The Book of Masks (Vol. 1)

A Warm Hand in the Cool Darkness

Previously: "Coffee Nerves" 

"Listen, um—"

You swallow hard. You're not sure what you're going to say. You're not even sure what it is you're trying to get across.

And it gets worse when Jack darts you a hooded look. The fear in his glance is impossible to miss.

Then something in you snaps.

It's the resistance that's been holding you back.

You set your mug down, then reach across to pry Jack's mug from his stiff fingers. He gives you a wondering looks as you set his mug down, then close your hands around his.

It's a move he's fantasized about being made on him. Now you're giving it to him in real life.

"This Legends place you were telling me about"—that's a dance club just around the corner from the coffee shop; it's Jack's favorite place in town—"sounds more my speed. But if you're going out to the Warehouse tonight—" You take a deep breath before making the plunge. "I want to go too."

The astonishment on his face would be comical if it wasn't at the same time a little heartbreaking.

Then the side of his mouth goes up in a cockeyed grin. "Great! Though if you want to hit Legends instead—"

"You pick." You squeeze his hand. "I think we settled one thing. I'll probably dig whatever you decide."

* * * * *

You and Jack have been talking for an hour, at least, and you both decide you need to get home for supper. You walk out of the coffee shop together, not holding hands, but outside you grip and squeeze his shoulder as Jack asks for your number. "Let's just keep using DMs," you tell him. "That way I got only one place to keep track of."

"Oh, how'd you manage to get a Westside account?" he asks.

You shrug. "There's ways. We hacked the site all to pieces back at my old school." You give him one last punch in the shoulder, and tell him to let you know when he's decided what he wants to do tonight.

* * * * *

It's a rush when you get the mask off again, and you are shaking hard all the way on the drive home. I've got a date for tonight! you exult. I think I've got a boyfriend!

And— Holy shit! you add as your grin turns sickly. What the fuck is the matter with me?

The matter, of course, is the very strong personality you felt while inside the mask.

Jack Li—now that you're outside of his brain and you can get some perspective on what you were feeling—is very self-assured and sociable. You found talking to him to be the easiest thing in the world, and not just because he was a glib talker but because you had become one as well. Your heart swelled when he talked about his friends Parker and Kristina and Wendy, and Leah and Brianna and Genesis, and ... and ... and ... So this is what it's like having lots of friends, you mused, instead of just the same two or three that I see every ... miserable ... day. When you're Jack Li, all you have to do is text someone, and you can be pretty assured of finding something fun to do and someone cool to hang out with.

But at the same time there was the yearning for something more intimate. More confidential. Something special and secret to be shared with only one other person. There's something sterile inside all those friendships. He knows so many girls, but he has nothing for them and they have nothing for him. It's almost worse with the guys at school, where there is always a wall—thin but impermeable—that cuts them off. Even with Parker, his best friend from elementary school, there is something vital withheld.

And when you were in the mask you felt a wild, runaway hope that here at last, like a falling star lighting in his hand, was the thing he wanted.

How could you not have felt his happiness? How could you not have wanted it too? If he was hungry, it occurs to you now, I'd've felt hungry too. And it would have felt good to eat!

Speaking of hunger, you are ravenous, and try to put aside the feeling of panic you can't seem to shake as you race home for your dinner.

* * * * *

You keep your phone close and logged in to Chang's account, but after your father gives you a second dirty look over the dinner table you turn the sound down so that the constant DMs and other alerts won't disturb things any further. It's all chatter about whether to go to the Warehouse or somewhere else. You can't help wondering what DMs Jack is exchanging with his other friends.

By eight o'clock, a decision has been made, and not only Jack but Mindy and Melissa and others are hitting you with DMs telling you to meet up at the Eastman parking lot when you can. We'll all split up and go where we want after that, Jack tells you.

You have a stupidly early curfew—11:30—which will only give you a few hours of fun unless you want to chance pissing off your dad, so you rush out as soon as you can tell your mom you're off to hang out with friends.

You have to change first, of course, so you detour to the Acheson Community Center.

It used to be the village's elementary school (or some such) a couple of decades back, and it looks like it was built a hundred years ago. It's made of greying brick and it sits on a shady lot with many old trees towering up around it. You park in the small lot around back, and as you pull off one set of clothes and pull on another, your eye strays to a distant corner, around which—

It was last year that you found another way into the building. You were wandering around the neighborhood and wound up at the Center, and that's how you found a short staircase the led down to an outside door whose top edge barely peeped out above ground. It had a padlock on it, but you were bored and in a mood for destruction, so you went home to get a crowbar, which you used to pry the lock off.

On the other side was another short, shadowy set of stairs that plunged into a basement. The place was filthy with dust and grime, and packed to the ceiling with old bookcases and discarded cabinetry, stacks of old school desks and conference tables, cast-iron sinks and toilets, moldy old gym equipment, and other castoffs from the days when the place was a functioning school. Why they stored the stuff instead of throwing it away, you don't know.

By the light of narrow windows high under the ceiling, through which dim and dusty sunlight came streaming through grass and weeds, you explored the space. It was much bigger than it looked from the outside, and you were able to wind a path into the depths. You poked around and rearranged things a little to make a kind of "fort." Then you went home, got a new padlock, and put it on the door.

A few days later, when you checked back, your lock was still there.

So you told your friends Caleb and Keith about it, and for a few weeks you made the place a weekend clubhouse. Last Halloween you actually camped out inside it overnight, drinking some whiskey that someone had got ahold of, and try go tell ghost stories.

But it's been months and months since you've been back. You're sure that your padlock is long gone. But it occurs to you now that if you needed a place to hide out to do your experiments, the basement would probably make a good hideout.

You don't check it out now, though. After getting changed back into those stylish overalls and other gear, you push the mask to your face, and pass out.

* * * * *

"Will!" "Will!" "Will!" You're greeted by lots of squealing girls as you come sauntering across the Eastman parking lot to where your new friends are gathered. The lot is a checkerboard of black-and-white under the blazing vapor lamps, and it's packed with vehicles, many of them thumping out music as dozens of high school kids mill about in small packs. You catch a few heads turning your way, but you ignore them.

It's odd to hear your name shouted out by a lot of excited girls. It's also weird to feel so comfortable putting your arms out to catch them as they come running up, and to peck them softly on the sides of their faces. Besides the ones you've already met—Mindy and Melissa and Elle; Cassie and Molly and Faith—there are the ones that you already know through the memories you've copied, but who you pretend now you're meeting for the first time. Leah Simmons. Brianna Kirschke. Emma Witkin. Genesis Lee. Also, some guys: Daniel Lujan and Aaron Flood. Most of these people are in the school marching band.

Jack, you notice, hangs back and lets you fight your way through the crowd before reaching him. When you do, you put out your fist for a causal bump, which he returns.

"So where are we going?" you loudly demand after the last few introductions have been made. "My folks stuck me with a bullshit curfew, so I don't got any time to waste."

"We're all going to the Warehouse," says Leah. She's a tomboyish blonde with the kind of short haircut that would tag her as a lesbian if she wasn't so outspokenly fond of cock. "Genesis's boyfriend's working there tonight."

Genesis, a big girl with mounds of frizzy black hair that falls to her shoulders, squeals. "He is not!"

"Okay, he's just her crush," Leah says. "One of these nights we're gonna push her into asking him to dance, and maybe it'll be tonight!" Genesis squeals again.

"So who's the guy?" you ask, as though you don't know.

For it gives you a pang of jealousy. Blake O'Brien is Jack's secret crush as well.

Next: "A Date With Himself" 

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