The Book of Masks (Vol. 1)

Do As I Do

Previously: "Operation: Fake Mom" 

Well, here it is, out in the open. You wondered if it was going to come to this eventually.

Jamie wants you two to fuck each other using the masks.

The only twist—which honestly you never saw coming—is that he wants you to be him when you do it.

"Sorry, I wasn't ready for this," the guidance counselor says as she bustles back in with a manila folder, and she speaks for both of you when she says it. "I put Jamie's file back when we rescheduled." She opens it up as she takes her chair.

You're too dazed to say much as she relates Jamie's various academic problems—the plummeting grades, the tardies and the absences, notes from his teachers about his disruptive behavior in class. You listen with a lot of "Uh huhs" and "I understands" as your mind drifts and hovers over the form and memory of Ashley Wymer.

She's a few years younger than Jamie's mom (Meghan snuck a look at her driver's license one day, out of a nosey need to know the precise age difference between them) and is in the same pottery class that Meghan has on Thursday afternoons. Ashley looks like a former cheerleader gone to seed. Straw-blonde hair with dark streaks, pulled back straight in a ponytail; firm boobs and butt and calves. She dresses in floppy sweats, though, and she's got a bit of a chin hanging out on the underside of her jaw, so Meghan can't help thinking (with some small glee) that she's getting a belly. Her skin is fair and still clear for the most part, but if you get close enough you can see the lines starting to form around her mouth and eyes. She could easily cover it up with makeup. But as the youngest woman in the class, she knows that she doesn't have to do herself up to make the other women feel frumpy and faded.

Is she a MILF? Well, she's married with twin boys, so there's at least two people who'd like to fuck her, her husband and Jamie.

Oh, wait. Jamie wants to be fucked as her.

"Ms. Rennerhoff?"

"What?" You retrieve your attention from very far away to find the guidance counselor giving you a very direct look. "I'm sorry, I was thinking about what you said earlier."

"About what?"

"Never mind. Is there something I have to sign?"

A pause. "If we're done here," Ms. Welch says.

"I think I've got the gist of it." You turn to Jamie. "He's just like his dad was in high school." Jamie's eyes widen and his mouth falls open.

"Mm." Ms. Welch shuffles her papers.

Jamie nudges you in the foot, and he nudges you again until you turn to see what he wants. He gives you a look that is clearly supposed to be meaningful. But meaningful of what?

"I'd like to have a follow up with you at the end of the semester," Ms. Welch says, and now when Jamie nudges you a third time you get what he wants.

"Can we schedule that now?" you say. "End of December? How about you send me a text giving me the time of our next appointment. Oh, and a reminder that we don't have to meet, er, tomorrow?" You feel a trickle of sweat drip down the back of your head as Ms. Welch looks at you with wide-eyed astonishment.

"Well, okay," she says, and turns to her laptop. "If you need a note from me—"

"It's on account of the calendar on my phone," you improvise. "It's so wonky. It'll give me all kinds of alerts if you don't send me a note cancelling our appointment tomorrow." As Ms. Welch stares at you, you pretend to dig inside your bag for the phone.

"Thanks for coming in," the counselor says when all the papers have been signed and the texts and reminders sent. She stands to shake your hand. "I hope the next meeting will more pleasant."

"Oh, I'm sure it will be." You turn to Jamie and brush a bang from his face. "Thanks for keeping me informed. It turns out there's a lot that Jamie's been keeping from me." Your "son" blushes deeply and grins with embarrassment. But his eyes are shining brightly as they hold yours.

"So that was great," he chirps as he hops down the hallway alongside you. "We fooled her so totally. That was brilliant, getting her to text you—I mean, my mom—to cancel tomorrow."

"Your mother's not so dumb," you warn him as you exit the school's side door leading to the student parking lot. "You're not home free yet. But you owe me now."

"Yeah!" he laughs. "So, my idea?"

A flush runs through you, from the crown of your head to the cunny inside your bush.

"Okay, we'll do it," you tell him. "You copy Mrs. Wymer inside the mask. By the way, how are you going to do that?"

"I'll just go over to her house this afternoon. Show her that mask." Jamie smirks hard. "You know, it looks exactly like the kind of thing you and her would make in that class."

Yes it would, you think. And you also think, He's talking to me like I really am his mom.

* * * * *

You skip Astronomy because it would just be way too awkward seeing Jamie in there after playing his mother in seventh period, and drive out to Acheson to check on the fire in the basement. Your heart briefly leaps when you see that the flames have died out, but it relights with a simple flick of the lighter. You hang out for a while, watching the fire, as you ponder the way things are developing.

You still don't feel like you're friends with Jamie, which is strange, because it seems like you know a hell of a lot more about him than you know about Caleb or Keith or any of your other friends. At least, you hope you know him better. You hope that Caleb and Keith don't have anything like the really twisted secrets that Jamie's got.

But now you're going farther than just "getting to know him really well." You're going to be getting intimate with each other. You're going to be going further with him than you did at church camp with that girl, and a hell of a lot further than you ever went with Lisa. And she was your girlfriend!

(And yes, God damn it, she was your girlfriend, even if she did break it off with you by telling you that you were never actually going out together.)

Doing that thing with masks ... Is it going to make you and Jamie, like, boyfriends?

No, you tell yourself. We're only going to do this one thing this one time. Make it a special bonding experience. (If even that.) Just this once.

And yet even as you tell yourself that, you can feel your will crumpling just a little. If it's fun, and he asks me to do it again, what will I say?

* * * * *

Jamie looks like he's going to burst when you see him the next morning. "This afternoon," he tells you in a strangled voice when he bounces up next to you at your locker. "Talk to you in Astronomy!" Then he bounces away, his head bobbing through the crowd.

"What was that about?" Caleb says, for he's standing right beside you.

"Guy I'm doing a project with in my science class."

Caleb gives you a look. "First of all, man, your astronomy class isn't a 'science' class. It's a bullshit credit. Second of all, I never pegged Rennerhoff for a science groupie."

"He's weird."

"Weird enough that I'd find another science partner if I was you," Caleb agrees.

Too late for that now, you think as you turn back to your locker.

Last period comes, and you can feel Jamie grinning at the back of your neck all through class, and he runs up to as soon as the bell's rung. "Got it. All ready," he croaks. "Know where we can go, too."

"Go?"

He glances around with mad, glinting eyes, then leans in to murmur in your ear. "Huh?" you ask him when you can't understand him.

"Just follow me out," he says. "Come on, let's split."

So you tag along behind him, following him out into the student parking lot, and then following him in your truck into town. At first you worry he's leading you up to the Warehouse, and it's only when he turns into the parking lot of a Motel 6 just off the interstate does it dawn on you what he's proposing.

"Listen," he says after summoning you over to his car, "I'm gonna change inside here, and then I'll go get us a room." His grin is like a mad half-moon full of teeth. "And here." He digs a mask out of his bag. "This is the one I want you to wear. After I go into the office, you get in my car and change into it, and into my clothes." His nostrils flare and flap as his breath quickens. "Then you can come in and find me. That's how I want us to do it."

"Which room'll you be in?"

His eyes dart about. "Well, I guess I'll have to text you after I get it," he stammers.

You nod and return to your truck. Out of the corner of your eye, you watch as his head sinks as he lays himself out inside his car. For ten minutes you distract yourself as best you can with your phone.

But your concentration is easily broken when a head bobs back into view inside his car. You can't really make it out, not until a figure in a white, sleeveless blouse and white pants staggers out of the car and on uncertain tread stumbles off toward the office. The face is turned from you, but you've a vague memory of the blonde ponytail. When she disappears around the corner, you crawl out of your truck and climb into Jamie's car.

His mask is laying atop a pile of neatly folded clothes, waiting for you.

Next: "You, Himself, and Her" 

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"Table of Contents (Vol. 1)" 
"The Book of Masks (Vol. 1)"