The Book of Masks (Vol. 4)

Hijacked from the Inside

Previously: "Piled Higher, So Digging Deeper" 

For an instant you are overwhelmed by a dizzying vertigo. My name is Will Prescott, you think as you grab for something firm. And what the hell am I doing here, sitting in his guy's lap?

You are wearing a mask—the face and form of a girl—and you're clasping your arms around the neck of another mask-wearer. You are pretending to be a girl, and you're pretending you don't know that the guy you're with is also pretending.

It suddenly seems all very silly, like an elementary school-yard game that has gotten out of hand. I'm tired of all this, you feel yourself wanting to say. Let's play something else.

But you're stuck now.

"I'm not jealous," you tell the guy who looks like Jack Li. "Except—"

"What?" he demands.

You shut your eyes and bury your nose in his lush, clean hair. You say nothing, playing for time as you try to center yourself and recover your "sense" of being Leah.

After a moment, Jack, who has been holding aloof, puts his arms loosely around you.

"You told all your woes to Olivia?" you mumble into his hair.

"What?"

You lift your face. "You told all your woes to Olivia?"

"Most of them. Well—"

"Stuff you haven't told me?"

He sighs, deeply. "You want me to tell you?"

You put your face back in his hair, and nod. Keep him talking, you think. It's safer than me talking.

"We just talked, her and me," he says. "About school and stuff. We talked about guys. I asked her if she was going out with anyone. She said no. She's just seeing guys casually, she said."

Again he sighs. "She asked if I was seeing anyone." He hesitates. "I said no, and I wasn't even seeing anyone casually."

If this was really Jack, you think, and I was really Leah, this is the point where I'd kiss him on the top of the head.

So you do.

"And then we just started talking about guys dating guys, and the assholes in the drama department."

So far, nothing that Leah doesn't know or heard from Jack himself. But oh! to have been at Panera with them as he shared it all with Olivia! To have listened as the hulking, brutish Gordon Black, trapped in the role of Jack Li, recapitulated all Jack's frustrations at not having a boyfriend; at having to be careful not to seem to "come on" to guys he likes as friends; voicing the resentment and anger at Charles Hartlein and his squad of prissy gay assholes.

But that's the puzzle, and that's what you really want to know: Why would Gordon go through this pretending, which must have been awful for him? He has to do it with his friends, if he wants to stay in character and not make his life even weirder. But why go out of his way to do the act with a girl he doesn't have to do it with?

"So," you ask, "how does this lead up to you thinking about going out with Olivia?"

"Well, it doesn't have to be Olivia. It can be any girl."

You bolt upright. "Any girl?"

"Sure."

The objection—But you're gay!—freezes in your throat.

Instead, you say, "What?"

He sighs again. This time it's short and sharp.

"I've gotten really tired of all the 'But you're gay' bullshit, Leah," he says, as though he's read your mind. "Maybe you're right, maybe something you said did 'break' something in me. I want somebody, I want to be close to somebody, I want somebody I can hold and talk to." He is holding and talking to someone—you—but he's acting like he doesn't even realize it.

His tone turns bitter. "I want to have a little secret club, like other people have, where it's just the two of us." He squirms beneath you. "And I'm thinking, if I really want that, maybe I need to stop being so picky about whether they have a dick or not."

You lean back to scrutinize his face. His expression is as impassive as ever, and the rumble of the nearby traffic is like the voice of inarticulate, unspoken thoughts.

"But you've got friends already, Jack," you protest. "You've got me, and Brianna and Genesis, and— Why Olivia?"

He digs his tongue around inside his cheek before answering. "I'd be trying something new," he says. "So maybe it makes sense to do it with someone new."

"What would you be doing that's new? I mean, talking, hanging out with, sitting around, like, with her in your lap even. What would you be doing with her that you don't do with—"

You trail off as the answer heaves itself over the horizon of your consciousness, like an eldritch thing.

"Oh my God, Jack!" you exclaim. "Are you going to—? Were you thinking about—?"

"Yes?" he says.

"You are?"

"No, I didn't say anything. I'm asking you to finish that sentence, is all. Say it," he challenges you. "Am I thinking about doing what?"

It's such a Jack-like thing for this not-Jack person to say that you have to spring from his lap in horror. "Oh my God," you murmur to cover up your confusion. "Did you tell Olivia that—? What did you tell her?"

He stretches his long, strong legs in front of him and slides deeper into his chair.

"I told her I'm gay and I know I'm gay. You know, what I've been telling people since forever. But I also told her I'm thinking maybe I shouldn't be— I don't know. That maybe I shouldn't be insisting on it so hard."

You stare at him. After a long minute you realize your mouth is hanging open, and shut it with a snap. "You told her," you stammer, "that you want to try ... ulp! S-sleeping with a girl?"

It's too dark out here, on the balcony-patio, to read Jack's expression. But you can well imagine the characteristic tightening of the skin around his eyes as he replies.

"Yeah," he drawls, "I asked her to get up on the table and pull down her panties so I could fuck her doggie-style, right there, in the middle of the restaurant."

* * * * *

"So it looks like he's going to try to change Jack's sexuality!"

You grip the steering wheel so tight that your knuckles whiten. Even now, Sunday afternoon, you can hardly register the shock you feel at Gordon's plans for Jack Li.

But Cindy Vredenburg, who's riding shotgun, sounds unimpressed.

"Well, dur," she says. "That's what I'd do if I was in his place. Hell, I was thinking seriously about coming out as lesbian"—she titters—"till Fairfax told me I couldn't. What a shock that would'a been to Seth!"

You shoot her an exasperated glance. Keith just can't stop talking about himself and Cindy's body, he's totally uninterested in anything or anyone else. It pisses you off.

Then you do a double take at him. Cindy's body is like cream. You could kiss and suck on her long, bare legs all day, or nuzzle her firm, snowy boobs, and bury your face in her ivory-like neck. In fact, you now wonder why you haven't asked Keith to let you put your mouth and fingers onto him, to let you get a taste of a girl you've often fantasized about from afar. Friends should share with friends, right?

But before you can gather the extra ten percent of the courage you need in order to ask, Cindy says, "But Fairfax had a better idea, to just dick around with him," and that jerks you out of your reverie.

You're on your way up to the school now, to have that long-delayed conference with the leader of your confederacy of imposters. You definitely have something to report, and Leah's psyche is champing and slobbering to gossip about Jack's confession, only you're pretty sure you shouldn't be sharing it with his and Leah's friends. So this morning you were up pretty early (only a little after ten!) after a short Saturday night, to text Maria to say you wanted to get together to talk. Fairfax put you off until the afternoon, though, and asked if you could give Cindy a ride up to the same meeting.

So there's something up with Keith, too. Only he's being very coy about it. Should've been at the meeting yesterday, he loftily said when you pressed him about what was up.

Well, fine. It just gave you a chance to practice your report on him. Only the fucker sounds totally uninterested.

There's no cars parked by the gym when you arrive, but Cindy tells you to park in the corner of the lot by the tennis courts, because even on weekends the slots right up against the gym are reserved for the patrons of the fuck room. And she makes a point of leading you inside instead of walking by your side. She hasn't got a key to the fuck room itself, though, so you have to wait downstairs on the bleachers for Maria to arrive. You ask if there's any chance of Gordon—the new Gordon—showing up, then follow up by asking how Jack is doing in his new situation. But she remains tight-lipped. That's part of the plan for today, she says.

Maria's not long in arriving, and she gives Cindy a key and sends her upstairs while she remains below to listen to your report. She takes it all in impassively and with what looks like a complete lack of surprise. "Well, keep us posted," she says when you're done.

"Is there anything you want me to do?" you ask. It bothers you. Fairfax was so impatient to get together with you before, but now he sounds like he can barely be bothered with you.

"Just continue to observe the situation," Maria says. Then she cocks her head. "Can you do that from your current position? Or do you think Olivia would now provide a better vantage?"

Next: "On the Outside, Peering In" 

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"Table of Contents (Vol. 4)" 
"The Book of Masks (Vol. 4)"