The Book of Masks (Vol. 2)

Chelsea Cooper, Marijuana Marketeer

Previously: "Into the Weeds" 

"Okay, but what if I helped you sell it?" you ask Chen before you can change your mind.

"You? Pfah! How would that work, you ditzy—?"

"Don't call me that! If you do I won't tell you my idea!"

Chen shuts up, but his expression remains skeptical and amused.

"You know," you tell him after you've recovered your own temper, "you don't sell nearly as much of that stuff as you could."

"I do okay," he growls.

"Don't you want to do better? You know, I'm hitting parties almost every weekend, and the number of them where anyone smokes any weed is— Well, there aren't any! Not hardly!"

Chen's eyes narrow. "So are you trying to suggest that you could—"

"Bet you I could!"

"How?"

You don't see right away how. But you don't let that stop you, now that you're on a roll.

"Lots of ways. By talking it up! By telling people they should get some! By getting people together to buy some for their parties!"

Chen makes a face. "And what would you want for acting as my ... 'marketing department'?" he scornfully demands.

"A percentage?"

"Fuck you."

"Listen, I'll do it myself!" you flare at him. "Give me—" He's lowered his hand, so you are able to snatch the baggie back. "There's two ounces in here! I measured! That's eight hundred dollars of this stuff!" You suppress a hiccup of surprise at how much that two ounces has come to. "How many joints could you roll with this stuff?"

"Two ounces? I could get eighty out of it."

You twinge all over. "Well, I'll send someone to buy eighty joints off you!"

"Oh, fuck!" He laughs. "Who?"

"I don't know! When I find them! Maybe it'll be a couple of people! But I'll send them, and I'll tell you beforehand who they'll be, and that way you'll know I sent them!"

He cocks his head. "Then what?"

"You sell it to them! Here!" You thrust the baggie back at him. "You roll that into eighty joints, and you sell it to the people I send to you! I'll tell them how much to buy, you sell it to them, and you give me half!"

"Half of what I sell it to them for?"

"Yes!"

"Okay, deal."

"What?" His quick acceptance totally blindsides you.

"I said it's a deal." He thrusts the baggie into his pocket. "You tell me who's going to come buying from me, and if it's someone I never bought from before, and they buy more than—" He thinks a moment. "More than ten joints off me, I'll give half the gross to you."

"Oh. Okay. That sounds fair." You blink rapidly. Did I fuck up somewhere? you wonder. He shouldn't be nearly this quick to accept my deal.

Then you spot what you think is the flaw. "Hang on," you call as he turns back to his Jeep. "I want something in advance!"

"You don't need an advance," he retorts, "not if you can really pull off what you say you can." He swings up inside his Jeep. "And if you can't, then you don't deserve an advance."

He starts his Jeep and roars off before you can catch him.

* * * * *

You console yourself with the thought that, although you didn't get anything from him for the weed, you might have succeeded in setting something up to make you even more money than you'd hoped, providing that you can follow through on what you boasted of. And you think you probably can.

You're given an even greater incentive when you talk to Caleb later that night. His text asking you to call was among a cluster of texts you got while waiting for Chen, and you were quick to delete it before Gloria could see it. "Jesus, there's no way I want your fucking phone number in my call list," you snarl at him. "I don't even want your texts in my—"

"Do I suddenly have cooties, Will?" he honks at you.

"It's just not good for my new image, you know," you tell him, "and it wouldn't be good if Kendra or Gloria or one of them spotted it there." Though you're alone in your bedroom, you toss your hair imperiously.

"Then get me Patterson's identity so you and me can—"

"That wouldn't do you any good either. Me and Steve despise each other."

"Christ. Then is there anyone—? And make it someone with some money, because if I'm going to talk to—"

"Why does it have to be someone with some money?"

"Because I like money? Money is good? Money's what makes the world go around? But more particularly"—here he clears his throat; it sounds like he's gargling with sandpaper—"we need a lot of money for the next spell."

"What spell? I mean," you correct yourself before he can honk at you again. "Have you been looking at the next one?"

"Of course I have. What else have I got to do while you're sucking off the captain of the basketball team?"

You lower the phone long enough to make a face at the screen.

"—and it's going to cost us a few hundred," he is saying when you raise the phone to your ear again. "Assuming," he continues in a very acidic tone, "you're still interested in our research project after your recent elevation to head cheerleader."

"Well, sure I'm interested! I've just got some— Oh, and by the way, tonight I wasn't sucking Gordon's off, I was—"

"Not an update I wanted to hear, Will."

"—turning that briefcase of weed we got off Chen into cash."

"Say what now? How?"

"By selling it back to Chen. Yeah!" You gurgle with delight. "I met up with him tonight, and I think I've got a deal that'll give us half its street value! It'll take awhile to sell off, but—"

"Can you get us four hundred dollars right away?"

Your face falls. "Well ... No, not right away. In a couple of weeks, maybe—"

"Then do you think you could get Anthony Kirk's debit card off him?"

"What?"

"I've got a copy of his brain, you know. I'm wearing it now and scoping out some college possibilities. Yeesh. If I had his money it'd be— But what I was saying, I know his PIN number, so if we got ahold of his card—"

"Oh my God! You're talking about stealing from Anthony's bank account?"

There's a pause. "Well, you're talking about dealing drugs, so—"

"That's not—! Okay, but stealing his card— You know, we'd have to steal it and then get it back to him. That'd be twice as dangerous as—"

It's a tedious argument that goes around and around without arriving anyplace, and it doesn't end until there's a hard banging on your bedroom door. You open it to find your—that is to say, Chelsea's—older brother, Jordan, glaring at you from the other side. "Can you keep it down?" he growls at you. "You got a voice like a drill cutting sheet metal." You make a face back at him and slam the door. But it's a good excuse to close down a phone conversation that is giving you a headache.

You spend the balance of the night combing carefully through all the social media sites you know of, looking for candidates you can coax and bully into buying weed for their parties.

* * * * *

The next day is Friday—yay! your first Friday as Chelsea Cooper!—and you get a start on your plans by targeting Eva and Jessica Garner with an invite to a very small and intimate social gathering (as you describe it to them) at your house. It's actually a two-fer plot. You want to go through them to get to their brother Marc, who in addition to being the captain of the boys' varsity soccer team is also a major (but high-functioning) pothead. If you could get them to throw a party into which you could sell some of Chen's weed, and also make a friendly connection to Marc's girlfriend, Hannah, so that all of you could start being friends ...

Your plans are derailed, though, when Patterson intercepts you and Gordon as you're wandering toward the cafeteria for lunch. "Someone left the loft door open," he coldly informs the pair of you.

"Oh, shit," Gordon giggles. (He's clearly still getting weed from somewhere.) "Did the horse bolt?"

Patterson ignores the weak attempted jape. "Just letting you know. I closed it up." He turns away as Gordon giggles again.

A chill runs through you. "Pookie," you tell Gordon. "Let's eat up in the loft today." Gordon guffaws with pleasure.

You have to bat him away once you're in the loft, and you ignore him when he asks what you're doing. Which is, you're searching for the stash of weed you left up here. It's gone from where you left it, and it's nowhere else you can find.

There aren't many suspects, so it wouldn't be too hard to confront and find the thief.

That is, if you want to be direct. It occurs to you that those mind-copying thingies might also prove useful in tracking down the culprit.

Next: "The Master Planner" 

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