The Book of Masks (Vol. 2)

The Morning Fog

Previously: "Meetings in the Dark" 

You can hardly think straight as you ride back to home, and you make more than one wrong turn, and overshoot your house. Your brain is numbed by a mental fog even after you stumble upstairs to throw yourself onto your bed.

Elle kissed you. Elle Moore locked her hands around your face and kissed you.

And then she rode off, babbling in embarrassment.

So what are you going to do?

The question brings no answer, just a blank. You can't even visualize the possibilities.

* * * * *

"You hear anything more from that person?" Caleb asks you the next morning as you're shuffling out of Walberg's class.

"What person?" you ask. "Oh. No." Since your bike ride with Elle, you haven't given a single thought to "Clover Mystery," nor have you heard from them.

"Then for fuck's sake what are you twitching all over for?"

"I'm not twitching! Who's twitching? The fuck is your problem, Johansson?"

Caleb gives you a look, but then you lose sight of him as you're sucked into the turgid hallways. But his voice honks behind you, sounding over the chatter and clatter of the mob.

"Listen, I've had my ear to the ground on line!" he says. "No one's talking about the thing with the time capsule anymore! It was big news for about five hours on Monday, but now everyone's forgotten it! So stop shitting yourself over it!"

"I'm not—! I'm not shitting myself over it, man! Except what happens if my dad finds out!"

"You're dad's not hanging out online!"

"I told you, I'm not worried!"

Caleb grabs and pulls you to the side against the lockers. He gives you an exasperated look.

"Then you need to adjust your meds, Prescott. Or switch to decaf. Because I wasn't the only one back in Walberg's class who noticed you had, like, ants crawling all over your dick or something."

You give a start, but Caleb releases you and slides back into the crowd before you can say anything.

* * * * *

But it's true, you're not worried about "Clover Mystery" anymore. Or, if you are, you're worries there have shrunk to nothingness next to your worries about what to do about Elle Moore. You woke this morning from a dream about her, with a redwood distending your shorts.

Not that anything happened in the dream, for you weren't so much dreaming about her as you were dreaming about thinking about her, because all you can remember is her face floating in front of you. It was enough, though, to leave you gasping as you woke, as though you were suffocating on your own erection. Thinking about it now, as you stumble into Mr. Hawks's Film as Literature class, is enough to set you shaking again. Keith gives you a worried look as you fall into a desk beside him. "Dude, are you sick or something?" he asks.

Keith is absolutely the last person you should be talking to about this. But maybe that's why you decide to open up a little with him—you can always just do the opposite of whatever he suggests. Besides, you feel you will burst if you don't tell someone.

"We were talking about Elle Moore the other day," you remind him.

"We was?"

"You were talking about her, how you'd do her."

"Oh yeah. I'd do her, I'd do Fatima, I'd do Audrey, I'd do—" He cranes his neck to glance around the room. "I do Mia over there."

"Well, what would you do if she kissed you?"

He blinks, then snorts. "Mia? She better be kissing me while I'm doing her. She better be doing a lot more than—"

"No! And I don't mean Mia, I mean Elle! I mean, like, what if she just came up to you and came on to you and kissed you?"

Keith stares at you. Then his expression turns mirthful.

"Well, fuck, man, long as we's talkin' that kinda shit, let's make it interesting, let's make it Chelsea Cooper who comes up and macks right on me."

In the next row over, Andy Tackett looses a gargling kind of laugh. "Oh, we know what you'd do if she did that, Tilley," he chortles. "You'd shit yourself and run off screaming like a little girl."

"I'mma come over there an' fuck you up one of these days, Tackett," Keith sneers back at him.

"Anyone'd shit themselves if Chelsea came onto them," you tell Keith. "'Cos they know what Gordon would do when he found—"

You break off as Tackett unfolds himself from his seat and steps up to loom over Keith's desk. Tackett is lanky, like you and Keith, and he's only got maybe an inch on you and your friend, but he carries himself with a lot more confidence. He doesn't say anything as he glowers down at Keith.

Keith doesn't say anything either, doesn't even look over, just keeps talking to you as he slumps a little lower in his desk.

"Yeah, well, if'n Chelsea did that, it'd be, like, parallel universe or somethin' anyway, so we could just leave Gordon out've it. Maybe he got hit by a truck and she was looking for sympathy sex, you know."

"Look, I'm serious." You glance up at Tackett, who remains impassively staring down at Tilley. "What would you do if you were talking to Elle Moore, and she, well, kissed you? Suddenly."

"Shit like that don't happen in real life, man."

Andy says, "Shit like that don't happen to you, you fugly fucker."

Keith gives him a brief squint, and settled even lower in his desk. "I said one of these I'd come over to you," he mutters. "I didn't say nothing 'bout you comin' over t'see me."

"Chickenshit," Andy snorts, and returns to his desk.

"Anyway," Keith continues, "what are you asking me for? I ain't interested in your sick, stupid fantasies. I got more'n enough of my own. Unless—" He sits up with a start, and a hungry light comes into his eyes, "you got fresh ideas and details about what you did with her after that kiss!"

"Yeah," you drawl back at him. "I'm so glad I talked to you about this."

* * * * *

The real problem, the thing that's got you really worried, though, is that you don't know whether to go looking for Elle. It really seems like you ought to, otherwise she might think that you're not interested in her, which would be really embarrassing to her after what happened between you last night. But the fact is that you're not sure you are interested in her. And didn't she also say something last night about how she didn't want you to talk to her at school? You have a vague memory of her saying something like that, but if so it was probably her panic talking. By lunchtime, you've given yourself a headache as you try gaming out all the possible things Elle might have meant or wanted, and what you should do about them.

So you decide to consult an expert. As soon as your lunch period starts, you head to the library to find Jack Li. Again.

You're standing just inside the library doorway, craning your neck to look around, when someone trods on your heels. "Hey Will!" a voice chirps behind you. You spin.

It's a girl with a short blonde bob, and she's grinning impudently into your face. Though you've seen her around—in fact, she's in the English class you just left, where she sits on the other side of the room—you can't put a name to her.

But you can put a name to the pale girl with the lush head of red hair that's with her. Elle Moore smiles up at you. "Oh, hey," you stammer at her.

"You can't eat in here," says the blonde girl. She's dressed in Levis, a flannel shirt, and suspenders, like a lumberjack. "They won't let you."

"What?"

"Your lunch." The girl slaps the brown paper bag you're holding loosely at your side. "You can't eat in here. Unless you got a special deal with Mrs. DeWare. Does she let you eat in her office?"

"No! I'm just, uh—" You look between her and Elle. "I was just looking for—" It seems pointless to try talking to Jack about Elle when the girl is standing right here with you. "Someone," you lamely conclude.

"So are we," says the blonde girl. "We can all wait together, then head over to the cafeteria."

That's not your plan, but you fall onto a study table with them. As it happens, they're waiting for Jack and his friends too. But in the crowd that quickly gathers, where you know only two names—Jack's and Elle's—and where you can't talk to Jack openly, you wind up holding your tongue.

Jack has a question for you, though. "What's your x2z handle?" That's a social media site linked to the high school, and one of the worst places on the internet, so you tell him (truthfully) that you don't have one.

"You should have one anyway," he says. "I'll set it up for you." He puts his hand out, and you reluctantly hand him your phone. "It'll help you better keep track of some of the shit you're dealing with," he explains as he taps away at it. "What's your email?"

"You in some kind of trouble, Will?" the blond girl teases. You just make a face at her as you give Jack your email address.

"Are you hanging out with us this afternoon?" Jack asks as he continues to type. "Gonna try some frisbee-golf again."

"Um, are all of us here going?" you ask, and make a point of holding Elle's eye. She smiles at you as the others grunt vague affirmatives. "Then I guess ... sure."

* * * * *

So you leave the library feeling wrong-footed. But you are left even more wrong-footed when you get an alert on your phone at the start of last period. It's a note in your new x2z account: Hey Will this is Elle, says x2z user "Meryl_Elle". Skip frisbee-golf, just hang out w me?

Next: "A Game You Can't Win" 

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