The Book of Masks (Vol. 4)

Theater of the Absurd

Previously: "The Wrong Kind of Party Crasher" 

"I think I'm gonna stay in today," you tell Eva.

"Oh, Will," she snorts. "You're not gonna mope, are you?"

"No, I'm not moping!" you reply as you slump into the chair at your desk. "I just don't feel like— Anyway, I think my dad's gonna want me around the house to do some work. He's got that look in his eye."

"That's why you want to come out here," Eva insists, "so you don't get caught."

"He'd just call and make me come back home. No, listen, um," you interrupt her before she can interrupt you. "If it turns out I'm not busy here, I'll text you back, maybe come out."

"We're gonna be getting started right after lunch."

"I'll let you know. Yeah, um, later." You hang up.

But almost you text her back, to ask for directions out to wherever she and her friends are meeting. For fuck's sake, you ask yourself, what's the matter with you? You've got a cheerleader— No, two cheerleaders— No, three cheerleaders, if Cindy's going to be out there— And maybe more than than that, if Yumi and Lin are along. And you'd rather sit at home doing fuck-all instead of sitting in a dark room, surrounded by cheerleaders, watching a movie? You are really pathetic, man!

And here's proof of how pathetic you are: Instead rousing yourself to chase after something you've fantasized about for years—Cheerleaders! Who want to hang out with you!—you slump deeper into your chair and deeper into your funk.

* * * * *

It's on account of the disaster at Meghan Farris's party last night, probably. You tell Caleb all about it when you get together with him after lunch. How about that? you grumble to yourself as you drive over his house. I won't hang out with cheerleaders, but I will hang out with Caleb Johansson.

"Yeah, I heard there was gonna be a thing over her place last night," he says when you told him you went over to Meghan's. His mom is out running errands, but you flop in his bedroom, as you usually do when you go over to his place. "How was it?"

"It was a disaster. I was only there ten minutes."

"Yeah, I coulda predicted that."

"Based on what?" you demand.

Caleb gives you a look. "So what happened? How was it a disaster?"

You make a face. "Well, Kelsey Blankenship was there, for a start."

Caleb hoots. "Whoa, fuck me," he says. "Yeah, that's already begging for trouble."

"And I kind of bumped into her and spilled punch on her."

Caleb stares. Then he claps his hands together and laughs.

"Really? Oh, fuck me! And you were there only ten minutes? Way to go, man, that's a record even for you!"

"It wasn't my fault! Stephanie Wyatt went galloping through and she bumped into me!"

"What, she bumped into you and you bumped into Kelsey?"

"Well ... More like 'fell onto' Kelsey. It was, like—"

You give him the whole story, from Stephanie charging past and knocking you over, to you knocking Kelsey onto her ass and spilling punch all over her while sitting on her, to Kelsey shrieking like a steam locomotive barreling out of a tunnel while she slapped at you. In fact, you spare yourself nothing in the telling, and include your silly attempt to dab the punch off Kelsey's bosom with a napkin, a would-be chivalrous gesture that was terminated when she kneed you in the ball sack.

"Some of the people had to pull me away from her," you glumly conclude as Caleb fights for breath in the midst of a laughing jag, "and when Cassie said maybe we should go someplace else, I just had her take me home."

"Auuuugggghhhhh!" Caleb howls when he's caught his breath, and then he spends another minute catching it again. "That is so brilliant! I need to design and build a time machine, so I can go back and see it first hand. You don't think anyone filmed it on their cell, do you?" He spins around in his chair to the laptop. "That would be, like, the best thing ever!"

"I am going to be so dead at school on Monday."

"No you're not," Caleb retorts as he clicks open a browser window. "Who would care enough to kill you?"

You have to acknowledge his comment with a shrug. If it was Chelsea Cooper or Cindy Vredenburg, or any other girl with a jock-asshole boyfriend, then yeah, you'd be dead by nine o'clock on Monday morning. But Kelsey hasn't got a boyfriend (that you know of) and she hangs out with a snotty country-club kind of crowd. The worst they can do is cold-shoulder at you.

Cold-shoulder you more than they already do.

Or, you reflect with a twinge of fear, post horrible things about me on social media.

"Eh, I don't see anything," Caleb says after a minute of cursory searching. "Maybe no one got it, if it happened as fast as you made it sound. But when's the next party you're going to?"

"I dunno. Why? No!" you exclaim when you see his grin. "No!"

Caleb snatches up his cell phone from off his desk and turns the camera onto you.

"If we could restage and reenact it," he chortles, "I guarantee you a hundred thousand hits on YouTube. Maybe a million. Maybe ten million! C'mon, Will. Don't you wanna be an internet star?"

* * * * *

You're finally able to put a stopper in Caleb's teasing when he asks if there's any other parties this weekend you could maybe crash and spill stuff over people at. "No!" you retort. "But let's go do something instead of hanging out here. Maybe I could trip you and push you into a lake if we went out and did something."

"So what do you want to do?"

You shrug, but after some back and forth, you agree to go see a movie. Caleb texts Keith to see if he would be interested, and forty minutes later the three of you are lined up to buy popcorn at the concession stand of the Silver Cineplex up by the mall.

Keith nudges you as you're trying to decide whether to spend your meager resources on a medium popcorn, or to splurge on the large with free refills. "Check out who just came in," he says, and visibly stiffens all over. You glance back. Oh hell, you think. I wouldn't mind sitting next to that in a dark theater!

"That" is Mia DeWitt, one of your classmates from your Film class. You don't spend a lot of time scoping out Mia, because she usually sits on the other side of the classroom, a few rows behind. But you make sure to make up for it now. She's dressed in skin-tight jeans and boots, and a black t-shirt that clings tightly to every curve of her hourglass torso. Her long, reddish-brown hair, which falls in gentle curves past her elbows, is kept in place by a knitted cap that she wears at a rakish angle, like a beret. A tartan-plaid ribbon hangs around her neck, at the end of which dangles a laminated card.

She's not alone. There's another girl with her: tall, with a bold, Romanesque nose, and dark, straight hair that hangs to her shoulders. She's dressed in distressed jeans and a tie-dyed t-shirt, and her eye, when it fixes on you, is friendly but direct.

You would play rock-paper-scissors with Keith and Caleb for the right to take these girls into the auditorium, except that they've brought boys of their own for company. No one has an arm around anyone else, and it's impossible to tell if anyone is supposed to be with anyone else in particular, but Andy Tackett (another classmate from Mr. Hawks's Film class) and Karl Hennepin are sauntering up with them. Tackett, as usual, is dressed down in dirty jeans and a gray hoodie; Hennepin, even with his puffy blonde hair jammed under the ever-present fedora, looks like he rolled out of bed in sweat pants, flip-flops, and a long-sleeve t-shirt.

"Tilley. Prescott," Tackett greets you in his surprisingly resonant baritone. "Quo vadis?"

"Nothing much," you reply. You're having a hard time keeping your eyes on his face and off of Mia's. "What are you here to see?"

Mia gives you a look, and Andy snorts. "Quo vadis," he repeats. "Aren't you here for the special showing?"

You and Keith exchange a glance. Tackett snickers. "What are you here to see?" he asks.

"Cravenmoor."

Now Tackett laughs out loud. "Pfeh, yeah, I saw that last week," he says. "You'll like it. You in line?" You glance back to see the concession agent waiting for you.

"Large popcorn, small Coke," you tell the guy. "So, uh, how'd you do on your paper for Mr. Hawks?" you ask Mia. She's standing off to the side, but you'd rather talk to her than Tackett.

"I didn't write one." She only gives you the barest of glances. "I'm doing the four big term papers instead of the one-and-nine option."

"Whoa, that's pretty ballsy of you." Instantly you regret your word choice at the look she gives you. "So, uh, how many you written so far?"

"Just one. Red River. Gonna write the second one this week." She studies the concession board.

"What on?"

"Quo vadis."

Shit. Only now does it occur to you that maybe Tackett was talking about a movie when he kept saying that phrase. "Is that an option?" you ask.

Her expression turns furtive.

"I dunno," she murmurs. "You sit closer to the front of the room, you can probably hear Mr. Hawks better when he talks."

Bitch, you think as she pushes ahead of you to order her own snacks.

"Careful with your Coke," the other girl tells you as you pick your own stuff up. "I saw what you did to Kelsey last night."

* * * * *

"Rachel Bell," Tilley tells you in the theater, when you ask who that other girl was. "Why?"

You don't know. But her name is one of the first to pop into your head later that night when an anonymous text sends you a link to a post on x2z.com: You've just been cursed. Pass it on?

Next: "A Bitch Slap" 

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