The Book of Masks (Vol. 4)

Secret Boyfriend

Previously: "School Days with Sienna Goldman" 

Kelsey Blankenship has a secret boyfriend? You grip Maria's arm so hard that she winces and tries to pull away. "What's the story?" you squeal. "About Kelsey and Karl, I mean."

She grimaces. "So I guess Fatima and her friends aren't plugged into the same grapevine as everyone else," she sighs.

You squeeze her harder. She finally gives.

For at least a month now, she tells you, Kelsey and Karl have been hooking up secretly outside of school, and by "hooking up" (when you challenge the phrase) she means hooking up, as in, checking into sleazy motel rooms and denting the walls with the headboards.

"At least, that's the talk," she says. "Well, it's not just talk about the motel rooms. As for how, mm, raucous they get—"

"How is this a secret," you demand, "if people are talking about it?"

"Kelsey thinks it's a secret. Karl's been telling everyone who'd listen." She gives you a look. "Really, Will, you hadn't heard? Either you or, uh, Fatima? Even Carlos and Mike and the rest of us knew about it."

You ignore the jibe. "So how does Kelsey think it's a secret?"

"Uh, because everyone's too scared to tell her to her face? That everyone knows what she and Karl are up to? You know, they don't even talk to each other inside the school." She pauses, and a shadow clouds her eyes as her gaze turns inward. "Chelsea says it's because Kelsey feels like she's slumming."

Speak of the devil, and she shall appear. Chelsea Cooper chooses that exact moment to stride into the classroom with a vexed frown. "Maria," she says. "The hell are you doing in here?" She gives you a quick, sniffy look. "Hi, uh, Fatima. Maria! The guys are already dressing out for practice, I've been waiting for you at my locker only for, like—" She pulls out her cell phone to check the time.

"Sorry, Chelsea," Maria singsongs. "Talk to you later, Fatima?"

"What are you even doing in the science wing?" Chelsea asks with a shudder as she pulls her friend toward the door. "All the nerd gas can't be good for the skin."

Yes, you wonder, and it's not the first time Fatima has wondered about it. What is the famously airheaded Maria Vasquez doing in an AP Forensic Science class? Charles Hartlein says it's because her dad is on the school board, and it would look bad if his daughter was only taking Home Ec and Parenting classes. Fatima is sure that can't be it, but she can't figure out another story, either.

* * * * *

Chelsea wasn't the only one waiting impatiently for you and Maria. Sienna is leaning against your car in the parking lot, and she glares at you through the smoke of her cigarette.

"I thought you gave those up," you tell her.

She tosses the butt away. "Don't start with me, Fatima."

So she's got her quills out. You keep your thoughts to yourself until you're out on Borman, then suggest that the two of you hang out at your house. "Just the two of us," you add.

Instead of relaxing, Sienna seems to tense. But she says, "That'd be fine."

All the way back to your house you wrack your brain for a way of broaching the subject of Karl Hennepin. Not until you and she are back in your bedroom, sprawled out with some homework, do you lunge at the topic directly.

"So," you say, with your heart in your throat. "Were you flirting with Karl in the music room this morning?"

Sienna's face falls as she raises her head. "What?" she demands with staring eyes.

"I'm just making girl talk, Sienna."

"What the—? I don't— Why would—?" she sputters. "Why would you even ask that?" she finally stammers out.

"Oh, I don't know. Maybe just the way you went up to him and started talking?" You try smiling through the fog of fear that you feel enveloping your face.

"I can talk to guys!" Sienna protests with a deepening blush. "I don't have to—! It wasn't flirting!"

"Chill out, Sienna." You force a laugh. "I'm just asking if— Well, did you hang out with any guys this weekend?"

"Fah! What does that—? I had Jelena all on my neck all weekend!"

"Well, that's gotta be a first for you. No wonder you're pissed off at her."

Her blush is now deepening from a cherry red to a plum purple. "Are you fucking calling me a slut or something?"

"No!"

"Because you're one to talk! You know, every time you go out to the Warehouse, you wind up upstairs with two or three—"

"I'm not calling you a slut, Sienna! Jeez!" You strangle the urge to jump out the window to safety. "I'm sorry I said you were 'flirting' with Karl. I was just, you know, wondering if you were interested in him. You know, you're allowed to!" you add when Sienna just stares back at you, breathing raggedly. "He's cute. He's smart. He looks good in those torn jeans and that sweater he was wearing."

"Do you want him?"

You give her a look, then change your mind about denying the accusation.

"Well, sure," you say. "If he's yours to give away. But you saw him first."

You hold her eye for a long time with a forced smile, until she finally looks away. She digs at her notebook with the tip of her pencil, until the paper tears.

"Yeah, well," she says. "I do need a date for the Warehouse this weekend."

"Well, there you go," you say. "That's all I was wondering. LIke, if you were trying to set something up with him this weekend."

Sienna gives you a mulish look, and goes back to digging the pencil into the notebook. Abruptly, she lunges to her feet and stalks from the room. She's gone for maybe fifteen minutes—long enough for you to start worrying—then returns with a face that shines from being scrubbed.

You wonder if she went into the bathroom to have a good cry.

* * * * *

You don't talk any more about Karl. In fact, you don't talk much more about anything. She stays for dinner, and she's a lot more talkative at the table where your mother and father—who treat her as a kind of prodigal daughter—dote on her. But she lapses again into a moody silence when supper is over, and asks you to take her home. "Are you sure?" you ask, for there's no one at home that she would want to see or deal with, and after a moment's thought she asks you to take her out to Nadine Martin's house.

You hope you haven't spent all your credit with her, the way Jelena seems to have.

And, thinking of Jelena, as you are, after dropping off Sienna you text her to see about getting together for a talk.

"Well, sure, I can fucking sympathize with her," Jelena says of Sienna after you've driven out to meet her on the university campus. "I mean, look at my situation."

Her situation is roughly Sienna's: an abusive family that doesn't live in a rat-hole so much as it infests it. The difference is that Jelena's was so bad that she moved out and moved in with her sister, who's a college student. That's why, for privacy's sake, you're pacing the darkened quad in front of the college administration building, moving from one pool of streetlight to the next while huddling close to each other. "But," Jelena continues, "that's no reason for her to be a bitch to me."

"How much experience have you had with Kelsey?" you ask. She shrugs. "Because Kelsey is a bitch to everyone. You roll one bitch up inside another bitch and— Oh my God!" You stop short and blink. "Kelsey and Sienna!"

"Yeah?" Jelena says. When you don't reply, she says, "You know, I wouldn't call Sienna a bitch, not when she's got reason to—"

"No one's keeping an eye on Sienna. I mean, the real one."

Jelena's expression is unreadable in the dark, but you can tell she's not smiling as she says, "Yeah, and Philip wants us to do something about that."

"Well, what I mean is—"

Except you're not sure what you mean. Only you've suddenly got a feeling like you get when you leave home and then start worrying that maybe you left the curling iron plugged in. (Which itself is a thought that give you momentary pause. Will Prescott never worried about leaving no curling iron plugged in; Fatima Zahedi has.) It's the horrible feeling that you've let something important slip.

Kelsey and Karl are secretly going out together. But now it will be Sienna (as Kelsey) secretly going out with Karl. Yet another thing that Kelsey will have lost when you and your friends traded her life for another's.

Then you remember something else: Kelsey and Dean Stratton, She was flirting with him in second period today!

"Yeah, so?" Jelena asks when you tell her about it. "Doesn't Kelsey flirt with guys?"

"She's supposed to be going out with Karl Hennepin! That's what Fairfax told me this afternoon. He told me that all you guys know about it!"

"Well, maybe she'll break it off with him," Jelena says, still sounding unimpressed. "It would totally be for the best for both of them, you know. Well, for Karl. Dude's all fucked up in the head, from what I hear, because Kelsey won't be seen in public with him."

"But we're gonna switch Kelsey and Sienna back at some point, right? What'll it be like for Kelsey if she goes back to being herself, but she's not with Karl anymore?"

Jelena shrugs. "Maybe she'll have learned not to fuck around with guys like that."

Even after you tell her about "Sienna" flirting with Karl in school, Mike doesn't seem much worried. He only says (sounding like Fairfax) that the drama sounds "interesting."

Is it the influence of Fatima's personality that leaves you feeling like it's less "interesting" and more "dangerous"?

Next: "A Triangle with Two Identical Corners" 

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