The Book of Masks (Vol. 2)

Some Romantic Backstory

Previously: "Just a Perfect Friendship" 

The invitation comes on short notice, on Friday morning, as you and your classmates are standing around an open grave.

Okay, it's not literally an open grave, and it's not a burial, except in a funny-morbid way. It's first period, and your class is outside, in the grassy quad between the school and the Music Annex, burying the time capsule.

The weather is cool under a cloud-dappled September sky, and all in all you'd rather be outside than inside. But it's all very boring, as you and the others stand in a jostling circle around the hole into which the capsule is to be lowered. It must be like a graveyard around there, you find yourself thinking, because you've heard that Mr. Walberg buries at least one time capsule every year. As you squint around, ignoring Kelsey Blankenship's tedious whine as she reads a little speech from a crumpled sheet of paper, you have the idle fantasy of getting a bulldozer and raking up the top six or eight feet of soil and rock on this corner of the school grounds, turning up and spilling open dozens of canisters like the one you are gathered to inter today.

The fantasy is nicer than suffering as Caleb seethes by your side. You and he staked out Mr. Walberg's classroom after school yesterday, but the old walrus never left his desk, so Caleb was never able to get into it. If I get fucking expelled over this, Prescott, he growled, I'm taking you with me!

I didn't do anything wrong!

So I'll frame you for a crime you didn't commit. You'll have the U.S. Marshals chasing you from here to Utah by the time I get done with you.

"Okay, everyone back inside," Mr. Walberg barks after Anthony Kirk has lowered the capsule into the hole, and Amanda Ferguson has spilled a ceremonial shovelful of dirt over it. You're shuffling back toward the school when you feel your elbow plucked.

It's Lisa Yarborough. "Hey, Will, what are you doing this weekend?" she asks in a low, soft voice.

It gives you a sudden, hopeful thrill, albeit an unconvincing one, for Geoff Mansfield, his smug face lifted toward the sun, is sauntering along on the other side of her. "Oh, just hanging out," you stammer. "Probably do something with Caleb and Keith."

Caleb snorts loudly on the other side of you.

"You know, there's going to be an exhibition soccer match tomorrow," Lisa says. "The girls' teams, us versus Eastman. Geoff and I were thinking of going."

Well, good for you and Geoff, you snort to yourself. Maybe someone'll bash his smarmy face in with a soccer ball. "Uh huh," is what you say out loud.

"I thought maybe you'd like to go along, hang out too." Before you can growl out a negative, Lisa adds, "I think we were going to meet Elle out there. You know, Elle Moore?" she adds when you say nothing.

"Oh, yeah, Elle," you say. "Um ..."

Yeah, you sound like a moron, but that's because of deductions and intuitions that are hurtling through your head, like a runaway freight train.

Elle is going to be there. Lisa thinks I know Elle. Elle must have talked to her about me. Lisa must think I'm into Elle. Elle must have said something to make her think that. Lisa's trying to set us up on a double date. Elle must have got her to. It's not Lisa, it's Elle asking to meet up with me at the exhibition match. Elle is asking me out, through Lisa.

"If you don't want to," Lisa starts to say when you've not made a reply.

"No, yeah, sure, that sounds great," you blurt out. "I was just, uh, you know, mentally reviewing my schedule. Yeah, I'm free."

Caleb says, "I thought you were doing that thing with Jack Li."

You ignore him. "What time?"

"Game starts at two," Geoff answers for her. "Cost you three bucks to get in. It's a fundraiser."

"Whatever. I'll be there," you tell Lisa.

* * * * *

You have plenty of time—the rest of the day, in fact—to wonder what is wrong with you, that you're going on a double-date with your ex-girlfriend and her new boyfriend. Especially considering the way that your ex-girlfriend broke up with you.

It happened at the start of the month—September the first, as a matter of fact; a day that will live in goddamned assfuckery!—and you had bopped over to Lisa's locker before the start of class. You were in a giddy mood—your head felt full of helium for some reason—and you casually draped an arm around Lisa's shoulder, interrupting her as she was talking to one of her girlfriends. You broke into a huge smile and were about to say something complimentary about her hair or her pores or something as she turned to you. But she got the words out first.

You know, Will, she said with calm brutality as she wriggled your arm off her shoulder, we never actually said we were going out together.

It was like being hammered in the stomach with a wrecking ball. It was such a shock, in fact, that you reeled backward into the worst and stupidest reaction you could have had. Oh, Lisa's saying she wants to make it official! Fortunately, your rational mind grabbed control of your mouth before you could blurt out something really stupid. Besides, Lisa had already turned around and was chatting with her friend as though you weren't even there. You stared at the side of her head with frozen shock for a very long moment, then turned and shambled off on heavy feet.

For the first few hours afterward, as you slumped dazedly in your classrooms, you could only think, She broke up with me. Snapped her fingers and just broke up with me. Didn't even snap her fingers. Just broke up with me.

Then the real horror broke through. No, we didn't break up, because she thinks we were never even going out together in the first place! With one sentence, she not only nuked your relationship, she nuked the pretense that you ever even had a relationship!

Even now, almost three weeks later, you flush hotly at the memory.

Because you were going out together of the summer, dammit! Okay, no one said, We're going out together, aren't we? but that was basically what you were doing. You were hanging out together around town with her friends, and you were texting her, and you went over to her house a few times to pick her up to take her to meet people. And you sat together and even leaned against each other, and once, as you were sitting together out by the river, you raised up and kissed the top of your head. Casually, as though it was no big thing! Because boyfriends kiss their girlfriends that way!

So where the fucking hell does she get off saying that you were never even going out together in the first place? And now she's shoving that smug son of a bitch Geoff Mansfield into your face. Are they going out together? Have they said that they're going out together? Is she going to tell you at this soccer match that it's official, that her and Geoff Mansfield are now officially going out together? Is that why she wants you along on this double date, to make you see that it was always hopeless between you?

Half a dozen times you come this close to texting Lisa to cancel the date, to tell her that you're going to come down with the flu or the plague or have your wisdom teeth out and so can't make it. But each time you manage to convince yourself not to wig out—Don't wig out, man!—and put your phone away.

Because, you remind yourself—

And how pathetic is it that you have to remind yourself of this fact?

—you're going to be there on a date with another girl.

* * * * *

Then, at very nearly the last minute, there's a substitution. Friday night, as you and Keith are killing the hours at his house with a desultory game of Magic: The Gathering (which neither of you have played in years), you get a text from Lisa. Hey Will, Elle can't make it tomorrow but Laura MacGregor will be there. Is that okay? You blink dumbly at your phone.

"Yeah, I'm bored with this shit too," Keith says.

"No, I'm just— It's fucking weird is all," you mutter. "I'm supposed to go on a double date tomorrow—"

"Yeah, that is fucking weird."

"Fuck you! But now it's supposed to be with another girl instead of the one I was supposed to go with."

"Nothing fucking weird about that," Keith says. He twines his hands behind his head. "First girl cancelled when she found out the date was with you."

"I'm going to come over the table at you and kick your ass if you don't stop it. It was Elle Moore I was supposed to meet up with. You know her?"

"Oh yeah. I'd do her."

"Thanks for the nightmare fuel. But it says she can't make it, so I'm supposed to meet up with Laura MacGregor instead."

"You can do better than Laura."

"What?" You jerk your head up at Keith's unexpected compliment. "Are you serious?"

"Nah, now I'm just fuckin' wit'chya. I was serious about the other shit I was tellin' ya. Laura could totally do better than you."

You make a face at him. "Well, how many girls have you got willing to drop everything and go on a double date with you tomorrow?"

"You keep saying 'double date'. Who's the other couple?" he asks.

"Lisa. Lisa and Geoff."

Keith's eyebrows nearly pop off his forehead. "And you're seriously thinking about going?"

Maybe he's right. Maybe this is the perfect excuse to back out of a scene that was eating your heart out with anger and resentment.

Next: "Why You Should Never Dig Up Your Mistakes" 

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"Table of Contents (Vol. 2)" 
"The Book of Masks (Vol. 2)"