The Book of Masks (Vol. 4)

Party of Five, Chapter 6

Previously: "Party of Five, Chapter 5" 

AFTER ALFIE HAD GONE, Scarlett went back inside to the kitchen. The owners had stocked the fridge with tiny bottles of Coke Zeros, and Scarlett drank one while leaning against the sink.

What a crazy spring break trip this was turning into!

Scarlett knew what her friends thought: Scarlett loves drama! And they weren't wrong. But they weren't exactly right either. It wasn't that Scarlett loved drama for its own sake. It's that she hated being bored.

And drama, for Scarlett, was the opposite of boredom.

No one, she told herself when she bothered to introspect (which in truth wasn't often), could say that she liked to stir up drama. She loved to listen to gossip but she hardly ever passed any along, and though she had plenty to say when gossip was offered, it was only ever commentary. Did Alfie spend the weekend with first Stephanie and then Katrina, while Becca was out of town at her grandmother's? Well, that was an interesting thing to know, and it was interesting to see what Stephanie did when she found out about Katrina, and when Katrina found out about Stephanie; and, of course, when Becca found out about both of them. That had been fun, and Scarlett hadn't had to say a single word to anyone because other girls took care of it!

But Scarlett didn't say anything to a anyone about how Becca confided to her that there was a boy she was sweet on in elementary school back when she lived in Jefferson, and that she intended to look him up and maybe go out with him while she was at her grandmother's. She knew the difference between enjoying the drama that other people made, and making it herself.

That's why she didn't much care about Brad and his little flirtations and cheats. She'd be causing the drama herself if she made a big deal about them. No, she handled those things in another way that staved off boredom: by reminding Brad of the reasons that he was going out with her, and why he would always like her more than he'd like the other girls at school.

Nor could anyone say that she didn't care about her friends when they got themselves wound up around an axle. Take this current situation which had set her nostrils flaring, the situation with Dougie.

Oh sure, the spat between Alfie and Susie was interesting in a way, but mostly only for the way it made more dramatic Dougie's impending, catastrophic sploodge.

Everyone thought Dougie the odd man out in the Brad-Alfie, letterman-jacket gang. And he was. The others were wrestlers and football players and sex players. They were the popular guys who got invited to all the parties, and whose parties everyone went to. They got good grades—none of them were dummies—but it was their muscles and their looks that everyone paid attention to. Dougie got good grades too—better grades at harder classes—but he hadn't done anything athletic since his days playing freshman soccer. (Which was probably why his legs were so strong and shapely and sexy.) Instead, he was quiet, bookish, shy, funny in a low-key, observational kind of way, and a loner even in a crowd. (And especially in a crowd of mouthy, jostling, breast-pinching jocks.) And so everyone wondered why they always saw him with those other guys, and those other guys (especially Alfie) with him.

Scarlett knew why, though she wasn't telling anyone. It was obvious to her, and she sometimes rolled her eyes but bit her tongue when others wondered aloud about it. It was because Dougie had a crush on them, while to them he was like a good-luck mascot.

Well, when she said (to herself) that Dougie had a crush on them, she didn't mean he was gay—though plenty of other girls, stupider and cruder girls, had made the leering innuendo. Dougie was not gay, and you only had to look at him to see it. (If you looked at him when he didn't realize you were looking, you'd be bound to catch his eyes popping as he ogled a pair of breasts or a bit of leg.) No, Dougie crushed on Alfie (and the others, but mostly Alfie) because he had grown up with them, and as they outdistanced him physically he had compensated not by resenting the changes but by appreciating and even venerating them, in a way. Dougie loved his friends, and so to prevent a distance from opening between them, he made himself love those differences that threatened to push them apart. That was why he attended all their games though he obviously would have preferred to stay at home, why he threw himself into their parties even though he never ended up with a girl on his arm. It's why he counseled Rick when Rick thought Amy was going to break up with him, and why he encouraged Alfie in his pursuit of "side dishes" by drinking in gleefully all the details Alfie had to share afterward. It was to keep him connected to them.

And they kept and cared for Dougie because he was so doggedly devoted to them. And also because they were all good guys who genuinely liked him.

But the tension was winding up too tight, had been all year. Dougie himself probably didn't realize how sexually frustrated he was, but Scarlett could see it in his eyes. They got wet all the time now at school, wet like the front of his briefs were probably damp by the end of the day. All these friends he loved so much—who he wanted to be with and to be like, and in Alfie's case probably wanted to be, full stop—were getting laid and getting blow jobs, were cooping up every weekend in the back of a car or a private corner of the old quarry or borrowing a friend's bedroom when the friend could promise his folks weren't home ... And Dougie was getting none of it for himself. He was a starving man watching well-fed men gorge themselves at dinner, and he couldn't even let himself get mad at them for not sharing.

Something was going to give, and it was going to give soon.

That's why Scarlett, who had been rather dreading a weekend on the island with Brad, cut off from the rest of the world, had been rather relieved when he got grounded, and had secretly rejoiced when, first, Brad suggested that Susie go in his place; and, second, when Tanya signed up to come along too. Dougie had started to back out, but Scarlett goaded Alfie into making sure he stayed in the party.

Because the way Scarlett saw it, one of two things was bound to happen after a week of isolation. Either Susie and Alfie would fight, and Susie would throw herself at Dougie in revenge; or Dougie would finally screw up the courage to try losing his virginity and would make some kind of a move on Tanya.

Each possibility was ripe with further possible drama. But the suspense of watching, even if nothing actually happened, would be enough to make the week spicy!

After finishing her soda, Scarlett looked into the living room, but found it empty. The bedroom doors were all closed. Rather than disturb any of the others—who were probably bringing themselves nicely to a boil already and probably didn't need any stoking from her—Scarlett went back on the deck to wait for Alfie to get back. She quickly grew bored, however, and decided to go looking for him, so she could walk and talk to him on the way back to the house.

She had no idea which direction he had gone, so she started by going downhill, back the way they had driven up. It was an easy walk down, but when she came to the first switchback she thought how awful it would be to hike back up twice as far as she walked down, so she turned around and huffed-and-puffed her way back up to the cabin. That's when she saw that the road was flatter leading the other way, so she continued along it, hoping that this was the way that Alfie had come up. But again she reached a switchback without meeting him.

She frowned. This was vexing, because the road, after turning back again, began to climb very steeply, and she was in no mood to make the climb. Well, screw Alfie, she decided, but she had already forgotten her pique by the time she had taken a dozen strides back to the house.

She hadn't gone far, however, when she heard the snap of a branch from the woods off to her right. She slowed up and peered into the darkness, and saw something moving in the shadows under the trees.

At first she thought it might be a deer. A more alarming thought was that it might be a bear. Only when she recognized the shape and color of a blue work shirt did she realize it must be a person.

"Alfie?" she said before remembering that he had been wearing a red t-shirt when he left, and so it couldn't be him.

Fear now took hold of her, and she turned to scamper back toward the house. But she had only taken half a dozen steps before another figure leaped into the road in front of her and caught her in an embrace. She opened her mouth to gasp, but a hand went over it.

And then she felt the other man pressing against her from behind.

Next: "Party of Five, Chapter 7" 

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