The Book of Masks (Vol. 4)

Four Girls and One Red-Faced Guy

Previously: "The Search for Support" 

You're settling back to spend the period with this unexpected party when the library door opens again and three girls walk in. One of them is Eva Garner.

As in "Eva Garner, cheerleader."

Not that she's dressed out as such today. She's wearing shorts drawn up over stockings, so you get a good look at her shapely, gymnast's legs. From the waist up, though, she's wrapped herself in a shapeless gray hoodie that, though it bulges where it should, doesn't exactly shape or flatter her figure. But at least her glossy blonde hair floats in loose curls down past her shoulders instead of being done up in a bun.

She and the others settle in next to Jenny with bright smiles.

The circuitry in your brain warms and hums, and almost before you've decided what you're going to do, you're pushing your chair back and pulling your backpack off the table.

"Uh, 'scuse me," you tell Kim and the others, wrenching your gaze off Eva long enough to address them. "Someone just came in I gotta go talk to."

Kim looks past you. "Hey Eva," she calls. Eva returns her a vacant smile and nod.

Mike stands up, and lifts his pack. "Me too," he says.

Josie looks up at him. "What?"

"Gotta go talk to the cheerleader."

She hauls back into his seat by the shirt tail. "Down, boy."

You squeeze between the intervening tables, chewing your lip as you approach. Do you have to talk to Eva? No, and that's why you're chewing your lip. You've only one topic of conversation to possibly broach with her.

It's just not one you want to broach.

"Hey." Your voice cracks as you announce yourself to her table. The four girls look up at you.

They occupy every side of the table. But there's space at one corner next to Jenny, so after an awkward pause, you pull up an empty chair and plop down with them. "Hey," you croak again.

"Hey, Will," Jenny says with a scrunched-up smile. "I didn't know you had this period off."

"I'm skipping. It's just my Career Planning class." You shrug. "So, you know, pfft."

"So you already got your career picked out?" says the girl on your left.

"What?" You give her a double-take. She has curtains of reddish-gold hair that drape limply all the way to her elbows; the tightly tangled curls look like they need a good brushing-out, and both her upper and lower gums show pinkly when she peels her lips back in a smile.

"Audrey's being funny," Jenny says. "Drop your backpack," she adds. "Stay awhile." But you just hug your books closer to your chest.

"So, um." You turn to Eva. "I just wanted to come over, tell you that—" You take a deep, shuddering breath. "Lisa and me are broken up. Not going out anymore." You jerk your shoulders in an another shrug-like spasm.

Her eyes widen slightly, and her mouth parts in an embarrassed-looking smile.

"Oh," she says. "I'm sorry to hear that."

"I mean, you knew that already," you stammer. Because, yeah, I've been bugging you and your sister, because you're friends with Lisa, for clues about why she broke up with me. "I'm just telling you that, uh—" You draw a deep breath that leaves you feeling half-drowned. "I've accepted it."

"Mm," Eva says, and suppresses her smile. "Yes, it's best not to fight these things, sometimes."

"Well—"

"Oh my God," Jenny exclaims at you. "Will! Are you saying you're on the market again?"

Your expression falls as you wheel on her. She bursts out laughing as your face begins to burn. "I—"

"That's great to hear," she says. "Got any one you're thinking of asking out?" Her eyes glint above her grin.

You're saved from utter humiliation by that mask you were carrying. It slips from between your hand and your backpack, falling to the floor with a clatter. The red-head (Audrey?) bends to pick it up just as you do, and you bonk heads.

She comes up with it. "Hey, what's this?" she says.

"Um, a project?" you tell her, grateful for the distraction. "Kind of an arts-and-crafts thing?"

"Cool. What is it? Oh, it's a mask!" She flips it around to show the table. "Look, it's a mask!" she repeats.

"What's it for?" asks her friend, who hasn't said anything up to now. You recognize her from the English class that you have next period, but you don't know her name. Her hair is long and thick and very dark, and she has olive-colored skin. Her nose is bold and prow-like, and she gives you a direct and speculative look with large, coal-black eyes.

"It's not for anything," you start to say.

"Did you make it yourself?" Audrey asks. "Like, you carve it? What'd you carve it out of?"

"I didn't—"

"Lemme see!" Jenny shoots her hand across the table. "Oh, cool. What's it made of? Alabaster?"

"Um—"

But no one's paying attention to you. Each of the girls, even Eva, takes the mask in turn, studying it and turning it over in her hands, and remarking that it's very cool and looks like it was done by a real artist. Finally it comes back around to you. You push it into your bag and murmur a general "Thanks" to the table.

At least it got them off the subject of your love life. Audrey starts talking about an art class she took middle school, which sets Eva off barking about the awful art class that she took her eighth grade year, and from there it's off to general reminiscences about the horror that was middle school. You keep your mouth shut, only putting in a word or two when Jenny asks if you remember something about the classes that you shared with her back then.

As the bell rings and you get up to go, though, Jenny pulls you back. "Sorry I put you on the spot back there, talking about you being on the hunt for a girlfriend," she says. It's alright, you mutter. "But hey," she continues, poking you in the shoulder. "You need to get out and be seen, Will. What are you doing this weekend?"

"I don't know," you reply through a kind of strangled panic. "No plans yet."

"I'll text you then," she says. "We'll do something. A bunch of us." She smiles. Her eyebrows go up when you only stare back. "Are you okay?"

"I think so?"

"Because you look like— Well, never mind." She settles a pair of heavy hands onto you shoulders and smiles into your face. "Let's just hang out. Okay?"

You jerk your head in a nod, and try not to notice how it looks like Jenny is about to burst out laughing as picks up her own backpack and turns away.

* * * * *

"Well, thank God for that," Caleb says at lunch, when you tell him what you told Eva, about being all done with Lisa. "Maybe now we can get back to your constant bitching about how unfair the most recent Call of Duty game is. I can do something about that."

"What can you do about it?" you demand.

"I can tell you to shut the fuck up about it, that's what I can do about it. I couldn't tell you that about Lisa, 'cos you'd'a hit me."

So you hit him. Well, you sort of shove him in the face. You've got mustard from your sandwich all over your fingers, and you get it on all over his cheek.

"Is that how come we ain't eatin' with Ioeger and them?" your other friend, Keith Tilley, asks. He shoves a fistful of orange Doritos into his mouth. "'Cos you don't wanna embarrass yourself in front of Eva again?"

The three of you are sitting, as more often than not you are when you take your lunch together, in back of the school, facing the baseball diamond and the agricultural annex. It's a kind of no-man's-land, where the thuggish kids won't hang out for fear of being seen by the teachers, and the popular kids won't hang out for fear of not being seen by the other cool kids, and so it's a perfect spot for you and your trio, who'd prefer not to be seen by either the popular or the thuggish kids, and who don't mind being seen by teachers because you're never up to mischief anyhow.

But occasionally you do eat on the front quad with Carson Ioeger and his friends James Lamont and Paul Davis. But Jenny is a regular with them too, and sometimes Eva or her twin sister, Jessica, will sit with them too. After today in the library, you don't feel like seeing any of those girls so soon again, and so you vetoed Keith's suggestion that you eat up front with them.

"I didn't embarrass myself," you retort to Keith's jibe. "I just told them, well— I told them I'm on the market again," you announce.

Dead silence. You stiffen against what you know is coming next.

"Pfwaaaah!" Keith guffaws. Caleb, at least, only pinches the bridge of his nose and smirks.

"Fuck you guys," you tell them. "Fuck you guys," you repeat when Keith only laughs the louder.

Fuck you guys, you tell them a dozen more times over the course of lunch, growing hotter and hotter, until you are boiling with fury by the time the bell rings.

* * * * *

"Oh! Hey!" A hand grabs you as you exit your Calculus class. You wheel, expecting trouble.

It is, of a sort. That girl Audrey grins at you. Her gums are bigger than her teeth.

"You have my friend Dorothy for first period," she tells you.

You blink. "Dorothy Harmon?" you stammer after trying to remember every first-period class you ever took. "Yeah, I guess so."

"She knows you. I mentioned you and your project to her. She wants to see it. What are you doing after school?"

Funny. That's what Jenny asked in the text she sent you at the start of class. She made it sound like she had plans lined up.

Next: "Any Friend of Jenny's ..." 

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