The Book of Masks (Vol. 2)

Morning Haze

Previously: "Dane, Gelded" 

You feel half dead as you sprawl on the sofa in Shep Tsosie's living room. At least you don't have a hangover. You had the presence of mind last night to only drink beer and smoke a few joints, and not much even of that.

Mainly because you had a girl in your lap and were more interested in her. You still have the memory of her hair in your face as you kissed and nuzzled her. And then of—

You wince as you look up now at Brianna, who is straightening out the clothes she slept in. She looks a mess.

You grunt and dig the heel of your hand into one eye and ask, "You gonna be in trouble for staying out all night?"

"Prob'ly. Who gives a shit."

"You going in to school?"

"I am if you are."

"Where's Maize and them?"

"Took off."

"What?"

"I got up last night at one point and there was no one here."

You lever yourself upright, pull up your shorts, and stagger onto your feet. You lurch around the house, looking in Maize's bedroom—bed unmade but empty—and in the bathroom. You shove back the broken blinds and squint out the window. No cars. "Looks like we're stuck here," you tell Brianna.

"Yeah." She sounds insouciant, but she doesn't meet your eye. "What happened to your Bug?" That would be Gordon's vintage VW Bug. An odd little thing for him to drive, almost ridiculous. But it filled you with dread every time you saw it tooling into the parking lot, or parked by the gym.

"Gordon's dad's got it. He kept it when he kicked me out of the house. I been getting rides with Maize. So what are we gonna do? Where's your car?"

"Justin picked me up." She still won't look at you, and even a guy as dense as you (or Dane (or the dumbbell that combines you)) can tell she doesn't especially want to hang out with you, even after sleeping with you and then spending the night, using you as a mattress. "I could call someone to come pick me up." She squints up at you sidelong. "You going in to school?"

You don't have to, and you don't really feel like it. You are still exhausted from the night before, and you have Dane's exhaustion of the day before that. He hasn't dropped out of school yet—he's having too much fun there with his new body—but he's got an after-school and evening job (which Justin got him) at White Fang Outdoor Equipment that he can't afford to skip because it's the only way he can afford to eat and give Maize a little money to pay for the sofa he sleeps on.

But your plan was to go into school and connect up with Caleb, then talk to those weirdos and lure them out to Dane's trailer for an ambush. But now you're tempted to just wait to do that after school. Those guys will have basketball practice, and you can go up to the school and talk to them as that's letting out.

Oh, but Dane hasn't got a cell phone anymore, so you can't coordinate with Caleb long-distance.

"Yeah, I should go in. I got nothing to do out here anyway."

Brianna turns her back on you and starts tapping into her phone.

* * * * *

You're late for first period (a Spanish class of Gordon's that Dane inherited when you shoved him into Gordon's body), which is the only class of the morning that Dane ever attends, so you head straight back to the portables to hang out with the crowd there. You're astonished to see that Joe Durras, one of the guys you were going to look for, is back there, lounging on the grass with Cody Wooten and Jordan Fry. "Dane!" he cries out joyfully when you're still half a football field away. "Dane! Dane!"

"Hey guys," you greet them as you trudge up. "Anyone got a—?" You mime taking a hit off a doobie.

"I do," Jordan says, and he reaches for his backpack.

Joe giggles. "You get started awful early, man."

You wrench Jordan's pack from him and paw through it yourself, pulling out books and dropping them to the ground. It's the kind of habit Dane has fallen into. Maybe he hasn't got Gordon's bullying instincts, but he can get away with a lot of shit thanks to Gordon's body, and has been. So from the pack you not only pull a little Ziploc baggie with three doobies in it, but a brown paper bag half-smushed by the books it shared a space with. "Hey!" Jordan cries, but he doesn't get up to stop you because, well, you're a small mountain of hard muscle. You drop the pack but keep the Ziploc and the paper bag, which you tear open. "Oh, man, thanks! I didn't have breakfast yet!" you cry as you shove the sandwich into your mouth. Joe and Cody both laugh as Jordan fumes.

"So what're you all doin' out here?" you ask as you drop to the grass. "I'm skippin' Spanish 'cos I got here late." You decide not to tell them why. Brianna was chilly to you all the way up to school, and besides, Dane's bragged enough about the girls he's scored with.

"We're skippin' Algebra," Cody says. "Durras here's a bad influence."

"Hey, it wasn't my idea!" Joe protests. "You dipshits is the ones who talked me into comin' out here an'— You know I could be back in there, learning!"

"If we could learn anything in there," Jordan sneers, "we wouldn't be taking Intermediate Algebra our senior year."

"Well, I could be back in there not learning," Joe says, "from someone who's at least got a rack. My old math teacher at Eastman—"

"Ms. Simeon hasn't got a rack!"

"More of a rack than Mr. Jones! Are you gonna hog all those for yourself, man?"

You look up from peeling the orange you stole to find Joe pointing at the baggie. You take out one for yourself and toss the rest to him. "Yeah," Joe says as he snaps a finger at Jordan until Jordan digs out a lighter. "And Ms. Simeon's got that earth mother thing goin' on. I bet she's got a bush like a jungle, and I got a python'd just love to go nosing around through it."

There follows a fairly nasty but entertaining conversation about whether Ms. Simeon is sexy, and whether "sexy enough" is itself enough to be sexy. You don't contribute much except the occasional grunt. You don't even light anything up, but take hits off the joint Joe lit, and which he passes around. You concentrate on him the whole time while trying not to be obvious about it.

He's very blonde, with a shock of hair that seems to catch and multiply the rays of sunshine that fall on it, and he has a California tan that glows ripely with health. He's wearing a sleeveless t-shirt that shows off strong shoulders and strong biceps that would be a credit to a wrestler, and there is cat-like power and grace in the way he lounges on the grass. His countenance is open and bright, and his blue eyes shine with mirth even when he's cussing the other guys. His teeth are strong and white, and his features bold and regular. He wields a doobie with an expert's flourish, but you have the impression he's not actually inhaling as deeply as he pretends.

Your mind wanders back to Monday, when you—when Dane, that is—got cornered by him and his brother. Frank was taller, more lithe, and even more panther-like in his moves than Joe, with dark hair and a hard gaze that seemed to go through you like a spear. He hardly smiled, and you couldn't help thinking that he talked like a cop whereas Joe was easy and relaxed and made you feel like you and him were old friends. You talked with him about weed and girls and skipping classes—all activities that he said he liked while Frank listened on with seeming disapproval. But still, you hung your head with embarrassment when Joe asked you point blank how come you were telling people you were really "Dane Matthias."

I dunno, you said. Maybe I been smoking too many of these. You were finishing off the very end of a blunt as you talked with them.

The conversation shifted a little as Joe dared you to prove you weren't as high as you thought you were, and eventually it turned into a game of tongue twisters before segueing back to the question of who you really were. It was easier by then to confess that you were pretty goddamned convinced that you were Dane Matthias, because you could remember all kinds of shit that only Dane knew or remembered—like growing up in a trailer park with his mom—and that you didn't know a goddamned thing about Gordon Black's life and were doing a really good job of fucking it up. You told them about how you were yourself up until a couple of weeks ago, when you ran into some guys back in one of those portables and it felt like you got knocked out and when you woke up— Bang! Suddenly you were in Gordon Black's body!

Frank wanted to go look in that portable, but Joe told him he could be a dumbass on his own time and go looking next period, when Joe was planning to have lunch with this cheerleader he was trying to get to know better.

* * * * *

"What are you doin' now?" Joe asks you as the bell ending first period sounds.

"Just skippin' another class."

"Me too. Thinkin' of skippin' the whole day." He rolls onto his back to drink in the sunshine while sucking down another hit off the rapidly vanishing doobie. After a moment he squints over at you. "Wanna leave school, hang out at your place?"

"Um—"

"Your place, Dane," he says. "Your old place."

Whoa! He's walking right into your trap, it sounds like, and it's his own idea!

But maybe you should wait until you can round up his brother too, and Caleb.

Next: "The Face Factory" 

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