The Book of Masks (Vol. 3)

A Science Nerd Reports

Previously: "The Crisis in Chelsea's Trousers" 

Oh, Jesus! Philip Fairfax—the guy that Chelsea is impersonating—has a crush on you?

On Danielle Davis?

You thank Carlos for the heads up, and stagger home.

You finished your homework before heading out to that meeting, so you've nothing to distract yourself as you perch on your bed with your cell phone, exchanging desultory texts with friends, checking in to Snapchat and Instagram and other places, and edging up to before backing away from sending any texts to "Philip" to check on how he's doing.

For what would you say?

hey, you getting philip's memories yet? what do you think of when you think of danielle?

hey there, i think i know y u had that accident today.

hi, just checking in, you'll know you got philip's memories if i'm in a wet dream tonite.

But though it's a mortifying discovery, at the same time you're not sure it's a bad thing. Sure, it might make things really awkward between you if Chelsea sticks to impersonating Philip—what if she can't get a firm hand (so to speak) on those urges?—but there is potentially an upside.

Chelsea is bound not to act on them, right? But if Philip has a crush on Danielle, and that word got out, then it would be great cover if ... you started going out with him.

Not because you want a boyfriend, still less because you want Philip Fairfax for a boyfriend. But because then you wouldn't have to worry about Sean Sax or Jeremiah James or LeShawn Puckett—or anyone else—making a play for you while you're in this disguise.

All the way up until bedtime, then, you can't put your cell phone away, in case you get a text from Chelsea, or in case you decide to text her yourself.

* * * * *

Tuesday dawns as a cold October day, and the rains have returned as you turn into the Westside parking lot. You're wearing stockings under your skirt; boots; and have layered an undershirt and a woolen sweater under a jeans jacket, and topped your head with a green-and-blue tam o' shanter. You don't brave the weather right away after parking, but sit in your car waiting for Chelsea. She had texted you early, asking to meet in the parking lot. ok, you'd replied, but said nothing else.

It's ten minutes before classes are to start when she texts to ask where you are. You get out and look around, and a moment later you see Philip's head bobbing up a couple of rows away. He waves at you, then runs over. You get back in your car; he jumps in on the passenger side. "Hey," he says. "How'd the production meeting go last night?"

"Okay. We should talk about it. How's your head?"

His eyes freeze. Then he says, "Oh, you mean my brain? My and Philip's brain?" You nod.

He slides his tongue across his lower lip, then pushes up his glasses to rub at his eyes. It was a gesture he made yesterday, but today ... now ... it seems ... in character? Somehow?

"It's an interesting phenomenon," he says as he straightens out the glasses. "I'm still more than a little perturbed at it all. I don't mean the, uh, accident I had at your place." A little red spot shows in his forehead. "I mean the, uh, delay in ... attaining with Philip the ... merger of mental states that you and ... and Danielle accomplished so instantly." He turns his gaze—and a deep, penetrating gaze it is, too—upon you. "I am wondering where the explanation lays. Is it an artifact of these masks, or of our, um, idiosyncratic psychologies?"

Your jaw drops.

"Pffftttt!" Philip can't stifle the giggle that shatters his very serious demeanor. "Oh God, would you listen to me?" he shrieks. "I sound like a flipping computer or something! I mean, oh my God!" He buries his head under his arms; his shoulders rock with suppressed laughter. His face is red and his eyes are streaming when raises his head again. "This is, like, the last person in the world I can picture myself being, but here I am!"

Your voice, even your very breath, seems to have died during this performance, and not until Philip gives you a very merry look do you find it again. "Wow," you murmur. "Um ... So when did it all, uh, come to you? When did—?"

"This morning. Or last night. Sometimes when I wasn't looking. I was getting, like, heavier flashes of things before I went to bed. And I remembered the password into his cell phone. You know like how you can't remember a name or something like that, no matter how you try, and then like a couple of hours later it'll just pop into your head? It was like that. I was all, like, suddenly, C-H-O-6126, and I thought, what the hell is that? Then I was like, oh yeah, that's the code to unlock his cell phone. Also—" He rolls his eyes. "It's a mixed-up version of the formula for glucose or something. Because of course. But anyway, when I woke up this morning—"

His gaze goes distant, and his lips work soundlessly for a moment.

"Well, it was like there was two of me, inside me. And it was like one of them was trying push the other one out. And I wasn't sure ... " He trails off. "I wasn't sure who was doing the pushing and who was being pushed. What I mean is ... " His eyes, still locked in a thousand-yard stare, go very hard even as his voice goes very soft. "I didn't know which one I was. Was I the one pushing, or was I the one being pushed?"

He falls silent, still staring. You watch him closely. His face is pale and freckle-free under a reddish-brown crew cut. His lips are rosy and his eyes are hazel with speckled shards of green in them. It occurs to you—or to the Danielle personality you are wearing—that without his glasses he is probably pretty good looking. Then ... Even with those heavy black frames, he's pretty good looking.

"Well, at some point," he says, and the resumption of his story startles you after the silence. "Somehow, it was like the two of me pushed into each other. Like when you shuffle a deck, then push all the cards together into a neat stack?" He turns, and you see almost nothing of Chelsea in his expression—only the sober, introspective gaze of a science student trying to describe the outcome of a lab experiment. "And it's like I can shift back and forth between them. Or like they're all shuffled together, and I can pull out whichever set of ... of personality traits I need or want to use. I can be Philip ... " His eyelids quiver, then his mouth spreads out into a mischievous rictus and his eyes sparkle. "Or I can be me!"

You nod. "Yeah, it's like that for me too."

"Is it? Honestly, I don't feel like I know you enough, Will, or Danielle for that matter," he says in a girlishly confiding tone, "to tell which one you're being. Who are you right now?" His eyes shine.

You hesitate. "I think I'm being myself. But, uh, Danielle's not exactly the girliest girl in school—"

"She's got all the right parts," Philip says.

The comment blows away every reservation you might have had. If Chelsea is going to be that blunt, you can be that blunt right back.

"Does Philip have a crush on Danielle?"

Philip stares at you. Then his eyes slowly widen, his hair bristles, and rose blooms flush in his cheeks. "Um ... "

"You can tell me, Chelsea. It's okay. Carlos told me last night that Philip had a crush on her. And if you're really being him, I figure that you should know if—"

"Yeah, okay! Jesus!" He turns away, blushing furiously. "I wasn't going to say anything, 'cos I figure neither of us— And it's not like Danielle's the only one he's—" She squirms. "Christ. How do you guys keep this thing under control? Suddenly I understand why Gordon was all the way he was, and that's not something I ever thought I'd say."

"Who else does Philip have a crush on?"

"Only everybody, practically, if the kind of, you know, pictures I keep getting are anything to go by." She blinks, hard and rapidly. "Even when I'm trying to be, like, myself, I get these little explosions in my head. Like I'm having a freaking stroke, and inside each little explosion is a girl's face. Her shape, her body. Ungh!" She smacks herself in the temple. "Maybe it's a little better when I put on the whole Philip Fairfax act. Maybe he's got a better grip on things. Oh, Jesus, did I just use the word 'grip' there?" He sits up and straightens out his khakis, so that the bulge in their front will have a little more room to rise.

"But he does have a crush on Danielle?"

"Yes! Why? Do you feel flattered now?"

"No. I mean, it doesn't really— That's not why I was asking. But come on, we need to get to class." As you say it, the alarm on your phone softly sounds—the famous opening measures from Beethoven's fifth symphony. "You want to get in character?" you ask Chelsea after you're out of the car and hitching your packs onto your backs.

Philip blinks a couple of times, chews on his lower lip, then nods. "So I'll see you in second period," he says in a very neutral tone. "I'd offer to walk you to your locker, but I don't want to seem presumptuous."

But maybe you want him to be presumptuous. If Philip Fairfax has a crush on you—and if that's semi-public knowledge—then it wouldn't be a shock if he and Danielle started going out.

And it would put a stop to your worries about Jeremiah James or anyone else asking you out.

That's all for now.

*
"Table of Contents (Vol. 3)" 
"The Book of Masks (Vol. 3)"