The Book of Masks (Vol. 5)

Kelsey, Night and Day

Previously: "The Sex History of Kelsey Blankenship" 

"What are we going to tell our friends about this?" Seth asks later, as you're getting dressed in the girls' locker room, where you and he showered and scrubbed yourselves clean. "About us?"

"Well, who are Seth's friends?" you ask as you pull on your jeans. "I mean, besides Gordon and Steve?"

"Richards. The rest of the guys on the squad, kind of." He thinks a moment. "I guess he's also friendly with Huber and Hildown. Um. Nathan Cruz."

"Nathan?" you ask in surprise. Nathan's on the swim team, but Kelsey mostly knows him as an AP student who is also the first-chair violin in the school orchestra. "That's weird."

"Well, he thinks Cruz is cool enough. A bit of a tightass. But aren't you—? Isn't Kelsey friends with him?"

It's your turn to think. "Not really," you reply. "He's more friends with David Scofeld and his group."

"What's that mean?"

Again, you think, then give up.

"Look, let's just tell people that we ran into each other at Milagro and hung out. But come find me at Kelsey's locker tomorrow, ask if I want to eat with you. We'll go from there."

"What about tonight? Up in the loft?" He gets a light leer. "Do we tell them about that?"

You're about to tell Chelsea to say nothing about that—it was something between you and her, not Kelsey and Seth—then instantly change your mind.

"You can tell Seth's friends all about it," you say. "Brag. I'll tell Kelsey's friends we just hung out at Milagro. Your story'll get around, like Kelsey and Karl, and it'll be another"—you snigger—"another thing for 'Kelsey' get hot and mad about."

Seth sniggers too.

"But isn't she going to be mad at me too?" he asks.

"Sure." You pull him into an embrace. "That'll make the the makeup sex even hotter!"

You kiss and suck on each other a long moment before separating.

* * * * *

This is going to be fun, you think later that night, in bed, on your back, with your middle finger slid up inside yourself. Kelsey loves to make trouble for other girls, not only enemies like Chelsea but friends like Amanda. (Actually, Kelsey probably has no friends, only frenemies.) Late last summer, for instance, Amanda got drunk and handsy at the Warehouse with a shirtless Laurent Delacroix, and Kelsey snapped a quick photo of them making out, and posted it anonymously on x2z, the shit-stirring social media site. Then Kelsey, affecting outrage, stirred up a storm looking for the person who had taken the photo, which only had the effect of spreading it around further, humiliating and embarrassing Amanda and Ricky even more.

Why? Because it was fun to humiliate Amanda, and Kelsey got to make herself look like a good and loyal friend by making such an angry fuss.

So you're going to get twice the fun out of humiliating Kelsey, because you'll have fun yourself, and you'll have fun as Kelsey fucking over ... well, a girl that you are now frenemies with: Kelsey herself.

Fucking her over like you're fucking her now. You close your eyes and gnaw on a knuckle as you push and rub deeper into yourself.

* * * * *

Your alarm goes off way too early the next morning, but you drag yourself out of bed to do ten minutes of stretches on the floor in your pajamas. Then, your eyes still barely open, you give your hair a quick but thorough combing before changing into a track suit and going downstairs to breakfast, where Marta is already fixing an egg-white omelet for you. (A two-egg-white omelet with spinach, Swiss and a slice of avocado, a slice of whole-wheat toast, and a tofu-sausage link, with a small glass of milk and a shot of orange juice; that's Kelsey Blankenship's usual breakfast.) Kelsey's mom is at the breakfast table with her phone as you join her with yours.

"I didn't hear you come in last night, didn't get to tell you good-night," she says.

"I had to go to the bathroom, and then I just stayed in my room," you explain. In fact, you didn't want to deal with Kelsey's parents until you had to.

"Did you meet up with Amanda or Anthony?"

"No. I did run into Seth Javits, though. He's on the basketball team?" You meet her gaze with a smug look of your own. "I think you met him last year at one of the prep rallies, he was going out with Cindy Vredenburg."

"I think I remember him. Tall, good-looking?"

"You just described half the basketball team. But yeah. Anyway, he and Cindy just broke up." You arch your eyebrows meaningfully even as you concentrate on cutting up your omelette. "So he and I wound up talking a really long time."

"Oh?"

"He needed a sympathetic ear, some advice." You scoop up a bite of the omelette. "We were out late talking."

"Hmm. Well, I suppose that's kind of you, if you're trying to help him."

You stiffen a little, for you know what her unspoken reprimand is: If you're not trying to get some kind of revenge on Cindy, who I know full well is someone you despise.

"Well, he was talking about all the problems he had with Cindy. She'd been driving him nuts forever, he'd finally had enough. I actually had to stick up for Cindy about a couple of points."

"You know," Mrs. Blankenship says primly, "that is the kind of thing boys do when they're really broken up about losing someone. They try talking themselves into thinking they're happy it's over when they're not."

"I get it, Mom," you sigh. "I was just trying to help him out, get him to talk it all out. He doesn't have anyone he can talk to about these things."

"He doesn't have any friends?" she asks skeptically.

"Not like he can talk to! Not Steve or Gordon or the other guys on the team." You roll your eyes. "And all the girls he was friends with were Cindy's friends. He needs someone neutral he can talk to."

"Well, if you're neutral."

You cluck your tongue and give her a look.

"You think I can't be neutral because it's Cindy he broke up with?" you demand.

"I didn't—"

"I don't care who he goes out with, or if he goes back to Cindy! We didn't meet up there to talk, we just ran into each other!"

"Kelsey—"

"I'm just telling you who I ran into last night, who I was with, and what we talked about!"

"Okay! Subject closed!" your mom says, and picks up her phone to resume reading it.

You return to reading your own phone—scudding quickly through x2z to see what the latest gossip, scandals, dirt-dishing, and backstabbing there is—and gobble down your food. When you're done, you give your new mom a quick, tight smile and announce that you're going upstairs to get ready for school.

At the kitchen doorway you slow up long enough to glance back at her. She's wearing pale satin pajamas and a thin shawl. As ever, even though she isn't made up, she looks totally stylish. She is forty-one years old, but in great shape, with only a few lines starting to show in her face, and with a good head of brunette hair cut stylishly to curl just below her jawline. (Kelsey got her hair—flat, rather thin, no body—from her dad, much to her dismay.)

I would kill to look as good as her when I'm forty, you think with half your brain. With the other half you think, God, Kelsey's mom is such a MILF.

* * * * *

You haven't time for the kind of shower you'd like—long and hot and soapy, with touching and exploring—and spend most of your time on your hair. That includes the careful application of conditioner while in the shower; a volumizing mousse when you're out; and spritzes of texturizing spray at the roots. You carefully comb it out and pin it in place so that the hair on one side of your head falls behind the ear, and falls over the other side like a heavy curtain.

It's going to be a clear and cool day, with highs only in the mid-60s, but Kelsey's legs are one of her best features—you would often sneak a look at them in class—so you dress in a short jeans skirt and flat sandals, so as to show as much leg as possible. Above, you wrap your torso in a black, sleeveless, velvet button-up shirt with tiny silver buttons. It's so tight it's almost like a corset, but it really accents your shape. As a concession to the weather though—and to accessorize your skirt—you shrug into a short jeans jacket. For jewelry, you hook a heavy silver-turquoise bracelet around a wrist, wrap a necklace laced with tiny white onyx stones about your neck, and dangle two inch-long silver feathers from each ear. You twinkle at your reflection as you study your look in the mirror.

You can practically feel the stares you must be getting as you stride confidently toward the school after parking in your special corner in the lot. (Far off from the gym, away from most of the cars, even though it means you have to hike all the way across the lot to get to the school.) You can feel the waggle in your hips, and the cool air on your scissor-like legs, and the small smile you can't keep off your uplifted face. How different you feel approaching school as Kelsey Blankenship than as Will Prescott! As Steve Patterson, even! As yourself, you always dragged yourself toward the school with a furtive hunch, dreading attention from assholes, and resenting having to expose yourself to them to receive a so-called "education." As Steve (now that you think back to it; at the time you didn't pay much attention), you just walked in and got down to business. But as Kelsey you feel you are sailing into your element. Learn the material and get the grades so you can go off to an Ivy League school. Gossip with friends, stifle the competition. The world needs managing, and you've got the brains and the skill to steer it.

No wonder Kelsey always carried herself like a queen. She basically thought she was one!

Next: "Bait and Baiting" 

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