The Book of Masks (Vol. 4)

Party of Five, Chapter 9

Previously: "Party of Five, Chapter 8" 

SUSIE WAS SLOW TO WAKE, and it took her awhile to realize that a pair of arms were wrapped about her torso in a loose embrace. It took her even longer to realize where she was, and whose arms they were.

She rolled over and accidentally knocked Scarlett in the face with her elbow. The other girl flinched and muttered something that sounded like a cuss word, then turned over and hunched up the covers. Susie stared down at her, then struggled off the bed and went to the bedroom door. There were sounds from the front of the cabin, but the bathroom, blessedly, was free.

The smell of frying bacon greeted her when she came back out, soaped and showered with her wet hair drip-drying down her back. She ducked into the bedroom, to find rumpled sheets where Scarlett had been. She changed into fresh underthings and a fresh set of pajama bottoms and t-shirt.

Everyone was in the kitchen when she joined them. Scarlett was still in her old pajamas, but her hair was brushed out, and she greeted Susie with a happy and alert smile. The others were dressed and Tanya had showered, but the boys were still in yesterday's clothes. Alfie slid a couple of strips of bacon and two fried eggs onto Susie's plate as she sat down at the little kitchenette table. But Scarlett was the only one with a plate in front of her, so Susie guessed the others had already eaten as well.

"Sleepyhead," Scarlett said with a giggle. "We were up all night, practically," she said to the others. "I can't speak for Susie, but I'm exhausted!"

Susie ignored her. "Don't we have any grapefruit or health cereal?" She stared critically at the eggs and bacon, which looked like fat and chemicals to her.

"We have to go back to the mainland, to the store, to get supplies like that," Alfie said.

"I thought you said the kitchen was going to be stocked!"

"Well, not with stuff like that. Only with—" Alfie indicated Susie's plate. "If you want to have an early lunch, there's some bread and deli slices for a sandwich—"

"Ugh. Lemme get dressed, and then we'll go shopping." She poked an egg with her fork. The whites were runny, and the yolk, in her imagination, was swimming with salmonella.

"Susie," Scarlett said. She reached across to squeeze Susie's wrist. "Don't you remember what we were talking about last night? The caves!"

"What caves?" Susie picked up a slice of bacon and forced herself to nibble at it.

Scarlett's eyes rolled as she glanced around the kitchen at the others. Alfie was still standing at Susie's shoulder with the skillet and spatula. Tanya was washing up other dishes. Doug was daydreaming while staring out the kitchen window.

"Those guys I hung out with last night?" Scarlett said. "They told me there's some caves up on the hillside not too far from here. I want to go check them out. Like, this morning." With her fork she picked up a little of Susie's egg and made a meal of licking it off the tines.

"Sounds interesting," Alfie said in a tone of voice that suggested the opposite. "But we should go into town—"

"Yych, I'm not going into some smelly cave," Tanya said as she dropped a sudsy plate into the empty sink and sprayed some water over it. "They're probably full of bats."

"But it's something to do!" Scarlett protested.

"There's lots we can do," Alfie said as he turned back to the sink. "That's why we came up here. Swimming and canoeing and sunbathing. Like, I gotta start working on my tan, I can't do that in a cave! I also think there's also volleyball pit or something down near the ferry, we could stop and play a game on our way back."

"Doug?" Scarlett said.

Retrieving his attention from a million miles away, he said, "I get claustrophobia."

"Well, it's an idea," Scarlett said. "They don't sound as bad as you guys are making them out, and the guys said something about a hot spring—"

"Who are these guys?" Tanya asked.

"Just some guys. I think you'd have fun with them, Tanya." She giggled. "Everyone else here is kind of spoken for, you know."

Susie had been listening to all this in kind of an angry stupor, but now she stretched her foot and kicked Scarlett under the table.

"Ooh, I've been signaled!" Scarlett said. She laughed and got to her feet. "Come tell me what's on your mind," she said as she trailed a finger over Susie's shoulder, "while I get cleaned up."

Susie glowered at Alfie from under her lowered brow as she got up to follow. "We're going shopping," she told him in a low but hot voice. "Doug can drive if you need to stay and work on your tan." She turned down the hallway as Alfie flushed.

Scarlett was slowly peeling off her clothes when Susie caught up to her in the bedroom. She was almost making a striptease of it, flapping her flannel top out after unbuttoning, and smiling kittenishly over her shoulder at Susie as she twisted her bra around to unhook it. "What did I say now?" she asked Susie with a low, crackling fry in her voice.

Susie pushed the door closed behind her.

"First of all, what the hell was that crack about us being 'exhausted' from last night?"

"I didn't say we were, Susie, I said I am. And I am!"

"I know what you were trying to say! What you were trying to make them think!"

"Did I get it across, do you think?" Scarlett bent over, almost putting her face to her knees as she pushed her flannel pajama bottoms down, exposing the backside of a silk thong to Susie. "Or was I too subtle?" she asked from this nearly upside-down position.

"I don't want them thinking that!"

"Why not? And you can hardly stop them," Scarlett drawled. She straightened up and kicked her bottoms of. "Alfie was thinking it all night long!"

"No he wasn't!"

"Please! When a guy isn't fantasizing about doing it with a girl, he's fantasizing about another girl doing it with her. Kind of like the way I fantasize about Alfie and Dougie doing it when I have the itch for kink."

"You what?" Susie felt herself nearly coming unglued.

"Alfie and Dougie! It's just waiting to happen, you know. Of course, there will have to be girl in there with them, 'cos they're not going to just come out and do anything gay. Could be you who breaks the ice between them, Susie. Would you do a three-way with Alfie and Dougie? And when you got tired you could crawl off to rest and leave the boys to—"

"Oh, for God's sake! Where do you get this stuff?"

"I keep my eyes open."

"Well, I'm not—! And Alfie's not—!"

"Would you get in their way?"

Susie spun for the door, but caught her temper before it could fly off completely, and spun again to make a complete pirouette.

"And the second thing," she said more calmly, for it was clear to her that there was no point in trying to argue with Scarlett, because she was just trying to get Susie to get her wind up. "The second thing is, what was that crack about everyone else being paired off or something except for Tanya?" That seemed to Susie a much better way to tackle the real issue, which was the way that Scarlett seemed to be trying to toss Tanya, like a lamb chop, to a pack of horny guys probably ten years older than her.

"Just another observation," Scarlett said. She had twitched off her panties and was pulling a new pair on. "There's you and Alfie paired off, and I just said that Alfie and Dougie could, you know. Me, I think I'm going to be seeing more of those guys I met last night. They're a lot more fun than—"

"Well, keep Tanya away from them! Jesus! She's barely seventeen!"

"That's old enough. I was sixteen when—"

"Not with a guy who's thirty!"

Scarlett gave her a look.

"Who'd be better for her," she asked. "One of Alfie's friends?" She clucked her tongue. "A guy who's thirty could be a lot better for her. More mature, more serious, more grounded."

Susie grabbed her own head by the temples. "I can't believe I—!"

She was interrupted by a shrill laugh from Scarlett.

"Oh, Susie!" she gasped. "If only you could see your face!" Her own was flushed with mirth.

Clad only in a tight thong, with her breasts exposed, Scarlett came around the other side of the bed to put an arm around Susie and pull her close.

"Listen," she said. "You need to learn to laugh at things, Susie! And you know, I was saying all those things in front of the others just to, you know, get Alfie going. He needs a kick in the ass!"

Susie grumbled a low cuss word to herself, but suffered Scarlett to lightly paw her.

"Listen, you tell Alfie that he and the others can go shopping in town. You and me are going to wander around the island. Maybe look inside those caves, see if they're something worth checking out. I did some work on him last night, Susie, before I went out. I think he's just about ready to—" She trailed off with a smile.

"To what?" Susie asked. There were a lot of things that Alfie might be persuaded to do, not all of them things that Susie was eager to join him in.

"What do you think?" Scarlett put her arm around Susie's shoulder and pulled her close. Into her ear, she whispered, "There's just the tiniest difference between a guy going crazy, and his going crazy for a girl. Just give me two minutes to talk to Tanya, to tell her what to say and do while you and me are off exploring, and then I think we'll have him crazy for you.

"And then," she added, "there won't be any sexting or 'side dishes'"

Susie felt herself quiver all over, and it wasn't from the soft kiss that Scarlett pressed against her ear.

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There's a comment for Chapter 6 when you check during a writing break: These people seem kind of awful.

Well, yes, you'd agree. They're going to get what they deserve, and you hunch back over your laptop to start giving it to them.

Next: "Party of Five, Chapter 10" 

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"Table of Contents (Vol. 4)" 
"The Book of Masks (Vol. 4)"