The Book of Masks (Vol. 1)

Things That Frighten You

Previously: "A Day That Starts Like Any Other" 

Geoff Mansfield? Hot and steamy with Lisa? Your eyeballs feel like they're about to boil out of your skull.

Then, almost as suddenly, the mood passes. Your gut clenches up like you want to vomit, but you grit your teeth and grab a thick tuft of grass until the worst of it passes.

No one says anything, not even Caleb, and James and Carson go back to chortling about the time they glued Seth Javits's sneakers to the floor.

* * * * *

Low as your mood is after lunch, Westside High has a special way of being able to pull you down even deeper into the shit. You're trudging to the library for your study hall when powerful hands seize your belt and lift you from the floor. You gasp and kick, and peers scatter as, like a hovercar, you fly toward the double doors of the nearest exit. You brace as your body batters them open, rattling your teeth. Students stop to gape and point and grin as you're hustled toward the music wing.

The trip is long enough that you've time to speculate on which of the school's numerous bullies has caught you. Lester "The Molester" Pozniak? He's the one who specially likes putting your head in a toilet, but Pozniak likes to jeer, and except for a buffalo-like snorting from behind, this assailant hasn't made a noise. David Kirkham? You shiver. But that psycho is too small to pick you up; he'd have just dropped you with a blow to the kidney. One of the football players? It's been a year since you got crossways with Roy Nelson or Dominic Kleason.

Almost you are looking forward to finding out who it is, when you are thrown bodily against the wall of the music wing. A ringing blow jolts the back of your head, and your backpack is ripped from your shoulders. You're spun around and shoved against the wall.

You nearly shit yourself. Oh, fuck me fuck me this is a hundred times worse than all those other guys put together!

It's Gordon Black who looms over you.

Gordon is the captain of the basketball team, but he's built like a linebacker. At six-and-a-half feet tall, he can look you in the eye with his Adam's apple. His shoulders are massive, rounded, and broad. He has a chest like an oil drum, arms like pistons, and legs like tree trunks.

And he's got a temper like a rhinoceros that's stepped on a bumblebee.

Gordon pins your shoulder to the wall. "You like hassling my girlfriend, you little puke?" he demands in a rumbling bass.

"Girlfriend?" you squeak. "I haven't even seen—"

You gasp, and feel yourself whiten all over. It's Chelsea Cooper, the head cheerleader, that this man-mountain is talking about. The girl you flipped off this morning after she almost ran you over in the parking lot.

Gordon bends to put his face to yours. His breath smells of chili, Fritos, and the souls of every high school kid he's ever chewed up and spat out over the years.

"You saying you didn't disrespect my girlfriend this morning, you little shit?" he growls. "You saying you didn't show her your middle finger?" He grabs your wrist and yanks your hand up. "Was it this one?"

"Oh God!" He's going to break your fingers off, one by one, and feed them to you like Vienna sausages. "Was it this morning, are you talking about this morning in the parking lot?" you gabble. "I flipped someone off. Was that—? I didn't know it was Chelsea!"

He covers your mouth with a palm the size of a catcher's mitt. "Doesn't matter, asshole. You do the crime, you pay the time."

Your bowels loosen. Don't shit yourself, Will, you plead with your sphincter. Don't shit yourself don't shit yourself don't—

But instead of pounding you flat, Gordon glances down, then bends to pick up your backpack.

"Tell you what," he says, "you say you didn't know it was her, so I'll go easy on you this one time. What class you got now?"

"Sssstudy hall. I was g— On my way to the l-library." Your heart is trying to pound its way out through your larynx, so that you can barely string two words together.

"Well, you go wait for me in the library, you little shit. I'll bring your pack to you when I'm done with it."

"My p-pack?"

His eyes—which even on a good day are the color of death—go even colder and emptier. "You rather me do it to you?"

"N-no! I— I'll go now!" You edge over a step, and when Gordon doesn't move, you scamper off as fast as you can. Only when you're halfway to the library do you slow down and curse at yourself for being such an obvious pussy.

Ten minutes later, when Gordon dumps it on the library table in front of you, your pack is empty save for the reek of piss. You don't find your books until after school, scattered and trampled behind the portables. You never do find your English textbook, though you do recover a fantasy paperback that you didn't realize you'd swept into your pack this morning.

* * * * *

"So you're saying Gordon would'a pissed down your throat if you hadn'a run away. Izzat it?"

You stop in mid-chew and glare back at your friend Keith. He smirks.

"Yeah, that's exactly what I was saying, asshole," you mumble around the wad of half-chewed donut that's congealing inside your mouth.

Keith's smirk widens. "You know, if you really want me to sympathize with you, you won't call me names."

It's Saturday morning. You woke early, and because your dad had that "This feels like a day for heavy chores" gleam in his eye, you bolted the house to run across town to Don's Donuts for your breakfast. Your friend Keith works there, and he's taking advantage of a lull in traffic to perch at a table with you.

"So I gotta get me a new book bag—"

"How come's that?" Keith asks. But before you can answer, he leaps to his feet as the bell over the front door rings. His face lights up as he dashes back around the register.

Keith is not the kind of minimum-wage drone who gets life-satisfaction from slinging donuts at customers, so you turn to see who it is that has got him excited. But it's only Kim Walsh, another student from school. She smiles warmly at Keith as she walks up to the register.

"Hey Kim," Keith says. The pitch of his voice drops half an octave, from light tenor to scratchy baritone. "Usual as always?"

"I'm predictable, I know. Hey Will." Kim smiles at you, and you give a little wave back. Kim is not a girl you feel helplessly enthusiastic about, but she is pretty enough: a small, slim red-head with a clear, bone-white complexion. But she's president of the student council and radiates wholesome good sense, when what you want from a red-head is fire, zing, and a tendency to offer blow jobs without any prompting.

"I'll get on the order right away for you," Keith is telling her. "You'll get them piping hot."

"I'll just take whatever you've got in the case, Keith," she replies.

"Nonsense, nonsense." He waves an airy hand. "Besides, some fat fucker—er, trucker—came in here just a minute ago, cleaned us all out. You just sit there and keep Prescott company, and I'll bring 'em out soon as they're done!" With a jerk of his hips he turns and hops into the back of the shop.

Kim comes over and sits across from you. "You get your stuff made to order, huh?" you observe to her.

She returns you a tight smile. "I don't ask for it. The day-old stuff would be fine for us. It's for my dad and them, back at—" She waves toward the window. "How are you, Will?"

"Fine, I guess." No point telling her about Gordon. Kim is one of those serious, interested-in-helping-people girls, and she might try using her position to do something about Gordon, which would be very bad. You got off light yesterday, and you don't want him developing a grudge. So the conversation lapses for a few seconds.

"Got plans for tonight?" Kim asks. "It's Saturday."

"Yeah, well, you know." You shrug. "I'm playing it by ear."

"Where's the parties?"

Beats the fuck outta me. No one tells me anything about shit like that. "Oh, well, around." You affect a bored shrug. "The usual places. Keeping my options open, in case of something new."

"Mm-hmm." You don't like the gleam that comes into her eye, a gleam that says, You're cute when you try bullshitting people. Again, the conversation suspends for a few seconds.

Then she leans across the table. "I overheard a couple of girls talking about you the other day."

"Yeah?" You let your eyebrows lift, but the rest of your body locks into place.

"Uh-huh." That gleam turns mischievous. "They were wondering who you were. Like," she adds when you only stare back, "they were interested in finding out, and mad that they didn't know you already."

"Really." Every muscle in your body tightens. "Um, and who were they?"

Kim falters. "I don't know. I think they were juniors. Maybe you'll run into them when you go out tonight."

"Yeah, maybe."

The grumble of traffic on the busy boulevard can't quite cover the silence the ensues. Or is it the sound of blood racing in your ears.? Kim's expression tightens in a way that stretches her mouth into a painful smile.

"Look, Will," she says in a low, sympathetic voice, "I heard about you and Lisa. I'm sorry. But I don't want to see you brood about it. All you have to do is get yourself in circulation, you know, and—"

The world before you suddenly turns transparent, and behind it opens up vista upon vista of girls, all grinning madly back at you.

Some of them even look like Chelsea Cooper.

Next: "Mini-Golf and Many Girls" 

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