The Book of Masks (Vol. 1)

Liquored Up With Somewhere to Go

Why do you nod when Mary asks you if it's a deal? Is it pride? Lust? Pig-headed stubbornness?

Does it matter?

"Awesome," Mary says you with a wide, gushing smile. "Thank you so much for doing this for me. Here, can you take this down, what we need you to get?"

* * * * *

Caleb refuses point blank to go with you, so after dropping him at his place it's just Keith in the truck with you as you rattle down Twentieth Street. Which is lucky, because you have no idea where to go or how to fake your way into getting the—

"Fuuuuuuck!" Keith groans as he studies the list you copied down onto your cell phone. "How drunk are these chicks planning on getting?"

It's a long list that Mary gave you, along with several hundred dollars to cover the cost of the tequila, vodka, whiskey and rum that she wants. She gave you the brands too, and also told you which labels to avoid if you had to make substitutes. J. M. and Corinne only listened (and looked a little green) as Mary rattled it all off to you.

"Hey, it's gonna be a big party," you reply. "All I know"—you nearly hiccup with excitement—"is I'm invited too!"

"Catholic high-school girls. All liquored up," Keith muses. He shifts in his seat, and you can guess why, because you shift in yours as your restless cock squirms and itches with desire and anticipation. "Can I come?"

"You ran out on me back at the place!"

"I just went to keep Johansson company!" Keith protests. "Pussy," he sneers. "I just didn't want him sulking and feeling bad about— And besides," he interrupts himself. "It's my ID we're gonna be using."

That is a point. "Fine, you can go. But can you just try not be— Um—"

"Be what?"

Not be like yourself? is what you want to say. Can you be a little cooler? But not "cool" in that fake-gangsta way like when you're trying to be cool? Smarter, but not goofy-smart like when you're trying to impress Kim?

Can you just not be "Keith Tilley, Dumb Westside High Senior," without also being "Keith Tilley, International Badass of Coolness and Mystery"?

Because I don't want to die of embarrassment in front of the Mutants.

"In my way," you lamely conclude. "I'm the one who saw 'em, and I'm the one who got us the invite."

You feel Keith's eyes on you, but you keep your own eyes locked on the road, watching for the packaged liquor store he told you to find.

"Whatevahs, man," he finally replies, straightens out the collar of his shirt. "You stick to your side of the room, and I'll stick to the cool side of the room. Which is whatever side of the room I happen to be on!"

You cringe so hard you almost steer into oncoming traffic.

* * * * *

Just as Keith promised, there's no trouble picking up the liquor. ("They knew it was a fake ID I gave him," he boasts as you drive away. "Those guys at that store, they just don't give a shit.") And when you drop Keith off at home, with the promise to let him know when you hear back from Mary, he brings out a tarpaulin to cover up the liquor that you've piled into the passenger-side footwell of your truck.

Still, you are terrified as park in front of your house, and even as you step in from the garage you are wracking your brain for a place you can drive off to so your dad or mom or brother won't accidentally find the stuff.

So you jump hard when your mom calls your name in a sharp voice. The liquor store called and told me what you did! you expect her to say.

What she actually says (when you find her in the living room) is, "I cleaned your room today," and she sounds pissed off when she says it. She's in sweats and a bandana, with a smudgy face, and she looks like she's none too pleased that you weren't around to help. "And when I say I cleaned it, I mean I cleaned it!"

Worries about the liquor in your truck vanish, replaced by an even more terrifying possibility: Did she find my jerk-off sock?

"It was a sty in there," she says. "So now there's three boxes on your bed. Clothes, books, and video games. Go through them and pull out what you don't want to get rid of. There's a fourth box up there too," she adds, and she shows your her teeth as she says it. "Everything you decide to keep has to fit inside that fourth box. Fit! As in, taped down and sealed! One way or another, you're clearing out two-thirds of what I packed up."

You gulp, nod, and run upstairs, where you throw open your bedroom door and—

It's like being hit in the face with a fucking pine forest. Or a lemon grove. The windswept shoreline of a pristine lake?

You take another tentative sniff at the air. Oh my God, you gasp. So that's what clean smells like!

Your desk is clear of everything except the old laptop your dad passed down to you at the start of the school year, and the top of your dresser is bare. The floor is picked up and vacuumed, and the scent of late summer drifts in through your open window. Even the light fixture appears to have been dusted, and the old pizza stain scrubbed from the wall switch.

A quick search between your mattress and box springs reassures that your jerk-off sock wasn't touched, and with a sigh of relief you turn your attention to the three boxes your mom told you about.

Your first instinct, of course, is to move everything back into the "save" box. But your mom knows you, and while she packed the "to go" items into three large cardboard boxes, she set out only one small box for items to be saved. You concentrate on the video games, naturally, pulling out a handful of titles that you really can't bear to part with (even though it's been a year or more since you played them), and you are able to salvage you school astronomy book, which she made the mistake of putting in the "throw out" box. But aside from those items and two Marvel-branded t-shirts that you'd like to keep, everything else you decide to let go of. It will make it easier, you decide, the next time she tells you to pick up your room.

You're still enjoying the fresh smell of your spanking clean bedroom when you get a lengthy text from Mary, telling you exactly how to get into Xavier's. As you read it, you lift your eyes to stare at the boxes that your mom packed.

Amazing, you think. It's like someone knew I needed an excuse to get rid of this shit tonight.

* * * * *

"—and then I told my mom I'd take it to Goodwill for her," you conclude.

Keith, his knees tucked up under his chin, looks down into the footwell, where the three boxes of castoffs are how sitting. So there's no room for his feet, naturally. In fact, books, clothes, and video games are in danger of sliding out of their containers. "And she believed you?" he asks.

"Of course she did! I'm her oldest child!" You grin at Keith, who returns you a skeptically amused look. "And after we drop this stuff off at Goodwill, I'm going to get dinner with you, and then we're gonna hang out at your place, where I'm going to sleep over with you."

He returns your grin. "I thought I was sleeping at your place."

"You tell your dad what he needs to hear," you chortle, "and I'll tell my mom what she needs to hear." You put out your fist for a bump.

You do stop at Goodwill on your way out of town, because your mom demanded a receipt for the donation. But of course you are careful to take in the one box that hasn't got a couple of bottles of liquor hidden at the bottom. Then, with the truck stereo busting out some sick rhymes, you hit the interstate west for Lattyville, where a turn off will take you up to the St. Francis Xavier School. You give Keith your cell so he can shoot Mary a text, telling her you're on your way.

Your GPS directs you first off the interstate onto a state highway, then onto a country road that curves back around toward the river. Groves of stately trees rise on both sides of the road, and these still cut off all sight of the school when you pull up to a gate and a little stone gatehouse. Three Mutants—two guys and a girl, none of whom you recognize—are waiting out front.

"You the guys with the donation?" asks one of the guys when you roll down your window. He is tall and brusque, with a clipped and brutal manner that you instantly dislike. "Let's see."

"I'm, uh, supposed to give to Dalton Reeves?" you reply.

"That's me. Let's see the boxes."

So with mounting disquiet you get out, and you and Keith hold up the two remaining boxes for inspection. The Mutant gives them a cursory examination—probing nowhere near the bottom—then signals the guy and the girl over. "Okay, take 'em in," he says. "Give these guys a receipt," he adds, jerking his head at you and Keith.

This isn't what you were expecting. Yes, Mary told you to hide the liquor inside a "donation" to a charity drive, and that "Dalton Reeves" would collect the boxes. But you were supposed to bring them in yourself.

But after you hand the boxes over, the three Mutants just pass back inside the gate without inviting you in. In fact: "Road back to town is that way," Reeves says, pointing you back the way you came as he closes the gate.

"The fuck?" Keith gasps.

You send Mary a text.

An hour later, you still haven't got a reply.

That's all for now.

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