The Book of Masks (Vol. 5)

The One Who Has It Worse

Previously: "The Main Chance" 

You are not in the mood to see anyone, particularly Dean or Patrick, if they are going to be in a mood to brag about the girls they banged last night.

But though you are feeling spiky and petulant, you at least understand what you are feeling, and with a groan you shove those feelings aside. Yesterday might have been a little rough, but it was also fresh and exciting, and you feel almost as though you have made a new start on a high school career.

So you text Dean to say you can get together with him after two.

* * * * *

He's got dark circles under his dark eyes when you see him at The Crystal Cave—a coffee shop near the university—and his face is so pale it looks drained of blood. Briefly, spitefully, you wonder if he's going to brag about being up all night with a hot girl. But there's such a look of wan despair in his expression that your mood quickly shifts from resentment to sympathy.

"Hey," he says as he tumbles bonelessly into the booth opposite you. "You not drinking anything?"

"I blew everything I got yesterday."

He grunts. "I'll cover for you. What do you want?'

"That's okay, you—"

"I said, what do you fucking want?"

"Um— Americano would be fine, I guess," you mumble.

You watch him carefully as he slides back onto his feet and disappears around the corner.

He's got two coffees and a biscotti when he returns. One of the coffees, and the biscotti, he shoves at you after falling back into the booth, and he ignores his own coffee to stare at something a thousand miles off behind your left ear.

"So, last night was fun," he says tonelessly. "Patrick got some. So did Scott, I think." He grinds the heel of his hand into an eye. "And you fucking know Lorenzo and Jonas got some."

Which one is Jonas again? You don't ask, though.

"How about you?" you ask.

He throws his head back, and slides down a little in his seat.

"Dude," he groans. "D'ju see how Patrick was all grinding nasty with Kayla Shea? She had her whole squad with her, and it was like they all came out and came after me. It was great," he continues as you feel your heart sinking, "and I was almost hyperventilating, 'cos every time I got through dancing with one, another one slid in. I never got that kind of attention before! It was like, I dunno, I won the lottery or something."

He slumps to his side, and his expression sinks.

"And then they were all, like, nope, we're done with you. They wouldn't even look at me, but all busted up and went off with other guys. Fuck me." He rubs his face. "So I look around and I go find Lacie and them, and that's when I find out Patrick and you already took off. Those girls, they were just distracting me, so Kayla and Patrick could—"

He breaks off with a deep, wet, bubbly sigh.

It reminds you, of course, of what Sydney told you last night when you parted. But she told you the opposite, that she was distracting you so that her friends could rescue Kayla from Patrick. But maybe she misunderstood the situation as well?

Or was that just a line she was feeding you, to discourage you?

"I'm sorry, man," you tell him. "That's rough. So you didn't, um—"

"I don't know why I'm telling you this," he groans, "why I gotta tell anyone this. 'Cept I know I'm not gonna get any sympathy from anyone else." He gives you a pinched look. "I'm not asking for sympathy from you, either."

"Well, you got it anyway. I know what it's like."

He grunts.

"Pisser is," he says, "they didn't all have to take a turn with me. And then it was, like, I feel like no else who was out there took me seriously. Like, they all thought I was only there to dance. 'Cos I was on the floor with those girls all night. I almost tried to go with this one girl who was left, after it got late," he says after a lengthy pause, "except I knew I was just being desperate, and that killed it for me. So I just went home and crawled into bed." He fumbles out his phone and peers at it. "I only woke up about three hours ago."

"I had to go to church this morning," you reply. "I've been up for six."

He peeps at you darkly. "You ever date anyone who goes to Agape?"

"Agape?" That's the Christian school, and suggestion shocks you. "No!"

"Why not? I hear, the girls out there are raging. Like, they can't get enough!"

"So why don't you try going out with one of them?"

"I don't know anyone who goes out there! That's why I'm asking you— But Timothy Ruffner— You remember Timothy?"

"Uh ... no."

"He graduated two years ago, he's out at Keyserling now. But he was at Agape in middle school, so he knew all the girls who went there, and he—" A look of intense pain crosses Dean's face. "He fucked every one of them. Seniors and juniors. Like, he machine-gunned 'em with his cock."

"Whoa!"

"Oh man, if I knew someone who knew anyone at Agape—" He straightens up. "Doesn't anyone at your church go out there?"

"I dunno, maybe. All the girls at my church—and there's not a lot—I think they go to Eastman."

"Pff, Eastman," he says, and goes limp again. "I been out to parties with Eastman people. You ever get with a girl out there?"

"No," you reply.

"I guess they're like all the girls at Westside. You gotta know who's open to, you know. Not like Agape." He shakes his head. "You just say two words to a girl who goes to Agape, and she goes down on you without even asking if you want it."

* * * * *

He talks a lot more in this way—a guy fascinated and frustrated by sex—and it's a very new experience for you. Oh, sure, you and Caleb and Keith used to talk about it, and the girls you'd like to have it with. The difference is, you and Caleb and Keith were never getting, so it was all practically in the realm of fantasy—like talking about what you'd do if you ever found a dragon egg. But Dean is talking from experience, the experience of having and of having gone through a dry spell afterward. He doesn't seem to expect you to empathize, but he does expect you to understand. You mostly keep your mouth shut, asking only such questions as will keep the conversation going.

Dean's phone dings constantly with texts—and yours dings once, with a text from Caleb—but he only answers a couple with a frown before resuming the conversation. It's plain he just wants an ear to pour his frustrations into, but you're baffled as to why he has chosen you, not until he gets one text that causes him to fling his phone across the table with a look of disgust.

"Fucking Lorenzo," he snarls.

"What's wrong?"

"He's trying to get everyone together for a homework session. Like anyone needs his fucking help. I don't even wanna look at him. Or Patrick. Or anyone!"

Okay, you finally realize. He's just mad at everyone he knows, so I'm the only one left. You know that feeling as well.

So you feel some real sympathy when he fixes you with a hard but mournful eye and asks if you've got all your homework for the weekend finished, and if not if you could stand to have a little company while you worked on it.

"No, I didn't have a lot to do, and the stuff I had I— Shit!" You bolt upright.

Dean sits up too. "What's the matter?" he asks.

"The fucking time capsule!"

"What time capsule?"

"The fucking—! Oh, God damn it!"

You completely forgot that you are supposed to give Mr. Walberg something for the time capsule tomorrow morning. You scramble to your feet, and Dean follows.

"I gotta go to the store or something," you gabble at him. "You can help me out. No, wait, I don't have any money. Shit!"

Dean looks utterly flustered by now, so you explain the situation to him as you hurry out of the coffee shop: How you are supposed to give your social sciences teacher an item for the school time capsule, and how it's due tomorrow, and how you totally spaced out on the assignment.

"You didn't have ideas for it at all?" he asks when you're outside, on the sidewalk.

"No! Because it's a dumb as fuck—"

You freeze with a hard frown as you stare at the used book store next door. It reminds you of something, but you can't place it.

Then it comes to you: That book you bought there last week. You picked it up thinking you could put it in the time capsule. And you've still got it, don't you, in your room someplace?

But you're not sure you want to submit that. It doesn't seem like the kind of thing that your teacher was looking for, which is why you decided in the first place not to give it to him.

But now you're desperate.

* To give the book to Walberg: "The Devil in the Deli" 
* To get Dean's help brainstorming something else: "Another Fashionable Choice" 

*
"Table of Contents (Vol. 5)" 
"The Book of Masks (Vol. 5)"