The Book of Masks (Vol. 5)

The Littlest Possible Help

Previously: "The Cork on the Current" 

"I don't know Lacie's sister," you protest. "Or her boyfriend. How will I recognize them?" As Tiffany busies herself with her phone, you add, "Why can't you get one of their other friends—one of those guys—to do it?" You point back in the direction those two other guys went.

"Because Jonas and Bree won't listen to them," Mattie says.

"But they'll listen to me?"

Before Mattie can answer, Tiffany holds up her phone to show you the screen. It shows a boy and a girl, sitting at a table shoulder to shoulder, smiling brilliantly into the lens. You recognize them from this afternoon, at the German restaurant, as the boy and girl who were flirting hard with each other.

You sigh and wilt under the intense gaze of the two girls.

"Alright," you say. "I'll try. What are their names again?"

"Jonas and Bree. You can do it, Will," Tiffany says. The expression on Mattie's face says, You'd better.

* * * * *

You've never been inside the Warehouse, but you've driven past it and you know where it is. There's also traffic on the boulevards, some of which seems headed there, so you're in no danger of getting lost.

But you are filled with dread—a feeling like you get when you are going to the dentist, and are sure he's going to find a cavity, or worse. You square your shoulders, and tell yourself that as long as you go in with a laser focus on finding the two you're looking for, it will be alright. The hard part will be getting them leave with me, you tell yourself. Not the Warehouse itself, or the scum inside.

You get your first test when you turn into the parking lot. A burly figure with a flashlight steps out to stop you with an upraised hand. You roll down the window and get a face full of the flashlight beam. "The fuck you want?" he demands.

And from somewhere (you know not where) you summon the reply, "I'm here for the party, man."

The light flashes past you into cabin, and then its holder looks into the bed of your truck. Then he shines it in your face again.

"Back up," he says.

"What?"

"Back into the street, cocksucker. You're not coming in."

"But I—!"

"You want to make this into a fucking problem?" He has a police whistle dangling about his throat, and he lifts it to his mouth and bites it.

You sigh and throw the truck into reverse.

But before you can move, someone shouts: "Jimmy! Hey, Jimmy!"

The goon with the flashlight doesn't move, but shifts his head to look as a figure comes bounding up to look into the cab at you. You can't make out the face well, save for some heavy-framed glasses.

"Yeah, it's you!" the figure exclaims with a grin. "Hey, what's going on?" they demand of the guy with the flashlight.

"This motherfucker's just leaving."

"No! You can't—! What's wrong?"

The guard growls something unintelligible, being drowned out by the sound of honking behind you.

"So?" the other says. "Yeah, I'll vouch for him! He drove in empty 'cos he's driving people out. Designated driver, you know?"

The guy with the flashlight ponders this. Then he straightens up and waves you in. But your benefactor slaps the car door, says "Hey, wait for me!" and runs around the front of your truck to climb in on the passenger side. "Okay," they say. "Let's go."

You put the truck in drive and push carefully in. Your rescuer directs you into the back of the parking lot. Only after you're parked do you turn to look at them.

It's a girl, you decide after you've got a look at them, though she's dressed boyishly in a black t-shirt and jeans, with a dark ski cap pulled down low over her forehead. She has a bold nose, and her eyes are set off by a pair of glasses with thick, black frames. Nerd girl, you find yourself thinking.

She smiles at you. "So what's your name?" she asks. "I like to know who I'm doing favors for."

* * * * *

Her name is Emily—Emily Sparks—and she explains that she fast-talked you into the Warehouse because she doesn't like to see "the motherfuckers who run this place" giving people trouble. "But this is your first time out, isn't it?" she says, and it barely sounds like a question.

"Yeah," you admit.

"I could tell," she says. "Goombah with the flashlight could tell, too. Everyone carpools in, and you didn't have anyone in your truck. Why didn't you come with someone? Don't you have any friends?" she slyly adds.

"I didn't come out here to party," you tell her. "I came out here to pick someone up."

"They should'a met you out front, then."

"I think I'm supposed to drag 'em out."

"What?" Her expression falls.

Briefly you explain: that the kid sister of someone you know is out here with her boyfriend, and you're supposed to come pick them up. Get them to leave, actually. Emily isn't impressed by this story, and asks what kind of a fucking narc you are, until you mention, off-handedly, that the girl is fourteen. Then it's like you touched her with a hot wire.

"Jesus Christ!" she yells. "She's fourteen and she's out here? Who's she with? How old is he?"

"Sixteen? I think?"

"Still! Come on!" She jumps from the truck, and you scramble to join her.

"Okay," she says as the two of you trot quickly across the parking lot toward the hulking brick building at its other end, "I was a freshman first time I came out here, but I was with some guys I knew, friends of my brother. And they were football players, and they were seniors. This girl, any chance she's with guys like that?"

"Her boyfriend doesn't play football." You weren't told that, but he didn't look like it. "And I haven't seen any football player types around her or her friends."

"Shit. Are they regulars out here?"

"I dunno."

"How much trouble are you gonna have getting them to come with you?"

"I don't know. I mean, I don't even know them. I only met them today."

"What?"

"I told you, I basically just met the people they hang out with today, and they're the ones who asked me to come out here!"

She stops to look at you, with a very even expression. "They couldn't come out here themselves?" she asks.

You shrug.

"Well," she says, "you don't want to start a fight if they won't come with you. You're gonna need some help."

She glances around with a preoccupied look on her face. "Blake," she finally says.

"Who?"

"One of the guys who works out here. Only one I can talk to, only one who's halfway decent. Oh, hell, all-the-way decent. I'm in love with him, actually. I'll talk to him, he'll help us." She resumes her trot toward the club.

* * * * *

There's a small crowd outside the entrance of the building—which is a hulking mass of brick that's at least three stories high—but Emily slips you through these easily and into a kind of large atrium. Pounding music pulses in the air from nearby, and it hardly fades when she leads you into a kind of saloon. Along the far wall of this is a long line of planks set on sawhorses, behind which stand a lot of surly-looking teens with boxes and crates of drink and food (and probably worse); the floor is crowded in with tables and booths, most of which look like they were rescued from the landfill. It's not crowded.

"I thought there'd be more people here," you tell Emily as you glance over the place. It seems hardly more populated than Legends; and the space being bigger it feels a lot emptier.

"What do you want?" she asks. "It isn't even eleven o'clock. Do you see your guys? Don't point when you spot 'em."

You look around, and do a double-take when you spot the last persons you expected to see in a place like this—Carson Ioeger and James Lamont—seated at a small table. They have already spotted you, and are glaring in your direction.

But they are not your business. Your business is with the skinny brown-haired guy, and the skinnier dark-haired girl, seated at a large booth with a couple of other kids their age.

Emily told you not to point, so you don't. You just indicate with your eyes where they're seated, and tell her, "Over there, that booth with the five, six people. The girl, and the guy who's got his arm around her."

Emily looks, and gasps.

"Fourteen?" she squeals. "And sixteen? If he's sixteen then I'm thirty-nine! And she looks like she's ten! Oh my God!"

You see what she means when you give them a quick, direct look. And as you glance between the guys manning the bar—who look like the kind of seedy douchebags who hang out behind the school, smoking weed—and the girl, you better sympathize with Tiffany and Mattie's determination to get them out of here.

"Okay," Emily tells you. "I'm'a go get Blake, explain things to him, get his help. You— Those guys don't know you?" You shake your head. "Well, you go stand by the doorway there. I'll get Blake to bring them over to you. After that, you're gonna be on your own. Can you handle them?"

"I'll have to try."

"Well, Blake'll stop 'em from coming back in. The rest is up to you."

She scampers off. You take up station by the door to the saloon, and watch from the corner of your eye: both the booth where the kids are, and the table where Carson and James are huddling.

You wait a good long time too, for Emily has vanished. And you wait long enough that Carson, apparently unable to master his curiosity any longer, gets up and trudges over.

"The fuck are you doing here, Prescott?" he asks.

Next: "The Real Rescuers" 

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