I Hunt Killers Neutral Mask (2 page)

Billy grinned, and Connie had seen that grin, had kissed the lips that made it. “Once this is all done and I’m a free man,” Billy drawled, “we can talk about that.”

His voice. God. His voice was
just like—

She slammed the laptop shut, too hard, not caring.

Oh, Jazz. Oh, what the hell have I gotten into?

*****

T
HAT
NIGHT
,
SHE
DREAMED
that Jazz came in through her window, handcuffing her to the bedpost before she was even entirely awake. She screamed for her parents, but Jazz just shrugged, and then there was somehow Billy, too, and Billy dumped a trash bag’s contents on the floor—her parents’ heads. Her brother’s.

“Two is better’n one,” Billy said offhandedly. Jazz nodded and, with a large, wicked knife, cut Connie’s oversized T-shirt—the one she’d snaked from her Dad’s dresser years ago, with his college crest over the left breast—from her body and leaned in, and she woke up, and everything was fine, of course. Everything was normal.

It was his
father, she reminded herself, yoga breathing to bring her heartbeat —which had decided to Sousa march—back into line.
You don’t inherit crazy.

That thought, plus the yoga, guided her back to sleep.

*****

M
ONDAY
AT
SCHOOL
,
SHE
rushed through her normal locker routine—bio, English, trig books into the backpack, lip gloss check in the mirror—and made it to homeroom with plenty of time to spare. Van—Vanessa McCurdy, one of her new friends here in the Nod—was lazily sketching what looked like an astronaut in her notebook when Connie sidled up to her and said, “I need to talk.”

Van shrugged and popped her gum. “Now?”

“Before first period.”

“Def.”

Right after the first bell, they ducked into the girls’ bathroom and jammed into a stall at the far end. “What’s so urge?” Van asked. She was incapable of using more syllables than strictly necessary.

Connie hesitated. She hadn’t told any of her new friends that she had gone on a few dates with Jazz. First of all, it hadn’t seemed like anyone’s business. Second of all, she knew how territorial girls could be—lions on the Serengeti seemed more likely to share a patch of veldt sometimes—and she had no desire to be “the new black girl”
and
“the girl who stole the guy someone else was secretly into.” Lastly, she
was
“the new girl,” and she didn’t know the prestige (or lack thereof) of Jazz’s particular block on the flowchart of the Lobo’s Nod High School social scene. She thought he was cute. She didn’t want to prejudge him based on high school gossip before she got to know him.

Well, she knew him now. Never in her life had she felt such an immediate connection to someone. And never before in her life had she felt such an equally immediate need to know more about someone.

“Do you know Jasper Dent?” she asked.

Van’s eyes went so wide that Connie could see the curve of the orbs sinking back into the sockets.

“What
about
him?”

“I—” Connie paused. Had someone just come into the bathroom? She and Van held their breath and stared at each other through the silence until convinced they were still alone.

“Remember how I told you I went on a couple of dates with a—”

“Jasper
Dent
?” said Van, sounding like a woman who’d just gagged down a bowl of toddler stew. “Are you kidding me?”

“No.”

“He’s the one—”

“I know. That’s his father, though.”

“You don’t
get it
, Connie. You’re new to town. We grew
up
with him.”

“So what?”

“He was
normal
. He
seemed
normal. But the whole time, his dad was killing people and stuff, and he was teaching Jasper all about it.”

“We don’t know that,” Connie said with a confidence she neither deserved nor trusted.

“He taught him,” Van shot back just as confidently, though Connie suspected Van’s confidence—deserved or not—was backed up by something more than Connie’s own. “But here’s the thing. Here it is. Look, the whole time his dad was murdering peeps, Jasper seemed normal.”

“You already said—”

“He acted normal. Like nothing was weird at home. Like everything was cool. Get it? His dad was a psycho freakazoid, and Jasper just came to school every day and acted like everything was normal. No one ever knew.” She shook her head. “Acting normal when that kinda shizz is going down at home? When your dad killed your
mom
? That’s
not
normal, Connie.”

The bell rang. Van swore briefly and stumbled out of the stall.

Connie sank onto the commode. She would be written up for being late to her first class, but right now she didn’t care. She had to think.

*****

A
FTER
SCHOOL
, C
ONNIE
CAUGHT
up to Jazz in the parking lot, near his battered old Jeep. Howie was with him. Of course. Where goeth the Lone Ranger, so too goeth Tonto. Sherlock needs his Watson. Batman needs his Robin. And on and on.

She was wearing a modestly cut shirt with a cardigan to cover up, but even with the sweater, there was a little more cleavage than was probably prudent around a horn dog like Howie.

Connie frowned. “Hey, Howie, my eyes are up here, buddy.”

Howie recoiled, as though bitten. “I
know
that! But your
boobs
are down
here
,” he said helpfully, “so that’s why I was looking
there
.”

Connie gave up. Howie, she had to keep reminding herself, was completely harmless. Male or not, bigger or not, stronger or not, he was still a hemophiliac. He could be stopped with a strong hit to the head. If she raked her fingernails down his neck, he’d probably bleed out.

“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.

*****

T
HE
NEXT
WEEK
, C
ONNIE
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 express 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.