The Book of Masks (Vol. 3)

Friendship Is What You Make of It

Previously: "The Dunjuns" 

You spend your seventh-period study hall in a distracted state, playing with the idea of getting yourself a new set of friends by using the "lackey" spell. You depress yourself by reflecting that fake friends would be no friends at all, then cheer yourself back up when it occurs to you that not all of your new "friends" would have to be lackeys. By replacing just a few key people at school—members of one or more social circles—with fakes, you could get yourself an "in" with those groups.

Then you get yourself really good and depressed by wondering if your new social status would be all that convincing. Would it be really believable, even with the help of lackeys, if you started hanging out with football players, or drama people, or kids who played in garage bands? Maybe there's a reason you don't have all that many friends at school, and maybe it has everything to do with you and not with them.

But—and you sit up very straight when the thought occurs to you—there are other schools in town. If you made got yourself some new friends at Eastman High School or at ... Um ...

The Christian school? Ugh, no.

Okay then— if you made and then got yourself some new friends at Eastman High, then how could anyone tell if you-plus-them equalled "one really weird scene." Same over at Eastman.

The more you think the idea over, the more you like it.

The only big problem would be ... How do you get in contact with someone from Eastman? And how would you know who to "recruit"?

* * * * *

The Molester catches and delivers his tribute to you on your way out the door, but Spencer fails entirely to find you. Still, the ten dollars you collect are a welcome first payment from your lackeys. You tuck the bills away in a special envelope that you hide in your sock drawer—money you are earmarking to repay Caleb for what you stole while using his face.

But you wind up spending it that night, after you text Caleb to see if he'd be up for getting together to study. You stop at a 7-11 and buy a couple of large sodas and a big bag of chips.

"You know anyone who goes to Eastman?" you ask in a carefully, casual tone of voice after you've been working on your math for nearly an hour. Caleb is sprawled on his bed while you hunch over his desk.

"Sure," he replies, and rattles off a lot of names that you don't recognize.

"Are they cool?" you ask. "I mean, are they worth hanging out with?"

Caleb gives you a look. "If they were worth hanging out with," he says, "don't you think I'd be spending a lot more time hanging out with them and less time hanging out with you and Tilley?"

He's still in a bad mood—a hangover of the nasty prank you played on him, you suppose—so you forgive him the gibe. "So who are these people?" you ask.

He sighs. "Just people I went to middle school or elementary school with. They probably don't even remember me."

"But you remember them."

"What's this about, man?"

"Oh, I just kind of got into it with Carson and James today," you explain. "And I got to thinking‚ well, we need to start hanging out with a better class of asshole."

"I've thought that for a long time. So do we take Tilley out to the country and abandon him there, or pack him up a big box with some air holes and mail him to—"

"I wasn't talking about Keith," you retort. "And what's wrong with Keith?"

"Aside from the obvious?"

"Yeah, sure, he can be a bit much, but—"

"I say the same thing about you, you know—"

"What?"

"And I assume you say the same thing about me."

"No I don't!"

"Really?" Caleb's face lights up a little. "'Cos I was sure—"

"Oh, fuck you! If that's what you really think of me—"

"I'm just giving you shit. But if you're talking about Carson and James— Oh, and Keith can go fuck himself, for all I care, the cocksucker hasn't been talking to me since, well—"

"Yeah, I know, you don't want to talk about it. But I was just thinking— Well, it wouldn't do us any good when we're at school. But if we had some friends over at Eastman, we could—"

"If I wanted new friends, Prescott," Caleb says in a very clipped tone, "I could find them at Westside."

"Really?" You affect surprise. "Where? Who?"

"Around."

"See, that's what I was telling Carson, that I got friends he doesn't know about—"

"Who?"

"Don't start with me, man. That's how I got mad at Carson and decided I wanted some new friends!"

But you talk some more, particularly about the people at Eastman that he used to know. Most of them, it sounds like, went on to be come the kind of people you don't have much use for: football players or worse. But a couple of them, he's pretty sure, turned out decent. And one of them, he says after turning thoughtful and melancholy, he knows for a fact is a cheerleader over at the other school.

"God, I had a crush on Ann back in the fourth grade," he says, though that isn't exactly what you had asked him. He rolls onto his back to stare at the ceiling. "She was the cutest red-head. Probably still is." He chews on his lower lip, then snaps his finger at you to hand him his phone from the desk. He taps and scrolls at the screen, then stares for a very long time at it before turning the screen to show you.

It's a picture of girl with long, bright-red hair in an EHS cheerleader uniform. She is perched on a set of bleachers and her smile is tight and bright. She's pretty, but not a knockout.

"She looks great," you tell Caleb with about twenty-five percent exaggeration. "But that's just what I mean. Why aren't you hanging out with someone like that on weekends?"

"You mean instead of with you?"

"Well, we could all—"

"There's no point, man."

"Why is there no point?"

"Because it's not going to happen."

"Well, it isn't if you just mope around like this!"

Caleb gives you a very pinched look, and insists on getting back to his school work.

* * * * *

But you keep badgering him over the course of the week, and by the time Friday rolls around, you have succeeded in breaking down his resistance. It turns out that he still has Ann Sibley's cell phone number buried in the recesses of his contact list, and after a lot of goading you get him to her a text, suggesting that him and her and maybe some of their friends might get together to do something on Saturday. "Nothing'll come of it," he warns you, "if you think you're gonna use her to meet some hot Eastman cheerleaders." You airily dismiss his suspicion. You've got other reasons for wanting to meet an Eastman cheerleader.

In the meantime, you've managed to straighten out your lackeys, arranging for Spencer and Call to pass their daily contributions to the Molester, and for him to deliver it once a week—on Fridays—under the pretext of hauling you out back for a beating. It gives you a weird thrill that afternoon when the Molester, without even a preamble, grabs you from in front of Keith. Except for the absence of mocking banter from Pozniak, it feels exactly like all the other times he has marched you off for a bout of pain and humiliation, and you shudder all over with remembered horrors as he steers you with a clammy hand on the back of your neck toward the portables. But it's not real, you gleefully tell yourself between shivers. He's my lackey and this is just an act! When you're out of sight, the Molester lets you go, and sullenly hands you a dirty envelope containing sixty dollars in various denominations.

"He just made me give him my underwear," you tell Keith afterward. "Guess he has a thing for sniffing my farts." That is, in fact, what you ordered Pozniak to do after you had stripped off your boxers and handed them to him, in order to make the pretended abduction look that much more convincing.

On Saturday morning you wake to a text from Caleb, telling you that Ann invited him to join him and a bunch of other Eastman students, who are planning to see a movie that afternoon. Sounds great! you reply. Me invited too? To which Caleb says, Sure.

He's in a subdued mood when you pick him up, but you can tell he's tamping back his excitement. As you pace in front of the theater, you're joined by two tall guys in Eastman letterman jackets. From their talk, you soon deduce that they're waiting for some others to arrive, and when you ask if Ann Sibley is one that's coming, the taller of the pair point-blank asks if you're the "Caleb" that she's meeting up with. You point to your friend. The other two then introduce themselves as "Conor" and "Timothy."

There's one false start before Ann arrives, though. A couple of more Eastman students show up and exchange some brusque words with Conor and Timothy before going in. The latter mutters that he's going to go wait inside before "that cocksucker" shows up.

"Who?" you ask Conor after his friend has gone in.

"Guy named Charles Whitney," Conor replies. "Him and Timothy don't care for each other. Lucky he goes to St. Xavier now."

St. Xavier! You almost jump out of your skin. Why didn't you remember the elite boarding school west of town? If you had "friends" that went to St. Xavier, you could look down your nose at all of Westside!

And one of them is coming out here to the theater? Where you can catch him with the memory strip that you brought along to use on Ann Sibley?

Next: "Mugging a Preppie" 

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