The Book of Masks (Vol. 2)

Stoned-Cold Stupids

Previously: "Joint Ventures" 

"You're fucking with me," Caleb says when you show him the hair dryer you brought from home. "You're not putting that—"

Into the time capsule? Yes, you are. It's the only thing you could find after a frantic, last-minute search for a substitute. Besides, it's busted. It can either go in the trash or into the time capsule.

It's first period, and you shook Spencer off by saying you had to get to class. Good riddance, he probably thought. Neither of you have ever had much to do with each other.

"And we've got another problem," Caleb continues. "Dane Matthias has detention in here in after school."

"Yeah, I know."

"You know?"

"Sure. What's the big deal?"

Caleb glares. "The big deal is—" He glances around the classroom, which is filling up. "We can't break into his desk," he continues in a low mutter, "while Dane's in here. He'll see and he'll say something."

"Dane won't narc on us."

"It's Dane. He'll get the giggles and Walberg will know something's up. We need a third man for the crew. A desk man, a look out, and someone to distract Dane."

You instantly think of Spencer. Sure, you dropped him like a cigarette butt earlier, but he knows Dane and he would be totally up for this kind of thing.

Except then he might think he had something to hold over you and Caleb. You wouldn't put extortion past Spencer Osbourne.

So you only nod when Caleb pulls out his phone to text Keith Tilley.

* * * * *

It should have been a disaster, but the heist goes off perfectly. You and Keith and Caleb are loitering in the hallway after school lets out, trying to look innocent, when Mr. Walberg comes waddling out of his classroom. Caleb pokes you in the ribs, and you saunter in, to find Dane splayed with glassy-eyed boredom in a desk. He comes alive when you nod at him, though, and turns around to talk to you when you perch in the desk behind. This gives you (but not Dane) a clear view of the front of the room, and of Caleb as he creeps in and disappears behind Walberg's desk. You keep your voice high and loud while he rummages, and it only takes him a minute to reappear, give you a thumb's up, and tiptoe back out. Twenty seconds later, you and he and Keith are running hard for the exits.

"Oh, shee-it," Keith drawls thirty minutes later, after you've rendezvoused inside the basement of the old school near your house. He inhales down to his toes. "That was smooth!"

"It was professional," you agree as you take the joint in turn. The smoke is harsh and acrid as it hits the back of your throat, and it seems to go straight to your brain.

"It was lucky," says Caleb as he takes his turn with the joint.

You were already feeling buzzed as you fell, laughing with relief, into the student parking lot after escaping the school, so you excitedly proposed going to the old "clubhouse" for a few quick, celebratory hits off the doobie that Caleb liberated as he swapped your hair dryer and his thumb drive into Walberg's stash of junk. Your friends eagerly agreed.

"Dude!" Keith groans at Caleb. "You are high if you think—"

"Not yet, I'm not."

"—if you think that was just luck! We should seriously think about turning professional."

"It was just a simple job, Tilley," he says as he passes the joint back to Keith. "Even three monkeys like us could pull it off. We're just lucky we didn't have, uh, bad luck."

Keith cough and hacks at his last hit, and you rescue the joint from him. "We were lucky it was Dane in there, not someone else," you agree as you wet your fingertips and extinguish the burning tip. "I think he was already high or something, I don't think he barely knew I was—"

"What are you putting it out for?" Keith wails.

"That's enough," you say. "I don't wanna be stoned when I get home. Shit, I don't wanna stink like I've been smoking this stuff. Do I smell like weed to you guys?"

"Whole inside of my nose and mouth smells like weed," Caleb says.

"Shit. 'Cos Dane stank of the stuff when—"

"He probably burned half a dozen before going in to detention."

"Fuck. You got any clothes I can borrow?" you ask Caleb. "So I don't smell like—"

"You are high, Prescott," he honks, "if you think I'm gonna strip so you can wear my shit home."

"When are we gonna finish the toke?" Keith asks.

You and Caleb look at each other. "Friday," you say in unison. "Out here," you add. You grin at Keith. "I picked up a second one the other day." Keith's eyes light up, but his face falls when you add, "It'll be your job to supply the beer."

* * * * *

You must not smell so bad that your mom catches a whiff as you race through the kitchen, and you quickly change upstairs and spray your old clothes all over with about half a can of deodorant. Maybe it's the adrenaline and maybe it's the fading buzz from three deep hits off the joint, but you are lightheaded all through dinner. This, you suppose, is what gives you the courage to tell your dad that you can't get the book back. "Sounds like it turned out to be valuable," he dryly observes when you say that the guy refused to part with it for any price. You only shrug and dig back into the mashed potatoes.

That was Wednesday. Friday morning comes, and with it the official burial of the time capsule out behind the music wing. It's a dull exercise—Kelsey Blankenship reads a pompous little speech, and then some of her AP friends get to carry out the actual internment—until you all turn to troop back to the classroom. You jump like you've been poked with a cattle prod when Mr. Walberg himself falls in beside you on the march back. "So tell me, Mr. Prescott," he gruffly inquires, "what are you going to say in your paper?"

"Paper? Uh, sir?"

"The paper you're going to write on your submission. That's what I'm going to announce when we get back to the classroom. That you're all going to write papers on what you put in the capsule."

You think you see a few heads turning in your direction. Apparently the others in the class haven't heard the rumors.

"Uh, I haven't thought about it."

"Then why don't you practice on me?" he says. "Tell me, why did you you choose to put that thing into the time capsule?"

And that's when you realize you're stuck for an answer.

* * * * *

Carson Ioeger claps his hands and howls with laughter. "And what did you say, Prescott?" he asks as he ostentatiously wipes away a tear of mirth. "You miserable little luckless fuck?"

It's lunchtime, and you and Caleb and Keith are eating out front with him and his friends. You wanted to eat in your regular spot, but Caleb insisted on eating with Carson, and himself introduced the awful tale to them with a chortling grin.

"He didn't say anything, did he?" James Lamont suggests. Like Carson, he is stretched on his side. "He shat himself so hard he blew out the seat of his pants, and that's when Walberg said 'Gotchya!' Right?"

"No, the moron tried bluffing his way through," Caleb says. He's laughing along with all the rest. "Right there, on the spot, he tried coming up with some bullshit reason why the future would be interested in his busted old hair dryer—"

"Oh, fuck you guys!" you yell. "It wasn't a bluff! That is what I'm going to write my paper on!"

"I told you," Caleb says, "that he was going to notice the swap. When he went to pack the time capsule. Did you really think he wasn't going to notice that a doobie had disappeared and a hair dryer showed up in its place?"

You flush furiously with anger and embarrassment. "Then why didn't you stop me?"

"I tried. You insisted."

"So what was I supposed to do?"

"Well, clearly, you should have told him you were going to write a paper about putting some weed into the time capsule. Then he wouldn't have known that you knew about the swap, which means that you were the one that broke into his desk."

Which is indeed what he figured out. So now you get to share detention with Dane in Mr. Walberg's classroom for an hour after school, for all of next week. You also have to take home a note to your parents explaining the circumstances of your detention, including the fact that you first tried submitting a joint for the time capsule.

So you are fucked all the way around.

At the least the subject wanders off your humiliation and onto the general subject of weed, how much there is at the school, and who uses. Even Jenny, who is usually too prim for the subject, gossips that Marc Garner—who, she says, is something of a pot head despite his clean-cut looks, AP classes, and athletic build—was stoned out of his head when he came to school this morning, and missed soccer practice. "And he's captain of the squad!"

And you are humiliated anew when you learn that the typical joint does not cost twenty-five dollars, as Spencer told you, but only eight. In other words, you traded that book to him for only a third of what he said he was paying you for it!

* * * * *

That evening you are grounded and grounded hard—no cell phone and no internet, either—so you don't get to hang out with Caleb and Keith at the "clubhouse" to smoke the rest of your micro-stash, and Monday afternoon you troop into Mr. Walberg's room to take detention. At least you get most of your homework done. But as you're leaving—

"Hsst! Prescott!" a voice hisses.

It's Justin Roth, one of the scruffy, shaggy-haired guys who likes to skip classes out by the portables. "Gotta minute?" he asks. And when you shake your head, he shows you a joint. "Trade you this for five minutes of your time."

* To go with Justin: "Portable Bodies" 
* To go home: "Some Ginger and Mary Jane" 

*
"Table of Contents (Vol. 2)" 
"The Book of Masks (Vol. 2)"