The Book of Masks (Vol. 3)

Girls with Plans

Previously: "Some Backstory on Amanda" 

Sydney listens with arched eyebrows as you outline your plan for Amanda.

"Well," she says when you're done. "I guess you're the best judge of Amanda and her friends and how it will all go down."

"You think it won't work."

"I didn't say that."

"So what do you think?"

She hesitates, and resumes carving runes into the metal band. "It sounds to me," she finally says, "like you'll piss a lot of people off. But are you really sure they'll respond the way you think?"

You squirm. All of Amanda's instincts are to snap at Sydney, to tell her that of course it's going to go the way you want. But you yourself have to acknowledge that there's a difference between giving people their lines in your imagination, and being confident that they'll say them in real life.

"I'm going to do this," you say. "The point is to screw with Blake. The rest of it doesn't matter."

"Still, maybe you'll want some help?" She brushes her fingertip over the metal band. "We're going to have another set of masks by tomorrow."

"There's not really a part for you."

"Sure there is. One of Amanda's girlfriends. Kelsey, maybe. She sounds like she could use some managing. Or one of these other girls. Or— I don't know. Maybe your boyfriend?"

"What?"

"Sure, your boyfriend. The whole thing depends on him not losing his shit—"

You almost strangle yourself on your Amanda's outrage.

"First of all, Sydney," you say, and you hate how ragged your voice sounds, even in your own ears, "Nothing depends on Ricky not losing his shit. Let him lose his shit, who gives a fuck, it'll just be more drama, which is fine. Second—" You tick off a finger. "Second, he's not going to lose his shit, because Ricky doesn't do anything I don't let him oo. And third," you go on, overriding her interruption, "are you freaking serious? Do you even know what he looks like?"

A nasty smile slides up the side of her face. "We said a long time ago, Will, that it wouldn't matter what we looked like inside these masks. We'd still be—" She bites on her grin.

"Well, here, take a look at him!" You grab for your phone. "But even if he isn't— Even if you don't think he's—"

You fall silent as you scroll through your album, and a very large album it is, too, with lots of selfies of yourself alone or with friends or at special places, or pictures of friends and of special places, or of random people or things that Amanda has snapped and uploaded to Instagram or other social media.

But there's not one picture of her boyfriend. A faint chill settles between your shoulder blades.

So you go online to find one. Sydney watches with puzzled amusement until she gets bored and goes back to working on the new brain band.

"Here." You thrust the first photo you can find under her nose. "He's the one on the right. The other one is Seth Javits."

"I know who Seth Javits is," Sydney says. "Oh," she says as she studies the screen. "I know him, I've got him in my Environmental Science class."

"He looks like a frog, doesn't he?"

"He does not, Will."

"Okay, he looks like a prince that got turned into a frog, then got changed back, but the reversion spell didn't totally take."

"Stop it. There's nothing wrong with him."

"So you seriously want to be him."

"Not permanently. But we need recruits and he could work. He looks really respectable—"

"Oh God, is he."

"—and I kind of like the idea of turning these clean-cut types into worshippers of Baphomet."

You play your last card. "But he has a cock, Sydney!"

"So? that's not a deal-breaker for me. It could be fun. I assume it is, guys are always trying to have fun with their peckers. Right?" She grins. "If you can have fun trying this stuff out—" She grabs and tweaks one of your boobs. "I can have fun crossing the line too!"

* * * * *

You don't come to any decisions. In fact, you're so unnerved by Sydney's suggestion that she might play a guy—and Amanda's boyfriend!—that you cut the work session short. Sydney seems to pick up on your discomfort, for she gives you a lingering, open-mouthed kiss before letting you leave.

You go back home only long enough to change into a new and looser-fitting dress. At school and at parties Amanda prefers clothes that are tight and constricting—the better to show off the figure she has striven so hard to attain—and especially likes anything made of leather, anything that has been crisply starched, or anything made of silk. It's a look that attracted some pretty unseemly attention—creeps sidling up close to whisper that they'll bring the handcuffs if she brings the whips—but it also seems to work pretty well at scaring the more casual creeps away. Amanda just has to give them a freezing look, and most guys wilt.

But with her friends on a study date (which is where you're heading out for) she can put on something more comfortable. But still you will wear high-heeled sandals.

It's Anthony's turn to pick the study venue, so at around about six-thirty you pack up your books and drive out to Balducci's Pizza, picking up Rachel and Brooke on the way. There's a dozen of you—the same kids who partied at Kelsey's last night—and you push together two large tables and unpack books. Amanda got most of her homework done Friday afternoon and evening; most everyone did, actually; and it's a good thing, too, for this "study session" is mostly given over to internet browsing on cell phones, ogling of the college students (furtively by the girls; less furtively by the guys), and watching the sports shows that are playing on the TVs hanging in the corners of the room. You finish off the little math homework that was left over while nibbling the cherry tomatoes off a gloppy and indifferent salad.

Most of the time you spend watching Geoff and Lisa out of the corner of your eye, and watching Kelsey watching them. By the smoldering, slit-eyed glower that disfigures her face every time she glances over at them, you confirm your suspicion that the coming week is going to be rough for them.

But why?

Well, because Geoff is too good for Lisa; and because she's too good for him. That's what Amanda's gut tells you when you calm down enough to listen to it.

And it is just a gut feeling, though one that Amanda and Kelsey have gossiped over indirectly. But you'd bet anything that this week Kelsey is going to start saying those kinds of things to other people.

You get confirmation the next morning on your way in to school.

* * * * *

You're wearing silk today—another dark one-piece dress that clings in a filmy way to your hips and thighs and bosoms—and black patent boots with spike heels. You cast a frigid glance at the asshole kid (probably a junior) in the football jersey and hockey hair who whistles at you in the parking lot. You're scarcely less cold to Deanna Showalter, who a moment later pops out from between two cars as you are stalking by and falls in next to you. "Oh my God," she gushes, "you're going to have start carrying mace if you keep coming to school dressed like that."

"Dressed like what?"

"Like— Nothing." Deanna snickers through her nose. "I wish I could pull it off. But hey, I heard things got really wild at Kelsey's party this weekend."

You would have to hear about it, wouldn't you, you think, since Kelsey banished you until further notice for taking some compromising pictures at the last one she let you into. "Where'd you hear it got wild?" you ask. "Because it didn't."

"Oh, I just saw some chatter online. About Geoff and Lisa."

You're wearing sunglasses, so she probably can't see your eyes flicking over at her.

So Kelsey must have been up late last night, probably after you went to bed, posting her thoughts on Geoff and Lisa, because you didn't see anything like that online before you went to bed. And Kelsey knowing what Kelsey knows, she obviously dangled it out where she knew Deanna would be sure to hook onto it.

She's a terrible gossip, Deanna is. Her idea of fun is to scurry around, letting everyone know what everyone else is doing, and then scurrying off to tell everyone else what everyone else thinks about the things that everyone else is doing. There's no malice in it—she is too sweetly stupid to be malicious—but if you want something to go viral at Westside, better to give it to Deanna than to put it on Twitter.

"Pictures," you tell her. "Pictures or it didn't happen."

She bites down hard on a smile. "Can't you give me a picture, Amanda?"

So you stop and turn on her. If this is what Kelsey wants, you tell yourself.

"Look, it doesn't hurt me if Geoff wants to use Lisa for an easy lay-up," you say, "and if Lisa's okay with being his easy lay-up. It's not like anyone gives a shit. You wanna say they got wild last Saturday," you continue as Deanna's mouth falls open, "then say they got wild last Saturday. Except Lisa wouldn't know wild if she was standing in the middle of a zoo in the middle of a tornado, and Geoff's idea of wild involves leaving home with less than a full tank of gas. For them, sure, they were swinging from the lamp fixtures all night long. For the rest of us, they might as well have been knitting mittens. I've got to get to my locker, Deanna," you close with a snap, "and I'm not talking about this where anyone can hear."

You don't have to, not after talking about it to her.

And on your way to your locker you spot Blake at his. His friend Erik is looming behind him. Neither one sees you walking up.

So you have to poke Blake in the side of the hip to get his attention.

Next: "When Troubles Pile In" 

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