The Book of Masks (Vol. 3)

In Which Life Grinds On

Previously: "The Warlock's Lair" 

The fire shows no sign of abating. And even though it is giving off no heat, you don't want to leave it alone.

So you pull out one of the unpolished masks you've got on hand, and one of the three incomplete metal bands. You have no firm ideas about who you might use them on. But with nothing else to do, you might as well work on them.

Besides, the next spell might ask for a blank mask or brain band as one of the ingredients.

You hope that the fire doesn't burn as long as it will take to polish another mask, though.

* * * * *

"The fuck you do with yourself this weekend?" Caleb asks you Monday morning. "Did your dad ground you on account of the way you fucked up your paper for Walberg?"

"No. I just did stuff. You know. Projects."

"Like what?"

You deflect him. "Where was Keith? You do shit with him?"

"Meh. He's decided he wants to be a YouTube star."

You frown, then remember that movie review channel he was talking about. "How's that going?" you ask.

"Fuck if I know. You've got him for that bullshit Film as Literature class, not me."

"It's not bullshit!" You flinch when you catch Amanda Ferguson wheeling around to glare at your outburst. "It's not bullshit!" you hiss in a lower voice. "You had Mr. Hawks last year, you think he's gonna make it easy?"

"You thought it was gonna be easy when you signed up for it last year. You were all, I'ma watch movies all next semester, yo."

"That was Keith who said it. And it turned out to be hard."

"It turned out to be bullshit."

You flip him off, then hide your hands under your desk when you catch Mr. Walberg glaring at you.

* * * * *

But Caleb's got a point. You did give him (and Keith, technically) the blow-off over the weekend. So you make a point of saying that you should all eat together.

Somehow that metamorphoses into eating lunch out front with Carson's group.

It's just him and James and Paul, though, and none of them are very talkative. Paul hunches up and stares morosely at the passing traffic. You're tempted to ask him when the last time was he hung out with Yumi—it seems to be the high point of his day when she comes out to eat lunch with them—but decide to be nice. As for Carson and James, they seem too preoccupied to say much, and only grunt and murmur when anyone says anything to them. Even when Caleb openly chides you for fucking up on your time capsule paper, Carson only offers the laconic observation, "Yeah, Walberg's a hard-ass about things like that," and goes back to eating his sandwich.

As for where Jenny is, that only gets an "Around" from James when Caleb asks. But a fuller answer emerges halfway through lunch when Carson's phone chimes. He squints at the screen, makes a sour face, and shows it to James, whose face also curls up into a grimace.

"Hey, you wanna make yourself fucking useful?" Carson barks at you. "Get something out of my locker, take it to Jenny."

"I don't know your locker number."

"Forty-nine-twenty-three. Combination is four, twenty-nine, ninety-nine. Date of Oliver Cromwell's birth."

"The fuck?" Keith exclaims.

Carson ignores him. "Need you to get my calculus book out and take it to Jenny."

"Where is she, and why can't you—?"

"She's in the gym, which should answer both your questions. Move it, Prescott! She needs to copy my homework, and I need the book back before next period. Unless you want to lend her a copy of your homework, and I don't know why she'd want a D."

You just stare back. "No, tell me why you can't go to the gym yourself!"

James answers. "We've got three good reasons," he says. "Four if Seth's been up in the fuck room."

Carson clicks a ball point pen, grabs your hand, and scrawls on the underside of your forearm. "Those are the numbers. Jenny'll kick your ass if you don't get her my homework in the next five minutes."

You glance over at Caleb and Keith. Tilley, who shrank up at the mention of Seth Javits's name, avoids your eye. Caleb openly grins, and falls onto his side and stretches out his legs.

"Fuck you guys," you fume at Carson and James, but you get to your feet. "Where in the gym?"

"The classroom under the mezzanine. Where the coaches have their offices."

You almost fall over. But it's easier to do the errand than to explain why the P. E. offices are the absolute last place you want to visit.

* * * * *

You wouldn't want to visit the gym anyway—even the sophomore jocks unnerve you—but after your adventure last week you've got better reasons to dodge anyplace that has P. E. coaches in it.

So all the way to Carson's locker, and all the way over to the gym, you wrack your brain trying to remember Coach Schell's schedule. You know she has a free period during seventh—same as yours—but what lunch does she have? And where does she usually take it? Almost all the memories you had while wearing her brain band have leached away. You only remember her house and workout club—because you visited them—and that she is sleeping with Thomas Luna—because blecchhh! that's hard to forget—but otherwise ...

Well, whatever the mental equivalent of Crickets! would be, that's what you've got.

There's a lot of traffic between the cafeteria and the gym, and it's traffic of the worst sort: buff guys in athletic shorts and t-shirts, smelling of the locker room. But none of them notice you, and you squeeze into the gym foyer without incident. You creep over to the east court and peer in. Boys and girls, dressed out in exercise clothes, are playing clumsy games of basketball. Off in the corner, Coach Tesla, looking like a frog that has learned to walk upright, watches with a bored scowl on her face.

You let out a sigh of relief, and hurry over to the mezzanine.

Several of the office doors are open, and these you hustle past. Halfway down you come to Coach Schell's door. It's closed. But you're too nervous to take any solace from that.

At the very end of the corridor is a large classroom, out of which drift girlish voices and laughter. Inside are a dozen girls, some sitting at the desks and some of them sitting on them.

Jenny has her back to the door, and you only recognize her by her ponytail. But Yumi is sitting next to her, and when she sees you she nudges her friend, who turns around.

You thrust Carson's book at her. "Here, Carson asked me to bring this to you. See you later." You turn.

"Hey, wait a minute!" Jenny yells after you, and reluctantly you turn back. She drops into a chair and pulls a notebook from her bag. "Just hang on, I only need this a few minutes, and you can take it back."

"I gotta get back, I'm eating lunch," you protest.

"She only needs you to wait a minute, Prescott," a voice says behind you, and you wheel. Stephanie Wyatt is giving you a very steady look. "Your lunch can wait."

You wilt. Stephanie Wyatt is the gender-swapped equivalent to Gordon Black or Steve Patterson. She's a hard-muscled basketball player who has scared the shit out of you ever since you shared a fifth-grade class with her.

So, humiliating as it is, you sit on the edge of a desk and wait for Jenny to finish copying out some of Carson's homework problems.

Conversation resumes among the other girls, who you now recognize as members of the girls' varsity soccer and basketball squads. You do your best to dodge their eyes. But you notice one blonde girl, who's sitting behind Stephanie, grinning at you. You hunch your shoulders and turn away.

Before long, it feels like ants are crawling up and down under your skin. Jenny works very deliberately, and a couple of times she stops to consult with Yumi about whether some of the answers could possibly be right, even after Yumi reminds her that she's taking Statistics, not Calculus. You tell Jenny that yes, Carson did the problems correctly. But she looks skeptical.

Finally, with five minutes to spare until the bell, she folds Carson's homework back inside the book and hands it to you. You jackrabbit out the room and down the hallway before anyone can stop you. Even when a voice shouts "Will! Will!" behind you, you pretend not to hear.

But you jump back under the mezzanine when you spot a dreadfully familiar figure crossing the gym court. As you watch, paralyzed, Coach Schell strides across and vanishes around the corner into the foyer toward the main exit.

A hand drops onto your shoulder and you spin around. "Jesus, you're jumpy," Yumi says. "Didn't you hear me calling you?"

"Oh, was that you?" you gasp. You glance back into the gym, torn between the desire to make a break for it and terror of running straight into the arms of the coach you've twice victimized with your magic shenanigans.

"Yeah." Yumi glances over her shoulder, and tiptoes up to you. "You noticed Katy, didn't you? She was looking at you," she says with a grin.

Your gut freezes.

"Cool," you say. "But listen, I gotta go." You sprint across the gym toward the side door, and you don't stop running until you're on the far side of the school.

* * * * *

It was on account of some genius prank, Caleb explains to you after school Carson and James were being extra careful to avoid the gym. You only grunt and race back to the elementary school. You find the fire still burning.

The mask you started polishing is nowhere near being finished. But you did complete a new brain band. Maybe you should put it on Carson -- he's smart and full of ideas for pranks.

But you're also thinking about Yumi, who wanted to talk to you about a girl ...

Next: "Picking a Brain the Old-Fashioned Way" 

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"Table of Contents (Vol. 3)" 
"The Book of Masks (Vol. 3)"