The Fullback and His Best Friend by Maggie Dallen & Maggie Dallen

Author:Maggie Dallen & Maggie Dallen
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Maggie Dallen

ELEVEN

DEREK

I followed behind Olivia, leaving the skeeball game halfway through because I had to know what she was up to. When I caught up to her, she was finishing up a purchase, and she spun around with a wicked grin that made my heart slam against my ribcage.

“What is that?” I asked, nodding to the piece of plastic in her hand.

She held out a mask. A cheap, half-mask of the Joker. With her other hand she was already slipping on another mask of her own. A ridiculous old-school masquerade style mask that covered her eyes and nose but revealed that wide, gorgeous grin. “You want to be anonymous, Derek? Let's be anonymous.”

I laughed in disbelief, but she was totally serious.

I slipped on my mask as she pulled out her phone.

“What are you doing?”

“Just telling Collette that we’re bailing early.”

I tensed. “You don’t have to leave your friends⁠—”

“You are my friend, too,” she said. She looked up with a smile. “I’ll see them all at school tomorrow, anyway. I say we take the rest of the day for us.”

My heart was going to combust. She was doing this for me. All of it. Her friends were great but...yeah. I could feel their curiosity every time anyone talked to me. And the mall was fine—it was just your average mall—but anytime I was in big crowds, I got paranoid that people might recognize me.

I slipped the mask on and reached for her hand. When she took my hand and tugged me out into the crowded mall, this time with the anonymity of a mask, I wished I had the words to thank her. Not just for the mask, but for getting it. For understanding me. And for liking me, even when I was just Dorky Derek.

“Come on.” She squeezed my hand, and I laughed.

I laughed a ton, actually, as we slipped in and out of shops, picking out weird novelty items and T-shirts with funny sayings in an unspoken competition to see who could make the other crack up more.

Through it all, I held her hand, and she didn’t try to pull away.

Maybe it was the anonymity of this stupid mask, or maybe it was the way she’d opened up to me back there in the arcade, but I felt like myself again. How messed up was it that it took wearing a mask to feel like I was me?

But the more I thought about it, I began to realize that, no, it wasn’t the mask.

It was her. It was all Olivia.

She grinned at me as she held up a T-shirt of Baby Yoda wearing a Santa hat. “I need this.”

“Christmas is over,” I reminded her.

She made a tsking sound. “Christmas is never over. Where’s your spirit?”

“Oh, sorry Mrs. Claus,” I said. “I didn’t realize you celebrated year-round.”

She was giggling as she held it up to me like she was checking the size. “Yup, you need this. Try it on.”

I complied way too quickly, whipping off my mask and slipping the T-shirt over the one I was already wearing.

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