The Book of Masks (Vol. 3)

Hustled and Bustled

Previously: "The Coward's Way Out" 

Caleb has disappeared inside the school by the time you get a parking spot, so you have to catch up to him inside Mr. Walberg's classroom. You find him slouched in his desk with a sour expression on his puss.

He doesn't look like he wants to hear about you and a girl, so you tell him about Friday night instead. "Fuckin' weirdest thing happened to me last Friday," you open as you drop into your own seat.

"What? You got laid?"

"No! Fuck you! Although on Saturday I—! Okay, but I think I almost got lucky with Chelsea Cooper!" You waggle your eyebrows meaningfully at him.

"That wouldn't have been weird. That would have been fucking psychotic. On her part."

You snort. "Yeah, well, she called me up Friday night. Lemme say that again. Chelsea. Fucking. Cooper. Called me up Friday night." You can't help gloating as Caleb's frown deepens. "And get this. She called me up to the fuck room. The fuck room! Her and me. Alone. There. Late on a Friday night!"

You can tell that Caleb is about to say something really cutting. But then his eye flicks to something behind you, and a glimmer of fear shows in it. You feel a bead of sweat pop out on the back of your head, and you get the sudden sense that something horrible, like a panther or a python, is creeping up behind you, fixing its awful eyes on you. You glance back.

Jonas Martin, one of the thuggish basketball players, is giving you a hard, gimlet-eyed glare.

Shit! Did he hear what you were saying? Because if he did, and he repeats it to Gordon Black, Chelsea's bad-tempered boyfriend, you won't just be dead, you'll be positively massacred.

"Yeah, it was one of those really good dreams," you stammer as you turn back to Caleb. "You know, the kind you can't help having when—" Frantically, you gesture him to follow you as you lurch to your feet.

You're outside, at a corner of the school where no one can overhear, when you resume.

"Okay, seriously, cards on the table," you tell Caleb in your soberest tones. "I really did get a call from Chelsea on Friday night, and she really did ask me up into that, um, clubhouse of their's. But, you know, nothing else happened."

"Yeah," Caleb drawls. "I'm so glad you're asking me to believe only two impossible things instead of three." But his expression is hard and his stare unwinking.

"But she wasn't making any sense," you continue. "She had some kind of problem, and she was asking me to help fix it. But— Well, here's one part I don't understand, but maybe you can clear it up for me."

You glance around, you don't know why, feeling as though you're about to impart an important confidence to Caleb.

"You know that book I sold you, the one I found in the used book store?" you say. He looks startled. "Well, she had it up there with her. Did you sell it to her or something?"

Caleb goes deathly white and grabs you by the shoulders. He hauls you off in back of the Agricultural Annex, where no one is likely to hear or even see you.

* * * * *

Caleb insists on hearing your whole story, from beginning to end, top to bottom, even after the tardy bell has rung, and grouses that he really wishes you'd told him about it over the weekend. He seems particularly fascinated by your account of that statue of Gordon, and about how (according to Chelsea) Gordon "did something" to himself.

But he won't explain why he's so fascinated, and he won't say anything about how Chelsea came to have that book. Instead, he just keeps mumbling that We need to get up there while glaring off into space. "Dude," you finally complain, "you haven't told me what's going on!"

"Because it doesn't concern you, Prescott," he snaps back. "Remember, you said you didn't want anything to do with it?"

"I don't even know what 'it' is!"

"Good. Just keep telling yourself that ignorance is bliss."

It's bullshit, you want to retort. "You got something going on with Chelsea and Gordon?"

"What? No! What would I—? Listen, you need to get back to class," he advises with a clap to your shoulder. "Come find me in the library before you go to second, bring me my shit."

"Where are you going?"

"To the library. I've got some research to do."

"Who the fuck do you think you are, ordering me around?"

"I know exactly who I am," he retorts in a very annoyed voice. Then he fixes you with a shrewd glance. "And I'm pretty goddamned sure I know who you are too," he adds.

* * * * *

He won't say tell you anymore, and he practically frog-marches you back into the school with the reminder to bring him his stuff when class is out.

Mr. Walberg pauses when you reenter the room, and gives you the silent treatment until you are settled in your desk, before he asks you for a tardy slip. When you say you don't have one, he orders you to the office to collect one.

So, with one thing and another, by the time it's done, you might as well have skipped first period entirely. You're in a black mood when you find Caleb, to hurl his bag at him. He hardly notices as it flops with a thud onto the table in front of him, for he is entirely absorbed in his cell phone. "And don't expect me to eat lunch with you today, cocksucker!" you snarl, but he just waves you off. You storm off to second period, mouthing more obscenities as you go.

Caleb doesn't bother to show up to fourth period, either, and you are so preoccupied with his assholery that you forget entirely to look for Rachel, even though she's in that class. In fact, it's not until after class ends, and you're standing in the doorway waiting for Keith to join you, that you glance back into the room and spot her. Shit! you think. I should to ask her if—

But before you can duck back inside to invite her to lunch, a meaty hand grabs you by the shoulder and spins you around. You only have to time to gasp a quick Erp! at the sight of Gordon Black—that slab of bad-tempered muscle—glowering down at you before he grabs you again and thrusts you through the hallway before him, using you like the blade of a snowplow to barrel your way through the crowds.

It's a long trip, which gives you plenty of time to crap yourself, as he pushes you past the main office, the cafeteria, and out the double doors onto the breezeway that leads to the student parking lot. But then he steers you sideways, into the gym. At least we're not going to the portables, you think with a gulp. So it can't be that bad. Unless he wants someplace super-private to—

You almost faint on your feet as you recollect what you said to Caleb in first period, in front of Jonas Martin. That bastard must have blabbed to Gordon, and now Gordon is taking you off to a quiet, private spot, out of sight of teachers, administrators, and the rest of the student body, to go sick-medieval on your ass.

Mounting the steps to the fuck room is like mounting the steps to a scaffold.

At the top, on the short landing, Gordon bangs a meaty fist against the fuck room door. It flies open, and Chelsea appears before you. Her face is grim and unsmiling as she thrusts something blue at your face ...

* * * * *

You wake to consciousness with a hard gasp, and look around. You're find you're outside, on the grass, behind the portables—those old, crate-like buildings that are slowly falling apart behind the school. There's no one else around, and no voices. No sign of Gordon, either. Your bag is by your hand.

Slowly you get to your feet, and feel yourself all over for damage. You seem to be whole, with nothing broken or bruised. In fact, you don't feel so much as a scratch on you, and nowhere do you hurt.

I should be a battered, broken heap, you think. And I should have felt every punch. Did you shit yourself unconscious, and frighten Gordon into dropping you outside the school? That would be mortifying. Though maybe better than the alternative.

You pick up your bag and scamper back to the school. Lunch is still in progress, and you duck into a restroom, where you check the status of your underwear. (As clean as it was this morning.) The numb shock is wearing off, though, as you exit, and you are trembling hard as you make your way to sixth-period math.

You've got that class and seventh-period study hall to wonder what that was all about. And the longer you puzzle over it, the more you wonder if it really had anything to do with what Jonas overheard you bragging about in first. The more you think about it, actually, the more it feels to you like a sequel to Friday night.

Maybe this is my chance for a take-back, you ponder. Maybe I should go find Chelsea, tell her that whatever trouble she's in, I want to help. Show her there's no hard feelings for—

Well, for sending her thug boyfriend to mug you during lunch. It would probably look pretty pathetic now to go crawling back to her. Especially when you don't even why she wanted to see you Friday night.

I could tell Caleb about this, you then think.

Except he's treating you almost as bad as Chelsea is.

Maybe they should both just fuck off. There's a girl you want to catch up with.

But you're in such a bad mood, you might screw things up with her before they get started.

Next: "Something Like Witchcraft" 

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"Table of Contents (Vol. 3)" 
"The Book of Masks (Vol. 3)"