The Book of Masks (Vol. 2)

El Midnight

Previously: "Invitations in the Dark" 

Maria continues to writhe slowly in place before you, grooving to a music she can only hear. With each twist of her torso she draws centimeter by centimeter closer to you. She says she wants you to stay and party with her all night.

But she's not really saying that, is she, not to a guy like you. She's just being a thoughtless flirt.

"I've got a curfew that I really can't break," you stammer, and blush all over as you say it.

There's a hiccup in her shimmy, but she quickly resumes. "What time?"

"My curfew? El— Midnight."

"El Midnight?" Her laugh is like a light hiss. "El Midnight gives us plenty of time to have la mucha fun. Come on." She grabs your wrist, and you almost levitate out of your pants.

* * * * *

The music is pounding inside the Warehouse, so hard it sets your ribcage vibrating.

And that's just in the entryway. When Maria pulls you into the main dance hall, the beat hammers your eardrums so hard they might start geysering blood. Strobe lights explode in the dark, like supernovas, flash-searing your retinas.

The dance hall is a wide, deep space under a high ceiling. It's dark and shadowy between the blinding strobe flashes, save for the bright pool of light on the stage where a DJ is running the sound system. But the floor isn't very crowded—only a few dozen kids, maybe—which gives you and Maria plenty of room to dance with each other.

Not that you know how to dance. You can sort of wriggle on your feet, and swing your shoulders around. But for actual moves, you are stuck trying to mirror Maria, which leaves you feeling (and surely looking) really silly. She shimmies and swivels and dips and whirls like a bolt of living silk—and, anyway, you are too fascinated by her moves to put enough attention into your own. Pretty soon you are only standing in place, rocking feebly from side to side, as you stare in gaping wonder at Maria.

"Come on, you're not trying, Will!" she shouts after you give up even on that. "Here!" She gropes for your hand, and an electric shock jolts through every muscle as she lays your hand on her hip and covers it with her own. "Now give me your other one!" She puts her free hand onto the small of your back, and pushes her boobs into your chest. "Can you remember to breathe?" She has to scream to be heard over the crash of music.

"Hrgh?"

"Just keep in time with the music and with me!" She starts to rock back and forth, pulling you into her rhythm. At first your feet and hips don't want to cooperate, but they gradually loosen.

"That's it!" she says. "Now put a little sub-beat into it! One-and-two-and"—she dips her hips hard on each sub-beat—"three-and-four!"

But you don't care. You're embracing Maria Vasquez, cupping her curves in your hands while she presses herself against you.

* * * * *

You're not on the dance floor long, though. Maybe Maria gets bored, or maybe she has other ideas, but she pulls you out of the dance hall and into a kind of saloon. There's more kids in here, squatting around tables or huddled up inside dumpy booths. Along one side of the room is a makeshift bar behind which some rat-faced teenagers—the kind who hang out at portables and curse at students like you—are selling—

"Buy me a beer?" Maria asks. She is squeezed up close to you still.

"I don't have any— Wait." You feel at your pockets. "I've got a ten. Will that be—?"

"Two cervezas," Maria tells a tall kid in a burgundy t-shirt. He's been watching you and Maria—her with open lust and you with undisguised contempt—and he snorts as he pulls out two cans of Budweiser. He doesn't even hand them to you, just sets them on plank that separates you, and snatches your ten without a word. You don't get any change.

"Hey Will! Maria!" a girl shouts. It's Brianna, who with most of her friends is packed in at a booth. She gestures you over, even though there's clearly no room for more. You shuffle over anyway. Maria feels for you hand, and clasps it.

But you're intercepted on the way over. A tall guy in a red shirt with a lanyard around his neck steps directly in front of you. You have the vague impression that he's a football player, for he's built like one, and he's got the swaggering attitude.

"Where you two headed?" he asks with open insolence.

"Uh. Over there." You point around him. "With our friends."

He stares you down. "Occupancy's exceeded over there. Find another spot to squat."

"What?"

"Hey, Ricardo!" Brianna shouts. "What are you—?"

"Over there," the guy says, and points to the side. "You can sit over there." You glance in the indicated direction. There's a single, small booth in the corner, where a blonde kid is sitting. It's Erik Carstairs, who you know is one of the football players. He's eyeing and smirking at you openly.

You start to protest. "But our friends are over—"

"Rest of the bar is closed. It's over there, or you take it outside." He lifts his chin, and daunts you with a cold glare.

You'd probably melt into a little squirmy puddle of shit, but Maria's warm hand in yours seems to give you courage.

"Then we'll take it outside," you say. You turn to Maria. "Is that okay?"

"I'll hang out with you wherever," she breathes.

You give the bouncer—for such he seems to be—a look, and turn. But he grabs your shoulder and whirls you about. "Can't take this out of the bar," he says, and twists the beer from your hand. "The girl can keep hers if she stays."

Maria gives him a bright, winning smile, and drops her beer on his foot. She pulls you from the saloon. At any moment on the way out you expect to be tackled from behind, and your skin ripples with fear and horror on the long walk to the front door, but nothing happens.

"You did good in there," Maria tells you when you're outside in the parking lot again. Cars are pulling in, and crowds of laughing teens are pushing toward the doors, and no one pays any attention to you or Maria as you trudge out out the other way.

"I should've punched him out," you mutter. You don't know why you say it, and cringe.

"No, you shouldn't have. You know what they do to guys who fight back? They wind up in urgent care."

"Well, I'm not going back in there," you tell her. You come to your truck, and you hang your head. "Thanks for the dance, and I'm sorry I— You can go back in there, have fun, you know. I'll just go home. Brianna and them'll—"

"You're not trying to get rid of me, are you?"

The question stuns you. "N-no. I just— I guess I have to go, but you—"

"I don't want to go back in there. I don't even know why I came out here. I never do." She glances back toward the Warehouse. "Guys like that, it's bad enough back at school, having them all over you." She tosses her head and shrugs.

"Are they all over you at school?"

She gives you a look. "What do you think?"

You know what you think, but the answer wouldn't be polite. Besides, it was clearly a rhetorical question.

"I think," Maria starts to say, then starts over again. "I like the way you treated me tonight. I liked that you weren't all over me. So don't be all over me at school on Monday. Okay?"

"N-no, I won't!"

"I mean," she says, "if I ignore you at school, it isn't because I didn't have fun, and it isn't because I didn't like like you. Or because I don't like you. It's because, well—"

She leans back against your truck and tilts her head up to stare into the sky. Her hair drapes back over her shoulders. "It's because I get enough of it at school. And if you did it too—" She turns to give you a sidelong look. "Then it wouldn't be special."

"What wouldn't be special?" you squeak.

"The special thing between us."

You have to suck in a deep breath, and fight the instinct to crouch and put your face between your knees. "Ohhh-kay!"

Maria laughs "Give me a ride back to Eastman?"

"Really? I mean— Yeah, sure. Um—"

"What?"

"Well, what about the other guys? Who rode out? Is it okay if—"

"Sure. They'll find a way back. No one ever leaves with the person they came with. Unless—" She sways her way around to the other side of the truck. The cab is between you when she leans across to say, "Unless there's a special thing between them."

* * * * *

Maria doesn't want to talk much on the drive back, and you've not a lot to say either, so she fills the ride by softly humming to herself. Not until you're parked at Eastman and she's about to get out does she turn to say something serious to you: "I don't think those guys back there were really happy with you."

"Who?"

"Brianna and them. I mean, you notice they didn't follow us back out into the parking lot, right?"

"Yeah."

"I don't think they're happy with you, Will. You should tell me why some time. I don't know why anyone wouldn't be happy with you. But not back at school, and not in the theater. Okay?"

"The theater?"

"I've seen around there after school. You've seen me there, right?"

"Oh. Yeah."

"Let's hang out someplace else, Monday, after school. I'll text you. Are you on x2z?"

"Yeah. Will Prescott."

"I'll find you, DM you. Thanks, Will." She leans across to softly kiss you on the side of your mouth. "You're a real gentleman."

Next: "The Wilderness" 

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