by Ameriie
The mask itself is one of the things I love most about Adam’s story. The imagery and the history behind it drew me in, while simultaneously repelling me with its grotesqueness. Paired with the narrative, Slate’s physical mask points toward the metaphorical masks that we ourselves wear. Everyone puts on façades at certain times for various reasons. Whether to exert a sense of professionalism when dealing with customers, or to display our very best side on a first date, we use different masks to present different sides of ourselves to those around us.
However, the way in which we are perceived isn’t solely dependent on our own individual output. We can’t always manipulate how others see us, as often there are also societal expectations and assumptions that come into play. But when you actively choose to put on a mask that has certain meanings, you can subvert or control how other people see you.
Slate undermines those expectations. Her scar-covered face does not fall within the prescribed ideas of “beauty” as defined by our present culture. Nor does the mask of rotted flesh she wears to cover those very scars. Slate’s mask’s purpose is not to fit in and conform to societal beauty standards and present an idealized image of the female face. The mask is Slate’s face. It is the image people recognize as belonging to the crime lord. Rather than attract, it repels and disgusts people. Most importantly, it is a trophy that also embodies Slate’s strength and control. Furthermore, Slate does not act like your typical eighteen-year-old girl. (I can’t say that I know any teen crime lords, but then again they wouldn’t reveal their identity to me.) She certainly acts in . . . questionable ways, which is what I find so fascinating. Slate is ruthless and unforgiving, having been hardened and shaped into a calculating and resourceful villain with really creative ways of obtaining what she desires without getting her hands dirty. But most of all, I love how she is her own knight in rusty armor. She doesn’t want or need saving from anyone, and she wears a mask all her own.
SO WHAT DOES YOUR MASK SAY ABOUT YOU?
Hero or villain, you must hide your identity when you are saving the world or trying to destroy it. You look at the masks lined up side by side. Your fingers trace a smooth jawline as you decide which will be your new face. You hesitate for a second before ultimately going with your gut instinct. You fasten the mask to your face. Was it . . .
THE EYE MASK
Some say the eyes are the windows to the soul, and you like to let people in . . . but only a little. You allow others to learn a bit of your deepest self before they get to truly know the everyday you. Maybe it’s a way to repel people from the start, to not get hurt down the track. Or maybe you are too afraid to open up to people on your own, so you give them the opportunity to look and see for themselves.
THE ANIMAL MASK
There is something within you that you are desperate to hide. Unfortunately, it isn’t so deep down that others can’t see it, so you wear the face of an animal just in case. If you slip up or reveal too much, you can blame it all on the beast. You are just in character, you say, merely playing a part . . . that’s all.
THE LACE/HALF-FACE MASK
You like to intrigue people and keep them on their toes. You maintain an air of mystery that only serves to entice people. They feel like they know you from the half-clear view they can see, but they don’t quite realize that you’re masking so much more beneath the thin veil covering your face.
THE ANONYMOUS MASK
You are a natural leader and like to control how others perceive you. More than that, you know how to influence how people see you, and this mask does the job just right. Perhaps it is the face of another, or perhaps it is a representation of one of your own many faces. Either way, you aren’t hiding behind the mask, merely using it to force people’s gaze.
THE PAINTED FACE
You are comfortable with who you are, and by manipulating the paint, you can highlight and accentuate the traits you want the world to see, front and center. No matter how vibrant or abstract that layer of color, it is entirely and completely you.
JULIAN BREAKS EVERY RULE
BY ANDREW SMITH
THIS IS NOT SPERM DAY
Steven Kemple would not die.
Maybe Steven Kemple wouldn’t die because I knew his real name. So every time I think of him, it’s always Steven Kemple, Steven Kemple, Steven Kemple. All my other victims—Crazy Hat Lady, Camaro Douchebag, Unfriendly Bicycle Meth Head—I just kind of naturally made up their names. This was Iowa, after all, and anonymity here was as rare as an ocean breeze. I preferred not to know anything at all about the strangers who lived on the streets around my house, especially the ones I’d killed.
Everyone else knew everything about everyone. That’s how small towns like Ealing are: we all go to the same church and the same school, shop at the same market, fire up the barbecues on the same days, shovel the same snow, step in the same dog shit.
And I hated Steven Kemple.
You probably already hate Steven Kemple, too, at least a little bit. You kind of hate the way his name sounds. And I haven’t even told you anything about Steven Kemple yet—about the oatmeal thing, or how he’d handcuffed me in my underwear to a drinking fountain when we were in middle school, or the party I had.
Who knows? Maybe Steven Kemple will die at the end of this story—which may or may not be foreshadowing.
Don’t skip ahead.
But the fucker would not die.
Last week—this was in biology class at Hoover High—my best friend, Denic, told me this: “You know what I hate most of all about you, Julian? You can break any rule and nobody gives a shit. You could fucking murder someone right here at school, and all the teachers would be like, ‘So what if Julian killed someone? We all love Julian.’ ”
In many ways, Denic was right. Also, it’s okay for guys to hate certain things about their best friends, like if you had a friend who was really, really good-looking and confident around girls, or if your friend, like me, could get away with anything.
I had always been like that—the getting-away-with-things part, not the confident and good-looking thing. I can’t explain it. I’d hate it, too, if I weren’t me. But you’re not allowed to. Your job is to hate Steven Kemple.
I’ll bet that just now, when I said “Steven Kemple,” it was like someone poked a rusty knitting needle slowly through your eyeball and into the center of your brain. And you’re probably, like, Man! I sure hope Julian kills Steven Kemple soon.
Because I’m like that. Denic didn’t know how right he was when he said I could get away with murder.
Oh, one more thing about saying names: “Denic” is pronounced “Dennis.” Don’t ask me why, even though now you’ll probably need to go back and reread the last page so you can erase the “De-Nick” or whatever your stabbed brain has been narrating to you. You’d have to ask Denic’s parents why his name is spelled that way. After all, they named him.
So, that day in Mr. Kang’s biology class when Denic griped about my talent for getting away with anything—and let’s face it, it really is a kind of superpower—we were doing a lab involving looking at epithelial cells, which was extremely gross and awkward because our lab group included Kathryn Huxley and Amanda Flores, who were easily the most all-around-together tenth-grade girls at Hoover. I’d never had the guts to talk to either of them, being the skinny loser that I was, and now here we were, thrust together in a compulsory assignment where we would have to discuss tissue samples harvested from our own bodies.
Like I said, it was gross and awkward.
Talking about my own personal epithelial tissue in front of Kathryn Huxley and Amanda Flores was every bit as humiliating as being handcuffed to a public drinking fountain in my underwear in the middle of Bloomer Park, which is something I know about but, naturally, did not get in trouble for.
Nothing, on the other hand, could deflate Steven Kemple’s self-image.
Steven Kemple, whom I hated immensely and who also would not die, was our fifth lab partner.
Kath
ryn Huxley was horrified. “He can’t actually expect me to do that!”
The “he” was Mr. Kang, and the “that” was scraping the insides of our cheeks (the ones on our faces) with a toothpick to goop out some of our epithelial tissue, which we would then smear like butter onto a glass slide and examine under the microscope.
“I’ll do it,” Steven Kemple said. Then he hooked an index finger inside his cheek and began mowing his flesh with the toothpick as he drooled and spluttered something barely intelligible that included the words “volunteer” and “sperm day.”
I was disgusted by two things: first, that Steven Kemple would openly talk about his own sperm in front of Kathryn Huxley and Amanda Flores—while he had his hands in his mouth, no less—and second, the size of the tissue sample Steven Kemple extracted from his face. It looked like a pale, miniature leg of lamb.
Amanda Flores’s mouth curled down so tightly it was almost like she could turn her face inside out.
Denic leaned in to inspect the object at the end of Steven Kemple’s toothpick and said, “Dude. Did you just give birth?” Then Denic added, “Hey! That’s a piece of oatmeal.”
Steven Kemple rotated his wrist like he was a jeweler holding a rare diamond. “Yeah. It is oatmeal. From yesterday. I had waffles today.”
I could have vomited, but it would have been too embarrassing in front of Kathryn Huxley and Amanda Flores.
Then Steven Kemple pointed his mouthbaby at me and said, “We should use some of Powell’s.”
Here’s another reason why I hated Steven Kemple: to Steven Kemple, all boys were last names. To Steven Kemple, life itself was a continuous gym class. But the thing Steven Kemple did next was why he should have died that day, because anyone else who did it would have.
Steven Kemple wiped his day-old mouthbaby oatmeal on my left shoulder.
But Steven Kemple didn’t die.
He could have swigged a pint of antifreeze and the fucker would not die.
You hate him, don’t you?
CRAZY HAT LADY
Let me explain.
Crazy Hat Lady was the first.
Crazy Hat Lady used to yell at me for running past her yard and making her dogs bark at me. Did you notice I referred to Crazy Hat Lady in past tense? Yeah, that’s major foreshadowing, too.
Of course I did not know Crazy Hat Lady’s real name. But she always wore hats, and I assumed she was crazy because there was never any reason for her to get mad and thrash her arms wildly and yell at me just because her stupid dogs barked at me whenever I ran by.
I like to run.
Present tense, so you know everything ends with running shoes and a pulse for me.
The incident with Crazy Hat Lady happened two years before Steven Kemple talked about “sperm day” in Mr. Kang’s biology class at Hoover High. Denic and I, who’ve been friends since we were in kindergarten, were tough-guy eighth graders, about to be liberated from Henry A. Wallace Middle School.
Iowans like to name their schools after prominent politicians who came from Iowa, as if to assert to the rest of the world that Iowa exists, and people who are not actually invisible come from there. Don’t Google Henry A. Wallace. He was a vice president.
A dirt path through vacant fields connects the street I live on with Onondaga Street, which runs straight down to the creek I like to run along. The path also goes right next to Crazy Hat Lady’s (former) house. That day, as usual, Crazy Hat Lady’s two dogs—a long-haired wiener dog and an overweight shepherd–chow mutt—were behind a low cedar fence, running around like crazed convicts in Crazy Hat Lady’s front yard. And that day, as usual, Crazy Hat Lady’s dogs launched themselves into a hysteria of agonized barking when I came running up through the field.
Crazy Hat Lady opened her front door, flailing her arms at me.
“Why do you have to run here? Look at what you do to my dogs! Leave us alone! How dare you do this to us!”
She wore a leopard-print pillbox hat with a black mesh net that looked like one of those sacks you buy tangerines in, and a black pheasant feather spearing out of its top.
I never answered her. I felt her line of interrogation was more rhetorical than inquisitive.
But that day, just as I cleared the field and came out onto Onondaga, two things happened: first, Crazy Hat Lady’s mutt scaled the short wooden fence around her front yard; and second, our local state trooper, Clayton Axelrod, rounded the corner in his patrol vehicle. So he saw everything.
The dog ran at me.
Crazy Hat Lady ran for her dog.
“Leave my dogs alone!”
I caught a glimpse—but only a glimpse—of her arms flailing as though she were attempting to extinguish invisible flames bursting from the top of her leopard-print pillbox hat.
The dog clamped his yellow teeth on my left wrist.
I realized something at just that moment: when a dog is biting you, shaking its head frantically as though attempting to remove a mouthful of flesh, it makes you really want to live. So I was kind of grateful—but only momentarily—to the dog for making me aware of just how much I loved my life.
“Leave my dog alone, you little prick!” Crazy Hat Lady yelled.
I slid my free hand inside the dog’s collar and twisted. The dog began choking.
I think at that moment, because of a lack of oxygen, Crazy Hat Lady’s dog realized how much he loved his life, too. In fact, there was so much love of life going on there on that morning beside the creek it was almost as though the dog and I had gone on a weekend retreat to one of those motivational seminars for depressed businessmen.
Trooper Axelrod got out of his vehicle.
Crazy Hat Lady, who ran very slowly, flailed and yelled, “Get the fuck away from my dog, you piece of shit!”
Trooper Axelrod, who wore very nice, shiny leather gloves, managed to grab the dog by the scruff of his ample neck fur. The dog unclamped from my bloody wrist, and Trooper Axelrod said, “Okay. You can let go of him.”
As soon as I untwisted my right hand from the dog’s collar, the fucker bit me again.
Thanks, Trooper Axelrod.
That was when Crazy Hat Lady finally caught up to us, yelling at Trooper Axelrod and me to get the fuck away from her dogs and her house.
I ended up with my mom and dad in the emergency room. I got four stitches and a tetanus shot in the left cheek of my pale, skinny butt, which everyone in the room, including the doctor, a nurse, Trooper Axelrod, my mother, and my father, looked at. I hated Crazy Hat Lady and her stupid dogs so much. And right when the needle was going in, that was when it happened for the first time. I thought, I wish Crazy Hat Lady would die. Wishes, like the thought of death, are almost always foreshadowing, and I wanted her dead. You might think that’s an intense overreaction to the situation. But not me. Death was called for, in my opinion.
My day was ruined, but probably not as much as Crazy Hat Lady’s would be, which is major foreshadowing.
In Ealing, a town where nothing ever happens and anyone who doesn’t live here is only passing through—either in one direction toward Waterloo or Cedar Falls, or in the other direction, toward Iowa City—there is a gas station/peanut-brittle-and-venison-jerky shop/petting zoo called Bill and Carol’s. The peanut brittle and deer jerky are not made there, even though the owners pretend that they are, and the petting zoo is the dumbest thing I have ever seen in my life. All the animals except three have died. The three animals in the Bill and Carol’s Peanut Brittle and Jerky Petting Zoo that are still alive are a desert tortoise, a Chihuahua with three legs, and a twenty-four-foot-long Malaysian reticulated python. The python would not eat the tortoise because of its shell, and the Chihuahua is very nimble, more so than the other animals that used to be part of the zoo’s collection.
So that day, at approximately the same time that my naked thirteen-year-old butt was being stared at by my mom and dad and a bunch of strangers in the emergency room of Ealing’s Angel of Mercy Lutheran Hospital, Bill and Carol’s twenty-fo
ur-foot-long Malaysian reticulated python, which was named Eddie, escaped from their woeful petting zoo and made its way down Onondaga Street, into Crazy Hat Lady’s front yard.
Naturally, Crazy Hat Lady’s long-haired wiener dog barked, yapped, and flung glistening strands of saliva. The other dog—the one that had bitten me—had been carted off to the dog pound to think about what he’d done for forty-eight hours. But Crazy Hat Lady, on hearing the commotion in her yard, assumed that the annoying runt who liked to torment her poor dogs had come back, running on the path beside her yard, which is what the little fucker liked to do.
She was wearing a lavender cloche with what looked like a bow tie pinned to its band. Her big mistake, besides choosing a green frock, was making an attempt to wrestle her long-haired wiener dog away from Eddie, who coiled his elm tree of a body around and around and around Crazy Hat Lady.
When I read about what had happened on Onondaga Street, I felt a little bit guilty, but only a little. Had I caused it by sheer will? Yeah, pretty sure I had.
Over the next two years, after what happened to the others—Camaro Douchebag, Unfriendly Bicycle Meth Head, Perverted Angry Substitute Teacher, and a few others—I came to recognize the fact that I was Ealing Iowa’s Little Angel of Death. It only took one little trespass on their part, and I would think, You should die, Camaro Douchebag, or Unfriendly Bicycle Meth Head, or whoever—and not just die, but die in the most strangely unpredictable manner imaginable, like death by space junk, for example, which is what hit Perverted Angry Substitute Teacher when he was driving in his convertible Fiat, which is a fleet vehicle for perverts.
Every last one of them died. I didn’t ask why or how I controlled their fates.
I just did.
Which is why I couldn’t for the life of me figure out why Steven Kemple would not die.
DON’T BE AN IDIOT, JULIAN
The Friday after Steven Kemple pulled something big enough to deserve a name and birth certificate from his mouth and smeared it on my Herbert Hoover High School cross-country team polo shirt in Mr. Kang’s biology class, Mom and Dad went to Minneapolis for three days.