The Book of Masks (Vol. 4)

The Golden Child

Previously: "Boys Will Be Boys" 

You and Riker question the rest of family closely about their suggestions. By the time you're done, you're less than enthusiastic about any of them.

The Ritchies are only two people when you need four. And the baby, Logan, sounds like a complication you'd rather not deal with.

The family at the base leaves you lukewarm as well. There might also be a problem getting the two boys at the boarding school (St. Xavier's, a dozen miles west of town) into Saratoga Falls for your "meetings."

And Eric's and Alec's suggestions aren't even families. Sure, they both have a couple at the center of them, and the Kerns are all related. But neither of them is a "family" the way the Browns are.

"What's the matter with you, brah?" Riker demands after you've gone upstairs to copy out your homework for tomorrow. He sounds irritated. "I thought the Ritchies—"

"Do you want a baby, Sydney?" you bluntly ask him

Riker blanches.

"Well, it sounds, uh, interesting—" he stammers.

"How about Elijah Cabot?" you interrupt. "How about him and his mom and his dad?"

Riker's eyes widen.

"Oh, wow!" he exclaims, and breaks into a huge grin.

* * * * *

The Cabots are "royalty." At least, that's what Riker and Micah's mom says, but she doesn't say it in a good way. "You'd think they were royalty," she would fume on the drive home from the soccer games that Elijah and the twins participated in. "At least they think they're royalty!"

They're certainly a very WASPy family. A golden haze seems to shimmer off them, for they are all three very blonde and tan, and the parents dress in beiges, creams and tweeds. Elijah's mom and dad seem very aloof, too. At the soccer meets they would stand apart, watching from behind sunglasses, and offering only the smallest chitchat to anyone with the nerve to approach them. Elijah didn't keep apart, but he was very intense and concentrated on the game and at practices, and he only relaxed with a handful of other kids, neither of whom were Riker or Micah. Knox, who's as much into soccer as Elijah is, can't stand him, and calls him a stuck-up snot.

But all the girls have a crush on him.

Maybe Sydney does too. Because that night, after you're huddled in bed together, naked, arms about each other and penises erect and touching, she whispers between kisses: "We'll do this when you're Elijah, won't we?"

* * * * *

Wednesday. Lunch. You and Sydney talked the idea over only briefly, because you don't need to rehearse when you're Micah and Riker Brown.

You enter the lunchroom late and scan the tables. Knox sees you and shoots up a frantic hand to signal you, but you ignore him as you search out for—

There he is.

Elijah's back is to you as he hunches at a table with his friends. But his wind-tousled hair—butterscotch, shot through with streaks of brown and bright gold—is unmistakable even from behind. Also, he's wearing a green-and-white tracksuit jacket with the name of the Proctor Middle School soccer team—the Falcons—embroidered on the back.

You slap Riker in the arm, then lope over to your target.

Cameron Hill—older brother of your friend Luke Hill—greets you with a jerk his chin as you saunter up. "Hey guys!" Bits of food shoot out of his full mouth.

You drop heavy hands onto Elijah's shoulder, and bounce up and down, like you're going to leapfrog over him. Elijah shrugs you off and looks around with a scowl. He's got doe-like eyes—big and soft and brown—so he doesn't look angry, just pained and annoyed and reproachful.

"Hey man, we're having a party over at our house on Saturday," you tell him. "Barbecue. Hamburgers. Hot dogs. You're coming, right?"

"First I've heard about it," Eljiah mutters, and turns back around.

"So now you heard about it," Riker says. "And you're gonna come." He puts his head around Elijah's shoulder, to grin into face. Elijah pushes him away.

"Who all's coming?" Cameron asks.

"All the guys," you tell him. Riker says, "Like, you're coming." "Luke's coming." "Everyone's coming." You poke Elijah in the side of the neck. "Elijah's coming." He swats your hand away.

"Dude, hamburgers!" Cameron tells Elijah. "What else?" he asks you.

"Ball games. Football, basketball." "Frisbee." "Squirt guns." "Capture the flag." "War."

"You got room in your backyard for all that?" Tai Belton asks.

"We got the whole neighborhood." "We got the whole street."

"What's going on?" That's Knox, who's hurried up with an anxious expression.

"Talkin' about our party on Saturday." "You're coming." "Everyone's coming." "Elijah's coming." You poke him again.

"I didn't say I'm coming!"

"Whole soccer team's coming. Cameron's coming," you tell him. "Luke's coming." "Hamburgers and football, squirt guns." "Knox's coming."

"Yeah!"

"I have to think about it," Elijah says. He sounds harried.

"If you don't come to our house," Riker says, "we'll take the party to your house."

"Hey everyone!" you shout at the table. "Big barbecue party at Elijah's house on Saturday!"

"Alright!" Elijah yells.

"Cool. Now ask us what time it starts."

He sighs. "What time's it start?"

You jab him between the shoulder blades with a sharp fingernail. "Fun starts when you get there!"

* * * * *

It irritates and offends you that Elijah was so reluctant to come over to your place. (Maybe Knox is right and he is a stuck-up snot.) But his attitude seems to have excited Sydney. "That's what make it so hot," she says at dinner that evening, after you and she have explained the weekend plans to the rest of the family. "He doesn't want to be with us. But then he's going to be one of us." Flecks of mashed potatoes show in her mouth—Riker's mouth—as she grins at the table.

"I don't know we've got money in the budget for the kind of party you boys are planning," your dad says.

"Baphomet will provide," Riker serenely replies.

"Amen," your mom says. "Boys, break formation," she adds, for without even noticing it, you've fallen to mirroring your brother's actions.

By "Baphomet will provide" (it turns out) Sydney means that she will get the money, in cash, from her obedient stepfather. And sure enough, the next day, Alec brings a fat bundle of twenties home from school (passed on to him via Sydney's doppelganger), and he and Eric and your dad make a store run that evening to buy supplies for the party.

* * * * *

The guest list grows even longer on Friday, when you and Riker have a football game in Fletcher Grove, so that by the time that Saturday dawns you will be expecting almost twenty-five schoolmates. Your mom and dad are looking harried by ten o'clock, even with help from you and your brothers. Texts and calls are coming and going from all directions as you ask friends—and friends of friends—to bring over every spare bit of sports equipment they have so that you'll have enough entertainment for a lot of rambunctious twelve- and thirteen-year-old boys (and a handful of girls). The major (characteristically) is soon grousing that he wishes you'd set the party up at another location.

Unfortunately, the day turns out to be cold and windy and cloudy with intermittent rain. Cameron and Luke Hill—looking sullen—are wearing rain slickers when they are dropped off at your place a little after noon. "Way to check the weather forecast," Cameron glumly observes.

"Hey, you were gonna get wet anyway," you retort. "Knox is bringing three super-soakers."

"You mean we're gonna have a squirt gun fight in the middle of this?" Luke wails. He points at a window, against which a cold rain is rattling.

"It'll toughen you up," says Eric as he passes through the living room.

"Yeah!" Riker shouts. "We all went running in this weather! Before dawn!" That only earns him a fish-eyed glare and a muttered Weirdos! from Cameron.

The mood of the other guests isn't any better when they start arriving, and pretty soon the unspoken consensus develops that the day is better spent indoors, sprawled across a couple of different rooms, on cell phones, playing games. Eric and Alec do the cooking outside, in the drizzle, on the gas grill, and as the patties and wieners come in, two dozen middle schoolers take turns filing through the kitchen to pick up paper plates loaded with burgers and hot dogs and chips and store-bought cupcakes, while spreading out across several rooms. At your mom's suggestion, some old board games are taken down and broken out, but no one seems to have much fun with the ancient copy of Battleship, still less with Candyland.

And in the midst of it all, the only person doesn't seem gloomy and disappointed is Elijah Cabot.

Not that he's turning handsprings, exactly. But he is polite and quietly cheerful, and goes out of his way to help your mom and brothers by carrying and fetching, and complimenting them on the food. After half an hour of this, Riker leans in at you and mutters, "Is he already part of a cult or something?"

"The cult of good guesting," snorts Eric, who was standing within earshot. "Is he the one we're adding?"

"Yeah. How did you know?"

"You keep hovering. He's gonna figure out you twerps are up to something, if he hasn't already."

Riker gives you a panicked look. "What are we gonna do?" he asks. "If everyone was outside, we could lure him back in, and then—"

"Leave it to me," says Eric. "You ready now? You got the stuff?"

"Um—"

"I think it's in Alec's room," you say.

"Then I'll ping number three and you twerps follow him out."

"What are you—?"

But Eric is already stalking off toward the living room.

There, as you gape, your burly older brother grabs Elijah and throws him over his shoulder like a sack of grain. Your recruit-to-be gasps.

Next: "The Hiding Place" 

*
"Table of Contents (Vol. 4)" 
"The Book of Masks (Vol. 4)"