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A high school student finds a grimoire that shows how to make magical disguises. |
Previously: "A Drive to Distraction"  Though you don't like the look Carson is giving you, you bite your tongue. He is, after all, a friend even if he does usually act pretty condescending toward you. "I'm out here to have fun!" you shout at him over the wail of the band. "I came with—! Uh—!" You look around, but you've lost sight of Patrick and the others. "What are you doing here?" "I'm here with James!" You snort. "Naturally!" "What does that mean?" he demands. "It means of course you're with him! Where is he?" You crane your neck and look around. The atrium is crowded and a little hazy. Weirdly, it's like the music is also interfering with your vision. "He's in the bar!" Carson shouts at you. He holds your eye, and you hold his. His lip curls when you don't move. "This is your first time out here, isn't it, Prescott?" "Well, so what if it is? How many times you been out here?" "I've lost count! Just come with me!" He grabs you by the shoulder and hauls you deeper into the building. * * * * * Just a little way further on, a wide doorway opens into a large, open space. Most of the floor is taken up with tables, booths, and chairs, scattered haphazardly throughout the room, but one long wall is set up like a makeshift bar built of heavy plywood planks on sawhorses and other support. There's no single bartender, but a dozen or more, each manning a station, selling food and drink. Some of the guys you recognize from school; none of them, though, are the kind you'd feel comfortable socializing with, for they are a rough and surly-looking crew of the kind that hang out behind the portables, smoking weed and cigarettes and fingering the boobs of any girls miserable enough to hang out with their type. Carson steers you away from the bar, though, and into a far corner. You hear your name shouted over the buzz of the crowd and the growl of the music, and you look over to see Patrick, looking puzzled, standing next to a large booth around which nearly a dozen guys and girls are squeezed. You wave to him, then hold up one finger, as though to say "Be with you in a minute." He nods, but continues to watch you with a vague frown. James Lamont—Carson's inseparable friend—is hunched at a table by the wall, intently studying his cell phone. He looks up at Carson draws up, then does a massive double-take at you. His eyes go very wide. "Holy Jesus and every fucking thing!" he gasps. "Where did you find that? Behind a toilet in the shitter?" "Hey, fuck you!" you shout at him. "Calm the fuck down!" Carson squeezes your shoulder. "You gotta expect to get a little shit thrown your way when you let Tilley dress you!" Another frown pops onto his face. "He's not here, is he?" "No! I told you, I came with—!" You point back the way you came. "Patrick, uh—! And—!" Carson's eyes pop as he looks in the direction you're pointing. "Christ!" "What's wrong?" "Nothing! But sit down! You can hang out with those guys later, but we wanna talk to you first!" He pushes you into a chair, and then takes a seat himself. "So what are you doing hanging out with McGehee and them?" he asks you. He is talking now in a normal tone of voice, but he has to lean across the table and put his face close to yours to be heard. Even so, his words are barely to be distinguished over the clamor of the place. "We ran into them up at the, uh, minigolf. Caleb and Keith and me were up there, and they came in." You can't help flinching a little at the flinty expressions on Carson's and James's faces. "Caleb and Keith took off, but I went with the other guys. Now we're out here." You glance down at the track suit you're wearing—and the gold chain—and remember you're wearing a trucker cap backward—and that you've got a stud clipped to your ear. With a grimace you reflect that of course these guys thought Keith Tilley when they saw you, because (it now occurs to you) this is totally the kind of thing Tilley would wear out to a place like the Warehouse. It makes you want to curl into a ball under the table. "Well, hang out with us instead," Carson says, "so you don't get in t'any trouble." "I'm not gonna get in any trouble!" "You don't know this place." "How do you know it?" you demand. That belligerent resentment you felt earlier is back, and in danger of boiling over. "When do you ever come out here?" "Often enough," says James. "See the guys in the red shirts?" Carson says. He points out a couple: beefy guys in red t-shirts and tank tops, swaggering around the floor with alert looks on their faces. "They're the ones in charge. You or anyone gets outta line, they won't just throw you out, they'll beat the shit out of you and then throw you out. Take a good look at 'em, Prescott. You seen some of 'em at school? Well, they get to do the kind of thing out here they can't do back at Westside." A slight chill settles over you as Dominic Kleason comes barreling past. Dominic is a football player, and in addition to his rounded muscles he has a cold, fuck-with-me-not glare on his hard face. His eyes briefly touch yours before roving on. During most of your sophomore and junior years, he found ways to make you dread coming to school. "I not gonna start any trouble," you mutter at Carson. "Yeah, well, you don't gotta start it. Look around, man. This place is packed with guys who are drinking and shooting up with other stuff, here to dance and to party and above all else to fuck. They're on the make for anything with a pussy in a short skirt, and they will throw a punch if the wrong someone so much as—" He's interrupted by a shrill whistle from deeper in the building. Instantly three of the room's red shirts, including Dominic, race for the doorway. A fourth wheels into the middle of the room, a whistle in his own mouth, and glares around the saloon with folded arms. "Someone's about to get their face broke," says James. "A couple of someones, likely," Carson agrees as the whistle shrieks again. "That's the thing, Will," he adds. "These aren't cops. They don't arrest anyone, there's no judge or trial. They grab everyone and go to work on them. You step on the wrong asshole's foot in here, and he smacks you back?" Carson's mouth is a grim line. "Good chance you'll wind up in the hospital, and it won't be on account of the guy who smacked you." * * * * * Every story you ever heard about the Warehouse—the brawls, the knifings, the drugs, and the blow jobs—comes back to you. As you look around the saloon, it takes on a darker and more sinister sheen. Most of the guys look like you or Patrick or Carson—teens dressed in street clothes, milling about like it's the cafeteria back at Westside. The girls, though, are dressed a lot more provocatively, in short skirts and dresses, with low-cut tops and bare midriffs, showing lots of leg and lots of boob, with their hair piled up or else worn in great drapes that flow over their shoulders. You feel your own excitement mount as your eyes rake over the bare flesh, and thoughts of beaded sweat lubricating the scrape of skin against skin—of soft mouths and probing tongues—of hands feeling and fingering and pushing inside of clothes—come to you. If every other guy in the place feels as you do, it would be easy to imagine a riot breaking out. You turn back to Carson and James. They are chipped from the same mold as you and Caleb and Keith. Tall, skinny, a little gawky. They are both science-math nerds, like Caleb, but have the sharp glance of guys who are both book-smart and too smart to make too much of their book-smarts inside the walls of the school. Of the pair, James would be the more handsome, with dark hair and dark eyes, an aquiline nose, and a firm chin. Carson is bonier, of both face and body, and he wears his kinky, dirty-blonde hair under a filthy bandana. James could probably pick up a girl; Carson could at least get a dance partner. But neither of them seem the kind of who would go out to dance, let alone try to pick up a girl in a place like this. So— "So what are you guys doing out here?" you demand again of Carson and James. "We're here to have fun," James retorts in a tone that makes clear how stupid he thinks your question is. "And you can have fun too, Prescott," Carson says. "I'm just telling you to be careful." "Are you gonna dance?" you ask. "If that's what it takes," James says. You stare at him. You are suddenly struck by a horrible thought. "What about Jenny?" you blurt out. Jenny Ashton is a girl that James has a massive crush on, and you've always assumed that he is interested only in her, and that he has always been ... saving himself ... for her. James's eyes flash. "Christ," growls Carson, and he hauls you to your feet as James says, "That's the kind of remark, Prescott, that could get both our faces pounded into hamburger." Carson hustles you halfway across the room. "Leave Jenny's name out of this," he warns you. "And don't mention seeing us here to anyone. Or, at least, don't say anything about James being here. Or if you have to," he adds with a glower, "you make it clear he was being my wingman, and not the other way around." * To continue hanging out with Carson: "A Short Way with the Warehouse" * To return to Patrick and his gang: "The Chess Club" |
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