The Book of Masks (Vol. 2)

Using What You've Got

Previously: "A Mask, a Moon, and a Monobrow" 

You could go over there and say something to Ian.

But he'd probably freak out and run away. Besides, he has no reason to trust that you're who you'd say you were.

Or you could call Shelly and tell her to talk to Ian.

But she's surely done that already, and there's nothing you could tell her to tell him that would make him feel better.

Still, you hesitate all the way across the parking lot, and with every few steps you feel the urge to swerve back toward Ian. Not until you are at the door to Thrifty Nifties do you finally give up on any other plan but to follow Margot and talk to her about the Libra.

Besides, that's the best thing you could do for Ian. Get the Libra back and squash the bad guys.

"So, this homework you were telling me about," you prompt Margot.

But you've lost your chance. As soon as she's in the door she makes a dive at a rack of dark, distressed vintage clothing, and is oohing and aahing over it and telling you about some of the plans she has for it.

Then Cassie Harper—a motormouth classmate from Westside who you didn't realize worked at Thrifty Nifties—comes over to help, and soon she and Margot are lost in talk of buckles and hose and scarves and hats. You occupy yourself in a corner with your cell phone, and stoutly resist when both girls try cornering you with shirts to try on.

And then ...

* * * * *

"—and the punchline? It turns out it was Ovid she was having problems with. The Metamorphoses. A flipping bullseye. Just one hanging on the wrong wall, is all."

Abi looks up at you from under her brows as you finish relating the story of your afternoon. You're in the school's game room, and she's stretched halfway across the pool table, a cocked cue in her hands, and after giving you a wry look she sinks two balls, then moves around to line up another shot.

It's early Sunday evening. The game room will be filling up soon, and even now the largest table is occupied by a quintet prepping a session of Settlers of Catan. But this is the best place to talk to Abi. It's public enough that it won't look funny if anyone finds you with your heads together, but still private enough that no one will be able to overhear you.

"You know, I'm starting to think maybe you don't want to find the book, Will," she says as she eyes her next shot. "It seems to me you're not trying very hard."

"Of course I'm trying! I spent the whole afternoon with Margot and Emily—"

"Did you score with either of them?"

"What?" Her question knocks you back on your heels.

"You heard me," she says after sinking another ball. "Why don't you go put on that cable-knit shirt Mark was rocking so hard at our last study group? You know, the sea-green one." She runs a glistening tongue over her lower lip. "The form-fitting one."

"Oh, jeez!" You grip your own cue as your cocks swells. "Why would you say that?"

"Because maybe then you'd go put it on for me? But my point is—" She frowns at the lay of the table. "My point is that I made a deal with you. Help me find the book, and I help you find someone who can rock a good look. Or who has money. Or who has both. But now I'm thinking maybe—" She straightens up to chalk the tip of her cue. "Maybe you figure you've already got someone with both, so why bother helping me out anymore?" She lifts her chin, and her lip curls.

You stiffen all over; and yes, you stiffen a little more where you're already stiff.

"I got lots of reasons to help you get the book," you retort. "And I'm trying. You got ideas for how to look for it, I'm listening."

"Go put on that cable-knit shirt," she replies, and stretches across the table to take another shot. Her filmy blouse falls open a little, giving you clear line of sight straight down between her boobs. "Go put it on, then go look for some of those girls you say were hanging out in the library."

With a hard clack she sinks another ball, leaving only two on the table. "Jesus, Will," she says. "Use what you've got."

* * * * *

But you don't go put on that shirt, and you don't go out looking for any of your suspects. Abi's "pep talk" has depressed you too much.

You itch and twitch all over after parting with her, and after briefly landing in your room, you go sit out on the building's South Balcony. It's chilly out, and you pull the bomber jacket closely about yourself as you slump in a wrought-iron chair and stare out across the central traffic circle at the four-story New Hall across the way, where the first- through fourth-formers have their rooms.

The problem, you decide after batting at your angry mood in a distracted way, is a building resentment against The St. Francis Xavier School, and the obliviously entitled and privileged kids to who attend it.

Kids like Mark Pederson. You fidget with the zipper of his jacket.

Stepping into Xavier's has been more than just stepping into a new school, or into a higher socioeconomic strata. It's been like stepping into an entirely new mode of existence. A mode of existence where money dissolves every obstruction and sands away every rough spot. As Mark Pederson you don't have to worry about money for clothes or gas or gear; and with no distractions and no threats, there is nothing between you (Mark Pederson) and anything and everything you could want or hope for. It's like you've been given a clean canvas, new brushes, fresh paint, and unlimited time and freedom to fill that canvas with whatever you care to fill it with. You are bounded only by the limits of your own wit, will, and talent.

So it is with everyone here. They all breath the raw, harsh, purified air of Mount Olympus, and have no task but to forge and fashion themselves into whatever they want to be.

Take Dawson Young, who you spot now sauntering out from the patio below, heading toward the parking lot. He is tall, slim, blonde, his hair always swept back into a perfect pompadour. When he turns the light catches the angle of his chiseled cheekbones. He's one of the drama kids, like Jacob, and there are rumors that his lips, nose, ears, and jawline are not exactly natural—which is exactly what would be expected from someone who is avowedly pursuing a career in modeling and photography. If those rumors of cosmetic surgery are correct, he is almost literally a self-made guy!

Or take Travis Rallart, who you now glimpse loping up from the parking lot with his guitar slung over his back. He isn't even in the music program, he's taking mostly business classes! But every summer he spends a month studying music with Bernie Leadon of the Eagles—or is it Thom Gimbel of Foreigner?—not because he's wants to be a professional musician, but because he likes playing the guitar, and someone in his family is friends with someone who knows Bernie Leadon—unless it's Thom Gimbel—so he gets to take lessons from him.

But this isn't why you resent their privileges.

No, what really grates is that they are totally taking advantage of those privileges to improve themselves, to make themselves even more elite.

By contrast, when did you ever do the same thing with what you had, with what "Will Prescott" has back in Saratoga Falls? Bad enough the kids have so much. But they make you feel worse because so many of them are using it to get more.

Isn't that what you should be doing? What you should have always been doing? Again, it shows up how lazy you have been. But would it count as "improving Will Prescott" if you do it by becoming one of them? Which is what Abi is promising you? Maybe you should take from the example they set, instead of taking one of their lives.

"Hey, whatcha doing out here?"

You jump a little, and look around at the interruption. It's Jacob again, the guy from last night with the Scotch and the filthy fantasies. His mother acts in that procedural police drama CGIS, and his dad writes plays for the New York stage. Naturally, he's in the school's drama program.

"Waiting for the future to arrive," you tell him.

But at least he hasn't got every advantage. Jacob may be rich and he may come from Hollywood, but he would have a hard time outwitting your old friend Keith in a game of tic-tac-toe.

So he only snorts. "You must be the only guy I know who's looking forward to Monday," he says.

* * * * *

The hammer drops the next morning, right after chapel. No exeats to be granted for the next seven days. You can sense the seething resentment against the prefects when it is announced. Not only for the suspension, but because everyone knows that two of the prefects, at least—Abi and Todd Baldwin—planned and threw the party that led to the suspension. Those two are immune to pushback, but Chris Fiore isn't, and he gets jostled hard when the moody crowd files out.

Most everyone heads out for class, but you run upstairs to change shoes—you tried on Mark's new loafers, and they're killing your ankles. You open up the footlocker and bark with anger at finding that Chris has somehow got back inside it and—totally against your warning yesterday—hidden that mask there. You shove it aside with a snarl—

—and find a second mask beneath it. You freeze.

Then you push the second mask away, to uncover the half-buried item beneath it.

A book with red leather covers, and a golden pentagram stamped on the spine.

Next: "Close Encounters of the Vee Kind" 

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"Table of Contents (Vol. 2)" 
"The Book of Masks (Vol. 2)"