The Book of Masks (Vol. 2)

Chasing Stephanie

Previously: "Some Explanations for Odd Decisions" 

Your dad has no answer for you the next morning at breakfast, but he does have a question: "When you do you have to tell your friend your decision about her job offer?"

"Oh, is it my decision?" you retort.

"Don't get smart with me, or it won't be."

"I said I'd tell her today."

"Uh huh. Well, tell her it'll be tomorrow before you can say for sure. And you can blame the delay on me."

Who else would I blame it on? you mutter under your breath.

"Get a twenty outta the bank drawer on your way out," he adds as you turn to leave. When you blink in surprise, he says, "I'm taking your mother out for dinner, just the two of us, tonight, so you're on your own." Behind his back, at the table, Robert perks up alertly. "Go eat with some of your friends. Take another twenty, and treat Sean to something," your dad continues. "Pay him back for all his help. He's saved your ass more often than you know."

"What about Robert?" you guardedly ask as you dip into the drawer where extra cash is kept.

"What about him? He can look after himself. Can't you, kid?" your dad asks him over his shoulder.

Robert brightens. "Yeah!"

"Okay!" You gulp, a little nervously. "Thanks!"

"Thank you," he dryly replies. "You're getting a break from us, but more important, your mom and I are getting a break from you."

* * * * *

You shoot Stephanie a quick text before you leave, telling her that you won't be able to give her a yes or no before tomorrow. She doesn't reply, but she doesn't have to. She's waiting outside the breezeway leading in to school. "Will!" she shouts when she sees you shuffling across the student parking lot. "Is there a problem, you can't take the job?" she asks with a concerned expression.

"I don't know yet. My dad's being dumb."

She snorts. "Yeah, I know what that's like. What's the deal?"

"He thinks I've got a scheme or something, like I'm just using your job as a way of quitting work at his place." She looks puzzled, so you give a fuller explanation of your dad's suspicions.

Which makes her grin. "That's brilliant," she says. "I should use that trick to get out of having to do stuff at my pop's place. Is your dad hiring? Eh, never mind, it wouldn't work." She rubs her nose with her open palm. "My pop'd still make me work at his place in my spare time. But what're you doing now?"

"Going to class."

"We got, like, twenty minutes! Come hang out with me." With a cheery grin she draws you down the breezeway, and reluctantly you follow her into the gym and thence under the mezzanine, where the coaches have their offices. There's a tiny classroom there too (which you never knew about), and a bunch of girls are in there: Stephanie's jock friends. You get only a couple of glances—none of them friendly, but none of them unfriendly, either—from them, as they are all preoccupied with their phones. Stephanie lofts herself onto a table and sits cross-legged. She grins at you as she takes out her phone, then falls into the same pose as the rest. After a pause, you settle into a chair with your own cell phone.

* * * * *

"The fuck is this about you quitting Salopek?" Caleb wants to know in the minute you have with him before the start of first period. He leans so far out of his desk, with his nose quivering at you, that it looks like he'll topple over.

"I got a job offer at another place."

"Where? Rent-a-Doofus?"

"Fuck you, man, I thought you'd be interested, it opens up my slot at Salopek."

That was how you wound up spending your time before class, texting people. And since you didn't have much to say, you texted Caleb to tell him that you might be quitting Salopek to take another job.

"So who's got a better job for you?" Caleb wants to know.

"What do you care?"

"I don't, I'm just being a nosey motherfucker. But you didn't even want the job at Salopek, and that's a sweet gig—"

"No it isn't."

"So where would you be going?"

"Furniture store."

"Jesus!" He rears back. "What kind of—? What's the job position, vice-president in charge of moving sofas around?"

You make a face. "That's basically what I'm doing at Salopek anyway. And it'd be safer moving furniture than what I'm moving around at my dad's work."

"Where'd you hear about this job?"

"Stephanie Wyatt."

Caleb gives you a very long stare. "What?" you ask.

"What is going on between you two?"

"Nothing! Why does everyone—?"

"Mr. Prescott!" the teacher barks from the front of the room. "You can keep your voice down. In fact, you can keep your mouth shut, if you please. I'm going to start class in a minute."

* * * * *

"I don't get why anyone is interested in you either, Prescott," Carson Ioeger observes at lunch. "But maybe that's because I know you, and I know there's not a goddamned thing about you that's interesting."

"I wasn't talking to you," you retort. "I was talking to Jenny." Jenny Ashton's retort is even shorter: she pops Carson on the back of his head.

It's lunchtime, and you ditched Caleb and Keith to eat with Carson's gang out front: him and Jenny, James Lamont and Paul Davis. Of all the people you know, Caleb was one you would have expected to be most oblivious to "whatever the thing is" that is between you and Stephanie. So when he came out with that question in first period, you decided to find out from Jenny—who is more on the pulse of things—what the gossip is about you, if any.

She's not helpful, and her reassurances (if that's what they are) don't make you feel any better either. "No one's interested in you and Stephanie," she tells you. "I mean, I guess you're talking about that thing that happened out at Maggie's party last week?" You shrug. "Well, people are just talking about Stephanie, if they're talking about it at all. Because, you know, she was wasted."

"She wasn't wasted," you protest.

"She was wasted, Prescott," Carson says. "Any girl'd have to be blasted out of her head to mack on you."

"Has any girl macked on you?" you retort.

"None of 'em have ever got drunk enough," he replies with a serene air.

"Stephanie is someone that a lot of people know," Jenny says. "So people are gonna talk about her. I don't think anyone thinks there's 'something'"—she hooks the word in air quotes—"going on between you and her."

"Look at his face," James says. "He thinks you just insulted him."

Jenny leans over to smack him on the knee. But he's right. It was an implied slap in the face: No one thinks that there could be "something" between you and Stephanie.

Maybe that's the reason you blurt out that she wants you to come to work at her dad's furniture store, where she does part time work. So they'll think that maybe Stephanie does too like you!

But no one looks impressed, and Paul actually uses the awkward silence that ensues to change the subject.

So it's a surprise when Carson makes a point of walking with you to the sixth-period calculus class that you share.

"Listen, man," he says. "I don't know what it is about you and these fantasy girlfriends you like to fuck yourself in the head with—"

"What 'fantasy' girlfriends?"

"Lisa. And now Stephanie, it sounds like. Don't look at me like that, man, I'm trying to give you some good advice. If you want a girl, and I know most of us do— Christ!" His gaze briefly goes distant. "Anyway," he continues when he returns to earth after that brief vacation, "if you are serious about getting a girlfriend, I can give you a list of girls who'd go out with you if you just asked them."

"What?"

"I can give you a list," he repeats, then adds, "Okay, they're not gonna be the girls you're having fantasies about, but it's healthier than—"

"Oh, Jesus!"

"I'm trying to do you a solid here, Prescott!"

But you ignore him. And at least you get your message across, because even though he follows you into the classroom and drops into the desk next to yours, he just makes a face at you instead of reviving the topic.

And he must have really got you stirred up, because you glare back at Scott Bickelmeir, who you catch giving you a lingering glance of curiosity. "What?" you demand of him. But he only smiles gnomically to himself, and turns away.

* * * * *

At work, Sean suggests you go out again for a bite, like you did yesterday.

"I'm supposed to go meet Stephanie at her dad's work after I get out of here," you tell him. "Yeah, Stephanie suggested coming out there so I could look around, tell my dad—"

"Mind if I come along?" Sean asks. "We could still go get something after you're done with her."

That's fine with you. But you ask why he wants to tag along.

"I dunno, I just got to thinking after we talked yesterday, maybe you're right about finding someplace else to work. After that run-in I had with Scott yesterday—" He makes a face. "This place is starting to have too many bad associations." He punches you lightly in the chest. "You wouldn't mind if maybe I followed you out the door and over to your new job?"

"Glad to have you along," you assure him. "Though I dunno if they've got jobs for both of us." The fact is, you're nervous that maybe Stephanie's dad will take one look at Sean and decide that he's better for it.

And maybe Sean reads your worry. "If they hire me," he tells you with a grin, "I'll make sure they hire you too, Will."

Next: "Scouting a New Position" 

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