The Book of Masks (Vol. 1)

Friendly Warnings

Previously: "Too Many Girls" 

"The Warehouse?" you squeak. "Yeah," you continue after wrenching your voice into a lower register. "I could probably, uh— Who all is going?"

"Oh, the usual suspects," Eva says. "Me and Jessica. Marc and some of his friends." She rolls her eyes, but they light up when they come to rest on you again. "Cindy'll be there. She was asking specially if you'd come out!"

That almost causes you to do a one-eighty. "So I guess Seth'll be there too?"

She shrugs. "Maybe, but he won't be with her. It's a girls-night thing for us. Except we want you along." She giggles and pokes you in the shoulder, and a hard ripple of delight runs all up and down the left side of your body.

"I can't resist that kind of invitation," you gasp. "Uh, so how are we going to, uh, meet up?"

"We'll talk Friday afternoon." Her dimples deepen. "We just didn't want you making plans first." She leans in close. "Oh, is there anyone special you want us to invite along too?"

Your head spins, and you grab your locker door to keep from falling over. "You mean like, uh, Caleb?"

She titters. "No, you goose! Like, a girl? Someone you specially want us to make sure is there for you?"

A blush rushes up from your neck and down from your scalp, and the two waves slosh together at the tip of your nose. "I haven't, uh ... "

"Well, think about it, let me know. You have my contact info? Never mind, I'll get yours, I know who to ask." She brushes your shoulder with hers as she turns away, but she pauses to look back at you. "Come find me tomorrow third period, in the library. Or Jessica second period. Those are our study halls." She pushes back into the crowd, and such is the power of being a cheerleader that the students seem to part before her.

* * * * *

"Go write me some Harry Potter-Jabba the Hutt slash fic," Caleb sneers when you hook up with him later that afternoon. "It would be twice as believable and only half as sickening as this story about Eva inviting you out to the Warehouse."

You're in his bedroom, sprawled on his bed while he slouches in the chair at his desk. You're usually at his place, not yours, when you hang out, because his mom works until five-thirty and so his house is usually empty. Today, though, you had Eva's invite as an extra incentive to race over to his house. You're not surprised that he's being skeptical, but it takes you a little aback at how surly he is. "What's your problem, dude? Why are you pissy just 'cos I—?"

"Oh, am I supposed to be happy for you?" he exclaims, then slumps deeper in his chair with a sour glare on his face. "Fuck, I guess I am. Congratulations, Will. You got a cheerleader to invite you out to—" He squirms. "But why?" he demands, and he pierces you with a hard look. "The way Cindy was acting at lunch ..."

"I know it's funny," you groan, and turn onto your back. "But can't I be, like, happy for a little while before it all crashes down on me again?" You cover your face as your cock noses its way through the folds of your underthings, and you shiver all over. "Eva never talks to me like—"

"Yeah, just watch yourself," Caleb growls. "You say Cindy was asking specially about you?"

"That's what Eva said."

"You better hope she was lying. She wouldn't be dating Javits if she had a problem with being mean."

"Oh, did she say anything more at lunch about breaking up with him?"

"Yes. God!" Caleb makes a face. "She kept going back and forth about what a loathsome piece of shit he is, and about the white-hot thrusting rod of steel he has for a cock."

You gag. "So she's not breaking up with him."

"She says she is."

"Not if she's talking about him like that. She's just bragging about him." You sit up. "Maybe I shouldn't go out to the Warehouse, she'll have him along and—"

"No, you are going out there," Caleb says. "I am too."

You look at him surprise. "You're not invited."

"Who has to be invited?" he honks. "It's a free country. As long as you're in high school, you can get in. I just never wanted to go before," he primly declares.

"And now you do?"

"Sure. Someone has to look after your shit, Prescott. You're such a child."

* * * * *

Thursday morning. Your phone buzzes on the way to school, and you almost run a red light as you eagerly snatch it up in case it's one of the Garners. But it's Keith, and you drop it again like it's a tarantula. Not until you're parked in a far corner of the student parking lot do you check the text: bak behdn libary come find me. You roll your eyes good and hard, but do as he asks.

"Jesus!" you gasp as Tilley lunges at you once you're around the corner. "What's with the—?"

"Johansson says you've started hanging out with those cunts," Keith says.

"What cunts?" You blink. "Oh, you mean Eva and Jessica? They're not—!"

"Exactly how dumb are you, Will?" Keith grips your arm.

"What's your problem? So they invited me out to the Warehouse! That's all!"

"That's all? I can just see you at the Warehouse! With them!"

"Well, so can I!" you retort, though your meaning is more or less the precise opposite of his. You wrench yourself away. "What's got into you and Caleb?"

"Caleb?" Keith's eyes bulge. "Is he—?" But he cuts himself off.

"Is Caleb what? Is he freaking out because—?" You straighten down your shirt and preen a little. "Is he freaking out too because a couple of cheerleaders have taken a shine to me?"

"They don't give a shit about you, Will. Or maybe they do. But it's the wrong kind of shit!"

"You're full of the wrong kind of shit!" You brush him back as he grabs at you again. "I'm going to the Warehouse tomorrow, and I don't care how fucking jealous you are!" But then you cock your head. "Caleb's going too. Wanna come?"

"Pah! Yeah, Caleb too," Keith sneers. "They'll do it to him next."

"Do what?"

Keith only puts a finger in your face. "Just watch yourself, asshole. I wouldn't get within two hundred yards of those bints, even if they were putting out. Especially if they were putting out!" He looks around, then hops away, and at a loping run disappears around the corner of A wing.

"Oh, Tilley's always been a freak," Caleb tells you later while you're both waiting for Walberg's class to start. He's in a much better mood than he was yesterday, and chortles at the story you tell him of what Keith had to say. "But you can't really blame him. He's thinking about Seth."

"You'd think Seth was his boyfriend, for all the attention Keith pays to him."

Caleb snickers. "Well, you know what they say. Hate is just love turned upside down."

* * * * *

That's all that gets said, and for the rest of the period you concentrate on something much more important: Who is the "special someone" that you should get Eva and Jessica to invite out to the Warehouse tomorrow night?

It's a terrifying question, because if you interpret it right, Eva was asking who they wanted to set up for you as a date. The thought of having a date is terrifying enough, as is the thought of going to the Warehouse. The thought of having a date at the Warehouse is so bad that ...

... Well, that it doesn't even register. The idea is so fantastical that it is unreal—it feels like an abstract hypothetical, so your heartbeat is slow and firm, and your brow cool, as you contemplate it. Who do I want waiting for me at the Warehouse?

You thought about it off and on last night in a rather diffident way by running through the names and faces of girls that you have in your classes, but your instincts have narrowed it down to two: Jamie Bornholm and Emma Witkin.

You're not very pleased with either choice, but though you're not scared out of your wits neither are you under any illusions either. Much as you would love to find Andrea Varnsworth waiting for you at the Warehouse, no one's going to swing that kind of deal for you. But Emma or Jamie? Well ... maybe.

But likely not in the case of Jamie. She's a swimmer, like Andrea, and is built to scuttle fast through the water, which makes her a little skinny and a little flat for your taste. Plus, she's got a face that has been unkindly compared to a seahorse. But she's far from bad looking—she has long, lovely blonde hair that hangs in flat sheets, and her skin is clear and her eyes are big and bright—and when you watch her in sixth-period math you're taken by her quick, darting motions and her ready laugh. She is good enough to be very desirable, but not so good that she bobs entirely out of reach (by your estimate).

Emma seems a likelier candidate, though. You don't have her for any classes, but you've seen her lots of times in the library during your seventh-period study hall, and you've even talked to her. She's in the marching band, and she talks and acts like a ditz. Even looks like one, with her clouds of reddish hair that float in a nimbus around her head. It depresses you somewhat to think that a girl like that is probably at your speed; and is probably a little above it.

* * * * *

So those are the names you offer Eva when you meet her in the library third period. She surprises you with a laugh. "Emma? You can do better than that!" She puts her chin in her hand. "How about Kristy Suffolk. I've noticed you hanging out with the girls' basketball team lately."

* To continue: "Dates Made and Dates Contemplated" 

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