Neutral Mask Read online

  “You can’t handle it,” she said, drawing in her breath and thrusting out her chest.

  Howie clutched at his heart and staggered back. “Oh, God!” he whimpered. “It’s a perfect chocolate valley of delight....”

  “That’s enough,” Jazz said in a flat tone. Or was it flat? A couple days ago, Connie would have said so. But now...was that menace threading through his words?

  Or was it just her imagination and the memory of Billy Dent’s crimes?

  “You’re just jealous because my sweet, sweet line of romance is tempting her heart away from you,” Howie said, pouting.

  “Wait for me in the car, okay, Howie?”

  Howie loped off toward the dented, ancient Jeep.

  “Sorry about him. He’s really—”

  “—harmless. I know. He takes some getting used to.”

  “I know. Sorry again.”

  They stood there, staring at each other. She willed him to speak because if he didn’t speak soon, then she would have to, and the only thing she had to say to him was—

  “I really enjoyed the other night,” Jazz said. “I was thinking maybe, if you can, we could—”

  “I know about your dad,” she blurted out.

  “Oh.” His expression did not vacillate or shimmer. “I didn’t realize you didn’t already.”

  “Really?”

  He shrugged. “I figure everyone knows.”

  “I’m not from around here.”

  “Neither were most of his victims.” He sucked in a breath, as if steadying himself against a strong wind, then nodded once, curt. Still no change in his face, his eyes. “Well, I really enjoyed our dates. Nice knowing you. Enjoy the Nod.”

  As he turned to go, she reached out, unthinking, reflexive, and grabbed him by the arm, pulling him back and spinning him around. He stared at her with that flat, disinterested mien, but she knew something else—a spirit alive and vibrant and connected—loitered back there, eager for its chance to burst through.

  “Don’t walk away from me,” she commanded with a tone that surprised her. “Who the hell do you think you are?”

  He jerked slightly in her grip, his eyes now betraying shock. “I, uh—” he managed after a moment. “Well, I guess, uh—” he continued.

  “Very eloquent,” Connie deadpanned. “You silver-tongued devil, you. You’ve swept me right off my feet.”

  “Look,” he said, stabilizing. “I don’t know what more there is to say. I thought—”

  “You thought I knew about your dad. And then you thought that when I did learn about him, I wouldn’t want to see you anymore.”

  “Well...yeah.”

  “Why?”

  He shrugged. “Isn’t it obvious?”

  “Not to you, evidently. Because before you thought I knew about him, but was still okay with dating you. And now you know I know about him, but you suddenly think I’m not okay with dating you. Does that make any kind of sense?”

  Jazz’s mouth guppied as he tried to speak. Silent moments passed, and then he shrugged once more, suddenly nothing more than a sheepish boy, and said, “It made a hell of a lot of sense in my head.”

  “I think I know a little bit about what it’s like to be an outsider,” Connie said. “We’ve been in four different schools since I turned eight ’cause Dad kept moving us around. And the solution isn’t holing up somewhere with your bestie and keeping your head down and hoping no one notices.”

  “What is the solution, then?”

  Now it was Connie’s turn to shrug. “Do something. Something meaningful to you. Something that resonates. Something that connects you to other people, even if only temporarily. Like, I do yoga and I also—” She broke off, a new idea forming.

  “I’m not doing yoga,” Jazz said into the void of her distraction. “For one thing, I’m just not putting my butt in the air like that and for another—”

  “Shut up.” She actually put a hand over his mouth. “Don’t worry about yoga. Even though it would totally help relax you. Yoga’s solitary. You need to be around people. You’re going to join drama club with me!”

  Jazz shook her hand away. “I absolutely am not,” he said with finality.

  *****

  THE NEXT WEEK, CONNIE met up with Jazz after school, linked arms with him in full view of God, Van, and everyone else, and marched him to Ms. Davis’s classroom, where drama club met.

  A ’whipped man is a happy man, Howie had intoned, but ’whipped nonetheless.

  “I can’t believe you talked me into this,” Jazz grumbled.

  “I’m very persuasive.”

  “I’ve noticed.”

  “Don’t pout,” she told him outside the classroom and pecked him on the lips. “Just watch today. We’re doing neutral mask exercises.”

  “What’s a—”

  “You’ll see.”

  Inside, the fifteen other drama clubbers all stared as Connie and Jazz entered, hand in hand. She had known them for less time than Jazz had, but she was sure she knew them better. And the teacher in charge of drama club—Ginny Davis—was only in her second year teaching, so she hadn’t been there long enough to form an opinion of Jazz. It was the perfect way to ease Jazz into the real world. Connie was supremely, sublimely proud of herself.

  “Jasper!” Ginny cried. “I am so thrilled to see you here! When Connie told me you’d be joining us, I was so excited. When we do the spring musical, I know you’re going to be perfect.”

  Jazz looked at Connie as though to say, “What the hell have you gotten me into?” then grinned and said, “Well, thanks, Ms. Davis, but—”

  “Ginny,” she corrected. “After hours, it’s Ginny. Now, let’s get started, everyone! Who wants to go first? Jasper, you can go next week with the second group.”

  Connie leapt at the opportunity to do her neutral mask performance first. She’d been prepping all week.

  It was a simple enough exercise—on the surface. She wore all black. Ginny handed her a stark white mask with an utterly blank expression—eyes not too wide, not too narrow; mouth a straight line. Connie handed Ginny a flash drive with some music on it. For the exercise, Connie had to be completely silent, her face hidden by the mask, her body neutered by the black clothing.

  Using nothing more than her body language and the music she’d chosen, she had to, as Ginny had put it last week, “show a transformation from one state to another.”

  Connie stood in the center of the room. The chairs and desks had all been pushed back, and everyone sat in a circle around her. She deliberately ignored Jazz; she had to focus.

  She signaled Ginny to start the playlist she’d assembled on the flash drive.

  Music started. Funereal. Somber. Connie slumped her shoulders forward and mimed a trudge. As the music continued, she tried to shield herself from above with an arm, warding off imaginary rain. Trying—and failing—to blot out misery.

  Acting wasn’t just about pretending. It wasn’t just about trying to fool the audience. In a way, you had to fool yourself, too. She had rehearsed this over and over, and she knew she could pull it off.

  The mask was neutral, but beneath it, she was not. Live your emotion under the mask, Ginny had told them. Project through the mask. Make the mask come alive to us.

  She grimaced. She stared. She pouted. She tried to force her emotion through the dead, white wall between her and the world.

  She paused. The music change was coming any second now. She needed to time this properly.

  She reached out for the rose.

  It wasn’t really there, of course. There was just the linoleum floor of Ginny’s classroom. But she made herself believe that a wild rose was growing there, that this was a field, not a school, that rain was battering her, wind buffeting her. If she believed it, she could make the drama club believe it, too.

  She crouched down by the rose, stooped and bent over it, cupping her hand to protect it from the fierce rain. Again, the mask was neutral, but she was not. She allowed her face to ex
press caution, then surprise.

  Tilting her head this way and that, she explored with her eyes every facet of it, every petal, every glistening drop of rainwater clinging to it.

  She willed the mask to reflect the delight on her own face.

  And now...the change.

  The music shifted. Connie pretended not to notice at first, still fascinated by the rose. Then, as the music became more and more upbeat, Connie craned her neck up and around, gazing at the sky. With infinite slowness, she unfurled herself, rising to meet a sky no longer clouded, but now radiant with sunshine, as the music swelled to a triumphant crescendo.

  She held her pose for a beat as the music faded. Ginny clapped and everyone else joined in.

  “Excellent, Connie!” Ginny said. “Brava!”

  She whipped off the mask and finally made eye contact with Jazz. He was clapping, too, worrying the corner of his mouth at the same time.

  *****

  WHEN THE CLUB MEETING ended an hour later, they walked out to his Jeep together.

  “I have to do something like that next week?” Jazz asked.

  “You’ll be fine,” she said, though she was not entirely sure. Throwing Jazz into the deep end of the pool and trusting that he would figure out how not to drown had seemed like a good idea at first blush. She didn’t want to make his sense of isolation even worse, though. “I’ll help you, if you want,” she added.

  He shook his head. “No, that’s okay. I’ll come up with something.”

  *****

  MUCH TO CONNIE’S SURPRISE, Jazz didn’t ask for help in the ensuing week. She had assumed that his casual dismissal of her offer had been teen boy bravado, a testosterone-driven inability to accept assistance, especially from a girl. She waited for him to break down and call for help.

  But even though they’d seen each other in school every day that week, gone to a movie on the weekend, and spoken on the phone several times, he’d never so much as mentioned his upcoming neutral mask exercise. Connie yearned to ask him about it, but some mulish part of her refused to be the first to capitulate on this. Let him ask for help before she offered it.

  He never did.

  They walked together to drama club, Jazz dressed in a black turtleneck and black jeans. Connie ached to ask if he was prepared, if he had any last-minute questions, if he needed any advice, but if he was going to be all stoic and tough- guy, then she could be hard-core, too.

  Aaron Plummer went first, miming a decent enough moment of a baseball player hitting a ball that seemed to be going over the wall...only to fall short at the last possible instant. He was followed by three more, and then it was down to the last two—Jazz and Eddie Viggaro. Jazz had managed to avoid his turn so far, but Ginny wasn’t about to give him a pass.

  “Jasper. Looks like you’re up.”

  A part of Connie felt sorry for him, but she also knew that this was—by and large—a supportive group. Ginny would have it no other way. This was the best possible place and manner for Jazz to learn to start trusting people.

  Jazz said nothing. He simply handed an old iPod to Ginny, then—instead of standing in the center of the ring as everyone else had—walked to the farthest point in the room, near the door. For a moment, Connie thought that he might just keep going and disappear into the corridor, but he stopped. Turned. Ginny plugged the iPod into her speakers.

  He slipped on the mask.

  The entire room fell silent. Which was nothing new, really—they’d been silent for each actor so far—but there was something different about this silence. It was the silence of a caught breath. The silence of trying not to breathe at all.

  Jazz signaled Ginny, then stood ramrod, arms at his sides. There was something about him, all in black—

  Is that how his father dressed when he would stalk—stop thinking like that, Connie!

  that made him fearsome and sexy all at once, and Connie went woozy for a moment with the dichotomy of it.

  In perfect synchronization, Jazz took a step forward as the iPod made a single beep.

  Not music. Just a beep. Followed by another. And another. And another, as Jazz slowly made his way to the center of the room.

  It was a heartbeat, Connie realized. A heartbeat measured in EKG tones, as Jazz came closer.

  Suddenly—again, in perfectly rehearsed synchronization—Jazz clawed at his own chest as the faux EKG went wild, its synthetic beat racing wildly. The mask betrayed nothing, preternaturally and cruelly calm in counterpoint. What was going on back there, Connie wondered. What was happening right now in his eyes, to his lips, his cheeks, his brow?

  Connie bit down on her lower lip as Jazz staggered against the audio coronary, his body bucking and jerking as he dropped first to his knees, then flat on his stomach, his cloaked face turned toward Connie, who could find nothing of him in the expanse of the mask.

  Jazz had transformed all right. From living to dead.

  The class had applauded Connie’s neutral mask exercise, as well as many of the others. At the very least, at the conclusion, Ginny had said something, thanking the student, offering a comment, teeing up the next exercise.

  But no one spoke. No one moved. Not even Ginny. Everyone stared at Jazz, lying on the floor, so completely and so convincingly—

  He’s just pretending, she told herself. He’s just acting. He’s fine. He’s not really dead. He’s not—

  Then why is he lying so still? How can he be lying so still? It doesn’t even look like he’s breathing. Should someone do something? Should I say something?

  It couldn’t have been more than ten or twenty seconds, but it felt as though years had passed in shocked silence as Jazz lay there.

  Connie could bear it no longer. She opened her mouth to speak, but just then, the iPod fired a pebble through the windshield of quiet, spiderwebbing it.

  Beep!

  A single beep. A pause.

  Another beep.

  The index finger on Jazz’s right hand spasmed.

  Beep!

  His whole hand trembled. His leg shook.

  Beep!

  The rhythm building now. Still bradycardiac, but building now, as Jazz—slowly, weakly—gathered his strength. He managed to get one hand flat on the floor and lever himself into a partial crouch, leaning on the other elbow.

  Beep! Beep!

  Stronger heartbeat now. Blood rushing through veins and arteries. Connie imagined she could hear the lub-dub, lub-dub of Jazz’s heart through his rib cage, his chest muscles, his flesh, that black turtleneck, and the seven or eight feet of empty air between them.

  Beep! Beep! Beep!

  Jazz finally stood, at first shaky, his legs trembling, his whole body threatening to collapse under its own uncertain weight, but then—just before he fell—he rediscovered his balance, and the EKG spun up into a victorious rhythm as Jazz thrust both fists in the air as though in conquest.

  Connie realized tears had gathered and now threatened to spill down her cheeks. She rubbed at her eyes to eradicate them.

  “Jasper,” Ginny said in a slightly strangled voice, “thank you very much.”

  Jazz pulled off the mask, and nodded as though he’d been complimented on his shoes.

  “Thank you very, very much,” Ginny said, and went silent, and everyone stared at Jazz in the center of the circle.

  She finally cleared her throat, a dream-woken sound, and said, “Eddie? You’re last. Jasper, please give—”

  He held out the mask to Eddie, who looked like he totally—totally—did not want to take it.

  *****

  ON THEIR WAY OUT to Jazz’s Jeep, Connie had to ask. She couldn’t stop herself.

  “You’re sure you’ve never acted before?”

  Jazz started to speak, stopped. Shrugged. Started to speak again. Shrugged again.

  “Not really,” he said at last.

  “Because, Jazz, that was...I don’t even know where to start.”

  “It was just a thing.”

  “Ginny was gobsmack
ed. She could barely talk.”

  “No one applauded. It couldn’t have been that good.” He said it without recrimination, as though the lack of response were merely factual, not a personal snub.

  “No one applauded because they couldn’t remember they had hands after that.”

  “You’re overstating.”

  “Not by much.”

  “I have to admit. I’m sort of curious what Howie would think of all of this.”

  She chuckled. “You don’t have to wonder—just tell him about it.”

  “It’s not the same as having him there.” And for the first time since she’d met him, Jazz seemed wistful. Regretful.

  She felt bad for not liking Howie. For that brief fantasy of shredding him with her nails. She resolved to make an effort. In spite of his leering and his flirting-with-offense rambling. It mattered to Jazz, so it mattered to her.

  “He really is your best, best friend, isn’t he?”

  “Pretty much my only friend.”

  Connie shrugged. “Not anymore,” and leaned in to peck his cheek with those coveted lips.

  Jazz kissed her back and then leaned in for a longer one, bringing up one hand and running it through the carefully braided cornrows draped down behind her ear. She jerked away from him, tossing back her beaded braids.

  “Whoa!”

  “What?” He seemed panicked. “What did I do?”

  “Here’s an important lesson for you,” she said. “Don’t touch my hair. Never touch my hair.”

  “Why not? It’s just hair.”

  “No. It takes a hell of a lot of effort and product and money to get it right. It’s not like white girls’ hair where they can just wash it and blow it out and tie it back or whatever. It takes forever to get it right. So don’t touch it.”

  “Got it.”

  “Unless I’m wearing it natural. Then you can touch it. But that will never, ever happen.”

  “So don’t touch it.”

  “So don’t touch it.”

  “You have beautiful eyes,” Jazz said.