The Book of Masks (Vol. 3)

The Dunjuns

Previously: "A Gang of Your Own" 

The manhole is narrow and dark, but faint light spills across the floor at the bottom. You judge it to be about twenty feet down.

Spencer pushes you aside and wriggles his way down. You peer after. When he's at the bottom, Spencer turns his moon-face up at you.

You suck on your upper lip, then twist around to follow him down the ladder.

You come to a stop in a narrow hallway with a low, arched roof. The floors and walls are concrete, stained with green and brown patches. In the ceiling, inside a little metal cage, shines a bare light bulb. From somewhere nearby you hear the echoing plop of slowly dripping water.

You're standing at a dead end. Spencer lopes down the other way, and you trail cautiously behind. He's only gone twenty feet or so before he comes to a folding metal gate. He shoves it open with a clank, and gives you a dull look. When you hang back, he passes the gate, slides it shut, and clomps off deeper into these "dunjuns."

After he's gone, you move up to examine the gate. The metalwork is smooth and oily in the dim light, and looks in good repair. In good repair too is the lock, and when you experimentally slide the gate shut, the lock clasps shut with a heavy clank of metal. When you tug it, it doesn't open.

Okay, so you've managed to lock yourself out of the "dunjuns," which isn't a great loss. And if Spencer and his friends are locked inside? If they get desperate, they can always phone the police.

You climb out the manhole and slide the heavy metal grate back into place. This piece of work too you closely examine. With the massive screws at the corner, it certainly looks bolted down, which may be why nobody except Spencer and his friends ever goes down them.

* * * * *

You've certainly never heard of these "dunjuns" under the school, and your curiosity is piqued.

So before first period you ask Caleb if he's ever heard of any tunnels under the school. He shakes his head, as does Keith when you ask him in second. But during lunch, which you take out front with Carson and James, Jenny and Paul—

"You don't want to go down there," Carson tells you in a clipped tone. "You seriously do not want to go down there, Prescott."

"What—?"

"Not if you don't want your ass raped," James says.

"What?"

"Do you want to get your ass raped?" Carson asks. He grunts when Jenny punches him in the shoulder. "Imagine Jenny raping your ass," he says, "only it's not Jenny, it's fuckers like Brian Heath, and they're not doing it to flirt with you, like Jenny does when she rapes your ass—" He grunts again when she gives him another wallop.

"What are they?" you ask. "That's all I want to know."

"They're places of ass-rapery," James says, "that you stay out of if that's not your thing."

"Oh just tell him already!" Jenny hollers. "Cut it out with the—"

"They're maintenance tunnels," Carson says. He flops onto his side and fishes some chips out of a bag. "Utility tunnels. Steam, electrical, water—"

"Ass-fuckery," says James.

"Yeah. Which is why I hear," Carson says, "that even the maintenance staff doesn't like going down into them."

"Have you ever been down into them?"

"No. Because I'm not into—" Carson pauses as Jenny readies her fist. "Into that kind of utility work."

"So how do you know about it? Who else knows about it? Is it like the fuck room?" That's a room above the gym, where the top athletes hang out and do the kind of stuff that gives it the nickname "the fuck room" around the rest of the school.

"Jesus!" Jenny bursts out. She scrambles to her knees, grabs up her lunch and her things, and skedaddles off toward the library.

Carson watches her go. Once she's out of earshot, he says, "Good, we finally got rid of her. To answer your question, Prescott—"

Except he doesn't, not all of your questions, anyway. He just has time to tell you that the tunnels might or not have once been a hangout for popular kids, but that they long ago became the lair for the most reptilian school elements.

"You ever notice how come you don't ever see guys like, um, Joshua Call around?" he says. He grows visibly uncomfortable at mentioning the name. "Not even out at the portables? It's because, um, when they're not skipping, they're—"

He falls into an embarrassed silence, and his eyes drop. James, too, you notice, has suddenly gotten very interested in the interior of his sandwich. Paul turns his back to you and becomes fascinated by the traffic flowing down Borman Avenue.

You have the sudden sense that there's someone behind you. You flop onto your back and peer up.

And you almost shit yourself when—speak of the devil—you find Joshua Call glaring balefully down at you. You swallow hard.

He holds out his hand. "Here," he grunts. "You wanted this." He's pinching something green between his fingers.

Tentatively—for though you've recovered your initial fright, and have remembered that he's now your lackey, habits of terror are hard to break—you reach up to take the item from him. It's a tightly wadded, very grubby, five-dollar bill. Call, his eyes alight with a cold fire, gives you one last glare, then turns and stumps off back toward the school.

You turn back over, to face Caleb and the others. They watch Call's retreating back with wary interest.

Finally, Carson lets out a hefty breath. "What the fuck?" he says. "What did—? Gimme that!" He snatches the bill from your hand.

"Hey!"

"The fuck is Call giving you money for?"

"Payment for ass-fuckery?" James suggests. He looks as shocked and surprised as Carson, but clearly his wit (what there is of it) hasn't deserted him.

"Gimme that—!" You grab bill back from Carson. "He owed me five and he's paying me back. That's all!"

Carson honks with laughter. "I've heard of Call 'borrowing' but never 'paying back'. What'd you do for him, Prescott?"

"Some guys I know owed me a favor," you improvise. "They talked to Call."

James snorts. "Guys you know? What guys do you know that could get Joshus Call to pay you back a loan? They have nukes?"

"Just some guys," you repeat. "Big guys."

"You don't have any friends who are 'big guys'."

"Who says?"

"It really looks to me like payment for services rendered," James tells Carson.

"I do so have friends who—!"

"Call wouldn't have paid," Carson tells James. "He'd have 'made'!"

"I got more friends than you guys! Bigger, too!"

"And the eight magical reindeer they own," Carson says, turning to you, "are they your friends too?"

"Oh, fuck you. Jenny had the right idea." You lurch to your feet and grab your stuff. "You know, the only reason I came out here to eat with you was so's you could tell me about the dungeons, and you didn't even—"

"How do you know they're called the dungeons?" Carson asks, sharply.

"—tell me all that much about them!" You wheel and stomp off.

Only after you've cooled off do you wonder if you accidentally let something important slip in front of Carson, when you called the tunnel complex beneath the school by the same name that Call gave them when he told Spencer where he was.

* * * * *

Mostly, though, you preoccupy yourself with Carson's taunt: You don't have any friends!

Okay, that's not exactly what he said, but his jeer that you don't have any "big" friends—friends who count, friends capable of making Joshua Call pay you back a loan—bites at you. You're a nobody, Prescott, is what he was saying.

You could taunt back that he's a nobody too. He and James don't have "big" friends either. But Carson would probably just grin and retort, Yeah I know, so what?

Or (an even worse possible retort, which occurs to you during math class): I don't need 'big friends', not like you say you do, Prescott.

But you do have "big friends." Now. Joshua Call and Jeff Spencer and The Molester. Okay, they're not "friends," but they are lackeys. Only, they're not people you really can afford to be seen with. They're not guys you want to hang out with. You don't want them to be "friends."

So how could you get some? If, hypothetically, you wanted some.

Well, obviously, the same way you got some lackeys.

But what kind of friends?

Cooler friends? Richer friends? Smarter friends?

Girl friends? A girlfriend?

Later that afternoon, during study hall, as you're engaged in a lot of tedious daydreaming, a wrinkle occurs to you: If you want to make yourself a set of friends, why do they have to be at Westside? There's other schools you could "recruit" them from.

Next: Coming soon! Check back!

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