I Hunt Killers Neutral Mask (3 page)

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.

*****

W
HEN
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.”

*****

M
UCH
TO
C
ONNIE
’
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.

*****

O
N
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 gobsmacked. 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.

Caught off guard, Connie blinked rapidly and nearly stuttered in response.

“They’re just brown,” she said.

“They’re beautiful.”

“No. Blue or green or even, like, yours, hazel, but brown is just boring. It’s —”

Jazz cocked his head to the left, and something deliciously cold tiptoed up her spine.

“Boring? Are you kidding me?” Without asking, without preamble, he touched his thumb and forefinger to the flesh of her left eye socket, gently holding her eye open. Connie couldn’t tell if the liquid heat that pulsed through her heart was fear or lust, but she realized she didn’t care. She could only stare into Jazz’s eyes, those hazel whirlwinds, coruscating flecks of gold and gray, threaded through with darker shoots like the veins of leaves gone autumnal.

“There’s a gentle blend to them,” Jazz whispered, his voice now low because he was so close that she could feel his words. “They’re not just brown, Connie. They’re
deep
. They’re unchanging and warm, like someone took everything about you and distilled it down into these whirlpools of—”

She lunged at him, grabbing him by the shoulders, and smashed her lips to his.

She was no longer in control of herself. Her heart was. Her soul was. Or maybe her hormones—she didn’t know and didn’t care. She just knew now, in this moment, that Jazz was hers and would be hers and had to be hers.

Or...no. That wasn’t true. Maybe she’d realized it in this moment, in this beautifully sinfully hot kiss, but it had come true in Ginny’s classroom, during Jazz’s neutral mask exercise. She’d fallen in love with him then. Wholly.

No one could produce something so demonstrative, so passionate, so alive, and be a soulless killer. Parents passed down much to their children, true, but she couldn’t believe they passed down madness. The children of alcoholics often never touched a drop of alcohol, for fear they would also fall into a bottle. Jazz, too, would never hurt anyone. She knew it. He would spend his life avoiding even the opportunity to harm someone, for fear of lifting his eyes to a mirror one day and seeing Billy Dent staring back at him.

They broke the kiss. Jazz gasped for breath.

“What was that for?”

“For liking my eyes,” she said, and went into his arms, putting her ear to his chest and finally hearing his strong, strong heart.

“We really should be going,” he murmured. “I should get you home. And my grandmother—”

“In a minute,” she said. She did not relish that eventually she would have to tell her dad that not only was she in love with a white boy, but that he was the son of the local psychopath to boot. Let them have this moment. This respite. The parking lot of Lobo’s Nod High School could be their safe haven for now.

He held her for a while, and then she pulled back and gazed up at him.

“What was going on behind the mask?” she asked. “I have to know. The whole time you were acting, I wanted to see your face.”

Jazz stroked the pads of his fingers along her cheek. She fell into his hazel eyes. He said:

“You did.”

This story, like the other
I Hunt Killers
prequels, grew out of a very natural process. When I started writing the books, I knew that the “present” of the story took place four years after the notorious Billy Dent had been arrested, tried, and convicted. Furthermore, I knew that Billy’s “career” stretched back twenty years, longer than his son had been alive.

This meant that I had a lot of backstory in my head and in my notes as I wrote. Some of it leaked out in dribs and drabs over the course of the trilogy.

Now, one thing authors have to drum into their heads early on is this:
Backstory is not story!
We have a tendency to fall in love with our backstories, which oftentimes leads to terminally dull prologues or extended, boring flashback sequences. It’s easy to forget that the audience cares about the
story
, not the backstory.

But when it came to
I Hunt Killers
, there were bits and pieces of the backstory that I thought would be of interest to readers…as long as they didn’t interfere with the action in the story itself. How did Jazz get his nickname? How did Jazz and Connie fall in love, given the circumstances? These were the sorts of character-driven backstory elements that I thought readers might enjoy.

My solution? This story you’ve downloaded, as well as some others. I hope you agree that they were worth the time!

Called a “YA rebel-author” by
Kirkus Reviews
, Barry Lyga has published novels in various genres in his career, including the
New York Times
bestselling
I Hunt Killers
. His books have been or are slated to be published in a dozen different languages in North America, Australia, Europe, and Asia.