The Book of Masks (Vol. 4)

Into the Deep End

Previously: "In the Wake of a New Girlfriend" 

The Warehouse!

The very name gives you a shiver!

You're not much of one for parties or party spots. Oh, you've been to your share of them. But mostly they've been low-key affairs, and you've gone because someone has asked you to come along; or they've been places you and Caleb and Keith crashed out of a sense of boredom and curiosity. You got to talk to some girls at them, but there was never any follow through, and a lot of the time you wound up alone in a corner, talking to some other loser. You don't have the easy way in a crowd that most people seem to have, and you're too often aware of just how awkward and out of place you feel.

As for party spots, you've been out to Legends, which is a dance club, two or three times, but you don't dance. And once, last year, Carson Ioeger and James Lamont took you along when they snuck into a bar. But they called you a dorkis afterward because you didn't do much there (but they didn't do much either, so what right did they have to call you a dorkis?) and said they'd never take you along to a place like that again.

But the Warehouse is a whole other level of party and party spot.

It is, for a start, illegal. Or, you suppose it's illegal. It's an actual warehouse in the city's decaying industrial district, and if it isn't actually abandoned (which it likely is) you can't imagine that the owners are making legitimate money renting it out as a party spot. It's just a building that's been taken over by the city's high school kids.

Every weekend—Fridays and Saturdays—there are giant parties with music provided by a high school DJ or a local band. There's beer and booze and weed and other drugs, and report has it there are rooms upstairs that can be rented at exorbitant prices for a little "privacy."

Nor is there any adult supervision. Security, such as it is, is provided by football players and wrestlers (and the like) from the city's two high schools.

Basically, it's a spot where everyone gets together two nights a week to throw a giant, unsupervised party.

You and Caleb and Keith drove past it, once, and dared each other to stop. You all three panicked, though, at the last moment, and hurried away.

Now Adam Dortch is assuming that you'll be going out there tonight.

You start to stammer a demurral, but catch yourself, and look at Andrea. Her expression is gnomic, hooded. You hold each other's eye.

Then, in a small, almost inaudible voice, she says, "I'll have to hang out with Charles after the play."

Which is all the answer you need. To Adam you call back, "Sure! What time's everyone going out?"

"We'll head over to Eastman about nine, then out there around ten." His expression has turned puckish and knowing, and he jerks his chin at you, and smirks before disappearing back around the corner.

"They're going over to Eastman first?" you query Andrea.

"To park," she says. "Then they'll carpool out to the Warehouse." A tiny smile forms on her lips. "You've never been out, have you, Will?"

"Have you?" you retort.

"A couple of times. Andrea has. Is anyone watching? Behind me?" Her back is to the door.

You shake your head.

"That's t0o bad," she says, and strokes your chest and stomach with a forefinger. You shiver all over, and shiver again when she mimes biting at you.

"Have fun out there," she says. "But not too much fun. Don't let anyone drag you upstairs."

"Upstairs?"

Then, as her expression darkens with amusement, you remember those stories about the private rooms that can be rented.

* * * * *

Andrea pushes everyone out of the house at around seven, and you go home to change into something sturdier. You ask your dad for a relaxed curfew, and when he demands to know how come, you tell him (mostly truthfully) that you'll be getting a ride to someone's house and that you don't know how easy it will be to get a ride back.

"Call an Uber," he tells you, and when you ask for money for an Uber he tells you that maybe you'd better not go at all. But that only stiffens your resolve, and you spitefully decide that if you miss your curfew and he grounds you, you'll just switch places with Kirkham or Amanda. You bet they don't have stupidly early curfews, and maybe no curfews at all!

And that reminds you that, via Kirkham, at least, you can probably get yourself a ride away from the Warehouse in plenty of time. So you text him and order him to remain on standby with a car, then text Adam to see if you can get a ride with him from your house.

Instead, he sends Ben Gunnison to pick you up

* * * * *

Ben is a chortler and a gigglepuss. He's a chunky kid with a doughy face and dark eyes, and between that and his chuckles, he puts you in mind of the Pillsbury doughboy. Only his voice is too deep, and his talk too full of "pussy" this and "pussy" that.

"You got enough money for tonight?" he asks as he turns onto Twentieth Street and guns the car up to fifty.

"I got seventy on me." And the only reason you've got that much is because your mom, as though sensing that tonight's entertainment would be expensive, slipped you three twenties before you left.

Ben guffaws. "Seventy! Oh man! So you just like to go out there and dance?"

"Well, I can get something for seventy," you retort.

"You can get something," he agrees. There's a friendly gleam in the glance he shoots you, but his lips curls. "But you're gonna be having fun all by yourself, old son!"

Old son? you wonder, but let the odd expression fly back into the slipstream of the conversation. "How much did you bring?"

"Two hundred. Okay, that's too much," he adds with a chortle. "You're gonna have to help stop me from spending all of it!"

The night has fallen hard when you pull into the parking lot at Eastman High, which is packed with cars and wandering crowds. Bottles are being drunk from, and clouds of weed and tobacco waft into the cold night air. Ben parks, and you follow him as he wanders through the lot asking if anyone's seen "Adam" or "Chase" or "Landon." You finally find them a couple of rows over, clustered around a truck, with Adam perched on its open tailgate with his arm around Catherine's shoulder. He slaps Ben lightly across the face—which Ben chortles at—and nods at you. "So where's Andrea?" he asks.

"She's at the school play."

"Shit," he says, and offers you the bottle he's clutching in his free hand. You take it, and a swig of sour beer. He takes the bottle back, then turns to a skinny kid kid with a big nose who's standing nearby, talking loudly to a couple of girls. "So wait," Adam interrupts, and kicks the guy in the side of the leg. "You were saying the mother got eaten by a goat? That's fucked up, man, what happened then?"

You listen long enough to figure out they're talking about a movie, then let your attention wander to take in the crowd.

It's mostly guys, many of them you met at Andrea's: Adam and Ben and Roy Booth and Isaac Cyrs. There's the skinny kid with the big nose, and a guy with a sullen expression under a helmet of thick, blonde hair. Girls are represented by Catherine and Meghan Farris, and three more brunettes with long hair. In contrast to the guys, who are dressed in loud shirts and ball caps, the girls are all dressed more demurely in jeans and heavy blouses; Catherine has a heavy camo jacket around her shoulders.

More kids join the gang, and some drift off, during the lazy hour that you are all waiting around. As usual, you feel yourself on the fringes, not knowing anyone and not getting any attention.

Until Nathan Cruz pokes you between your shoulder blades.

You recognized Nathan the instant he showed up, but it took you awhile place him. Which is mortifying after you remember that you know him from your time playing Kirkham. Cruz would seem an odd one to be a friend of the lizard-like Kirkham, for he would seem to belong to the aristocracy of Westside, being both a student athlete (a member of the swim team) and the first-chair violin in the school orchestra. But, in the first place, he and Kirkham respect each other as musicians—they even formed a string quartet together. And in the second place ...

Well, Nathan's opening words demonstrate why he and Kirkham are so tight.

"So, Prescott," he says in a gloating tone. "The fuck happened to you and Sydney McGlynn?"

That's right. Nathan Cruz is almost as nasty as Kirkham is. He's just not threatening about it.

A ripple of anger runs up your spine. "What about me and Sydney?" you retort.

He smirks. "I heard you broke up."

You dodge his eyes. "We weren't ever going out."

Not until you've blurted it out do you recognize the awful echo your words make to what Lisa Yarborough said when she broke up with you: We never said we were going out together. You feel yourself flushing hotly.

Nathan's smirk widens into a sneer. "Funny, everyone thought you were."

"Everyone was wrong. It turns out."

Even when you turn your back on him, he persists, his voice a sneering little hiss. "So who had the wrong idea about what was going on? You or Sydney?"

Next: "Woes at the Warehouse" 

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"Table of Contents (Vol. 4)" 
"The Book of Masks (Vol. 4)"