The Book of Masks (Vol. 3)

Who One Is and Who One Might Be

Previously: "The One Who Might Be Your Girlfriend" 

"Got you thinking what?" Sydney asks.

"Oh. Well." You make a hard turn onto Borman Avenue, and a hard turn in the conversation as well, toward the direction of the masks and of disguises.

"I was thinking about how, uh, you want me to make you a mask so you can copy someone so that we can, uh ..."

But Sydney doesn't fill the hole you provided her.

"That would be for business, right? The thing doing with the masks? I mean—" Your chest starts feeling like it's about to explode. "It would only be for, uh, doing business with the ley lines?"

Seriously, it feels like you're about to have a heart attack. Only now do you realize what you're saying. You're asking if she wants to use a mask to have sex with you because the ley lines require it, not because—

Well, not for any reason having to do with you.

It's a good thing you have a strong instinct for self-preservation, or else you'd likely steer the truck into a light pole and try to kill yourself.

"Right," Sydney says. Her tone isn't cool, exactly, but there's no flirtiness inside it. "Tapping a ley line is like plucking a string. You know, like on a guitar. Or hitting a piano key. Uh, coitus, according to the stuff I've read, is one way that you, um, pluck the string. A really powerful way."

There was the tiniest little titter, you think, inside the word "coitus," and by the end it does sound like she's trying to suppress a giggle. You chance a quick glance at her. But it's dark inside the truck cab, and you can make out nothing of her expression. Only her hair gleams in the dark, and the streetlights reflect off her eyes.

God, you want her in a lighted room, with her arms around you and your arms around her, peering down into her face and her face turned up to peer into yours. Maybe then you'd be able to tell how sincerely interested in you she is. And what that interest is.

"Well, I was thinking about what masks we could get. That's all."

"Did you have some ideas?"

"Well. No," you have to admit. A sudden thought bites you—something that could be a genius question or a disaster. "You want to wear a mask. Do you want me to wear a mask?"

Silence.

Yeah, you think as your heart jackhammers in your chest. This is a genius question. Also a dangerous one. I'm giving her a chance to say something about me, about my—

Well, fuck it. About my sex appeal.

You feel yourself crimsoning in the dark as she makes no reply. The trunk bench grows very hot under your butt.

I'm asking her if she could stand having sex with me, or if she'd rather pretend it was someone else. Some football player or one of the basketball players. Some slicked-up asshole like Mansfield.

I'm asking her if I'm up to her standards.

'Cos I sure as fuck don't feel like I am.

"Do we both have to wear masks if we do it?" Sydney asks. "Is that part of the magic, that you can't, uh, be intimate with someone if one of you's wearing a mask and the other one isn't?"

"I don't know," you confess. "I hadn't thought of that."

"Oh."

Then she bursts out laughing. "What?" you growl. Now you are ready to die of humiliation.

"Oh, nothing," she gasps. "You're just such a gentleman. So chivalrous."

"How am I chivalrous?" you demand, as though she's just called you an asshole.

"Being so thoughtful. I'm going to turn myself into another girl for you." She puts her feet on the truck console. "You want her to be sexy, right? You want it to be with a sexy girl."

"I didn't say—!" you try to protest, but your mouth fills with a froth.

"You don't have to, Will. I know that's what you'd want. It's what any guy would want. Or are you saying you could get it up for some dumpy, fat-faced girl with zits and weird hair?"

"Um—"

"No you couldn't." She giggles. "You don't have to be that chivalrous, Will. You're being chivalrous enough. Because now you're asking if I want you to make yourself up the same way. I'm gonna be the sexy girl for you, and you're asking if you have to be the sexy guy for me."

You're at a stoplight, so you can't steer the truck into a wall. But you could maybe hop out of the truck cab and scamper off into the night. Keep running until you crossed a state line. Change your name and get a job as a dishwasher and bury yourself in some big city where no one—especially Sydney—could ever find you again.

"You can do anything you want, Will. You can be the sexy guy when we do it. You can be the unsexy guy. You can be yourself. It doesn't matter to me, as long as it's a guy who can get it up and work it until something comes out."

Oh my God! Her description—"get it up and work it until something comes out"—almost scorches your face off the front of your skull. But in reply you only murmur, "So it really is just business?"

"Oh!" She sighs. "Don't work yourself up so much about it. We're friends, right?"

"Yeah! I hope so. I want to be." You shoot her a couple of ardent, sidelong glances. "That's what I keep telling myself. 'I'm friends with this girl, isn't it great?'"

"So we're friends. We're having fun." She strokes your arm. "On the mask thing, I'll leave it up to you. I need one, but I'll leave it up to you if you want to put a mask on too. Leave it up to you who, too."

"Even if he's fat and pimply and has weird hair?"

She throws her head back and laughs.

* * * * *

We're friends, aren't we? Sydney said to you in the truck. But are you? You barely know her. And you wonder if she really feels like she knows you. The disconnect between what you've said and how you feel becomes most apparent at Catherine's.

You don't go to many parties, but this one doesn't feel much like the ones you've been to or like the ones you crashed while wearing Caleb's face. Those parties had food and drinks set out, with music and dancing and people falling over each other and making out. This party at Catherine Muskov's, though ...

Well, there is music and dancing in the living room. There's food in the dining room and kitchen. People are sitting on stairs and there's lots of raucous laughter. But the feel is different. It's disorganized. The music and the dancing starts and stops, and there's usually not more than four or six people dancing to it. The food and drink is BYOB—sacks of fast food and chips and bottles deposited by people coming in and out. Most of the people are entertaining themselves on their cell phones. The mood isn't somber, but it is so relaxed that it's practically boneless. You don't even glimpse your hostess except once, when she goes gliding through the dining room with a faint smile on her face.

So it's more like a "hanging out" session than a party. And your time with Sydney is more like "hanging out" than partying together. She finds herself a cluster of kids in the dining room early on and talks intently with them about school and acquaintances and movies and books.

Books especially. It seems to be a bookish group. Shakespeare is a particular topic. They've got lots of things to say about Shakespeare.

You don't, so you linger at the edge, feeling out of place and studying the others, wondering which of the girls she might get a mask of. Wondering which girl you would like for her to get a mask of.

You only know two of them by name, for you've had them in classes: Reagan and Whitney. They're volleyball players, you think. Neither one is very beautiful. They are husky girls—not fat, but they don't look like girls who have been smoothed down by lots of running and swimming. They are like the female equivalent of football players, you decide. Strong of thigh and shoulder and fist and face. Reagan in particular wears a very bold expression, and when someone spills a little dip on her front she blows very indignant and tosses her long, blonde hair like it's a horse's mane.

Two other girls are there with their boyfriends. You don't catch their names, but all four are in AP classes, judging by their conversation. The guys in particular remind you of the AP assholes like Mansfield, and one of them—when talking about Richard III—casually describes like it's no big deal a performance he saw in London last year. He's also full of things to say about Hamlet and "Oedipal interpretations." You also note that, except for an Indian-American girl who gives you a couple of lingering, curious glances, they completely ignore you.

The guy who doesn't ignore you, though, is Tony Peterson. You had him in middle school P.E., and though he didn't hassle you it was only because you did your best to stay out of his way. He's a wrestler now, and he hasn't got anything to say about Shakespeare or books, so he has plenty of time to glower at you in a sidelong way.

Occasionally you wander off, forgetting your fear of running into Caleb; never do you find more welcoming company, and no one hails you by name. Sydney never notices when you return from these vacations, and when she glances at you, her smile suggests that she never saw you go.

* * * * *

Hours wear on. Finally Sydney takes you aside to say she has to get home before her curfew. "You kept to yourself," she observes as you drive off.

"I don't do so good in big groups," you admit.

"I had an idea tonight," she says. "Maybe I could hang out with you tomorrow while wearing that mask of your friend Caleb? That's one way we could get to know each other fast."

* To let her put on the mask: "Is You Is or Is You Ain't My BF?" 
* To talk her out of it: "No One Wants a Creepy Girlfriend" 

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