The Book of Masks (Vol. 1)

Side-swiped by a Dumbass

Previously: "Conspirators Three" 

You would love to procrastinate, but with a sigh you conclude that you might as well do it now as later. Besides, you have nothing better to do on a Sunday afternoon, and Caleb might have an idea.

Your dad is already snoring on the living room sofa when you go downstairs, so you quietly ask your mom, who is knitting, if there's a pair of bolt cutters anywhere in the house. She looks alarmed and asks why you need bolt cutters, and after you tell her that Caleb needs to borrow some to cut off a padlock at his house, she tells you to look in the garage. After a short search, you find them, and with them drive off to the school to meet Caleb.

"Freaking Tilley," he mutters when you show him the bolt cutters and the snipped-off lock after he arrives, and explain why you needed them. "He makes trouble everywhere he goes. And not interesting trouble, either."

"Well, he's in it now," you reply. "Do we keep him involved? Or tell him, yeah, it was a prank?"

"I vote for the second," Caleb says after a moment's silent thought. "We'll never convince him, and it was a stupid idea trying to show him in the first place." You decide not to take offense at his calling your idea stupid—because it was your idea to call him out to the basement—and agree that's all for the best.

And then Keith has to go and show up not twenty minutes after you came to that decision.

* * * * *

"Dude, you should'a called me!" he exclaims after you get done grumbling at him over locking you out of the basement. (Yes, you had somehow managed to lay the key down on a table with all the supplies. "I could'a picked it for you! Then you wouldn'a had to cut it off!"

"What the fuck do you know about picking locks?" Caleb demands, at the same time as you chide him again for locking you out in the first place.

"It's not my fault," Keith retorts, "that you were a dumbass and went and left the key in here. But what are we gonna do now?" He saunters over to the dented and dirty conference table where you've laid out your supplies, and casually flips over one of the unpolished masks. "Do something with these things? Or have some fun?"

"Like what kind of fun?" Caleb wants to know.

"I 'unno. We could go hang out with Montoya and them, see what they're doing. Oh say, that' reminds me—" He snaps his fingers.

"Montoya? Montoya who?" you ask.

He looks annoyed, whether at the interruption or your not knowing Montoya, you can't tell.

"Carlos Montoya,"" he says. "An' Mike Hollister. Them guys I made that video with."

"What video?"

"For YouTube! I told you!" Now he really does look annoyed.

"Remind me of the details."

He makes a face. "I told you! I made a video with those guys! Well, I was in a video they were making—"

"Like what, something for TikTok?"

"No! A movie review! You know about those guys and their channel!" As he tells you about it, you dimly recall what he had told you before, but naturally you had filed it away under things to forget, so it's practically like hearing about it from scratch. "They have a channel, they post movie reviews, talk about them. Current movies, old movies. I'm gonna do one with them for extra credit in film class, but I helped them out with one last Monday, after school. We did a bit, and I was in it."

"Aren't you in that class, too?" Caleb asks you.

"Yeah." You make a face. "Mr. Hawks."

He snorts. "You knew what you were getting into."

"No I didn't! I thought it'd be a blow-off class—"

"Like all your classes this year."

"Shut up! Like I said, it's Mr. Hawks teaching it."

"And like I said, you knew what you were getting into. Or should'a known."

"Well, fuck me!"

Caleb looks at Keith. "You're getting extra credit in there? For making a video with Montoya and Hollister?"

"Yep. Gonna, haven't done it yet."

Caleb turns to you. "You should get in on this."

"I'll talk to them," you grumble.

"We could talk to them right now," Keith retorts. "Bet they're doin' something now!"

And that's how you end up at the Top Shelf Storage complex.

* * * * *

Or is it called "Top Self Storage"? The "h" in "Shelf" is in parentheses, so that the name of the place is ambiguous. But it's screwy all the way around.

Keith says that the place belongs to Carlos Montoya's uncle, and that he lets Carlos use a couple of empty units for his own purposes, so long as the units remain empty and unrented. They've got a little film studio set up inside one of the units, and Carlos has turned another one into a workout room. When Caleb observes it must be murder working inside a hot, metal storage unit, Keith retorts that they're set up inside a climate-controlled building. Totally cool, he assures you and Caleb. He even knows the codes to get in, both onto the lot and into the building.

It's a very modern sort of building, you find when you arrive (you driving your truck, with Caleb and Keith hitching a ride), with a glass door that opens into a foyer stocked with hand trucks and carts. Keith, leading the way, swaggers down a wide corridor lined on both sides with metal doors. The air inside, as he promised, is cool and dry. Halfway down, you see one of the bay doors is up and open. Voices drift out.

"—can do a better take than that," one is saying when the sound resolves into words.

"You'll lose the spontaneity."

"I sounded like a doorknob."

"You always do."

Keith, still in the lead, puts his head around the corner. "Hey dudes!" You and Caleb join him.

He's looking into a storage bay that's much larger than you would have expected, one roomy enough to hold a green screen, a desk wide enough to have two chairs behind it, a flatscreen TV and disc-player mounted on a rolling cabinet, a camera on a tripod, and a bank of lights.

Also, four guys you recognize from school.

Carlos Montoya is a bluff and cheerful dude with coffee-colored hair trimmed into a slight fauxhawk, and a wide, white smile in his brown face. Mike Hollister's face is flushed cherry-red under a close-shorn crop of reddish-gold hair, and his grin is equally toothy. They are sitting behind the desk, and their two companions, manning the lights and the camera, are less happy looking. Josiah Shank is a short, blonde dweeb with glasses and a neurotic stare, while Philip Fairfax, with his reddish crew cut, pale skin, and black-frame glasses looks like a NASA aeronautics specialist circa 1966.

They all look startled but not necessarily displeased by your appearance. Cries of "Keith!" "Prescott!" "Johansson!" go up from the guys behind the desk while the other two give you hooded but curious looks. You are all beckoned inside, and high-fives are exchanged. You and Caleb hang back, listening, while Keith perches comfortably on the desk to chortle and joke with Mike and Carlos. The chatter is a little hard to follow, but you gather they are recording a review of Shock and A.W., a new action-comedy that opened on Friday. "This dumbass liked it." Carlos laughs and smacks Mike on the side of the head. "I liked it too, but I'm not a dumbass about it."

Eventually Keith remembers that he brought you and Caleb along, and broaches the subject of your extra credit. "Yeah, so, Prescott's in that class with me, and he needs the extra credit too."

Mike grins. "Mr. Hawks is a lot of fun, isn't he?"

"It's a party every day," you grumble.

"Yeah, well, he wants to do a video with you guys too," Keith says. "Like you set up with me."

That seems to shock them into a sudden and awkward silence. "Um, did we set something up with you?" Carlos asks.

"Dude! Yeah, when we did that bit on Monday! You said—"

"I know we said we'd talk about it." Carlos looks at Mike. "Did you—?"

"Dude!" Tilley's jaw drops open. "You said—!"

"Okay, you can make one. Um." Carlos squints at you. "You and Prescott wanna make one together?"

"I thought I was gonna make it with you guys!"

"Keith, don't be a pest," Caleb warns him.

"But—!"

"It's just that we can't have— I mean—" Carlos backs up. "Guest videos, having guest reviewers, it kind of dilutes the brand."

"A one-off is fine," Mike quickly puts in. "We can put you guys together in a video—"

"You were talking the other day about how you wanted guest reviewers!" Keith protests. "You were even talking about having a third co-host!"

Mike and Carlos look embarrassed.

"We were talking about having a cute girl as a co-host," Carlos quietly explains as Mike's already flushed face flushes even redder. "You know. Like one of the cheerleaders."

Keith stares at him. You have to turn away in sympathetic embarrassment.

Then Caleb punches your shoulder and honks, "Prescott can get you cheerleaders."

* * * * *

"Why'dja have to go and open your fat mouth?" you snarl at him after you're back at the elementary school, and Keith has driven off. "I don't know any cheerleaders!"

"You were always hanging out with Jessica and Eva when you were going out with Lisa," he replies, sounding very pleased with himself. "At least, you were always bragging about—"

Okay, that's true, though you don't think you were ever "bragging." But you did talk to them.

And you didn't correct Caleb when he told Mike and Carlos that you hung out with them. Nor did you decline when they begged you ask them to come and appear in one of their review videos. So now you're stuck.

But Caleb has something else on his mind. "I wonder if we should show this stuff to Fairfax," he muses. "You know, he went to Washington, D. C., in a science fair."

That's all for now.

*
"Table of Contents (Vol. 1)" 
"The Book of Masks (Vol. 1)"