, you know? The, uh—" You remember the book, and grab it up like a security blanket. "I'm curious about it, and I heard that astrology is the foundation of all, uh, metam— metemphysical—?"

"Metaphysical?" she corrects you.

"Yeah, metaphysical, uh, thingabobbies, so I'm just starting to—"

"Who told you that?"

"Pardon?"

Her lips twitch. "You are polite. Who told you—? I mean, where did you read that astrology is the foundation of all metaphysical—" Her lips twitch again. "Thingabobbies?"

"Huh? Oh." Your face starts to burn. "Somewhere. I don't really—"

"So what got you interested in metaphysics and the foundations of metaphysics?"

"Huh? Well ... Astrology, I guess. 'Cos I read that—"

"No, I mean what were into that got you into metaphysics and occult knowledge?"

"Oh. Well." The book falls from your fumbling fingers. "I was always kind of interested in magic, you know, so I started doing a little, um, research on it. Looking online—"

"Where?"

If this was a job interview, this would be the point where you stood up, thanked her for considering you for the position, and threw up in her lap. "Wikipedia?"

You would have expected her to turn cold at that. You would have expected her to turn cold and bored and maybe even angry. Instead, her expression turns more and more alert and more interested. She puts her chin in her hand and peers closely at you with dancing eyes. "When did you read that Wikipedia article?"

You sag. "A couple of months ago? This stuff is really hard!" Even to you, your protest sounds like a whine.

She doesn't answer, but only holds your eye. You find you can't look away. She's so beautiful, and she seems keenly interested in you. Amused, too. Her lips purse up into a tiny smile. She looks like she's savoring a private joke, but there's no meanness or contempt in her eyes, as there was in Mansfield's.

"You'd tell me the truth if I asked you to, wouldn't you, Will?" she says. She grasps your hand. If you were a cartoon character, your ball cap would have rocketed off your head and now be pinging around the room like a bullet. "I can really see us hanging out together. You and me and Caleb and the rest of your friends and a lot of mine."

"Ungh-hungh?"

"Sure. Absolutely. So you'd tell me the real truth, wouldn't you?"

"Uh, what real truth?" you croak.

"That you're not really into the occult. Your friend Caleb is, though, and he put you up to this. Didn't he?"

* Confess all, including the book: "A Mask Is Dropped" 
* Tell her you're not into the occult, but you're definitely into her: "Deep Sabotage" 

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