The Book of Masks (Vol. 3)

Lonely Are the Brave

Previously: "Big Man, Big Mouth" 

Katy told you that she wanted to hang out with you at the basement after school, and you dutifully trudge out to meet her in the parking lot after classes let out. You do your best to ignore the crowd that mills about you, though you are convinced that they are all buzzing about you, and snickering at the way you're scurrying off like a scared rabbit from your appointment with Dylan Lloyd.

But I'm not running away, you tell yourself through gritted teeth.

Katy gives you a very close, very worried look when you find her at her car. "Are we still meeting up at the old school?" she asks. You nod. She gives you a long, grave look.

"I'll be out there!" you shout at her. "I promise. I gotta stop off at my house first, but I'll still probably beat you out there!"

She doesn't say anything, though, and continues to look anxious and a little frightened as she gets into her car. You shut the door on her, and watch as she buckles herself in. Then you stumble off toward your own truck. But Katy doesn't pull out of her space until you've pulled out of yours, and she tails you all the way back to Acheson, and gets off your rear bumper only after you've parked in the driveway at your house.

You do go inside, to drop off your book bag and to nod at your mom—"Meatloaf for supper," she tells you—and to ask if she has any errands she needs you to run. She looks at you like you're a psycho killer who's broken into her house, then tells you that she doesn't. "Well, I have to go do a little stuff in town anyway," you tell her, "so I thought I'd ask." You promise you'll be back by five.

Lloyd will probably only knock you onto your ass, so you don't warn her that she might need to break out the gauze and bandages for when you come back home.

In the driveway you then text Katy: Got cught by my mom have to run errand dont wait for me. You then peel out into the street and shoot your way back to the school.

* * * * *

The parking lot is still emptying when you get back, but you're able to park close to the gym at least. Like I want to not be late for this thing, you chide yourself as, with a sick feeling in your stomach you trudge through the breezeway to the front doors of the gym.

But you don't go inside. Instead, you loiter out front, on the grassy quad framed by the gym, the drama wing, and the school proper.

It's just like going to the dentist, you try telling yourself as you slowly pace the ground. You don't want to go, and it won't be fun, but then it'll be over and that will be all.

And just like going to the dentist, you're going to lose some teeth, you can't help replying to yourself.

Shut up, you tell yourself. He's not going to knock out any teeth. So that's one way it's not like going to dentist.

Right. And the dentist doesn't follow you around school afterward, jeering about how he could have taken out more of your teeth but he decided to go easy on you, the traitorous voice inside your head retort.

That's not going to happen either, you try telling yourself, but you are far from certain. In fact, the longer you pace, the more certain you become that you are setting yourself up for some real trouble. By putting yourself in Dylan Lloyd's sights, you've put yourself in the line of fire of the entire basketball squad. And the other assholes—like Lester "The Molester" Pozniak—are bound to gleefully follow Lloyd's lead by mercilessly hazing you. Hell, even the ones like Roy Nelson, who bothered you all during your freshman and sophomore years but then seemed to forget about you, are likely to try renewing their bullying "friendship" with you after it gets around that you—snerk!—challenged Dylan Lloyd to a fistfight.

Okay, but was it a "fistfight"? you tell yourself. I just told him that I'd— You know—

What? the other you sneers. Have a polite conversation about how it's not nice to hit on girls after they've told you to "fuck off"?

Well, it's bad enough having the conversation with yourself. But even worse is that it actually manages to kill the time while you wait, so that you leap like a startled fawn when the doors to the gym bang open and a knot of basketball players—freshly showered and glowing with health—comes swaggering out in their jerseys and workout pants. They laugh and ignore you as they wheel their way toward the parking lot.

Dylan Lloyd isn't one of them.

You plant yourself, with feet wide apart, on the grass directly in front of the gym doors, where Lloyd will be sure to spot you when he comes out. What the hell am I doing? you ask yourself.

Half the team have come out and gone, without paying the slightest attention to you, you've noticed, before he finally swaggers out. He's got two friends with him.

One of them—the guy in the center—is Shawn Saxe, one of the small number of black guys at school. He's dressed like a gangbanger in bright, newly laundered track pants and a jacket, with a bandana tied tightly over the dome of his head and a pair of black Ray-Bans. He veers toward the parking lot without even glancing in your direction. The other guy is Scott Frazier, who shares several classes with you. Like Dylan, he is pale and blonde with a heavy beard that looks several days old. He gives you a quick glance that turns into a double-take.

Then there's Dylan Lloyd himself. A grinning, loudmouthed asshole, swaggering and chortling about some joke or other left over from practice. Like Shawn Saxe, he doesn't notice you, and swings off toward the parking lot.

But he's only gone a few strides before he stops and turns to squint at you. Frazier said something to him, and he and Shawn stop and turn to study you also.

You say nothing. You just stand and stare at them. Let him go first, you tell yourself, and try to pretend that that will make you seem cool instead of what you really are: nearly shitting yourself with fear.

Lloyd stares back at you, in seeming disbelief. Then he shoots a puckish look at his two friends, and nudges Shawn. There are some muttered words, and Shawn and Scott, with a couple of backward glances, shuffle off toward the parking lot. Lloyd stares at you with an amused smirk, then stalks over.

"Jesus, man, look at you," he chortles. He pulls up to a stop and grins at you with gleaming malice. You return his stare with a hard glare of your own, until the smile slowly fades from Lloyd's face. He finally sighs and drops his workout bag from his shoulder.

"Fine, let's get this over with," he says. His expression turns pinched. "Just roll with it, man," he says as he grabs you by the shoulder, "and it won't hurt so much." He pulls a fist back.

What comes next is very fast. You try shrugging his hand off your shoulder, and draw back a fist of your own. But he hurls his own fist past yours and plows it into your solar plexus. All the air explodes out of you, and your abdominal muscles try hiding themselves behind your bladder. You bend double and grab yourself by the middle, hugging yourself. Dylan pushes your head toward your knees and pounds you twice in the kidneys. You collapse to the grass.

"You'll be fine," someone says, and you're slapped hard on the back by a meaty palm. "Next time try tucking yourself around it instead of leaning into it with your bellybutton." You're given another meaty pat on the back as you vomit up a huge wad of sticky spit. "Catch you around, man."

You curl into a ball and press your forehead into the grass. Don't look at me, you pray when you hear the gym door open again. Laughing voices pass you by. Go away and don't see me, you silently beg every time you hear footfalls.

And none of them stop and no one asks if you're alright.

Until you hear Stephanie Wyatt's voice. "Okay, I think you can get up now, Prescott."

* * * * *

She'd been watching all this time from the corner of the school, she tells you as she helps you out to the parking lot. She watched you as you paced and waited for Lloyd, and she watched as he came out, and she watched after he folded you up with three quick blows, and she watched until she sensed that everyone else had gone. That's when she came out to check on you.

As for why she was watching you—

Yes, she had heard what was up, and she wanted to make sure you didn't come to any harm. She wasn't going to get in the way, though. "You're a dumbass, Prescott," she says, "but I guess you had to go through with it."

Well, fuck you too, you think. I guess you'd be happier if I got my ass kicked even harder.

"Don't tell Katy about it, though, okay?" you murmur after Stephanie has helped you to your truck.

"How come?"

"She'll be mad."

"She'll be mad because you lied to her about going to run errands for your mom."

It takes a moment for her words to register. When they do, you give her a sharp look Her stare is hard but not angry.

"I'll make you a deal, Prescott," she says. "I won't tell Katy you were dumbass after school if you do a favor for me." She swings her pack off her shoulder and rummages inside it until she pulls a mask out.

It's the mask that Katy went back to the school to get.

"I want to use this thing on Marc Garner," she says. "That way we can get Hannah in trouble with him, and get him in trouble with her."

Next: "Two Girls, One Plan" 

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