The Book of Masks (Vol. 2)

Wild Things

Previously: "The Pirate Princess" 

You want to go out with Leah to the Warehouse—you feel like things are really developing between you—but you also don't want to screw things up between you and Caleb.

"Listen," you tell him, "I'll help you out tomorrow night. Okay? We can come up here and do it tomorrow night. It doesn't matter which night we do it, right?"

"I guess not," he mutters back. "Promise?"

"Jesus, man. Do I have to cross my heart and hope to die?"

He gives you a look.

* * * * *

You're antsy all through school. It's not just the adventure to come, but the problem of how to swing it with your dad. You've got an earlier curfew than anyone you know, and there is no way that your hard-ass father is going to let you spend the night out partying, let alone partying at the Warehouse. You wind up spilling your problem to Jack Li when you meet up with him after class.

He texted you just after the day's final bell, to ask how you were planning to get to the Warehouse. (Leah must have told him you were going.) You were texting him back to say that you didn't know, when you bumped right into him (also texting) in the crowded hallway.

"I got the dumbest curfew!" you shout at him over the Friday-afternoon cheers and shouts that echo down the roiling hallway. "Eleven o'clock! Even on weekends!"

"And you can't blow it off just this once?" Jack shouts back.

"I like staying on my dad's good side!"

Jack gives you a querying side glance. "So I guess this'll be your first time out to the Warehouse!"

"Uh huh!"

"Well, I wasn't planning on staying long tonight anyway!" he tells you. "I was basically gonna drop by, hang out for just a bit! If you think you can stay out till one, I can get you home by then!"

You talk a little more about it as you accompany him to the parking lot. By the time you part, not only has he arranged for picking you up and taking you home, he's also given you an excuse to leave with your dad—you'll be out star-gazing for your Astronomy class. He's amazingly forward thinking, and also cautions you to bring along a change of clothes so that your dad won't pick up any stink off you when you do get back home.

* * * * *

"Hey, watch this!" Leah shouts in your ear. She has to yell in order to make herself heard over the pounding thump of the music. She pokes the girl in front of you.

"Hey Genesis!" The girl turns. "I think I see Blake over there!" She jerks her thumb off to the side.

Genesis Lee's eyes pop and she jumps. "Eeep!" she squeaks. Leah laughs, and falls against your shoulder.

You're just inside the entrance to the Warehouse, with a cluster of a dozen or so kids, only a few of which you know from the Mexican restaurant the other night. From a gaping doorway off to your left pounds the driving rhythm of a techno beat, and a shrill, repetitive melody that sears your eardrums. Another doorway opposite leads into what looks like a makeshift saloon. There seems to be some about whether to get refreshments first, or to go ahead and hit the dance floor.

You all rode out together in Jack's minivan: you and Leah and Jack and Genesis, along with two other girls and two guys whose names you caught but didn't retain when introductions were made. (One of the girls had to sit on your lap on the drive out, but she spent the whole time giggling and gossiping with her friends, and completely ignored you.) There were more of their friends waiting just outside the Warehouse doors when you arrived.

The place is, as its name conveys, a warehouse, a giant box built of decaying brick and sagging corrugated metal in the heart of the city's rotten industrial district. Acrid floodlights blaze down into a parking lot ringed by a cinderblock wall and razor wire, and an abandoned grain elevator, looming like an alien war machine, stands guard. The air of post-apocalyptic ruin continues on the inside, for the Warehouse is an improvised party spot where high school kids not only party but also sell each other alcohol, drugs and food Security comes in the form of hulking football and lacrosse players. It's like a world where the adults have all been stricken dead by plague, leaving the surviving teens to waste their own remaining time away in drunken revels and despairing fornication.

But maybe you're reading too much into the music and the location. Only three of the girls in your group are showing so much as a midriff, and Jack and the other guys are dressed in Dockers and polo shirts.

The decision is finally made to split the group up, with half of them heading into the dance floor, while the rest, including you and Leah, move into the saloon. It's furnished with makeshift tables and chairs and booths that look like they were rescued from the city dump; alongside one wall, behind an improvised bar of planks and sawhorses, a line of kids hawk beer, colas, packaged snacks, and probably harder stuff.

"Gimme your money and tell me what you want," Jack says as the rest of you pack yourselves into a dumpy, semi-circular booth. The orders he collects, along with the cash, are mostly for beer, but Leah asks for a "bump" of whiskey with hers. Not wanting to come off like a noob, you tell Jack you want the same. Leah directs a quick laugh at you, then leans over to talk to her friend Brianna.

You're distracted by a moan from the other side of you. It's Wendy Terrill. "Oh, God. Jack!" she whines as she gazes off toward the bar. You follow her glance. Jack is talking to a shirtless, dark-haired kid, who is grinning impudently at him. As you watch, Jack executes a quick but spectacular dance move—half gymnastics, half break-dancing—that involves a moonwalk and using his own left leg as a jump rope. Then he hands over some cash and collects a tray of beers from the guy.

"You didn't have to do that," Wendy snaps at him when he returns.

"It got me a discount," Jack says.

"It's humiliating! And they're gonna make you do it every time now!"

"What was that?" you ask, but Jack has already returned to the bar.

"It was freaking Lane being an asshole," Wendy tells you. "It's sick the way he won't leave Jack alone."

"That dance move? It was pretty spectacular," you say.

Leah asks, "What's spectacular?"

"Lane's making Jack flirt with him again," Wendy tells her.

"Fucker." Leah cranes her neck to look past you at the bar.

You don't follow what they're talking about, so you just repeat that Jack's move was pretty amazing. "He was just warming up," Leah tells you. "Wait'll you catch him on the dance floor. Hey!" she calls to Jack as he returns to set two shot glasses in front of you and Leah. "Will was just talking about how sexy your dance moves are!"

"They should be," Jack says as you gasp and sputter. "I only been working at 'em for ten years." He pushes Wendy, who pushes you, who push Leah and the others down so he can squeeze into the booth with you. "Ten years of gymnastics and dance."

"Jack wanted to be on the cheerleader squad ever since he was in middle school," Leah tells you.

"I changed my mind when I got to Westside," Jack says. "Not my kind of bitches."

* * * * *

You do wind up on the dance floor a little later, with Leah, but you don't get to see Jack in action, for there are far too many other people on the floor. You don't linger long either, because you're not an especially good dancer, and though Leah is lithe and can shimmy nicely she also doesn't want to put you on the spot. Mostly you spend the evening lurking in the corners of the saloon with a kaleidoscope of booth-mates, not only those who came out with you and Jack and Leah, but other classmates who slip in to say "Hi" to you as though you belong: Marc Garner and some of the wrestlers; Rachel Burton and some of the other gossipy girls. No one seems surprised to see you, and no one makes a big deal of your presence, and by the time Jack has plucked your shoulder and told you it's time to hit the road, you are wondering how all the stories about the Warehouse as the world's most dangerous party spot ever got started. You tell Jack much when you're in the minivan.

"Tonight was pretty calm," he replies. "The really rough trade wasn't there. I wouldn't count on it always being that laid back."

Laid back is not how you'd describe it. Your head is still ringing from all the noise.

Then Jack surprises you by adding, "Same thing goes for Leah."

"What about Leah?"

"You don't have to shout, Will," he tell you. "I meant that she can get kind of wild."

"Yeah?" You're not sure you like his implication, that you're not man enough to handle a wild woman.

"You know what she was getting ready to do when we left? She was gonna go upstairs and throw some firecrackers into some of the rooms."

Those would be the rooms with the mattresses and couples in them. You don't know what to say, so you say nothing.

And you don't know what to say the next afternoon, when you get a text from Leah basically inviting herself to hang out with you.

Next: "The Digging Party" 

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"Table of Contents (Vol. 2)" 
"The Book of Masks (Vol. 2)"