The Book of Masks (Vol. 5)

A Drive to Distraction

Previously: "Making a Makeover" 

It might be nice to have a "back up girl" at the Warehouse. "Sure, ask whoever out," you tell Patrick. He slides down in his seat and starts scrolling through his phone.

It takes him long enough that you begin to get nervous after he's started tapping in texts, and ask him who he's talking to. "This is just Kristin," he says, a little abruptly. "She wants to know where we're going." But about the time you pull into the parking lot at Legends, he is talking on the phone. You listen with a sense of unease to his side of the conversation.

"Hey yeah, whatcha doin'? What're you doin' out there? Oh Jesus! Naw! I'm hittin' the Warehouse, me and Dean, couple other guys. 'Cos I ain't been out there since school started! You're comin' out too, right? No, that's lame! No, come on, it's me and Dean'n Scott'n, uh, Jonas, I think. Oh, and Will. What's your name again?" he hisses at you. "Last name. Oh, Will Prescott. You remember him, we had'm in, uh, coupl'a classes a year or two back. I dunno!" He squints at you. "Like Jonas, only he got longer hair, you'll remember him. Oh sure! I told him I was gonna call you, ask you t'meet us out there, he was all, hell yeah! Well, bring 'er too, bring all you bitches out! Ba-hahahahaha! Yeah, we're up at Legends now, you can hang out here if you change your mind about comin' out to the Warehouse wi'chus. Then sneak out'n come back if you change your mind! Jesus Fuck, why you gotta make it hard? Yeah. Yeah!"

He shuts the phone off.

"Okay, we got, like half a dozen bitches comin' out t'meet us," he tells you. He's not looking at you, though, he's craning his neck, looking all around the parking lot, as though searching out for someone. "They're gonna need a ride." He peers out your back window. "We can pack summa them in the back of your truck there, right?" He claps your shoulder, then busts out of the truck cabin.

"So who was it you called?" you ask after you've joined him in the parking lot. He's distracted by his continuing search, but your question causes him to do a double-take at you.

"Oh, yeah," he says. "Sara Conniff. You remember her? Well, I'll put you t'gether. She thinks you're hot for her, so, y'know." He sniffs and goes back to searching the lot. "Slip her a little, at least to start with." He backhands you in the stomach and swaggers off toward the club entrance.

* * * * *

It's nearly forty minutes before the girls Patrick called show up, and then they have to get something to drink before they'll leave, and then half of them decide to stay at Legends with the others who are staying there. Patrick explained to Tiffany and Lacie, who were already there, how a bunch of you were going out to the Warehouse; they didn't want to go, but Lacie took you onto the dance floor for a little while. You apologized to her for not being very good on your feet; she snorted at that, and asked what anyone at the Warehouse cares about dancing.

But when you leave Legends, you make a point of offering to drive, because you want to have your truck there in case you decide to leave. Patrick, Dean, Jonas, and some others who met up at Legends all pile into the truck bed, but Sara Conniff and a friend of hers—Felicia Ramon—ride with you in the cab.

"Like, my God!" Sara chatters at her friend as they buckle themselves in. "I was gonna ask, d'ju see how Ella was trying to drip off'a Logan back at Susie's? They were in the hallway next to the bathroom, and she was, like, Uhnnnghh at him. Like she was gonna go down on him right there!"

You give her a sidelong glance as you put the truck in gear.

"Oh, and he was into it, because of course he was!" she continues. "Only, he obviously wasn't into it, except, you know, like, do I wanna do this, for real? 'Cos it's Ella, and obviously she's not! So he's obviously thinking, like, do I actually—"

"But he was into it?" Felicia interrupts.

"Oh, into it!" Sara assures her. "I mean, into the idea, the idea you know, not the idea of, you know, Ella, but into—"

"Blow job."

"Totally! So he was—"

"How was he looking her like?"

"Oh, like, big grin, big eyes. Like, you ever see him when Rhea walks into class?"

"Oh my God!"

"Yeah, just like that, only, like, more!"

"Oh my God!"

She and her friend are on the hefty side, but not displeasingly so. No worse than Tiffany or Lacie—or Lisa, for that matter—and they are dressed in a way that is, if not provocative, at least calculated to catch a guy's attention and maybe his boner. Sara has a wide, round face with fat cheeks and a mouth that breaks easily into a smile; she's dressed in a purple shift that hangs off her shoulders by some thin straps, and which is tight enough to show off the shallow curve of her abdomen, and short enough to show off most of her thighs. Felicia is Hispanic, with a great mane of dark brown hair, big eyes in an oval face, and a very wide and very white smile. She's dressed in a denim jacket over a midriff-baring top, and a jeans skirt.

They gabble on during the drive, about people you've never heard of, without paying any attention to you, until at one point, on a straight-away down Jackson Boulevard, you shift into fifth gear, and inadvertently nudge Sara in the leg. Felicia is talking, so she doesn't have to interrupt herself in order to glance over at you, and when Felicia finishes her description of some flirtations by a barbecue pit, Sara gives you a longer side glance.

"Hey," she says, "I have you in any classes?"

"I don't think so."

"What's your name again?"

"Will. Will Prescott."

She shifts to give you a more direct, and a more critical, look up and down. She turns back to Felicia, and they pass some unintelligible murmurs between them before Sara says, "You're with Patrick?"

"Yeah."

"Are you a senior?"

"Yeah."

The seat beneath her groans lightly as she shifts to murmur at Felicia again. She turns to look at you again, and you take your eyes off the road long enough to give her a glance in return. Though it's dark in the cab, you think you can make out an expression of wary interest on her face.

* * * * *

You've only driven past the Warehouse a couple of times in your life, and never at night, but it's not hard to find, even in the dark, on account of it's the only business in the city's spooky industrial zone that has traffic turning into his parking lot. You follow a pair of tail lights vanishing to the right, but are stopped by a burly figure in a sleeveless red sweatshirt who holds out a palm. You roll down your window.

"What's your fucking business out here?" he demands. You recognize him by sight as a member of one of the school's sports teams—you've seen him in a letterman jacket around campus—but his name escapes you.

"Hey man, let us in!" someone hollers from the bed of the truck, which wobbles suddenly on its chassis. His cry is followed by a burst of laughter.

The guy shines a flashlight into the cab, into your face, and then onto Sara and Felicia, where the beam lingers. There's more hollering from the back, even after the guy shouts, "Shut the fuck up!" Finally, with a gesture of disgust, he backs up and directs you to enter the lot.

It's crowded, and another well-muscled parking attendant—that's the only way you can think of them—has to direct you down a row and into an empty space. The truck wobbles violently as everyone in the back leaps out and to the ground. You're parked close to the cinderblock wall that encloses the lot, so that Sara and Felicia have to slide out on your side, and they let you help them out. But neither one says a word to you.

The Warehouse is just that: a brick monstrosity that rears up a couple of stories overhead, with blank walls overtopped under the eaves by some black, blank windows. A grain elevator looms next to it. The parking lot is broken and the asphalt heaves up in small, shallow ripples, like a petrified pond. Even from outside, from across the lot, you can hear the dull thump of music pounding its way out through the walls.

Patrick is chattering with his friends, and Sara and Felicia reconnect with theirs, leaving you feeling alone in the crowd as you walk toward the entrance. There comes over you a sharp feeling of alienation, even of a kind of despairing fright. You're about to walk into a strange world with people to whom it is not strange, but who have no interest in explaining it to you. They will vanish into it, you sense, swallowed up its crowds, leaving you abandoned and alone and prey to ... Well, to guys like the one who let you in.

So it's with a blow of relief—though of shock, too—when you hear your name shouted after stepping into a kind of giant atrium just on the other side of the entrance: "Prescott! Hey, Prescott!" You crane your neck, and spot Carson Ioeger—one of the last people you'd expect out here—staring back at you with a frown of incredulity. You wriggle through the crowd toward him.

"The fuck are you doing out here?" he demands, almost angrily, when you reach him, and he has to shout to be heard over the shrieking grind of electric instruments. "And why the fuck are you dressed like that?" His glare reminds you of the kind of look Mr. Walberg gives when you give him a wrong answer in class.

Instantly, that feeling of relief at seeing a familiar face curdles into one of resentment.

Next: Vote in the poll for how to continue: "BoM Poll: "A Drive to Distraction"" 

*
"Table of Contents (Vol. 5)" 
"The Book of Masks (Vol. 5)"