The Book of Masks (Vol. 5)

Lost in the Mess

Previously: "The Conscience of a Coward" 

"That's okay, I don't want to barge in," you tell Patrick. You're kind of hoping he will tell you it's no problem, and urge you to stay. But he only shrugs. "I just wanted to check up on Lacie's sister."

"Well that's nice of you," he says. "But I don't think there was anything to worry about. Like I say, she would have been out there with friends."

"They did say something about her being out there with her boyfriend."

To your surprise, that does get a reaction out of Patrick. His eyes pop and his face twists up. But then he relaxes back to his normal expression.

"Yeah," he says. "She would'a been with him."

He claps you on the shoulder and steers you back toward the front door.

"So if you wanna do something next weekend or, I dunno, later this week, just text me or call, I'll be up for anything. Oh, you have fun last night?"

"Uh, yeah."

"Sure you did." He claps you on the shoulder again, and gives you a knowing look. "Well, call me next time you wanna do something." He chucks his chin at you, and lets you see yourself out.

* * * * *

So that was weird, you tell yourself. You could have let it pass that Lacie's sister could be at the Warehouse without everyone freaking out—only Lacie's girlfriends—but that reaction Patrick had when you mentioned the boyfriend? You can't shake the feeling that there's stuff bubbling along below the surface that you don't know about or understand.

Well, whatever. It's not your affair, as Patrick has said, so you decide to forget about it. And you do.

It's too bad that you forgot about other stuff as well.

* * * * *

"Last call!" Mr. Walberg bellows out at the start of first-period on Monday. "Last call for contributions!"

It takes a moment for his meaning to penetrate. And less than a moment later to realize that you are fucked. You rush up to his desk.

"I forgot mine at home!" you gasp at the teacher.

"That's too bad, Mr. Prescott," he says. "Last call!" he bellows around your shoulder.

"Well, can I go home and get it?"

Mr. Walberg looks at you over the top of his glasses. He ostentatiously checks his watch, and taps it.

"Of course you can go home and get it," he says. "But if you aren't back here with it in ... thirty-four seconds ... it will be an automatic failure."

"What?"

"The deadline was the start of class, Mr. Prescott."

Fucking dick, you mutter to yourself on your way back to your desk.

Actually, the teacher unbends this far. At the end of class he summons you up to his desk and tells you that he will only take one letter grade off if you have your item to him by five o'clock, when he will be going home.

So that's one respite. It's too bad that you have no idea what to give him.

"How can you not have anything?" Caleb snaps at you at lunch, when you relate to him and Keith your plight. "You knew about it for a week. You and me talked about it, Will!"

"And I couldn't come up with anything!"

"You had a week! And now you got an extra eight hours! Fuck me, Walberg is getting soft in his old age," he grumbles, "giving you until five o'clock."

"Maybe he got laid last night," Keith says with a grin, "so he's in a good mood."

"And there goes my appetite," Caleb says, and he slides his half-eaten sandwich back into his lunch sack.

"Can I have that?" you ask him. "I'll give to Walberg for the time capsule." But Caleb only shoots you a spiteful look.

"And didn't you go into town to pick something up?" he asks. "I remember I wanted to do something after school, and you told me to go fuck myself because you had to go pick up something for the—"

"I didn't tell you to fuck yourself, I just said I was busy! But I didn't get anything. I couldn't find anything, couldn't think of anything."

"Where'd you go?"

"I wound up at Arnholm's. Oh yeah, I did pick something up there, but it wasn't for the time capsule."

"Well, give him that. Or give him one of your shoes."

You make a face at him, and turn to Keith. "What about you?" you ask. "You have any ideas for me?"

"Not my assignment," he says around a mouth full of banana.

"I guess I could give him one of my hats," you say, half aloud, for Caleb's reference to your shoes has reminded you of that cowboy hat you picked up Saturday night.

Keith eyes the ball cap you're wearing, and says, "No fucking way you've got more than one of those."

"No, it'd be a different one. What do you think I'd look better in? This, or a cowboy hat? I've been thinking of changing my look."

"Cowboy hat?" Caleb cries. "Oh for fuck's sake."

* * * * *

You chicken out in the end about changing your look, and when you run home after school it's the cowboy hat that you fetch and take back with you. But your talk with Caleb and Keith has provoked in you a vague curiosity about that book you got at Arnholms', and you clear off your desk—by pushing everything off onto the floor—and retrieve it to take with you, because you are still undecided about whether to sacrifice it or the hat to the time capsule. Neither one seems like a good contribution, but you are down to final choices now. To your relief, Mr. Walberg accepts the hat when you turn it in to him, saying nothing about it and asking you no questions.

That leaves you with that book, which you left out in your truck. You give some thought to driving out to Arnholms' and asking them about it—something you neglected to do when you bought it off them—but wind up driving home.

You forget to take the book back inside with you, though, and it is still sitting in the passenger seat a few days later, when you have to drive your little brother over to a friend's house.

"What's this?" Robert asks as you're buckling yourself in. He has pulled something out from under his ass and is examining it. "A book?"

"Brilliant deduction," you sneer at him. "You must be getting straight As."

"Oh, bite me," he retorts. You give him a quick and furious glance, wondering where he's picked up such language. But then you reflect that you were using language like that back when you were thirteen, too. "Is it for school?"

"No, I just found it. I need to take it inside but I keep forgetting."

"Is it Dad's?"

"No, it's mine. I found it at the used book store."

"The fuck is wrong with the pages?"

"Don't say 'fuck', Robert. You're too young to use the f-bomb."

"All the guys at school say it, 'tard-brain!"

"Well, the guys at school are all too young."

"But what's wrong with the pages?"

"Yeah, they're all glued together or something."

"What the fuck?"

"You're gonna accidentally say that in front of Dad, and then you're gonna be—!"

"Whatever!"

A silence opens up between you, a silence filled by the faint rustle of paper as Robert flips through the few pages that open, and struggles with those that don't.

"So what's the deal with thing anyway?" he asks again.

"I told you, all the pages are glued together or something."

"But why?"

"I don't know! It just came that way."

"That's fuc— freaking stupid. Was it like that when you bought it?"

"Yes!"

"So why'd you buy it?"

"Because it was only two dollars! The store had it marked for two hundred dollars, but when I showed them all the pages were stuck together, they let me have it for two dollars."

This earns you a brief but stunned silence. Then Robert says, "You paid two dollars for a book and all its pages are stuck together?"

"It was only two dollars!"

"You can buy a soda, or a candy bar for—!"

"Look, it's my money and it's my book! I can do whatever the fuck I want— Including saying the f-bomb—! So just drop it onto the floorboard or something!"

"Jeez!" Robert says. And then he adds, "Zuzz!" With a scowl he drops the book onto the seat between you.

* * * * *

Friday comes, and with it two surprise twists.

The first comes in first-period, after your class has trooped outside to watch the time capsule being lowered into the ground near one of the wings. Then, back inside, Mr. Walberg announces that everyone will have to write a short essay about the item they put into the capsule, describing it and why they chose it. You feel your own face go chalk-white, because of course you had no good reason to submit that cowboy hat other than because you needed to give Mr. Walberg something. But even you don't feel as ill as Caleb looks, because your friend submitted a thumb drive without telling the teacher that it contained pornographic images and video files.

The second comes late in the day, when Patrick (after sending you a text) meets with you to ask in person if he and some friends can get a ride from you late this evening out to the Warehouse. Most people carpool in, he explains when you ask him why, and he figures that your truck would be able to shuttle at least a dozen people, or more, out there. And of course you're welcome to come with them.

You're leery about joining them, because they wouldn't be heading out there until it's nearly your curfew, but you are willing to give them a ride, and to hang out with them beforehand, as they a bunch of them are planning to eat at Balducci's, a primo pizza place down by the college. You agree to meet everyone there at around 6:30.

And because your truck is filthy with accumulated papers, food sacks, and other trash, you clean it out when you get home.

That's when you happen to notice that that mysterious book is gone.

That's all for now.

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