The Book of Masks (Vol. 4)

The Problem Solver

Previously: "The Summer of Our Discontent" 

She gives you a very hard and direct look as you shuffle up the driveway to where she's waiting. A tremble passes through you. Maybe she's already heard from Alyssa, you think. Maybe I'm already in so much shit I'll never dig myself out.

But then the smile blazes across Chris Yves's face. "There's the cream for my coffee," she says. She stills the squirm in your shoulders by putting her arm around them.

The sun has already set, so that it's by the fluorescent lights of the garage that you and Chris embrace. She kisses the side of your head. "I didn't think you were ever going to show up," she murmurs.

It is later than you wanted. But you had to make a new memory strip and glue it into one of the masks that Fake-Will had polished up for you.

"Didn't you have anyone to hang out with, talk with?" you ask her. You press your fingertips into her back, and indulge Summer's thrill at having this sexy, powerful girl as a lover.

"Yeah, we had a band practice."

"No one else?"

"Was I supposed to hang out with anyone else?" Chris's tone is very neutral.

You let the shiver out. "I thought Alyssa was supposed to talk to you."

Chris says nothing at first, which is all the reply you need. "Let's go inside," she says.

You drop your own hand from her, but she keeps an arm around your torso as you pass from the garage into the house. It's a big house, sitting on the northeastern side of town, for her father is an executive at an aerospace firm. You glimpse him and Chris's mother in the den where they are watching a big screen television; to your relief, they don't see you and Chris as you cross the wide entryway.

"So what's this about Alyssa?" Chris asks when you're upstairs in her bedroom. If you didn't have Summer's memories, you'd be surprised at how pink and girly it is, for Chris Yves cuts her hair butch-dyke short, and front a punk band. Well, I'll have her figured out soon enough, you tell yourself as you drop your shoulder pack onto her bed.

"I'm in trouble with her," you tell Chris in a small voice as you unzip the pack.

"Uh huh?"

You nod, and sniff. "I talked to Adam about something the other night. And he told me something, and I told some of the other girls, and now it's all around school."

"Jesus, Summer." Chris sighs. "You shouldn't be talking to Karter anyway, and you sure as fuck shouldn't be passing along anything he says to Alyssa and them." She makes a face.

"You'll help me out, right?" you say as you tug the blank mask from the bag.

"I don't know if I can," Chris says.

"I wasn't asking." You turn and thrust mask into her face. The blow jars your arm up to the shoulder as her head jerks back. She falls onto her bed with a hard bounce. "I was telling you," you continue as you clamber atop her and stare gravely down into her vacant expression. "You're going to help me out, Chris. A lot."

* * * * *

You tug the boot laces tight, then snatch up the halter top, pulling it down over your head and shoulders in one quick, tight snapping motion. You throw back the closet door so you can scope out your new reflection in the full-length mirror that hangs on its inner surface. Chris Yves glares back at you.

Christ, but I like this, you gloat even as your glare deepens.

It's almost like being back in your original body. Chris Yves is almost as pasty as Lisa Rickover, but with light freckles instead of incipient acne, and with a Koosh-ball brush-cut of dark hair. But in the white top, black canvas pants, and laced-up boots, it's a much more bad-ass look. It doesn't hurt that Yves (as she's more commonly known among her friends) has a glare that makes football players swerve.

And the fact that she fronts the best garage band in Saratoga Falls—The Hi Hats—gives her even more cred. She doesn't have to tie herself to Alyssa Randal's pom-poms in order to get people to respect her.

You have to wince just a tiny bit at the utter contempt that Yves feels for the Rumorati (except for Alyssa herself, and Summer).

"Jesus Christ, honey," you snort at Summer, who is curled up on the bed with her knees under her chin and her feet clasped in her hands. "You are in deep shit, you know that?"

"I know," she says in a small voice. "I told Tina that Chris told me about—"

"And when Alyssa called me after school I told her I didn't know jack shit about it all." You climb onto the bed and put your nose into Summer's face. You breath softly into it, then briefly pinch her lower lip between your teeth before pushing her onto her back. "So Alyssa is really furious with you." You straddle her, and pin her at the shoulders. "You are in so much shit."

Then you fall atop her, searching out her mouth with yours. She resists at first, then relaxes as you kiss her all up and down the side of her neck and face.

* * * * *

"Yo, Yves!" Adam Karter jerks his chin at you and grins as you stomp up to him. "How's it—? Yeaaaagghhh!"

He gasps and flails as you grab him by his shock of white-blonde hair and haul his skinny ass around the corner of the school wing. Other kids turn and laugh.

"Last weekend," you snarl as you throw him against the wall. "You and Melissa Swenson. At the Warehouse. What happened?"

He only gapes at you.

So you pin him by the shoulder against the wall and raise a knee. He throws his hands across his crotch and grins weakly at you.

"S'matter, Yves?" he chortles. "Jealous I didn't hang out with you instead?"

"You cocksucking son of a bitch! Just answer the fucking question!"

"I don't know what you're asking! Whaddaya wanna know? The sticky details?"

"Was it sticky? You take her upstairs or anything?"

Karter only grins and rolls his eyes. He jerks his narrow shoulders in a shrug.

"I'm pissed at you, Karter! Really pee-oh'd!" You knee him in the groin—not hard enough to really hurt, but enough to make him gasp and pale. "I had to lie to someone because of you!"

And that gets his attention. His eyes widen as though he's been slapped, and his lips whiten. "What's the deal?" he asks, and there's a sober unhappiness behind the question.

"You tell me first what happened between you and Melissa. Last weekend."

He shrugs again. "We hung out. Danced. Made out." He rolls his tongue around in his cheek. "You know."

"You danced. Standing up or horizontally?"

His lips twitch. "We didn't get horizontal."

"You told Summer you did." You set your jaw and glare hard at him.

He grins over your head. "Yeah, sure I told her that," he says. "If someone asks me, it's not like I'm gonna— I mean I got a reputation to keep up."

"A reputation as a fucking man-whore. Jesus, Karter!" You release him, and stifle a sniff. "You know, there's other kinds of reputation worth having."

He shrugs, looks away, grins.

Every one of Chris Yves's misplaced maternal instincts rush to the fore. You want to seize Karter's face between your hands, force him to look at you, and scream Grow the fuck up! He's still just a puppy, and maybe there's still time to housebreak him ...

"Well, don't worry," you tell him, your voice rough with choked-back emotion. "As far as the whole fucking school is concerned, you just nailed another one. Maybe you should think about the girl's fucking reputation, though. Oh, who the fuck am I kidding? Look who I'm talking to!"

Karter looks hurt. But when he speaks, he doesn't ask about Melissa. He asks about you: "But what's this about you having to lie because of me?"

"Like you give a fuck." You wheel and stalk away.

But he runs after. "No, Yves, really, what—?" He touches your shoulder, and you slap him away. "I wanna make it up to you, whatever it was you had to do!" he hollers.

"Maybe you should stop worrying about the lies I have to tell because of you," you yell back at him over your shoulder, "and start worrying about the lies you tell other people!"

You practically rip the nearest door off its hinges and barge into the school, searching out the nearest restroom. It's one of the relatively empty ones, and you only have to shove one girl out of the way so you can get at the sink. She makes a noise, but backs away when you glare murderously at her reflection.

* * * * *

It is a shit show, you confirmed that last night after turning yourself into Chris Yves. Alyssa now believes that Summer lied to Tina about hearing that gossip from Yves, which more or less destroys Summer for good as a member of the Rumorati. As Lisa Rickover, you feel spiteful pleasure at seeing Summer so destroyed—she never had any business being part of the group. But of course, that also destroys her as a tool for making mischief against Alyssa; and as "Chris Yves" it rouses your fury against "Lisa Rickover."

Hmm. "Lisa Rickover." You repeat the name to yourself, emphasizing the quotation marks you put around it every time you think of the ... person ... who is walking around inside your old body. Maybe there's a way of deflecting all the blame onto "her." Which might have the effect of smoking out the real ... person ... inside it.

Or instead of trying to solve the problem, you could make things even worse for Alyssa. Stir the crisis up so that it gets even hotter?

Or set a fire someplace else?

Next: "The Fire Starter" 

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