The Book of Masks (Vol. 3)

The Boyfriend

Previously: "Marching to a New Drummer" 

A strange, thrumming vibration runs through you, from your crown to your toes, as you stride along the hallways and bounce down the stairwell. It's like you're a bowstring, and desire is the bow scraping itself over you and causing your body to sing.

It is singing for Luke Romero.

Holy shit, you think with a kind of grim fear. This girl has got it bad it for him. You feel another cold thrill when you remember that the diagnosis isn't original to you. It's what Harmony had said a couple of weeks ago while watching Annabelle key a desperate text to Luke when she thought he'd gone off to the river without her. It feels like an almost chemical dependency.

You burst out of the library into the deepening night and whip your head around, looking for Luke. You hear him before you spot him—or rather, you hear Deanna chattering away at him a dozen or so yards off. He's leaning against the side of his battered Honda Accord, looking down at her over his folded arms.

"Hey, sorry I'm late getting down here," you gasp as you run up. You have to gulp down your heart, which is trying to force its way up your throat. "Thanks, Deanna," you tell her.

"Oh, sure," she says, brightly. Then, more uncertainly: "Um, are we still getting together or something to, um, talk about—?"

"I'll text you." Without quite realizing what you're doing, you reach out to tweak the white sweatshirt your boyfriend is rocking. "You ready to go?"

"Sure." He straightens up and drops an arm onto your shoulder, to draw you close. "Thanks for hanging out, Deanna."

"Yeah," you agree. "Thanks for— I think Chelsea's waiting for you," you interrupt yourself as Deanna gives every indication of standing and staring and grinning at you. Her face falls, then she recovers to wish you a cheery goodnight, and turns back toward the library. "Oh God," you mutter, and again you surprise yourself a little by falling against Luke's torso. He staggers a little beneath your weight.

"Hey, what's wrong?" he asks.

"Nothing. Chelsea Cooper and Deanna Whatsername, that's all. They kept me there forever."

"I'm sorry. I tried to get back as soon as I could."

"And I still couldn't get away." You find the lie strangely easy to invent. "Even after you texted me you were here, Chelsea was all, like, 'One more thing, just one more thing'."

"What did she want to talk about?"

"I don't wanna talk about it." You pull away from him. "I talked about it enough with her. Where we gonna go?"

And that's when you more or less realize you have committed yourself to keeping Annabelle's date with Luke Romero.

* * * * *

He says he still has to go out to the Warehouse, which surprises you because the plan had been for him to go out there and take care of his business while Annabelle was meeting with Chelsea. "My mom texted right after I dropped you off," he explains as he opens the driver-side door for you. (You have to clamber in through the driver's side because the passenger-side door is busted; it's sealed up with duct tape, and garbage sacks are stretched over the busted-out window on that side.) "I had to pick up some stuff for her at the store. So I thought—" He waits to finish until you are both inside the car. "I thought I'd make things short for you by doing that first, then coming to pick you up. You mind?"

You can't help grinning at him in the dark. Luke Romero does not give off the vibe of a guy who'd be that thoughtful, and that he is that kind of guy is one of the things that drives Annabelle wild.

Luke is a tall, skinny kid—even taller and skinnier than Will Prescott—with a mop of thick, dark hair that covers his ears and falls to the top of his eyebrows and the back of his neck. He sports a weedy, bristly mustache, and dresses down in grimy jeans and t-shirts and pullovers, and walks around with a faint stench of weed on him. All in all, he looks like what he more or less is: one of those kids who skip class to hang out behind the school, getting stoned. But not content with even that kind of loser-dom, he actively works at the drug-and-beer trade at the Warehouse—the dangerous party spot that he now says he has to stop off at.

Yet under his rough, scummy, loser-y exterior, Annabelle has discovered a shy and reasonably thoughtful kid. She paid no attention to him their freshman or most of their sophomore years, even in the marching band to which they both belong. (Luke plays the snares.) It wasn't until the end of the last school year that she started to feel a little intrigued, then interested, then fascinated by him. There was something just so appealingly ... dirty ... about him. She wondered about it, but couldn't figure what it was exactly that kept drawing her eye to him. She finally gave up and admitted that she just must have a thing for "bad boys."

And then she discovered, after they started hanging out, that he wasn't really "bad," except for being bad at school and having a bad home life and just generally being on the bad-tempered outs with life and the world. It made her feel grown up to kind of take him under her wing. And she also found—after he had introduced her to weed, and to necking, and to taking off most of one's clothes so one could be pinched and bit and scratched in very exciting ways—that he gave her a freedom and permission to relax her otherwise very disciplined mind and habits. They haven't slept together, but they have touched each other intimately: he touching her with his long, skinny, knuckley fingers, and she touching his long, skinny, piccolo-like dick. It left both of them giggly and flustered and gleefully conspiratorial.

You tell him now you don't mind going back out to the Warehouse. But you put your foot down when he starts to light a roach while driving. "And not even when you get out there," you further tell him. "I can't afford to go home with the smell of it on me, and I didn't bring a change of clothes." He mewls, but you shut him up by playfully twisting his ear.

* * * * *

The Warehouse is exactly that—an abandoned warehouse in Saratoga Falls's decaying industrial district—that the city's high school kids took over decades ago and turned into a party spot. The soot-stained bricks absorb rather than reflect the stinging glow of the sodium-vapor lamps from the nearby street, and the immense building squats in the night like a rotting hulk.

"There's a lot of people here," you observe as you get out, for the parking lot is surprisingly full for a Thursday night. In a way you are glad, for you don't like the look of the raggedy figures watching you and Luke from across the street. Probably they are only homeless people, as shy of you as you are of them. But even the homeless can be dangerous.

"Setting up for tomorrow night," Luke explains. He throws a protective arm over your shoulders. "Well, cleaning up. That's what I gotta help with. At my station, at least." He hauls open one of the big metal doors that front the Warehouse, and pulls you inside.

Even when peopled by a few dozen kids, the Warehouse feels empty. Past the entryway is the wide doorway leading into the warehouse proper, which houses the dance floor and the band stage. Looking through it, you see a half-dozen kids taking down amps and mike stands. One of them you recognize as Bastian Jankowski, the lead singer for Los Scorchicos, the most popular band in the junior and sophomore classes. They played last weekend, you remember, and must have left their equipment behind all week.

But Luke pulls you into the saloon, which is furnished with the broken and castoff tables, chairs and booths of a dozen abandoned taverns; the bar itself—where more than beer is served up—is a long row of plywood planks set on sawhorses. Luke, his arm still around your shoulders, swaggers over to high-five Owen Hubble, another drummer in the marching band, and Luke's best friend. "Sorry I'm late," he says.

"See you dragged the ball-and-chain along," Owen says. His lip curls as he looks at you, but there's an appreciative gleam in his eye. Owen is cut from the same cloth as Luke—a tall, lanky loser—but he's a lot bolder and nastier, and entirely lacks Luke's sweetness. He is openly lecherous toward you, even though you doubt he likes you any more than you like him.

"Where's Ryder?" Luke asks. He points to some crates behind the bar. "I'm s'posed to have—"

"Up in the office, I guess," Owen says. His eyes still on you, he adds, "'Less he's in one of the rooms nailing one of his fillies."

Luke glances at you. "I gotta go find Ryder," he says.

"Better leave her here," Owen says, still staring at you. "In case he's not nailing a filly but decides he wants to."

"Fuck you, man," Luke says. But his tone is mild. He looks at you, and pulls gently at you.

So you accede, and follow him over to the makeshift stairway that leads to the upper floor where the "offices" are.

And as you follow him, you realize, to your own surprise, that you're already thinking in terms of where to place some doppelgangers in the junior class. Bastian Jankowski, the cute and popular boy-band leader, would carry a lot of influence. Ryder Hillberger, a JV football player who is lining up to take over management of the Warehouse when he's a senior, could give you practical control of the Warehouse of a base. And of course there's the "popular girls" that Annabelle so despises—the Stacy Stahls and Cristine Mileses—who are the Chelseas of the junior and so are obvious candidates.

But should you be thinking of the junior class when your plans were always for the senior class?

Next: "The Junior Menu" 

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