The Book of Masks (Vol. 3)

The One Who Might Be Your Girlfriend

Previously: "Love Scene in a Cemetery" 

Your voice seems to be hiding at the bottom of your lungs, and it's like it's trying to pull your throat in after it. "Um ... Yeah, I could do that," you gasp out. You feel yourself in danger of hyperventilating. "Um, does she ... the other girl ... Does she have to be a—?" You swallow. "A virgin too?" The last word comes out as a squeak.

"Mm-mm." Sydney rubs her face into your shirt, and finally you are able to put your arms around her. "But it's up to you."

For a long time you stand in the cemetery, holding each other. You don't have any more words for her—your head is spinning so hard it might unscrew itself and fall with a thud to the turf—and you don't want to let go of her. At the same time, your face is melting off the front of your skull in embarrassment at the boner you're pressing into her through the front of your pants. She's got to feel it, and yet she doesn't seem to mind.

Finally, she draws back and looks up into your face. But still she keeps hold of your shoulders. "It's really great of you to help me, Will," she says.

"Well, there's a couple of complications," you tell her after taking a deep breath. "First of all—"

Oh, Jesus it's a hateful confession, but you feel like you need to make it anyway. "I don't actually know a lot of girls," you croak. "Not— Not the way that I can, um, get real ... really close to, close enough to— I mean, there's one girl, Jenny. Jenny Ashton? You know her?"

Sydney thinks a moment. "Long brown hair, sassy attitude, likes to play softball?"

Does Jenny like to play softball? you wonder. "I think you have her in an environmental science class?"

"That's her. She's cute. Would you—? Um?" Now it seems to be Sydney's turn to be bashful. "Would it be weird for you to, uh, do the thing with her? Even if you knew it wasn't really her?"

You try to say "No," but you wind up pulling in a deep breath instead. Now that Sydney has put it that way, it does sound really weird. Jenny isn't a close friend, but she is a friend. "Um, well."

"So you're saying maybe it should be one of my friends, or someone I know?"

"Yeh, eb, ubb ..." You reset the gears inside your mouth. "I don't want to, you know, put a job onto you!"

"No, it's fair, Will. It's my idea, you'd be doing a huge favor for me. Just show me how you copy people with a mask or whatever, and I can do it. I could do it this weekend, easy. Could you get me a mask by then?"

"Sure! No, wait. Shit!" You've remembered the second complication. "I have to use the book to make the masks, and it's, uh, under that thing in the basement."

"Can't you get it out?"

"I don't want to screw up the spell while it's going."

"Mm. Well, how long until it's done?"

"I don't know." You blush to confess your amateurish ignorance. "The book doesn't say."

"Huh. Well, that's okay. I've waited this long." Sydney gives you a squeeze—one that almost makes you cream your shorts—and releases you. "We got a lot done tonight. Do you want to try finding the other focal point of his ley line?"

"Can we save it for tomorrow night? Or—" Your heart plunges. "Do you have a date with someone?"

"No date. I'm not seeing anyone." Your heart leaps, then crashes at the implication that she's not "seeing" you, either. "But I am supposed to go to a party." Her brow furrows. "You're coming too, right?"

"Um ... Could I?"

"Of course. It's just a thing over at Catherine Muskov's house. I thought everyone went to her things."

"I don't go to a lot of parties. But yeah, if no one's going to throw me out or anything." You shrug. "I'd love to go ... with ... you."

"Great, can you pick me up around seven? It's an all-afternoon, all-evening thing." She traces her fingertip down the front of your shirt. "We can go, hang out, dance, have some fun, then take off before my curfew? My mom's idiot new husband makes me come home so early. But if we take off early enough we could maybe do something just the two of us together before you have to take me home?"

Desire gurgles and bubbles in the back of your throat. "Like looking for a ley line?"

She titters. "It was romantic out here tonight, wasn't it? You said so yourself."

* * * * *

You lay in bed, sleepless, staring at the ceiling with three straining eyes.

Two of them, of course, are the eyes in the front of your head. The third belongs to your one-eyed trouser snake. It can't see the ceiling, of course, not even metaphorically. But it has firmly tented the sheets.

You're not even touching it. You're not encouraging it in any way. It's just there, dammit.

What was all that flirty stuff with Sydney tonight? You sure know what it looked like. It looked like she's interested in you. It looked like she's hot for you. Hell, she all but said that she'd fuck you except she needs to preserve her virginity for some reason.

But you of all people know that looks can be deceiving. What does she really want?

You? Even though you've told yourself I've got a girlfriend, it scarcely seems conceivable that you've got a girlfriend to that degree. Lisa sure didn't want you that way, and she knew you at your best, and she's not nearly as hot as Sydney McGlynn.

And Sydney's a pretty good little actress. She sure did a good job pretending to be interested in Caleb, until you told her that Caleb had nothing to do with the stuff she's interested in.

Maybe it's the grimoire she's really interested in. Is she manipulating you to get her hands on it? All that hugging and touching and scrunching up her nose at you like you're the cutest thing ever ... Standard female tricks for melting a guy down into jelly so she twist him into any shape she wants.

You throw a forearm across your sweating brow.

Unless maybe she is interested in you, but as a practicing magician? You have executed some spells. She acted genuinely interested in Caleb when she thought he had some magic skill, and she didn't think he had a book. In that case, she might be genuinely interested in you! As someone with a shared interest, a shared quirk! That's what good relationships are supposed to be built on, right?

It is a satisfying train of thought, and you feel yourself relaxing, until a vexing objection occurs to you. You're not the only guy in school who is into the occult. Braydon Delp, you groan to yourself.

At least, he's reputed to be into the occult. He looks like he would be. Delp is a scrawny social misfit—a misfit in a creepy kind of way, not a dopey one like you and Caleb and Keith—who hangs out with the RPG crowd. He's not an evil kind of guy, at least you've never got that kind of a vibe off him. But he dresses in black and he paints his fingernails black and he wears mascara and a lot of silver. People say that he's into the occult. Maybe he isn't, and Sydney found out he isn't, so that's why she's not attracted to him the way ... Well, the way she seems to be attracted to you. (A quiver runs through you as the very concrete thought "the way she's attracted to me" forms in your head.) But if he is into the occult, and she's not attracted to him, why would she be attracted to you? Because you've proved you can do something, while Braydon probably only listens to death metal and carries around little vials of blood in order to shock people? (Disclaimer: You've never actually seen Braydon with a vial of blood; that's just more of those rumors.) You squirm between the sheets, and your boner does start to subside as your bewilderment returns.

Your only comfort is that it is probably this way for most guys: Why is this girl interested in me? Is she really interested in me? Do I have a legitimate chance with her?

Except, of course, it wouldn't be this way for Steve Patterson. Or Marc Garner. Or Laurent Delacroix. Or even—dammit—for Geoff Mansfield.

Melancholy turns to sleepiness, and your raging erection puddles, as the names of guys who are probably totally confident that girls are horny for them drift through your mind: Seth Javits, Erik Carstairs, Noah Lepley, Chris Ratliff ...

* * * * *

Caleb is in a mood all day Friday, especially at lunch, which he takes with you and Keith and Carson and James and the others. They seem to have forgiven him—or maybe they are just tolerating him for friendships' sake—so talk is light and pleasant until Carson happens to mention Sydney's name. Caleb curses, grabs up his trash, and stalks away. "What's biting Johansson?" Carson asks. But you just shrug.

What's biting him, obviously, is that Sydney has totally forgotten about him after making that very promising approach.

But you don't care. He wouldn't have had a chance with her anyway. But it does give you pause when you meet Sydney up at her house a little before eight. "I checked the spell back at the school, just before coming out," you tell her. "The fire went out."

"Yeah? Does that mean it's done?"

"No, it's not done until it doesn't relight. And it relit. But it got me thinking."

You break off before suggesting that you skip Catherine's party and go looking for the ley line instead. Caleb doesn't go to many parties; but what if he caught you at this one with Sydney?

* To go to Catherine's party: "Who One Is and Who One Might Be" 
* To go find the other focal point of the ley line: "Focus Pocus" 

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