The Book of Masks (Vol. 3)

Deal Me In

Previously: "Gimme Space" 

It's probably just as well that Caleb took so long getting back to you. You took advantage of the empty afternoon between the end of basketball practice and suppertime by going up into the fuck room and rummaging through the mask collection. You needed ideas for where to infiltrate the Warehouse, and you found them in Karl Hennepin's mask.

Still, it took you a surprisingly long time, as you lounged on the crusty old gym mats—and had flashbacks to fucking Kelsey Blankenship from beneath—before you figured out what you needed to do and how you should go about doing it. The Warehouse, after all, is a hang-out spot, not a school program or a social group. What you needed to figure out was who regularly hung out at the Warehouse, and which of them would be useful to you.

You had to start, though, but cutting out a lot of eligible candidates. You want to make the Warehouse a nest for yourself, but you also want to put some distance between you and the other guys. This meant that some of the best choices—Erik Carstairs and other members of the football squad—were out, because they are guys who are likely to meet up with Patterson and his friends a lot. So your attention became focused not on the security squads—which are heavy with football players and the like—but on the guys who sell inside the Warehouse, or who help set up and maintain the entertainment, or who just hang out there lots. After a lot of thought, you reduced your choices down to a manageable set of five.

Mitchell Belz was the first you tentatively settled on. He's one of the losers who hangs out at the portables with Hennepin. He's a tall guy, like Hennepin, with dark, punk-wild hair that he dyes an even darker shade of black, and he favors black leather jackets and black boots. He's been arrested a couple of times for public intoxication, and he sells beer in the Warehouse on Friday nights. But he has a goofy smile, and there's no real menace in him. Mostly, Hennepin just has the impression that he's stupid, horny, and careless about what kind of fun he has.

Alex Massey and Antonio Sanchez are much more dangerous characters. They play on the school's varsity baseball team, which puts them one degree away from Jason Lynch, but the only time Hennepin has heard them talk about Lynch has been to mock him behind his back for his tiny penis, so there seems to be no friendship there. Alex is a little fireplug of tanned muscle, with long brunette hair that hangs down to the top of his shoulders. He wears camo pants and army boots down below, and wife-beaters and a silver necklace up above. He's the kind of guy you would be afraid of, the way you're afraid of the Molester and David Kirkham, but to the best of your knowledge Massey has never even looked at you.

He deals vodka at the Warehouse, while his teammate, Sanchez, deals lager beer. Sanchez is even bigger than Alex, and also dresses in wife-beaters and boots, but he favors heavy Levis. He also wears his hair long, and sports a fuzzy patch of dark beard on the bottom of his chin. Alex at least will grin, even if there's a greasiness to his smile. Sanchez only glares.

If you want to stay away from kids who are likely to get in trouble—and who probably have very troubled home lives, which is the vibe you get from Hennepin's impressions of Massey and Sanchez—Robert Vargas looks like a reasonable choice. He's Hispanic, and hangs out with lots of other Hispanic kids, and he's got a peppery personality. But he's also a band geek—a drummer—and even at the Warehouse he hangs out with other band drummers: Luis Castillo, Owen Hubble, and Luke Romero.

The last choice you settle on is Dustin Miller. He's a junior, and he plays on the JV football squad. Hennepin doesn't know much about him, except that he's blonde, clean-cut, and always had girls at the Warehouse following him around. But he also has a do-not-fuck-with-me glower. Like Sanchez, he is also on the Warehouse security staff, and Hennepin has seen him help take down drunken brawlers quickly while dealing them a lot of pain.

After settling on these, you took Hennepin's mask off and went home for dinner. At home, you let your own instincts then come to the fore, and later one, up in your bedroom, you came to a decision on where you should start.

So when you call Caleb back at Seth's number, you're ready to tell him that you've settled on:

That's all for now.

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"Table of Contents (Vol. 3)" 
"The Book of Masks (Vol. 3)"