The Book of Masks (Vol. 1)

The Stuff That Dreams Are Made Of

Previously: "The Hangover" 

"You can pick," you tell Jamie.

"Nah, come on." He nudges you again with toe. "Who you want?"

"You can pick!" you repeat. Louder, to cover the stammer in your voice.

"Whassamatter?"

"Nothing's the matter! I just— I'll let you surprise me is all."

Jamie laughs. "Fuck, man, you don't want me surprising you!" You glare, but he just grins. "You got a type?"

"Not fat. Look, it's probably not a good idea trying to copy anyone at school," you tell him. "We'd get caught."

He shrugs. "So we don't copy 'em at school."

"Where, then?"

"I 'unno." His smile tightens into a smirk. "Look, you seriously wanna leave it up to me?" No, you think, but you shrug. "Okay, I'll pick you some'n. I'll pick you some'n good."

"Who?"

"Pfah! You want me to surprise you or don'cha?"

You surrender yourself into Jamie's hands with another helpless shrug and fall onto the supplies to start making a mask.

* * * * *

The first hour or so passes without conversation as Jamie busies himself polishing a new mask while you concentrate on carving runes into a new metal band. But after he's got the mask polished and has nothing else to do, Jamie starts talking again about girls. He asks you who you like. You fob him off with the usual suspects—the cheerleaders and some of the girls on the swim team—which he enthusiastically endorses. But then he asks you, with guarded glee, if you've ever "done it."

You suck in your upper lip and bend your face closer to the runes. "Got a blow job at church camp one summer."

Jamie gasps, then explodes in a squealing laugh. "Church camp?" he shrieks. "That's awesome!"

"Sure. It, uh, wasn't much," you confess. In truth, you didn't even cum, being too scared of being caught and too freaked out about what was going on to be really engaged in it. "You?"

"Oh, yeah, I get blow jobs," he says with what sounds like casual braggadacio. "Up at the Warehouse, you know. You hang out up there?"

You shrug without looking up. You don't want to admit that you've never been out to the most dangerous party spot in the city.

"Well, you know how easy it is to get laid up there," Jamie drawls. "We should go hang out there some time after school. More fun than hanging out around here," he sniffs. Then he sniggers. "You get more blow jobs up there."

Your sphincter loosens. As dangerous as the Warehouse is on weekends when it's packed with unsupervised high school students drinking and dancing and puking, you hear it's even worse on weekdays when it's the hangout of people like Jamie's other friends.

He doesn't pursue the topic, though, and changes back to talking about girls, and you tell him about some of the girls you hung out with over the summer. He's impressed—gasping and squealing with delight—when you drop the names of girls like the Garner sisters, and Cindy Vredenburg, who, yes, you did sort of hang out with while you were hanging out with Lisa Yarborough (though she seemed to make a point of ignoring you). He sniggers sympathetically when (with a derisive snort) you admit that you didn't "do anything" with them. But you notice he doesn't press you further on your sexual history; and you also notice that he doesn't volunteer the names of the girls he supposedly gets blow jobs from up at the Warehouse.

Then, after a fallow silence, he stretches out on the conference table to stare at the ceiling and describe to you, in a low voice, what he'd like to do with a girl.

"I'd lay 'em out flat, you know," he says. "Flat out on their back. I'd start by pulling down their shorts and then their panties. But I'd leave everything on them up top. Save it for later, you know." He snickers. "Like, you don't open all your Christmas presents at the same time, right? So I'd sniff 'em out first," he continues, "then eat 'em out. Lots of tongue, licking hard, licking deep. Like, really snorf it up."

"Snorf?" you think. You make a note to never use the word when trying to describe the sex act.

"Then after I got them good and wet I'd go up and dry hump them for a while, just to give them a feeling of what's next. You know, really grind it into them. Nngh! After that, that's when I'd pull off her shirt and bra, grab hold of her boobs and suck on them. Nibble. Titties and teeth.

"By this time, you know, they'd be begging for it, and that's when I'd pull off my things and go in. Jam myself up deep and hard. She'd have her legs around me, and I'd go in— Bang!" He claps his hands together.

And then he starts over again, imagining it from a different angle, and then from a different angle after that. In the front, in the back, on the top and on the bottom, upside down and right side up, hanging from below and thrusting hard from up on top. You are drenched with a sympathetic sweat long before he's done.

"Anyway," he says after he's concluded and has let the heavy steam dissipate in a long silence. "That's what I'd do."

"Me too," you agree. "But I gotta finish this thing." You stretch and push the crick out of your shoulders.

"You don't talk about this stuff as much as other guys do, do you?"

You try not to wince. "I guess not."

"That's okay." Jamie picks up the blank mask and holds it over his face. "This stuff's a lot cooler than, you know, just talkin' about pussy."

A hard prickle runs up your spine. Where is this heading? you suddenly wonder. Is he going to suggest putting on masks of girls and ... you and him doing with each other the kind of stuff he was just now describing?

And what are you going to say if he does suggest that?

"I'm getting hungry," you tell him. "I should go home."

"Me too." Jamie lays the mask down and sits up with a groan. "You done there?"

"No, I'll have to bring it to you at school tomorrow."

"Cool." He smirks. "Gonna have a great surprise for you."

You can't help shivering. But is it with fear or anticipation?

* * * * *

You finish up the metal strip after dinner and glue it into the mask. The next morning at school you slip it to Jamie, who again promises to get you something "really great" with it.

"So how'd the great time capsule project turn out?" Carson Ioeger asks at lunch. Keith heard a rumor that Cindy Vredenburg might be eating with Jenny and her friends, so he pushed you and Caleb into taking lunch out front with them. But if there's any truth to the rumor, it's because Jenny has gone off for a private conference with Cindy, for neither girl is sitting on the grass with you.

"Got an an A," Caleb brags. He's been insufferable since first period, when Mr. Walberg handed back the papers you turned in on Friday. "Got an extra commendation for 'creativity'."

"Was it worth any extra points, this commendation?" James Lamont asks. With a critical eye he examines the insides of the sandwich he's just taken a bite from.
"No."

"Then bee-eff-dee." James jams the sandwich back into the paper bag with a sound halfway between a snort and a sigh.

"You know how hard it is to get a compliment out of the old walrus?" Caleb demands.

"It's not hard if you're halfway competent," James stares at Caleb's chips with an openly covetous expression. "He says nice things to me at least twice a week."

"Yeah, well, if I was blowing him every day after class I bet he'd say nice things to me too!"

"What about you, Prescott?" Ioeger asks. "You been awful quiet over there since the topic came up."

"I did okay," you mumble.

"Will got a C-minus," Caleb chortles.

"C-plus!" you exclaim. James cackles.

"Jesus," Carson snorts. "Whadja do, Prescott, bite down the last time it was your turn to blow him?"

"Oh, fuck you guys!"

"Will turned in a hair dryer for the capsule." Caleb grins. "His paper blew too. Hot air."

"Izzat how come we not been seein' any of you?" Keith asks. It surprises you to see he's paying attention, for he's been craning his neck and staring off at the school building. "Working on that paper?"

"What are you talking about?"

"I'm talking about how come we ain't seen nothing of you in, like, a week." Keith breaks off his search for Cindy long enough to give you an even look. "Not after school, not on weekends—"

"It takes a lot of time and candlepower," Carson observes, "to compose an essay justifying the bestowal of a hair dryer unto posterity."

"Yeah, whaddaya say to that, Prescott?" James snickers.

"Maybe I'd have something to say," you retort, "if he talked like a human being instead of an old book."

Afterward, Caleb tries to make nice with you. "Fucking Ioeger," he says as you trudge back into the school together. "Fucking waste of time. Fucking Tilley and his rumors." When you don't answer, Caleb asks, "So what are you doing after school?"

"I 'unno."

"Well, come hang out at my place. Tilley's right about that at least, we haven't done anything together in awhile. Whatcha been busy with?"

You shrug and don't answer.

But the temptation is there. After yesterday's talk with Jamie, you feel like maybe you need to insert a bit of a buffer between you, and you'd feel more comfortable with this stuff with the masks if one of your friends, at least, was mixed up in it with you.

On the other hand, what if that drives Jamie to bring one of his friends in?

Next: "Operation: Fake Mom" 

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