The Book of Masks (Vol. 1)

The Wrong Kind of Party Crasher

Previously: "Too Many Girls" 

"The Warehouse?" you squeak. "Um ... Well ... Who all is going?" Your voice wobbles in your throat.

"Oh, the usual suspects," Eva says. "Me and Jessica. Marc and some of his friends." Her eyes light up. "Cindy'll be there. She was asking specially about you!"

Your heart plunges. If Cindy Vredenburg's going to be there, then her asshole jock-bully boyfriend, Seth, will be there too.

"Well, uh, maybe," you stammer. "But I was already talking to, uh, someone else about a party Friday night."

Eva's face falls. "Who?"

"Stephanie. Wyatt."

"Stephanie?" Eva rolls her eyes. "You don't want to— Oh, come on, Will! Come out with us!" She tugs at the front of your shirt, and if she rubbed your swelling cock through the front of your jeans you could hardly get more stimulated. "We asked you first!"

Technically, Stephanie asked you first. (Although she didn't really even "ask" you, did she?) So you tell Eva that you'll talk to her about it later.

"That's a promise," she dimples, and touches your nose with her fingertip. Your nose tingles the rest of the day, like it's trying to cum.

* * * * *

Both Eva and Jessica show up at your locker on Thursday to badger you into coming out to the Warehouse with them on Friday. You tell them that you've got a curfew you won't be able to wriggle out of, but eventually you cave. Complicated plans are made to give you cover for a night out, and you even agree to hang out with the girls and their friends after school, but you manage to (semi-intentionally) forget to meet up with them downtown like you promised. The fact is, you're feeling kind of bullied.

"Pfft, I can't believe this is happening," Keith grumbles Friday evening, when he picks you up at your house. "You and them cheerleaders. You notice they never paid attention to you before now."

You give him a look. He's been in a sour, angry mood since yesterday, when Eva and Jessica dragged you over to talk to him after school. Not that you blame him for being pissy. He's the "cover" that the girls cooked up for you: You told your dad that you will be going to party with him, then crashing at his place afterward. That way, if your dad calls to check up on you, he won't be surprised to hear party sounds in the background.

But Keith wasn't planning to go to any party, and the expression on his face got uglier and uglier as Eva and Jessica forced him to agree to a plan that would let you go out to the Warehouse while pointedly leaving him out of it.

"So why don't you come out with me," you ask him now. "You always wanted to go to the Warehouse, right?"

"Tssh. Them girls'd be so pissed at me if I did that."

"Who gives a fuck about them?"

"Wonder why they give a fuck about you," he mutters, and gives you a slit-eyed side-glance.

"Jesus, Keith, you don't gotta hang out with 'em. You can come out, then go off and do your own thing out there. Pick up your own girls."

Keith looses a teeth-rattling sigh. "Eh, I got work in the morning anyway," he says. "It'd suck a lot worse if I had a hangover."

Fine, you grumble to yourself. Stay home and feel sorry for yourself. You fold your arms and slump in your seat, and keep quiet the rest of the ride, until Keith drops you at your intermediate destination. "Thanks for the ride and all the help," you tell him. "I owe you."

He mutters something unintelligible, and drives off.

* * * * *

So here you are, against all expectations, at Meghan Farris's house. That was part of the plan that Eva and Jessica set up: A lot of people, they knew, would start off at Meghan's party before moving on to the Warehouse, and you could get a ride with one of them. Look for Dominique Hughes, they said, or Josie Holden.

But you start by looking for a more familiar face. Any familiar face. You find one in Cassie Harper.

"Oh my God, Will, what are you doing here? I don't mean, like, you shouldn't be here, you can go anywhere you want and you probably do! But I didn't know you were coming out here! Are you friends with Meghan? Not that you have to be to be out here. I mean, my God, just look around! I think half the school's here, and it isn't even eight-thirty! When it actually gets going—"

You have to draw a deep breath on her behalf, because it doesn't sound like Cassie's going to be drawing a deep one for herself any time soon.

You've known Cassie Harper a long time, though sometimes it seems even longer because of how much and how fast she talks. It's like she can cram a year's worth of talk into just five minutes. Despite that, you do like her, you suppose. She's a pert, cute red-head, with faint freckles splotched all over her face. Her smile is wide and white, and her eyes shine like the beam of a lighthouse. She's a squirmer, too, and as she chatters brightly are you she shimmies in place like a cat trying to stand upright on its hind legs. You are tempted to grab her by the elbows to stop her in place.

"I heard about the party from Stephanie," you tell Cassie when you are finally able to squeeze seven words in. But that's all you can get out before Cassie grabs the conversational ball and scampers off with it again.

"Yeah, I saw Stephanie around her earlier! It's like her and all the sports teams are out here. Well, the girls' sports teams. None of the guys've shown up, though, you know, just— Oh hey, Carlos!" She playfully elbows another partygoer in the ribs. "I was just telling Will that it's kind of weird that none of the guys like on the basketball squad have shown up yet!"

But it's a chubby, black-haired girl who's been standing at Cassie's elbow all this time who answers. "It's still early," she says. She looks at you. "I remember you from Mrs. Epstein's class our sophomore year."

"Oh yeah." You nod at her. You have no idea what her name is, but you decide you'd rather try talking to her than to keep up with Cassie. "So, uh—"

"Oh, shit," the girl says as she looks past your shoulder. "Hey everyone, get ready to kiss ass," she calls out in a voice loud enough to carry over the hubbub of the crowd. "Queen Kelsey's arrived!"

You glance back. Sure enough, a regal figure has swept into the living room: Kelsey Blankenship, leader of the AP pack. She's dressed in a violet, sleeveless, one-piece dress whose hem barely falls past the bottom of her hips, and silver hoop earrings. A large, silver bracelet slides up and down her narrow wrist. She smiles narrowly into the room as she looks it over, picking out potential company on whom to bestow her imperial presence.

Her eye lands on you, and lingers for only half a second before sweeping on. Cassie, her friend, and Carlos Montoya don't make the cut either.

"What's she even doing here?" asks another girl who now joins you. She's shorter and even chubbier than her friend, but her hair is a lank, dirty blonde.

"Slumming," sneers the other girl.

"That's mean!" Cassie exclaims. "I mean, for Meghan. I'm sure Kelsey came out because—"

"Face it, Cassie," her friend snorts. "This whole scene stinks of desperation. You said it yourself. Where's the basketball squad? You see any cheerleaders?"

"I'm gonna get something to drink," you tell the girls as Kelsey sweeps into the dining room. You don't like Kelsey—she's the snottiest girl you know at Westside—but you're curious at the fact that she has shown up at this party, and without any of her usual friends with her.

She's nursing a paper cup full of punch as you sidle up to get some yourself. "Hey, Kelsey," you murmur at her.

She turns to stare at you. Then she blinks, and the most plastic smile you've ever seen breaks across her face.

"Will! So great to run into you! I should've guessed you'd be here!"

Before you can reply to this veiled insult, shouting breaks out behind you. You turn in time to catch it in the chest as a clutch of girls barrels through the room. Stephanie, her eyes blazing, yells, "Out of the way, Prescott!" as she knocks you backward. Domino-like, you plow into Kelsey before you can catch yourself, knocking her to the ground with you falling atop her. The front of her dress is drenched in punch when you both sit up.

* * * * *

"Oh my God, Will!" Eva exclaims. She is so excited that you have to pull your cell phone away from your ear. "I heard there was drama out at Meghan's!"

It's Saturday morning—closing in on noon—and you've been dreading this phone call: Eva calling to demand to know why the hell you stood them up at the Warehouse. You were at Meghan's only five minutes longer before bugging out with Kelsey's curses ringing in your ears. Bless Cassie for being nice enough to take you home!

"Yes, we heard about it from Carlos," she says when you ask how she knew about it. "We're out here now. You should come out, we want to hear all about it!"

"Come out where?"

"To their YouTube studio. We're all here, gonna be watching a movie and making a video about it afterward. You can help!"

Next: "Theater of the Absurd" 

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