The Book of Masks (Vol. 1)

A Face to Meet the Faces That You Meet

Previously: "Unmasked Desires" 

"You're drunk, Keith," Caleb says. "Come on, let's get you out of that—"

"Fuck you!" Jenny slaps Caleb's outstretched hand away. "You and Prescott got to go out and have some fun yesterday at my expense! Putting on that fucking mutant mask of me." She glares at you.

Caleb reddens, and you can tell he's about to say something that will set off fireworks, so you grab him by the elbow.

"Just go back to molesting yourself, okay?" you tell the glowering Jenny. "I'll talk to Caleb." Her glare only deepens—and it's a creepy effect, seeing Keith's truculent, dead-eyed frown on Jenny's face—and she watches as you pull Caleb over into a distant corner of the basement to quietly conference. It makes you sweat to talk with her glowering at you.

"Come on, man," you hiss at Caleb. "You gotta stop riding Tilley."

"He's acting like a child."

"No he isn't!" You speak as loudly as Caleb did, so Keith will hear your retort as well. Then, almost under your breath, you add, "And keep your voice down. He's listening."

"So let him," Caleb growls, but he does lower his volume. "I want him to know what I gotta say."

"Well, you can tell him in your own time. Let's take him out and have some fun. You heard him, he thinks we're leaving him out. Yeah, he's acting like a child, but you don't piss off a child or else he'll throw a tantrum."

Caleb glances over at Jenny, who is still staring balefully at you, and sighs. "He's gonna fuck things up."

"Not if we're with him. Anyway, we're not gonna run into anyone. We didn't run into anyone last night."

"It wouldn't have been a problem last night. That guy we took out wasn't someone anyone knew."

"And it won't be a problem tonight. But if you're gonna have an attitude, maybe you should stay here."

"I'm not gonna have an attitude, Will."

"You're having one now. So how about I take Keith out, and you stay here and finish your mask. You said you're almost done."

Caleb grimaces, but nods. "Okay," he says, then jabs you in the breastbone with a long finger. "But Tilley is your responsibility!"

"Whatever, man." You brush him away.

* * * * *

Keith is in a mood even after you tell him that you and him will be going out. "I don't need a babysitter," he snarls, and he sneers when you insist you won't be "babysitting" him. "Besides," you add, "you can't drive anywhere looking like that. You don't have Jenny's driver's license." That's enough to get him to mulishly consent to letting you be the chauffeur.

There's a little trouble with the clothes before you can get away. Keith's trousers are too long for Jenny Ashton's shorter legs, but you take care of that by rolling the cuffs up. There's less to be done about the too-big shoes that flop around on her smaller feet. Worse is the trouser seat of his jeans. "These things don't fit right anymore," she snarls, and she grabs and wriggles her ass around inside the big-seated back of the jeans. "Fuck me, I don't like this." But she glares at Caleb when he suggests she take the pants off and go out in her boxer shorts. "I didn't wear any underwear to school today," she retorts, to which Caleb sniggers, "Even better."

"I swear, one of these days I'm'a gonna go off and punch Johansson in his fucking face," Jenny fumes as she buckles herself into your truck. "Smug, fucking know-it-all."

"He's just worried, man," you reply as you start the truck. "Scared, even. You need to calm down."

"And fuck you too. You and him talking in front of me like I'm a child!"

"Well, you were acting like one! And we're gonna keep talking about you as long as you're acting like this. Keith, bruh," you plead as Jenny folds her arms and turns to glare out the passenger-side window. "We're all in on this. If we didn't want you along, if we didn't want it to be all of us, we wouldn't have showed you this stuff. We want you along. But you gotta act, you know, more mature about it."

She turns to frown at you. "How'm I bein' immature?" she asks as you throw the truck into gear and push out into the street.

"By acting like this. By pouting, sulking. You gotta be calm, man. Cool. Collected. Try to act like Caleb."

"You mean like a smug douchebag."

"Sure." You roll your eyes, and think, Anything would be better than the way you're acting now.

She slumps in her seat, but most of the resentment seems to be leaking away. "I 'unno, man," she says you exit Acheson onto one of the main thoroughfares. "Johansson just rubs me the wrong way sometimes. You do too. You bring me in like two weeks after you find this stuff, and I was just s'pposed to be your experimental monkey."

"No you weren't."

"Yes I was. Don't lie. You didn't know if these things were gonna work and you didn't wanna try 'em on yerselves. So let's get Tilley in here! He's dumb enough, he'll try 'em!"

You wince, for it's almost the truth. "No, that's not the way it was. We didn't know what to do, so we asked you to come in 'cos maybe you'd have an idea."

"Same thing, prac'illy. You only asked me out because you were stuck."

"Well, you're part of the gang now, alright? Equal member. And I'll explain that to Caleb."

"Yeah," she drawls mulishly, "the next time you two have some 'quality time' without me."

* * * * *

"What are we coming here for?" Jenny asks as you pull into the lot behind the used bookstore.

"To get a coffee," you say, for Arnholm's shares its building with (among other stores) The Crystal Cave cafe.

"Dude, I want a burger!"

"No you don't. 'Cos you're paying for both us, and you don't want to pay for a burger for me."

"Well, who says I'm paying?"

"I am. You're the one who wanted to come out and get something."

She makes a face, but drops the argument.

"Stop it," you mutter as you and she walk side by side across the parking lot, for she's squirming in her jeans again, and twisting them around to resettle them.

"These things don't feel right!"

"Or course they don't. Suddenly you've got a shelf back there. But remember, you're supposed to be a girl, so try acting like one." She still wriggles with discomfort as you turn onto the sidewalk that fronts the building, but at least she's stopped grabbing at her pants.

Inside the cafe, you order the cheapest coffees on the menu and take them into the back. You try steering her into a back booth, but she insists on taking a table toward the front. "Why do you wanna hide?" she snickers. Gonna try making out with me?"

"Don't make me puke. I know what you really look like. No, I—" You glance around, for she has maneuvered you into sitting with your back to the doorway. "We didn't have anyone run into us yesterday at McDonald's, and I don't want anyone to run into us now."

"How come not? I wanna see if I can fool someone!"

"Well, what if Jenny comes walking in?"

She blinks, then grins. "Then I'm all gonna be like, Who th'fuck are you? I'm the real Jenny Ashton!" You rub your temple, trying to stroke away the incipient migraine.

You talk some more, and you manage to get him off the topic of Caleb and how he's being treated, and onto the more general subject of magic and how weird it is to find out that it's real. She only grunts, though, so that you have to carry the burden. Gradually it dawns on you that Keith is trying to get into a "character"—like a "girl," probably. So she straightens up, and tucks her elbows in, and holds her cup up near her chin, and a kind of gleam comes into her eyes and a faint, distracted smile plays on her lips. Confirmation comes when she interrupts you with a girlish giggle and the squeaked exclamation, "Wouldn't it be neat if unicorns were real too? I love unicorns!" It almost makes you throw up.

And then the whole thing collapses around your ears. You don't even have to turn around to know that disaster is looming behind you, not when you see Jenny's jaw drop and her eyes pop with surprise and horror. "Oh my God!" she murmurs.

"What's wrong?" you ask as your stomach heaves with nausea. "Jenny?"

"Fuck me, no, worse than that! It's Javits!"

You freeze all over. Seth Javits, of course, is a basketball player who specially likes to torment Keith, and who torments you and Caleb when Keith isn't around. If he's here, and he sees you— Well, you're not in school, but that won't stop him from coming by your table and being nasty. And you'll either have to put up with it or you'll have to slink away like a pussy. Either way, you're gonna put yourself on his radar, and chances are he'll come looking for you tomorrow.

You can tell it's too late to run by the way Jenny stiffens and straightens up; her eyes roll whitely in their sockets, and her lips peel back from her teeth. All the muscles in your shoulders tighten, and the hairs go up on the back of your neck as you feel a presence behind you.

But the voice that sounds at your shoulder isn't Seth's. It's a girl's.

"Hey, Jenny," it coos, and your neck creaks as you twist around to look up at the speaker. It's Cindy Vredenburg, Javits's cheerleader girlfriend. She looks at you, and her smile clouds over a little. "Hey," she says, then turns back to Jenny. "You here on a date or something?"

Before either of you can answer, Seth, carrying a tray, appears behind her. His glance at you is cold but neutral. And it remains cold and neutral when Cindy says, "Can we join you guys."

That's all for now.

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