The Book of Masks (Vol. 4)

Little Tea Shop of Horrors

Previously: "Steam-Powered Action" 

You feel yourself torn in three directions. You should probably join Kelsey and Amanda to guarantee yourself a ticket to get into tomorrow night's party. But if you meet them and it gets out, people will wonder why Deanna passed up a date with the most eligible guy at Westside.

But do you have to pass it up? For a very long minute, as you sit behind the wheel of the Deanna's car, you're sorely tempted to text Steve and tell him that you actually can make your date. But your excitement gradually sours into nausea: Do you really want to play the part of Deanna Showalter so completely that you'd let Steve Patterson shove his cock inside you?

Feeling sick, you steer for home. But at the last minute you veer onto the interstate and change course for the mall. If you're going to torpedo Deanna's date with Steve, you might as well get grab what you can out of it.

* * * * *

"Don't worry about it," Kelsey briskly informs you after you're poured out your dilemma at La Patisserie. "Amanda and I will vouch for you. We'll tell people you texted us about your grandmother going to the hospital, so we invited you up here to buck up your spirits."

"Sure," Amanda agrees without looking up from her cell phone. "Make us out to be real Good Samaritans."

You show them both a grateful smile and cut another corner off the lemon bar you've been nibbling on for last twenty minutes. You ordered it and a coffee on arriving—even though the lemon bar alone cost nearly fifteen dollars—and were crushed when the other girls contented themselves with herbal teas and refused to even look at the pastry.

Guess I'm the only one with a normal appetite, you glumly think to yourself. Of course, I'm the only one with any baby fat, too. Stupid appetite. Stupid, stupid lack of willpower, you added on popping a second piece into your mouth.

At least it's a very good lemon bar—tart and buttery—which it should be for the price, and you'd hope that La Patisserie, with its linen table cloths and chairs with velvet cushions, would at least try to offer pastries that are worth the expense. You roll each bite around in your mouth, wondering what secret ingredients and confidential processes give it its bright taste and chunky texture. In your home econ class—well, in Deanna's home econ class—she had a hard enough time adding chocolate syrup to milk.

"How did you manage to score a night out with Steve?" Kelsey asks. She's taken out her own cell phone and is scrolling down the screen, so she isn't even looking at you as she asks the question.

"It wasn't that hard," you retort. "Don't make it sound like it took the intercession of a squad of saints."

"If you want to make the party tomorrow night," Amanda says, "don't get sarcastic."

You make a face. "Alright, take two." You take a deep breath and start over.

"Oh my God," you gasp, and stifle a squeal. "I don't know! I mean, he just came over and asked me out! Last Wednesday! The day before yesterday, you know?" You squirm as Kelsey and Amanda, all aghast, raise their heads to listen. "It was just before second period, right outside Ms. Gladstone's room. I guess he knew to look for me there, 'cos Ryan Shuler and Dylan Lloyd and a bunch of the other guys are in there with me, and I guess they must've told him I was in there too. So anyway he—"

"What class is this?" Amanda asks.

"Reading for Pleasure?"

"I thought you were taking AP English." Kelsey's lip curls in contempt. "I thought Eva Garner told me you were in there with her."

"I don't think Eva would have mentioned Deanna," Amanda says.

"You're so hilarious, Amanda," you retort. "Eva's one of my best friends!"

"Because she thinks you're a sweetheart," Amanda says. Her mouth twitches. "Delusional, but a sweetheart."

"Anyway!" You turn back to Kelsey. "So Steve meets me outside second period—"

"So you're not taking AP English?"

"So I like to read! Is there anything wrong with taking two English classes? It's better than taking another— I dunno, another math class!"

"She's in Speech IV too," Amanda interjects. "Reading and talking are her specialties. Well, talking is. Reading's just so she's got something to talk about when she runs out of—"

"So Steve was waiting for me outside Ms. Gladstone's—"

"Shh!" Kelsey silences you with a quick gesture. "This isn't the school cafeteria!"

"—and he asks me out. That's all. For tonight, for Friday night." You'd like to gloat over it, but the interruptions have soured your mood.

Kelsey mulls this. "I wonder which of his plans fell through."

"Whose plans?" you demand. "Steve's? What makes you think he had plans that fell through?"

"Please, Deanna. He gives you forty-eight hours notice for a date. It sounds pretty last-minute to me."

"Steve's really going to be pissed at you," Amanda says, "if someone cancelled on him two days before, and then you cancelled on him the night of."

Your jaw slackens. "I didn't—! He didn't—! It's not like that!" you protest. "It can't—"

Kelsey snickers. "Can you believe how easy it is to get her spun up?" she says to Amanda.

"Don't take it personally, Will," her friend tells you. "I'm sure Steve's laying in the dark on his bed at home, sobbing into his jerk-off sock because you—"

"Oh, fuck you guys!" But the other two only laugh.

"Seriously, though," Kelsey says after she's recovered herself. "I bet it was a last-minute thing for Steve. Someone must have backed out on him."

"Don't you have any idea who it might have been?" Amanda asks you. "Deanna usually knows these things—"

"No!" You're still feeling hot. "I don't know why you think Deanna couldn't have— I mean, I'd fuck her!"

"Quiet, Will!" Kelsey hisses, and looks quickly around. A few more people have filtered into the hushed dining room, but none of them seem to be paying attention to you. "Anyway, if you want to do something like that you've all night tonight to get it on with her. And tomorrow, if you want to come over to my place early—"

"Actually," Amanda interrupts, looking thoughtful. "That's not a bad idea. I mean, isn't it?" she adds when Kelsey gives her a querying look. "Will and Deanna as a couple? It's the easiest thing to set up."

Kelsey looks at you.

"Don't ask me while I'm wearing her mask," you retort. "It's weird enough thinking about myself without thinking about myself that way."

* * * * *

You stay out with Kelsey and Amanda until ten-thirty, talking of various people and things in something like an unofficial and very relaxed version of Truth or Dare while checking texts and social media. The lights are on at the Showalter residence when you get home, but Mr. Showalter is asleep in front of the TV. You wake him gently with a kiss on the cheek before padding down the hall to your bedroom. There you scrub off makeup and take down and brush out your hair and change into a night gown. You scrutinize yourself this way and that in the mirror before going to bed.

Deanna isn't the prettiest girl in school, but she's pretty enough. She has a healthy pink glow, and her eyes roll up in a button-cute away behind little pillows of fat when she smiles. Deanna as a girlfriend? You could do a lot worse. But as you think back to all the friends that she's got and the friends that she wants and all the people that she has to keep up with ... Well, it begins to tire you out. You're happy enough with a number of friends that you can count on one hand. If you had to keep up with her friends as well, you might die of exhaustion.

And as for Will Prescott as a boyfriend? That thought causes you to grimace into the dark after you're in bed. He's just a guy, Deanna's instincts tell you. He's no one she's even really paid attention to. Even when he was going out with Lisa Yarborough, it didn't really register with her—probably because you were such a nobody that she didn't even take you and her seriously as a couple.

You yawn.

No, you recognize as sleep begins to steal over you, Deanna is much more into guys like Steve Patterson—a somebody who could really elevate her socially, even if it's only because she was good enough to be one of his one-night companions. And as for someone she'd like for a boyfriend ...

Mmm. You wriggle deeper into the bedclothes and squeeze your thighs together as you think of how scrumptious some of the wrestlers are ...

* * * * *

"Oh my God, he didn't even text you back?" Meghan Farris stares back at you with frank horror. "Your grandmother is in the hospital—"

"How is she?" Jamie Bornholm asks. Her eyes brim with an almost liquid concern.

"Oh, she's fine, they think it was just a scare," you assure her. "They didn't even keep her overnight." You had to give the girls, who you are meeting for breakfast this Saturday morning at Salvation Donuts, the story of the family crisis when Meghan mischievously asked you how your "thang" with Steve went.

It's not yet eleven o'clock, but Deanna is used to getting up early even on weekends. You're wishing you'd stayed in, though. The donuts in the donut case are crooning for attention, and it's a cold and rainy day—the kind where you (Deanna Showalter) would like to spend inside in a comfy chair with some hot cocoa, a cell phone, and the internet.

But you're glad of Meghan's invitation when you look up at a door chime and see two burly guys in blue rain slickers and ball caps come striding in. Laurent Delacroix and Alec Brown.

And you were just thinking of wrestlers last night!

Next: "Salvation Comes with Donuts" 

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"Table of Contents (Vol. 4)" 
"The Book of Masks (Vol. 4)"