The Book of Masks (Vol. 5)

Busting with Amy

Previously: "Double-Dates for a Double Date" 

Are you being given a choice between Amy and Kate? You're pretty sure you're not. But a choice is presenting itself.

"So what's your address again?" you ask Dean. He gives it to you, and you start to enter it into your phone.

"I'll ride out with you," Amy says. "I know the way. I need a ride anyway," she adds, "'cos I came out with Kate."

It looks like your choice is paying off immediately.

* * * * *

"I really didn't see you coming out of one of the rooms upstairs last night," she says as she buckles herself into your truck.

"Yeah, I know you didn't, 'cos I wasn't upstairs," you reply.

"I couldn't have seen you anyway, 'cos I wasn't upstairs last night either," she says. "Wow, what a coincidence!"

You glance over at her. She's smiling at you again.

Amy has a very boyish figure. In fact, everything about her is boyish. She is the most boyish girl you think you've ever met, and that includes the very tomboyish Jenny Ashton, who at least has breasts and hips and long, thick, flowing chestnut hair. Amy doesn't really have any of those things.

In fact, until you started speaking to her back at the Squeezin' Freeze, you weren't one hundred percent certain she was a girl.

She is quite tall for a start, as tall as you. Her breasts, such as they are, are lost in a billowing gray t-shirt covered in a dark-blue denim shirt. You haven't given her a once-over, so you can't swear that she has no hips to speak of, but even if she does you doubt you'd make them out inside the blue jeans she is wearing. And her hair, though blonde and long enough to cover her ears and the back of her neck, is parted and combed down in long, sleek, lanky locks like a guy's. Even her face is androgynous.

Only her piping voice, and the girlish way she moves—she seems to hop rather than move from place to place, and her hands dart—strongly mark her out as female.

"How long have you known Dean and them?" you ask.

"Since middle school. Actually I played with Dean a couple of times on the playground back in middle school, but we didn't have the same home room so we didn't really know each other, I just remember him. You?"

"Yesterday, pretty much."

"No way!"

"Well, we've had classes together at Westside, I knew who he and his friends were, but I've never done anything with them. You know Patrick, uh— His friend Patrick?"

"God, yeah, I know him!"

Something about the way she says it suggests that she isn't Patrick's biggest fan. "Well, I know Dean the same way I know Patrick," you say. "'Cos they were in some of my classes."

"We were all out at the Warehouse last night," she explains in turn, "and we bumped into Dean on the dance floor, wound up hanging out with him. I think he was drunk because he started hitting on Presley."

"Uh oh."

"Oh, it wasn't awful. Dean doesn't really know how to hit on a girl, he was just paying a lot of attention to her, talking to her, like that. They know each other at school, and I think his being drunk just let him get relaxed. Anyway, we all made plans to get together this afternoon."

That doesn't quite jibe with the texts that Andrew sent you, but you suppose that there were wheels-within-wheels to the planning. You ask how she knows Presley, given that Presley is both a junior and a student at Westside, whereas she and her friends are seniors at Eastman.

"Well, Brooklyn's a junior too, you know," she explains. "And her and Presley and Kate all go to the same church together. You have a church?" You tell her you do, but it's apparently not the same one as theirs. "Well, they got to church together, and they're also friends at school. Me, I don't go to church anymore, I got my fill of that at Agape."

That's the Christian private school in town, and you ask her how that was.

"It wasn't bad. It was small and everyone knew everyone else. Not a lot of shit like you get in public schools, but it gets tiring of it being so small. Anyway, after mom left us, my dad moved me over into the high school."

You let this digest for a moment. Then you say, "I thought you said you knew Dean in middle school and elementary school."

Amy looks over at you, then bursts out laughing.

"Oh my God!" she gasps. "I can't believe it, you were actually paying attention! I didn't think you were!"

"What?"

"Yeah, okay, busted! I didn't go to Agape, I just know some kids who do. I'm gonna have to be careful around you!" You glance over to find her giving you a bright but shrewd smile.

* * * * *

Dean lives over on the northeast side of town, in a newly built subdivision where the trees are no more than saplings. His mom and dad are home—though his dad is working in the back yard, so you don't see him—and you all plop down in a comfortable living room. Kate and Andrew aren't long in joining you, and with so many people there the afternoon begins to take on the general air of a relaxed party. Pretty soon texts and calls are being sent to other people to come out, and when Amy asks why you aren't asking any of your own friends out—"Are you ashamed of them? Are they ashamed of you?" she teases—you text Caleb and Keith with an invite and the address.

Keith relaxes into the flow—you don't see him much after he arrives; he melts into the accumulating crowd—but Caleb proves standoffish. He is particularly fishy-eyed around Amy.

"Where did you meet these people?" he demands like a grump when you both wind up in the kitchen pouring yourselves some colas. "Where did you meet that girl?" Amy had been teasing him about his "workout routine."

"Yesterday, at the minigolf," you retort. "You remember, you were there."

"I remember Hudgens being there," he says. "I don't remember any of these other—"

"They're friends of his, most of them go to Eastman."

"Fuck me, you still didn't tell me how you wound up here."

So you give him, in broad strokes, the story of your time at the Warehouse.

He looks at you askance. "And where was I all this time?"

"At home whacking off to porn and wondering how come you never get any," you reply. "Hey," you nod at the girl who's come into kitchen just in time to hear this. She gives you a look and quickly scuttles out.

"Well, next time you're out there with these guys—" He breaks off to peer around the corner in to the dining room, which has filled up nicely. "I don't know how to end that sentence," he mutters.

Amy, on the other hand, seems quite taken with Caleb. "Your friend's adorable," she confides to you shortly after, when Caleb is taking a bathroom break. "How many girlfriends does he have?"

"Uh ... None that I know of. Except the imaginary ones."

"Does he want a real one?"

You swing on her in surprise. She's got that glinting, mischievous look on her face again—not that it's ever far away—so you can't tell how serious she is, if at all.

"I'm sure he would," you reply.

"Well, ask him out for me. We'll do a double-date. Here, I'll get you a girl, and then you ask your friend to come along and you'll bring a girl for him, and it'll be me."

"Uh—"

You're either rescued (or cornered, depending on how you want to look at it) by Caleb's return.

"I'm gonna take off, Will," he says. There's a hunted expression on his face as he looks around. "Oh, I meant to ask you," he adds, "what did you come up with for Walberg's class?"

"What about Walberg's class?" you ask. Then: "Oh, shit!"

* * * * *

It's that fucking time capsule assignment, of course. It's due tomorrow and you have completely forgotten about it. You have nothing for him.

Amy wants to know what you're upset for, so you explain. But Caleb wants to know why you haven't got anything.

"I thought you were going to get something the other day," he snorts. "I wanted to do something with you after school but you said you had to go into town to get something for the time capsule."

"I did go into town, and I did—! Wait!" You wrack your brain and snap your fingers. "I did get something! I got—! Oh wait!" Your heart plunges. "I changed my mind about it, I decided I didn't want to put it in the capsule."

"Oh, for fuck's sake, Will."

"Well, let's go get you something now," Amy suggests. "We'll go look for something for you and brainstorm and we'll get nachos while we're out."

Caleb is reluctant, but he'd already said he wanted to leave, so he consents to meet you up at the mall. Amy, of course, has to ride out with you.

"What was it you bought the other day?" she asks as you're getting into your truck. You tell her about that weird book with the pages glued shut.

"Well, what's wrong with giving that to your teacher?" she asks. "Then we could just go get nachos with your friend."

"I don't know what it is, except a fucked-up book. What would I tell my teacher about why I'm giving it to him?"

"Do you have to?" she asks. "Tell you what, let's swing by your place so you can pick it up, and I'll look at it and help you come up with a story for him!"

That's all for now

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