The Book of Masks (Vol. 1)

The Unusual Suspects

Previously: "Poor Boys" 

"I told my dad you wanted to apply for that job at Salopek," you tell Caleb the next morning when you fall into your desk in first period.

Instead of looking grateful, he looks indignant. "I thought you told him about that weeks ago!"

"It wasn't weeks ago!" you retort. "I didn't even hear about it until the start of the month."

"That was weeks ago, you dinglehammer!"

You're about to snarl back at him, but are distracted by a guffaw from behind you. It's Dean Stratton. He smirks at you.

You make a face back at him. Fucker thinks he's so cool. With his rakishly stylish 'do—blonde locks blown forward like he got blasted in the back of the head by a jet engine—he looks like he's just going to (or just come from) a dance club.

Come to think of it, you have heard he spends most of his nights partying.

And then, (come to think deeper of it, for you have been thinking of who you might show your book of magic to) it occurs to you that Dean Stratton might be just the kind of cool guy you whose mind would be blown and world would be rocked hard enough to become your friend if you showed him what you're working on.

* * * * *

"The fuck are you rubbernecking at?" your friend Keith demands next period, before class has begun.

"I'm not rubbernecking," you retort.

"You're rubbernecking," he insists. "It's at Mia, isn't it? Oh, yeah, she's fine."

You give him a dirty look.

It's second period, Mr. Hawks's "Film as Literature" class. You signed up for it thinking it would be a blow-off class. But the bony old asshole takes it seriously and makes his students take it seriously too, making the lot of you to watch a bunch of dusty old black-and-white films or movies with subtitles, and forcing you to learn terms like mise-en-scene and telling you to pay special attention to where the director has placed the camera. And you feel like you and Keith are the only guys who didn't know what you were getting in to.

Take Andy Tackett, for instance, who is the guy you were actually rubbernecking at. He may dress like you and Keith—today as most days he's in battered Levis and a fleece hoodie—but his hand is constantly in the air and he asks questions about "parallax" and "subtext" and "Hitchcock's criss-cross motif." You have the impression that—

But Keith asks a good question of his own. How come you were looking at Andy Tackett and not at Mia DeWitt, who is female and a lot cuter?

Oh, right. Because you'd be terrified of asking a girl to go in on the dark arts with you. But Tackett takes lots of creative writing classes, and you've heard he's working on a screenplay for a fantasy movie about urban vampires.

Which, on the one hand, makes him a possible partner. On the other hand, it also marks him out as even more of a dork.

* * * * *

At least Tackett would be someone you have talked to, and there's a couple of more guys like him in second period. There's not one person in your third-period "Career Planning" class that you even want to sit next to. This is another class you took as a blow off. You pegged this one right—the only kids who look like they might even be vaguely interested in it are the freshmen—but that means everyone else is the kind of lowlife loser who idea of "career planning" probably consists of figuring out which convenience store they're going to knock over on the way home after class.

The only consolation is that few of them attend every day. Today, for instance, you only have put up with a monkey-faced skateboarder who stinks of weed. That's better than dealing with the odious Nicholas Horner or the genetic abnormality Jeff Spencer, who typically sit across from you.

* * * * *

In fourth-period English you connect with Caleb again. Laurent Delacroix, who first got you thinking about showing your magic book to other people, is in there too, along with a lot of other jocks, most of them football players.

But Andrea Varnsworth, the shapely captain of the swim team, is in there too. You'd be even more frightened of talking to her than to Mia. But hell, most of the girls in fourth period are out of your league, being not only sexy and beautiful, but a lot of jockettes as well. Only Cassie Harper, who catches your eye and waves at you, would likely talk to you.

And, knowing Cassie, she would talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk at you.

"You were real quiet in class today," Caleb observes when you leave together for lunch.

"I didn't have anything to say."

"That usually doesn't stop you," he says.

"You want to brag some more about your porn project?" you retort. "That usually doesn't stop you."

"That's why I was on my way to eat with Carson and them," he says. "But you're welcome to go eat with Tilley and tell him some more about that hair dryer you gave Walberg for the time capsule."

* * * * *

"You talk some more with Caleb about his porn project?" you ask Carson Ioeger in Calculus, which you have after lunch. You'd like Carson more if he respected you more. But you like him well enough, and there's no one else to talk to in math. Just more football players. Oh, well, there's a couple of band girls in there—easy to pick out because they carry their instruments around with them in little black cases—but the band girls are even worse than the volleyball girls who are also in the class. At least the volleyball girls, who are in better shape, have a reason to be snotty. The band girls, as far as you're concerned, don't.

"Did you say something?" you ask when you realize Ioeger has been talking to you.

"Fuck," he sighs. "You know, there's a reason most of the school wants to hit on you, Prescott."

"Who wants to hit on me?" you exclaim. You look around. It couldn't be one of the band girls, could it? At least you're not foolish enough to think it might be Cindy Vredenburg, the cheerleader who is sitting with them.

Carson's jaw falls open. Then he smacks you on the side of the head.

"Hit you!" he snarls. "Not 'hit on you.' And I wasn't one of them until just a minute ago."

* * * * *

Seventh period is a study hall for you, but eighth period is like a culmination of all the classes that have come before. Lounge lizards like Andrew Harding and Lee Reynolds, who ooze an unmerited cool. Jagoffs like monkey-face from Career Planning, who is in there too. Band girls like Becca Daley and Ashley Scott. Asshole jocks like Shawn Sax and Scott Frazier. Scary, sports-playing girls like Stephanie Wyatt and Dani Sumner, and flocks of sophomores and freshman.

Oh, and—

"Hey, Will, was there something you wanted to ask me in English? I saw you looking over at me like there was something you wanted to come over and talk to me about, and I waved over at you but I don't think you saw me. Oh, but then I got distracted when Leah tapped me on the shoulder. You know Leah Simmons? Do you know Leah? Anyway, she had a question about the reading and then I had a question about the reading because it turned out I read the wrong thing for today. Not that it mattered because I didn't get called on, but it's not like that's a risk I want to run every day! But so, what did you want to talk to me about?"

You return Cassie Harper's bright look with a dazed one of your own. Cassie is sweet but scatter-brained, maybe because her mouth scatters her thoughts the way a tornado scatters mobile homes. She's cute enough, in an orange-y kind of way. (She's a red-head, with lots of freckles.) If only James Lamont hadn't once said (after seeing her wearing a Cheeto-colored sweater) that she looked like a traffic cone.

"I don't remember," you tell her. "I guess it wasn't important."

She dimples and starts to tell you something about one time that she forgot what she was going to tell someone, and how she remembered at last by walking her way forward through a chain of free associations from the last thing she remembered thinking about, but Mr. Cash calls the class to order. As you watch Cassie return to her desk, your eye catches Stephanie Wyatt's. Stephanie holds your eye, gives Cassie a sidelong look, then rolls her own. You fight down a wry grin. This is probably the first time you and Stephanie—a basketball-playing bulldozer who could kick the asses of most of the guys in school—have ever shared a moment.

* * * * *

You linger a little after school, getting some homework done in the library, then trudge out to your truck. The day feels like a bust. Not because you failed to think of—let alone find—a partner for your project, but because all your days lately have felt like busts.

School feels like a bust. Home feels like a bust. Everything feels like a bust.

Except for that book you found, and that mask you made. And you won't be able to get any further with it unless you get some money, and that means showing it to someone who can put some resources into it.

Yes, you could show it to Caleb or Keith or Carson or one of your other friends. But lately it feels like they're part of what's holding you back.

Showing it to someone new would be a further way of breaking yourself out of your recent rut.

So, the next morning, you decide to show it to:

Next: "The Video Stars" 

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