The Book of Masks (Vol. 4)

The Girls That Guys Obsess Over

Previously: "Jessica Explains It All" 

You are only able to spend another hour or so at Ratliff's until the party has to break up before his mom gets home. You change out of Jessica's mask, but are forced to wear that giant football jersey and short-shorts when Laurent takes you back to his place. Only there is Laurent (grinning the whole time) able to provide you with less embarrassing clothes to wear.

* * * * *

He lives in a tiny place in a shabby part of town, where the houses look like chicken coops and the yards are stamp-sized patches of weeds and trash. But his mom is very cheerful, and though the casserole she provides for dinner is very long on pasta and short on meat, it is filling.

Afterward, you and Laurent hang out in his cramped bedroom, whose floor is carpeted with discarded clothes, talking as he does homework.

"So you got things straightened out with Marc and his sisters, huh?" he asks, for you only gave him and the others the barest outline of your mission. "What was the deal?"

"Girl shit," you reply. Now that you're out of Jessica's mask, the whole thing seems very silly and stupidly emotional. "Eva had a bad date, and everyone managed to say something that made her mad about it. I don't know if I made it all better, but if I tell Marc to just not say anything, then—"

"Who was her date with?"

"Oh. Uh, Jeremy Richards." You must have made a face when you said it, because Laurent asks you what's wrong. "Nothing. I just don't like Jeremy. He used to be a friend of mine, but then he turned into a jerk."

"You wanna get back at him?"

"What?" The question startles you. "How? What are you talking about?" But the flesh up and down your backbone ripples and prickles with anticipation of his reply.

"I'm talking about getting back at your friend. Fuck, man, you've played Marc and you've played Jessica. Prank your friend with a mask of Eva, and you'll have three of a kind."

You feel yourself reddening. "I don't think Marc would like that."

Laurent shrugs.

"Well, you got your pick of faces to hit him from behind," he says. "Just put one on, get up close enough to cradle your friend's balls, then disappear. You know. Really fuck with his head."

You demur for now, and Laurent turns back to his homework with another shrug. "Well, it's your loss. Oh, hey, if you want to do me a favor and keep busy," he says, "you can make some more of those metal dinguses. Your book's in the bottom drawer of my dresser."

Is that how come he wanted me to come home with him? you wonder. He wanted me to do some work for him?

"Are they for Chris and them?" you ask as you turn to the dresser. "You know, they all seemed pretty interested in those things, after seeing what all I could do as Jessi— Holy fuck!"

You stare into the drawer you opened. It's like a treasure trove in there. Besides the book, there's seven ash-gray masks and one of those metal doohickeys like Laurent wants you to make.

"Huh? Oh yeah." Laurent grins. " I made up a fuckload of masks last night, enough so's each of us gets to have two to play with. Still gotta polish 'em, though."

"And you wanna make a metal thingie to go with each of them?"

He shrugs. "I guess we could. Though I dunno I'm much interested. Not me, personally. Like you said, some of the guys— And Marcos is definitely interested. He was specially asking for some, after I told 'im what they could do."

"Why's that?" Marcos was one of the few guys who didn't show up at Ratliff's.

"Fuuuuuuuck, man," Laurent says, and he rolls his eyes. "So, you know, I had an extra mask from the batch you made, and I went ahead and gave it to him, to keep him happy. 'Cos I told him I wasn't gonna be makin' him no half-dozen masks. He can have two, like the rest of us. Anyway, I gave him that mask, and you know what he did? He used it on his girl Cristina. You know Cristina?"

You've been out of Jessica's mask for a few hours now, but although most of her memories have evaporated from your head, you can vaguely connect the name to an fat Hispanic girl with a great mane of black hair. "That's his girlfriend, right?"

"One of 'em," Laurent says. "There's Trina and Alana too. And he wants masks of all of them."

"Okay."

"And he wants to get inside their heads, too."

"Whoa," you say.

But you are still not sure why Laurent is sounding so scandalized until he says, "I'm pretty sure it's 'cos he wants to know what it's like to be fucked by him. By himself, I mean. That's why he wants to dig around inside their heads." He gives you a very knowing look. "You know, so he can get inside the body of a girl he's fucked, and finger himself in bed while remembering what it's like to have his own cock up her—"

"Oh, Jesus!" You jump.

"That's right. Well, it's the only thing I can figure. I guess I shouldn't judge. Oh, all the stuff for making things is out in the garage."

You stare. "And you want me to— to make some of those things for Marcos? Even though he's—?"

"Well, sure." Laurent looks puzzled. "Why not? I mean, it's not something I'd like to do, you know. But if that's what he wants to do—" He shrugs and turns back to his school work.

You blink, then get to your feet, and in a distracted state pad out of the bedroom and through the house to the one-car garage. Yes, there are things to be done with these masks, you reflect as you check the recipe in the book and put the ingredients together. But not until this moment do you realize that you've been avoiding thinking about them, and have been waiting for other people—Laurent and Marc and Chris and the others—to suggest them to you.

Laurent is texting when you return to the bedroom with the book and the metal strips, and he continues to text off and on over the rest of the evening and into the late night hours as he finishes his homework and you scratch runes into the metal strips. But you are only able to complete two of them (the second with Laurent's help) before your host calls a halt to the work at a little before midnight.

* * * * *

It's dark when Laurent rousts you from sleep the next morning. He has a date to go jogging with Brownie, and offers you the chance to join him. You demur, but have to get up anyway. Together you drive out to a convenience store on the south side of town, and Laurent leaves you there with his truck and his keys when Brownie swings by to pick him up. You drive back into town to find an early-hour donut shop, where you revive yourself with a coffee and glazed donut, but you're back where Laurent left you by the time he returns.

It's you, Laurent and Brownie in the cab of his truck on the drive up to the school, and you finally find it easy to fall into a conversation with them about girls and tits and which girls' tits you'd like to play with, and whether you'd like to play with them from the outside or the inside. This at last gives you a feeling of really belonging in their company. (Or, at least, not being a weird outsider who is loitering nearby.) You share with them the theory you propounded to Chris, that you all should be avoiding the obvious choices—cheerleaders and the like—of girls to copy, and should instead pick up copies of some of the weirder ones, like that Emily girl. Your flattered that they seem excited by the idea.

The school parking lot is practically empty when you arrive, save for the white pickup truck that you recognize as your own. But Marc is already changed back into his own face and form when he springs out to meet you. Laurent and Brownie linger and listen with vague interest as Marc asks for your report on your afternoon as his sister, but they soon saunter off, suppressing their laughter as you tell Marc what the problem is and was.

"Just ignore it," you tell him. "They think you're a dope, and they think you'll do something dopey if you try to fix what you did wrong. Anyway, it wasn't you who did anything wrong, it was me." He looks mostly puzzled and exasperated when you're done, but he also looks relieved.

And as for his time at your house, as you? "I did your homework," he says. "I think you'll get a better grade on your math than you usually get." You make a face as he claps you on the arm. Besides having a girlfriend, and being the captain of the soccer team, and being super-popular, does he have to better than you academically as well?

You're miffed enough that, when third-period comes, you decide to skip your Career Planning class again and hang out with Laurent—it won't feel weird now—while redoing your homework so you can earn an authentic C-plus in math instead of the A-minus Marc has probably gotten for you. But as you're pushing through the hallway, you see Eva in front of you, and watch her turn and go into the library. Is this her study hall? you wonder.

You pause. In theory, you know nothing about her love life, and have no good reason to barge in and start talking to her about it. And yet, how hard would it be to go in and casually join her in the library, and casually steer the conversation around to the subject of Jeremy Richards, and to casually tell her all the reasons why he is a jerk she should have nothing to do with when there are so many better guys she could be dating instead?

Next: "Two Things Off Your Chest" 

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"Table of Contents (Vol. 4)" 
"The Book of Masks (Vol. 4)"