The Book of Masks (Vol. 4)

A Carpenter Tries Mending Things

Previously: "A Dana's-Eye View" 

The bell rings, so you don't stick around to argue. "Dana!" someone shouts as you wheel and march off for class, but you ignore them.

A hand grabs you by the elbow as you're turning onto the A-wing stairwell. You jerk away but spin around to glare at your assailant.

It's Ian. He grins down at you.

You have to catch your breath.

Ian Carpenter is tall—of course; he's the captain of the boys' basketball squad—and his chocolaty summertime tan still glows in his face and on his limbs. His chestnut-brown hair, chopped into short spikes, glints with highlights. His smile, under peaked eyebrows, is elfin; an impression amplified by the slight point in his ears. He leans and looms over you, and you have the momentary impression—which sucks the air from your lungs—that he's going to put his hand around the back of your shoulder and pull you to himself.

"H'wuh?" you say when you realize he said something you didn't catch through the rush of blood in your ears.

"What did you want to talk to Alyssa about?" he says.

"Oh." You feel yourself flushing all over again with anger. "Nothing, I guess."

"Well, don't go away mad. Why don't you just tell me—"

"I'm going to be late to class, Ian."

"So am I," he retorts. "But I got all the time you need."

Your heart skips as his white, gleaming smile widens.

"Listen," he says when you don't reply. "What are you doing after school? I got practice, but after that I can hang out." He leans in a little closer.

"With Alyssa?" Your throat closes around the words, so that they come out as a choke.

"No, with you. If you don't want Alyssa around, we won't have to have Alyssa around. Come hang out in my rec room. We'll get Kyle and Jenny, maybe a couple of other guys. Eat cookies, put on some music, have fun."

You blink—it's like your eyes are stuttering. How come? you want to ask. What's the catch? "Well, I'll have to see," you stammer.

"Good," Ian says. The tardy bell rings. "Unless you want to skip class, hang out now."

"No, I— I got to get to class."

"Where you off to?"

"Physics."

"I got History. I'll text you after practice."

"You don't have to."

"You'll text me?" His eyebrows go up. "Promise?"

Now you feel trapped and blushing. "Yes, I promise." You turn and hurry up the stairs. At the top, you risk a look back down.

Ian has gone, but you can still feel his presence near you, like the lingering scent of his aftershave.

* * * * *

Calm the fuck down, Dana, you chide yourself as you wait at the crosswalk in front of the school. It's not like Ian asked you out on a date, you remind yourself. There's a pack of kids around you, all chortling and poking at each other, and they jostle you. He's just being nosy on Alyssa's account.

But you can't make it stop: the butterflies in your stomach, the trembling in your joints, the helpless panic like you're being tossed over churning rapids.

To make it worse, you know it's not Dana who feels this way. It's you, Lisa Rickover.

The signal changes, and you lurch across the street.

Okay, sure, Dana also likes Ian, admires him, would love to hang out with him. But that's mostly because she's got a crush on Shawn Gregory, Ian's best friend. You're the one with a thing for the captain of the basketball team. A "thing" that goes all the way back to middle school, when Ian was only half a head, not a head-and-a-half, taller than you.

He was cheeky and charismatic even back then, one of the leaders of the boys' pack. You got to share a P.E. class with him in seventh grade, and you've had classes off and on with him ever since, and he's always been friendly with you.

It's just that he's always been more cheerful and a lot more friendly with other girls, it seems like. Even if he knows your name, and talks to you when you're sitting next to him, it's like you're a stranger he's being polite to. Certainly, he never chased you between classes, or badgered you into coming out to his house to hang out with friends. Certainly, he never acted like you were someone to be conciliated when you got crossways with Alyssa.

Alyssa. Your toes curl with anger as your thoughts pair Ian and the head cheerleader.

Because he's got a crush on her. It's been an open secret for a year now, at least, a secret that Alyssa herself knows and ignores. As hard as David Johnson moons after Dana Pak, so too does Ian Carpenter moon after Alyssa Randal.

And she does nothing about it.

Hence the blurry fantasy you've sometimes had, of shoving Alyssa off the top of the Mobley Building (Saratoga Falls' tallest structure). Ian would be there. "Alyssa!" he'd shout, and reach out to save her, but she'd bounce off the street below and go bouncing off across the skyline, like a hard rubber ball. And then Ian would freeze and look at you, as though seeing you for the first time. And he'd grin that elfin grin—only it would be a little lopsided, on account of the erection (yes, the fantasy is that vivid)—and he'd ask if you'd like to hang out someplace.

But now it's happened. Ian has finally given you a direct look, and smiled at you as though he likes what he sees.

And all it took was being body-swapped with a scruffy teenage boy who has disguised himself as your classmate, Dana Pak.

You always knew it would take a miracle to get Ian to notice you.

You blink in anger and confusion and look around. You're standing in the parking lot of Redway Plaza, across from the high school. Why did you come here?

Oh yeah. To kill time inside Paris Baguette while waiting for Ian to finish basketball practice. You stride into the bistro and get yourself a coffee.

It gets cold long before you finish it, as you stew over your circumstances.

* * * * *

"Oh, fucking Karter." Ian laughs. He's splayed across a beanbag chair, face turned at the ceiling, his legs spread wide as he twirls a basketball on a forefinger. "Sucks to be him."

You'd love to spread yourself atop him, pinioning his hips between your knees and digging your arms under and behind his shoulders. But it's not the two of you alone here, in his knotty-pine-paneled rec room basement. Besides him and you and the beanbag chair and the futon (and the pinball machine and the Galaga arcade game machine and the flat screen TV and the refrigerator and mini-bar) there's the lumpy brown sofa and its two occupants.

Jenny Taylor, captain of the girls' soccer team, winces even as she smiles. "Just because he lives in a trailer park," she starts to say.

"I don't mean that," Ian interrupts. "I mean, sucks to be him since Joe Durras moved to town." He laughs again—a clear, bell-like peal—as he tosses the ball lightly from one hand to the other.

"Who's Joe's latest?" asks her boyfriend, Kyle Lakewood. He's the captain of the boys' soccer team.

"He's still on Becky, last I noticed," Ian says. He raises his head to grin at Jenny. "But maybe you should tell Penny to watch out. I caught Joe scoping her out in Cussler's class the other day."

"Penny who?" you blurt out.

"My Penny?" Jenny gasps. Her eyes narrow. "I thought Joe was working his way through the cheerleader squad."

"Like a combine through a corn field," Kyle chortles. Jenny punches him in the leg.

Ian laughs too. "Can you imagine if Frank was as bad as his brother?" He goes back to twirling the ball. "It would be like the wounded after a battle, except it would be girls, all laying on their backs, moaning."

"Oh, Jesus, you're disgusting!" Jenny exclaims. But her eyes are shining, and her face glows.

Ian catches you staring at him. He raises his head, and tosses the ball off his fingertips to Kyle.

"I don't think you have to worry about Melissa or her reputation," he says, for you've told him by now what you wanted to talk to Alyssa about. "Karter should be worried about his."

"You make it sound like Melissa is a sloppy second or something," Jenny objects.

"Isn't that what it said on x2z?" Ian lifts a hip to dig out his cell phone. "But I didn't mean it like that."

"What did you mean it like?"

But Ian doesn't answer. He peers at his cell phone and grunts. "Summer's on her way over," he says.

Your blood chills. The hell? you want to ask.

Instead, you get to your feet. "I should be going." The others look at you in surprise. "Thanks for talking things out," you tell Ian. "You don't have to get up," you add as he struggles upright.

But he insists on accompanying you out. "Listen," he says, catching you at the door by the elbow. "Don't worry about Melissa," he says. "And don't worry about Lisa and them."

"Lisa?" you echo.

"Alyssa," he corrects himself. "That's why you're running out now, right? 'Cos I said Summer is coming over?"

"I have to go anyway," you murmur, and pull away. Again, you look back after you're away. And again, Ian has left without waiting for you to disappear.

But you said 'Lisa', you hiss to yourself as you grip the SUV's steering wheel.

* * * * *

A new identity. That's what you want. And you want one that can hurt Alyssa.

How would she feel if Ian stopped chasing her? As another of the Rumorati, you could sabotage her. Jenny Taylor has a lot of pull at school, and could be a dangerous (if secret) adversary.

Or you could turn yourself into Alyssa.

Next: "A Rapidly Developing Situation" 

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