The Book of Masks (Vol. 2)

A Cook's Tour of Party Hell

Previously: "Party Crush" 

Roy turns to his friends, and you make your escape, scooting off after Erik and Emily.

But as you pass into the next room, someone grabs you.

"Prescott!" Stephanie shouts, for the music is a lot louder in here. Her eyes are shining as she smiles at you. "I was about decided you weren't coming!"

"I came out with Sean Mitchell!" you shout back over the music.

"Cool!" Her face is flushed and she is perspiring. "You know—" She hauls you over to a circle of girls blocking the entrance to a hallway. "You all know Will here," she tells them. "Prescott?"

"Hey Will," says the girl nearest. She has long, blonde hair that hangs in straight sheets past the tips of her breasts.

'You know Will?" Stephanie asks.

"We've had some classes together." The girl gives you a long, expectant look , and it gives you a sudden fright to realize she is waiting for you to remember her name.

"Where's Phoebe?" Stephanie asks.

"With Matthew, probably." The girl looks around your ear.

"Fuck!" Stephanie's flush deepens, and she starts to put a flask to her lips. "Wait," she says. "I thought she said he wasn't coming."

"I dunno," the girl—Barbara! That's her name!—says.

Stephanie hauls you off again. "Come with me, I want you to meet Phoebe! You know Phoebe?" Her grip on your arm tightens.

"I—! Maybe!"

"You'll like her! I— Hey!" She punches a beefy guy in a tight t-shirt. "You seen Phoebe around?" The guy shakes his head. "God damn it!" Stephanie spits.

"What do you want me to meet Phoebe for?"

She does a double-take at you, and some of that old fire and disdain shows in her face as her lip curls. With a grimace, she pushes you steadily back across the room and up against the wall. "Watch out!" someone chortles. "Stephanie's going for the tonsils!"

She presses up close, squeezing her breasts against your chest, and you wince at the stench of alcohol on her breath. She lays a fist—the one holding the flask—on your shoulder as she digs into her back pocket to pull out a phone.

"You'll know her when you see her," she says as she thumbs down the screen, and now that she's not shouting there's a definite slur in her speech. "You'll reco'nize her. Fuck, you pro'ly— Here!" She holds her phone up, then suddenly sags and mashes the phone into your face as she catches herself. "This is Phoebe," she says after steading herself. "I'm a little wasted," she adds.

You grab her wrist to steady the phone, and throw your other arm around her waist to support her. Someone whistles, shrilly, but you're too preoccupied to care. You study the phone long enough to take in the girl in the picture. Then, as Stephanie sags deeper against you, you catch her around the shoulders and pull her to you. Her face goes into the crook of your neck, like it did the other night.

For a moment only she rests there, then rears back to peer at you. "You like this, don' you, Prescott?" she says in a sneer.

"What?"

"Hol'ing me like this."

You hesitate, then say, "Yes."

"I can tell. I'm giving you wood."

She is, a little, though not enough for her to have noticed, you'd have bet.

"Mm. You're sweet." She puts her face back in the crook of your neck. "You're sweet to me the other night. You're sweet an' I—"

Then she rouses herself with a deep breath and straightens up. You try to hold on to her, but she pulls away. "Okay, I'm fine," she says, and pushes at your shoulder. "You can let go of me now."

"You sure?"

"Yeah, I'm—"

To your relief, Barbara comes stepping up. "Hey there," she says as she takes Stephanie by the elbow. "Let's go take a little walk, okay?"

"Huh? Oh, sure." Stephanie stumbles as Barbara tugs at her. "Go look for Phoebe!" she shouts at you. "Tell her I want you t'see her! I mean, you want t'see her! I want t'see her!" Barbara shoots you a pitying look as she steers her friend away.

You gather your wits and suck down a deep breath. As you step from the corner, a foot shoots out and you're almost tripped by Dylan Lloyd, who is splayed on a sofa with a girl in his lap. He smirks up at you. "Like where you were putting your hands, man," he tells you. The girl squeals and claws at his chest.

* * * * *

You're not really keen on looking for Phoebe, so you go looking for Christian instead. But he's moved out of his corner and taken Darrell with him. You spiral through the house, and since things aren't already awkward enough, you ask Kendra, "Have you seen Christian Knouse around?" when you pass her.

"Ungh," she replies with a curve of the lip.

"What about Phoebe— Um, the soccer player?"

That gets her attention, and she gives you a disdainful but direct look. Then her mouth curls in a way you don't quite like, and with a crook of the finger she leads through the kitchen to where a pair of French doors open into the back yard. "Somewhere out there," she says.

"Hey Kendra," says Laurent Delacroix, who with some buddies is standing in a cluster by the doors.

She glances at him, then turns back to you. "What do you want Phoebe for?" she asks as she flops backward against Laurent. He throws an arm around her and pulls her close even as she continues looking at you.

"Someone asked me to find her."

"Who?"

"Stephanie Wyatt."

"Oh." All the interest drains from her face, and she turns to look up at Laurent. "Are you having fun yet?' she asks him in a little girl voice.

You roll your eyes and go outside. The back porch is brilliantly lit up by white floodlights, but the back half of the yard fades quickly into darkness. It's not so dark, though, that you don't spot a tall girl with long, straight hair—a girl stamped from the same mold as Barbara Powell—loitering near the side of a lawn shed with her phone out. You tramp over to deliver Stephanie's message.

"Hey, Phoebe?" you ask, and the girl lifts her face from her phone. Vaguely, you notice a nearby sound like streaming water spattering off leaves. "Stephanie's looking for you."

She blinks, then glances back down at her phone. "Are you Will?" she asks.

"Yeah. I was just with—"

"Oh my God. Yeah, um, you should go tell Stephanie that—"

There's a rustle from behind the shed, and a figure half as tall as the Empire State Building steps out from the shadows. It's Steve Patterson, and he's pulling his zipper up. "Get the fuck out of here," he says in a tone low and cold with menace. He grasps Phoebe by the base of the back of her neck.

Your eyes go wide. "Yeah, okay, I'm—"

Before you can turn and flee, though, shouts break out from the house. You wheel and watch with surprise as two guys go tumbling off the deck and hit the ground hard. There they scramble, pummeling each other and kicking their legs in the air while girls yell and guys shout hoarsely at them. Everyone seems paralyzed for a moment, before a couple of the meatier guys jump down to try prying the combatants apart.

Your feet are still frozen to the ground, though, until you are rudely shoved off them as Steve goes galloping past. He plunges in to grab one of the fighters about the head and wrench him back, twisting him in a headlock as. the others dive in to yank the other fighter away.

It gives you a shock when, on drawing a little nearer, you recognize who it is Steve is holding: Sean Mitchell. Your coworker's teeth flash whitely in his flushed face, and he shouts. The other is a football player, Scott Bickemeier, who you vaguely recall is new to Westside, having come over from Eastman at the start of the year.

And what's the fight about? There's no telling, what with all the shouting. But Steve has to hang onto Sean even after the others have released Scott. There's some more shouting, then Scott throws his hands into the air and stalks back into the house. That's when Sean starts screaming: "Yeah, you get the fuck outta here, motherfucker! And you stay the fuck away from my house! Stay the goddamned fuck away or I swear I'll fucking kill you, motherfucker!"

Not until Scott is gone does Steve let go of Sean, who curses as he wipes at the stream of blood pouring from his nose. He stoops to snatch his ball cap off the ground and jams it onto his head. Steve says something in a low voice, but Sean only flips him off before stalking into the house after Scott. Steve watches him go, then turns and saunters back out to where you (and Phoebe; you'd forgotten her in the excitement) are waiting.

"What was that about?" you ask him.

"Drama," he says in a cold voice.

Then he picks you up like you're a thing of sticks and straw and rags, and carries you over to the six-foot fence that bounds the property. Casually he lofts you over it, and you fall with a bone-rattling jolt into the back yard of the house next door.

Somewhere, the dark nearby, a dog barks. You bolt for another fence and vault it.

Next: "Hangovers" 

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