For once, I didn’t think Jackson was kidding, and I agreed with him.

Twenty-Nine

“So where are we going, Moore?”

“What time do you have to be back?” I asked.

“My curfew is midnight.”

“Then I want to go everywhere I’ve ever wanted to go.”

He laughed. “Not sure if we can accomplish that very general goal in three hours.”

“No, it’s actually quite specific. Every time I’ve wanted to go somewhere but have been stuck because I didn’t have a car. That’s where we are going tonight.”

“So Disneyland from when you were five?”

“No, I just mean since I’ve had a license. So the last ten months.”

“Got it. Sounds awesome.”

“First stop.” I pulled into the 7-Eleven parking lot.

“Seven-Eleven?”

“Have you ever gotten a craving so bad that you still remember it ten months later?”

He raised his eyebrows at me in the teasing way he had. “Yes, I have.”

I hit his arm. I really couldn’t tell if he treated me differently than he did everyone else or not. “Stop teasing me. I’m on a mission.”

“Wait, we can’t tease on this mission?”

I didn’t answer, just got out of the truck. When he caught up with me, I said, “There’s a corner gas station right up the street from our house that I can walk to, but they do not carry everything.”

“Am I about to find out your favorite drink so I can own you?”

“You could only own me if I didn’t know where it was sold.”

“Not true. We just established that this drink is only gettable by car. You, my friend, don’t have one of those.”

“It doesn’t matter, I’ve given it up.” I cut through the candy aisle and headed to the back.

“You’ve given up your favorite drink?”

“I’ve given up sugar.”

“So why are we here?”

I reached the Slurpee machine, grabbed a cup, and went straight for the lime. “Because tonight we’re breaking all the rules.” I smiled at him as I filled the cup. “You see, Jackson, the smart people who live somewhere warm have a favorite drink that is cold.”

“That does sound more practical.” He snatched the now-full cup from me. “Well, it’s my turn to buy since you’re a drink ahead of me.”

“No, mine were payback.”

He just headed for the register. After paying and on our way back to the truck, I remembered something from the letter I got with the mask. “So just anyone can nominate anyone to wear the mask?”

“No, it has to be someone who has worn the mask before.”

We climbed into the truck and buckled our seat belts.

“Huh. So who nominated me?” I took a long sip of my drink.

“Technically, I’m not supposed to tell you.”

I stuck the key in the ignition. “But . . . ?”

“But I will.”

I waited, and when he didn’t say anything, I turned toward him with raised eyebrows.

“It was Pool Boy.”

“What?” I asked, confused.

“I really didn’t know you very well at the time or Pool Boy, so I thought his claimed fear of body image issues was real, but later, after I got your DM about how I should stay away from the pool . . .” He smiled at that memory. “After I learned Pool Boy’s relationship to you, I realized the fear was probably a lie.”

“His relationship to me . . . ?”

Jackson waited for me to come to the realization, and when I finally did, I gasped. “Pool Boy is Robert? Robert ruined my race. What a . . .”

“Jerk? Yeah. I normally wouldn’t tell the nominee about the nominator, but since I’m pretty sure that whole stunt had nothing to do with his fear and he only did it to mess with you, I just wanted to make sure you knew . . . in case . . . I don’t know . . . you were thinking about getting back together with him or something.” He held my gaze.

“You think I was thinking about getting back together with him?”

“I saw you two in the hall the other day and . . .” He shrugged. “You looked kind of cozy.”

He was noticing me in the hall with other guys? “We’re not getting back together.” I should’ve been even more mad right now at Robert for ruining my race that night over a month ago, but I found that I really was over it, over him. Wasting energy on him seemed pointless.

“I knew you were smarter than that.”

“Sometimes I am. Obviously not in the figuring-out-the-Heath-Hall-mystery department.”

“Nobody figures it out until the mask ends up in their possession.”

I took another long drink, my throat going cold, my jaw aching with the sugar. It tasted amazing.

Jackson laughed. “That good, huh?”

“What? Did I make a noise?”

“The kind that said sugar was back in your life to stay.”

“Funny.” I propped the drink between my knees and started the truck. “How did the whole Heath Hall thing start anyway? Do you know? The social media account was established five years ago. That’s why I thought it was someone older, like DJ.”

“Did you want Heath Hall to be the dreamy DJ?”

“No. I didn’t.” I wanted him to be you. That’s what I should’ve said, but I still didn’t quite know where we stood. We were firmly in friend territory and I couldn’t tell if he wanted to be more than that. I pulled out of the parking lot.

“How did it start? Well, legend is that someone dressed up as Heath for Halloween one year. Obviously someone with some money to throw around because they got the best-quality mask ever. If you remember, that was the year the first Heath Hall movie came out and it opened big.”

“Take Down.”

“That’s the title of the movie, right? I’ve never actually seen it.”

I laughed. “You, the caretaker of Heath Hall this year, have never seen how he came to be?”

“I know. It’s a tragedy. But anyway, I guess there was this car full of people driving around that Halloween night and there was an attempted carjacking. Some guy with a gun came up to the window and tried to force everyone out of the car. So Heath Hall, well, the person dressed up as him, was driving in a car behind theirs and got out and tackled the guy, disarmed him, then left before anyone knew who he was. It kind of became this legend after that. I don’t know if someone else got a different mask and started passing it around or if the original guy thought he would give other people a chance to face a fear while wearing the mask or maybe that whole story was just made up by the person who thought of the idea, but whatever the case, that’s the history.”

“How come I’ve never heard that story?”

“Because it happened in a completely different city over five years ago. Heath Hall has traveled from there to here.”

“How do you know all that, then?”

“The story gets passed on to the keeper of the mask. I guess it’s supposed to make us want to be noble or keep the secret or I’m not really sure, but it works.”