The Book of Masks (Vol. 1)

The Prank Pals

Previously: "The Hot Potato" 

Mr. Walberg gets really sarcastic on your ass when you tell him that you forgot your time capsule contribution, but he gives you until the end of the day to find something for him. "Make it good," he adds.

Your plan is to talk to Carson at lunch, but almost you change your mind after two conversations occur in the meantime. The first is with your friend Keith, in second period, when you show him the book and tell him that you're planning to loan it to Carson for a prank against Seth Javits. You think that'll amuse him, but it doesn't. "How's it gonna backfire on me?" he asks.

"It's not gonna backfire on you."

"Fuck you! You remember that shit him and his ass-buddy pulled at the start of school?" Yes, you do: Carson and James glued Javits's books together, but it was Keith who caught the blame.

Then, during a break between classes, Sean Wilcox warns you that Carson's trick is going to lose you the book. "You're not gonna have a book any more, probably," he says, "if you let him use it."

So when you march off to meet Carson for lunch, you are determined to find out what exactly he has planned.

"Never you mind, Prescott," he snaps at you after you've made your demand. "It's not your prank and it's not your business—"

"It is my book," you remind him. "I'm only renting it to you. If I wind up renting it to you, which maybe I won't if you don't tell me what your idea is."

Carson takes a bite of his sandwich, and studies you carefully.

You're sitting out front of the school with him and his friends, on the quad between the main office and the teacher's parking lot. Light traffic is whistling down Borman Avenue. You haven't even broken out your own lunch yet, and you don't break it out now as you bend your full concentration onto Carson. His friend James—who typically partners with Carson in his pranks—stirs uneasily, but doesn't say anything either.

That leaves an opening for Jenny Ashton, also sitting nearby, to insert herself.

"I wish you wouldn't do whatever you've got planned," she tells Carson. "Your pranks have a way of backfiring onto Cindy." Cindy Vredenburg is one of the stuck-up cheerleaders, and is a friend of Jenny's.

"They wouldn't backfire onto Cindy," Carson retorts without taking his eyes off you, "if that douchebag wasn't her boyfriend."

"They wouldn't backfire onto her if you didn't pull them in the first place!"

James jumps in. "How do they backfire onto Cindy?" he asks Jenny.

"They piss Seth off, and he takes it out on her."

"Oooh, domestic abuse," Carson says. "I'm glad you told me. Next time he punches her, tell me, and I can have him arrested."

"I'm not—"

"It'd be for her own good, Ashton."

"He doesn't hit her! It's not abuse!" Jenny shouts. "He just gets pissed off. Naturally. And then he gets snippy with her and—"

"Jesus," Carson groans. "Snippy. Middle school girls get 'snippy,' Ashton. Are you saying that Javits gets snarky and makes little sarcastic comments at Cindy after we prank him?"

"What I'm saying is, why can't you do this prank to Steve or to Gordon? They deserve to get shit at least as much as Seth does. More."

Carson grunts. "They were first on the rota last time. It's Seth's turn now."

"Look," you jump in, "tell me what the prank is. I wanna know if—"

"Tilley's not gonna get hurt—"

"And I've got another buyer lined up for it. Maybe. I don't want lose the book if I can—"

"For how much?" Carson asks.

"What? Oh. Thirty dollars."

Carson sucks on a tooth and looks at James. James shrugs.

"I'll buy the book from you for thirty," Carson tells you. "I'll match this other guy's price. And if the prank goes off, I'll sell it back to you for twenty. How's that?"

"Ten," you counteroffer. "And you tell me what the prank is."

"Twenty," Carson repeats, "and you don't ask questions. It's safer for you that way, Prescott," he adds when you open your mouth to argue. "You're paying an extra ten for peace of mind."

"Alright," you grumble. "But I still need a thing to put in the time capsule if I'm going to loan you the book."

"Sell, Prescott," he corrects you "Sell and buy back. And the book was a stupid thing to put in anyway. But—" he adds, and glances around the circle. His eyebrows work.

"Buy it back from me for the full thirty," he says after a moment's thought, "and I'll give you a thing for the time capsule that Walberg will spazz over."

* * * * *

You have to hand it to Carson, it was a smart idea for the time capsule, though he had to explain it to you. Mr. Walberg himself gives you a very skeptical look when you hand the item off to him at the start of seventh period, and he only grunts when you give him the short version of Carson's explanation. But something in his manner suggests that, although you may not have hit a home run, you have hit a solid double and maybe even a triple. Considering how sarcastic he was with you this morning, that by itself is a huge win.

You're even more relieved when Caleb passes along a rumor he heard that Mr. Walberg will be requiring you and the class to write a short paper about your submissions. That's when the genius of Carson's idea really comes home, for such a paper—as he explained it to you—would practically write itself.

You are even off the hook with your dad when, the next evening, he asks you where that book went, for he has noticed that it disappeared from his office. He looks impressed when you tell him that you took it to school to give it (you are careful not to say "sold it") to Carson. "Yeah, I told him about it, and he sounded interested—"

"You think he'll be able to figure it out?" your dad asks.

"I think so. I bet so. He's real smart."

"Well, let me know how it works out," your dad says, "and what he found inside if he manages to get it open."

The real beauty, though, is that if Carson does lose the book, it'll be his fault, and you can blame it on him!

And as it turns out, Carson's prank does backfire on him, just as Sean Wilcox foretold.

* * * * *

It's a week before you find that out, though, from an angry and shame-faced Carson, and it only comes out when you press him over it. You're out front of the school, eating lunch with him and his friends again, and you remember to thank him for giving you the idea for your time capsule submission.

"What was it?" Jenny asks.

"Package of cupcakes. Out of the vending machine front of the office. The future'll find out if they actually kept for a hundred years. All those preservatives."

"I thought you and Johansson dug them out," James says as Carson makes no reply.

"No, it was his thumb drive we dug back up. You know, I didn't even think about that," you add. "I should'a taken those cupcakes out too while we were in there. I was hungry. That was fun," you add.

Well, it seems like fun now. Last Friday night, when you helped Caleb dig up the time capsule so he could swap out a thumb drive full of porn for a thumb drive full of nothing, it seemed like a real pain. "You should'a come along," you tell James and Carson.

And because digging up the time capsule now feels like a prank, you are now reminded of the prank that Carson meant to pull. "Oh, hey, that reminds me," you tell him. "Did you do that thing to Seth yet?"

Your question is met with silence, and you notice that even James looks a little embarrassed. "Did you?" you ask.

"It didn't go off," Carson says. "And, uh, you can't have the book back."

"Why not?" You don't especially want it back—you'd have to buy it back, and you'd rather have the money—but you're curious about the prank.

"It didn't work out," Carson says.

"So where's the book?"

"I suppose Seth has it," James says.

"What? What happened?"

What happened, Carson confesses in a voice tight with anger, is that the book disappeared before the prank could be pulled off. He had taken it into the main office to show Mr. Sagansky, the principal, and had shown it to a few other teachers, telling them it was a rare antique and worth hundreds of dollars, while being careful not to let them see that only the cover would open. Then he had snuck it into Seth's locker. (How he knew the combination, he didn't say.) The plan was to tell the administration that Seth had stolen it off them, and to lead them to the locker where they would find it. And then, when they examined it, they'd find that the pages were glued shut, so that Seth would be on the hook both for theft and for defacement of valuable property.

Well, that was the plan, and he did put it into effect. But when Seth's locker was searched, the book was gone. Upshot: Carson himself now has a black mark against his name in the administration's books.

That's too bad, you suppose, but it doesn't really bother you. Thanks to the deal you struck, you're thirty dollars richer.

And that seems like the end of it.

But it isn't.

Because the following Friday, Jenny comes looking for you in one of your classes. "Hey, you remember that book Carson used in that, uh, project?" she asks you. "It was yours originally, right?"

"Yeah."

"I thought so. Cindy wants to talk to you about it."

Cindy? you think. Cindy Vredenburg? The cheerleader? Your heart ricochets around in your chest. Sure! you almost yelp.

But Cindy is also Seth Javits's girlfriend. So there's another voice shouting inside your head:

It's a trap!

Next: "Cindy's Story" 

*
"Table of Contents (Vol. 1)" 
"The Book of Masks (Vol. 1)"