The Book of Masks (Vol. 4)

Party of Five, Chapter 2

Previously: "Party of Five, Chapter 1" 

You suppress the urge all day to check in to see how your first chapter is doing. It's a bad jolt when you do, finding that it's gotten no comments and only about a dozen views. It's with much less excitement that you write and post the second chapter that evening.

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THEY WERE NEARING THE FERRY before Alfie addressed Susie again. "Did you find out what the cops are all out doing back there?" he asked, glancing into the SUV's rear view mirror. Susie was sitting in the middle of the back seat, her face bent low over her upraised cell phone.

"I didn't look." Her tone was Arctic, and her words ground against each other like icebergs.

Scarlett, in the passenger seat beside Alfie, gurgled with amusement.

"You should've dropped her off back there," she said, "told them to arrest her for being a cold bitch in the second degree."

Alfie shot her a warning glance, but she was absorbed in her own cell phone.

Tanya, sitting beside Susie, shot her sister a surreptitious side glance. When she didn't respond, Tanya pulled out her own phone and sent her a text: Gonna have to talk to Alfie sometime.

She sensed Susie tensing, and steeled herself for the reply. But when it came, it wasn't as bad as she feared, though it was bad enough: Nite before we drive back then I'll talk to him.

Tanya winced. And spring break had started out to be so awesome!

Originally, she and Susie weren't even supposed to be going along. Scarlett's boyfriend, Brad, had scored a week's use of a two-bedroom family cabin on Saginac Island—it belonged to a friend of his mom's, from church—and the plan had been for him and Scarlett to go out for spring break, taking his friends Alfie and Doug along for company. He and Scarlett would take the master bedroom with its king-size bed, while the other two bunked in the two double beds in the kids' room.

But then Brad's parents caught him with too much weed and too much whiskey, and grounded him. That's when Susie saw her chance. Alfie had just broken up with Becca Evans, and Susie—who had been hovering around Alfie for two years, just looking for the chance to scoop him up—said something to Scarlett, and suddenly it was Susie going to the island in Brad's place.

More than that (Susie confided to Tanya): It was going to be her and Alfie snuggling in that king-size bed in the master bedroom.

And then her and Tanya's parents pressured her into taking Tanya along too! Plainly, their hope was that Tanya would help keep Susie out of trouble, but that was ridiculous. There was no way that Tanya—being a junior and two years younger than Susie, who was a senior already in her own mind graduated from high school—was going to be any kind of restraint. But even if Tanya had been the elder, nothing was going to stop Susie from getting frisky with a hunky high school wrestler like Alfie Garson, and both girls knew it.

And it was going to be great for Tanya, too, for there were bound to be other people on the island, including probably some cute boys for her. (Alfie's friend Doug was still going too, but he was kind of a dork and didn't count.) And if not, Tanya could still amuse herself with swimming and canoeing and hiking and picnicking and barbecuing and sunbathing and sitting around an outdoor fire in the evenings. All of which, in the form of posts and pictures and updates from the island, with Alfie and Susie and Scarlett in the background, would help make Tanya's reputation back in the junior class.

But then ...

But then, while they were waiting in the school parking lot for Scarlett (always late!) to show up ... Disaster! Alfie went into the school to use the bathroom, and Susie picked up his phone because she wanted to see what he was grinning about so hard while typing away so furiously. And when she saw what he'd been doing on the phone ... right there ... in front her ... while talking to her, even ...

Don't ruin this week for the rest of us. That's what Tanya wanted to tell Susie. But that would have been counterproductive. In the first place, it wouldn't put Susie into any better of a temper. In the second place, it would just make her try to force everyone else to have fun while she stewed angrily at Alfie, which make things even more awkward.

Bloop! A new text popped up on her phone. Are you texting Susie? Doug (seated on the other side of Susie) wanted to know. Tanya texted back a quick yes.

Did she say why she's mad at Alfie?

Tanya frowned. Did Doug think that Tanya didn't know? I know why she mad, she replied.

O why?

Now Tanya felt staggered. How could Doug not know? He had been there when Susie self-detonated all over the school parking lot! Was he really that oblivious?

If he was, Tanya decided, she wasn't about to explain by text, not with Susie sitting between them! Tell u later, she replied.

Then, to Scarlett, in the seat ahead of her: Doug doesn't' know why Susies mad at Alfie!

Omg lol! Scarlett texted back, trailing it with a string of laughing/crying emojis.

Then: "Hey Dougie?" Scarlett sang out from the front seat. "Do you know what sexting is?" Tanya almost leaped from her skin.

"Yeah," Doug said.

"Just checking." A moment later, while Tanya was still trying to still her racing heart, Scarlett texted her: Bet u he does not.

"Okay, ten minutes on the ferry," Alfie called out. "Then ten minutes to the cabin."

Tanya sat up and looked out the window. She hadn't even noticed they had driven onto the ferry—a modest-sized thing that was carrying only them—and her stomach quivered with anxiety as she felt the craft slightly roll and dip as it pushed into the lake.

"Have you ever been on a ferry before?" she asked Susie. Her sister shook her head. Then she looked up and took a deep breath, and let her phone fall into her lap.

"Susie's not gonna get seasick," Scarlett said in a lilting tease. "She's had too much practice with things heaving and thrusting and rolling around beneath her."

No one said anything, in reply or afterward, leaving Tanya with her thoughts until they were on the island and driving along a coastal road.

What was going on with Scarlett? she wondered. The girl had a mouth on her, Tanya had always known that. She liked to tease and jeer, and she could let fly some really crude and cruel things when she had a mind. But Susie was her best friend! So why was she saying things like what she said? Was she mad that Susie had wangled her way onto this spring break party when Brad had to drop out? If so, that was going to make things even more awkward! Tanya shrank back in her seat and tried not to anticipate a week stuck on an island with people none of whom were talking to anyone else.

After a mile or so, Alfie hung a left, and the SUV began to climb steeply while making a number of hairpin, switchback turns. This was much worse, somehow, than trying to ride the swells of the ferry in a closed car, and Tanya felt her forehead turning hot as her stomach clenched. She rolled down the window for some fresh air, just in time for them to pass a clearing between the pine trees that gave her a view of the lake below. It startled her to see that they were several hundred feet above the water level now, and still climbing a steep hillside.

Fortunately, the road straightened out soon after, and it wasn't long before Alfie was turning into the drive in front of a rustic but classy-looking log cabin. Its timbers were polished, and its bay windows twinkled in the early afternoon sun; a deck extended out over the plunging hillside. "Here we are," he said. There was a sigh in his voice. "If you girls wanna go inside, me and Doug'll bring the things in."

"I can get my own things," Susie snapped, and pushed at Tanya as the latter fumbled at her door. And so the two boys stood to one side, looking unhappy, as Susie grabbed her ruck sack from the back of the SUV and strode off for the cabin. Scarlett shared an open-mouthed smile with everyone as she grabbed her bag to follow. An awkward moment ensued as Tanya and Doug both stretched for their gear at the same time, then Doug stood aside as Tanya took hers first. She then waited until the boys had collected their bags before following them up some creaking, wooden steps onto the deck and then into cabin.

It was neat but had a closed-up smell when they stepped inside. The furniture in the living room—two sofas joined into an L; a coffee table; and a small breakfast table in the corner—was clean-lined and modern. It was empty of people, but muffled sounds from down a short hallway told Tanya where the bedrooms were.

"I guess this is where I'm sleeping," Doug sighed as he dropped a small suitcase onto one of the sofas: the plan had been for Scarlett and Tanya to share the kids' bedroom while Doug slept in the living room. But Alfie pushed Doug's suitcase off and dropped his own athletic kit there. "No," he said, "this is where I'm sleeping. Unless there's a doghouse out back." There was a hurt look in his eyes.

Before Tanya could think of anything to say, though, he strode off through another, wider doorway, and disappeared into a kitchen beyond. Tanya heard a cabinet door opening, and then the sound of water rushing from a faucet.

Doug leaned over and spoke to her in a low voice. "So what happened between him and your sister?" he asked.

Tanya made a face.

"You said you knew what sexting was," she said. "Well, Alfie was sexting with Carla Jones while we were all waiting for Scarlett at the school. You know, right in front of Susie. And she caught him at it."

Next: "Party of Five, Chapter 3" 

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