The Book of Masks (Vol. 5)

A Premature Resurrection

Previously: "The Hidden World" 

"What'll you give me for it?" you ask Keith. "How much?"

"You want me to pay you for it?" he exclaims. "Dude, I ain't makin' no offers—"

"I'm not giving it away for free!" you retort. "Fuck that, I don't get anything for it, I'll just throw it back on the pile in my room!"

Keith snorts.

"Fine. You say you paid two bits for it?"

"Two bucks," you correct him.

"Then I'll give you two bucks." He shoves a hand into his jeans pocket and digs around. "That's tops," he warns. "I ain't givin' you no profit on flipping the fucking thing."

So you flip him off and tell him to keep his money and you'll keep the book.

* * * * *

In fact, you decide that you'll not just keep the book, but that you'll dump it into the time capsule as you'd originally intended. So instead of driving with Keith out to the liquor store, you drive back out to the school, where you drop him off next to his car while you sprint back into the school.

Mr. Walberg gives both you and your submission a very long and steady look after you've handed it over, then in a notebook he silently records the nature of your submission before shoving it into a capacious lower drawer in his desk. Only then does he say to you, with unfiltered sarcasm, "I can't wait to read what you have to say about that thing."

"What do you mean?" you ask.

"You'll find out in good time, Mr. Prescott. Mr. Matthias," he calls to the tousle-headed stoner who he has been babysitting in detention. "Would you care to explain what you're laughing at?"

Dane Matthias only shakes his head and lays his face on his desk. His shoulders rock with suppressed laughter.

At the end of the week you find out what Mr. Walberg meant by that comment, and the following Monday you are discussing it with your friends.

* * * * *

"So, you suppose it was someone who changed their mind about what they wanted to put in the time capsule?" Carson Ioeger says. He's sprawled out on his side on the grass in front of the school as he and you and a half-dozen other friends are taking their lunch. He bends his head to give Caleb a very direct look.

"Only a moron would do that," Caleb says. He turns to look at you.

"I wasn't the one who was talking about digging it up and swapping out thumb drives!" you protest.

"He didn't say you were," James interjects. He has peeled back the bread of his sandwich and is critically studying the innards as he speaks. "What he's saying is that you were the one who told everyone else that that's what Johansson was thinking of doing."

"And I hope someone talked him out of it," you retort with a hot glare at Caleb, "when I couldn't."

The trouble had started on Friday, though it had its roots earlier. Caleb had got the bright idea to submit a thumb drive for the time capsule project, and as a kind of middle finger to Mr. Walberg, he had stuffed it with a lot porn pulled off the internet.

Then, to his horror, on Friday—the day the capsule was buried on the school grounds—Mr. Walberg announced that each student would have to write a paper on what he had submitted for the project, and why he had chosen it. Caleb had nearly come unglued right there in the desk next to you.

"I can't tell Walberg I gave him a thumb drive full of porn!" he hissed at you as you shuffled out of class. "I am so fucked!" You didn't argue.

Then, at lunch, he came to you with the screwiest suggestion ever: that the two of you dig up the capsule and substitute a thumb drive with something else on it, and that he write a paper on that subject. You told him you were not about to sneak onto school property and help dig up the time capsule just to spare him the trauma of confessing to Mr. Walberg what he had done. Caleb had called you a lot of names and stormed off.

On Saturday he was still mad at you, so you called Carson and met him up at a city park for some tennis. While there, you told him what Caleb had asked you to do.

And now it's circled back to you again.

"I didn't dig up the time capsule," Caleb repeats. "Someone helped me come up with a different idea."

"You mean someone explained what you could do instead," Carson says. "And I don't think you ever properly thanked that someone, if you actually did what he suggested you do."

"What did he do?" you ask Carson.

No one answers, only Carson and Caleb glower at each other, until James says, "If Caleb did what he was told to do, he wrote a paper saying he submitted a thumb drive with yabbledy-dabbledy something that isn't porn on it. A bunch of Wikipedia pages, I think, was the suggestion. Unless Mr. Walberg actually looked at the thumb drive before it got buried, he wasn't going to dig the time capsule up again to check that Johansson wasn't bullshitting him."

You look at Caleb who rolls his eyes.

So it's Keith who says, "So you suppose it was Mr. Walberg who dug it up over the weekend?"

"That's right, Tilley," Carson snarks. "Your teacher snuck onto the school grounds, dug up the capsule, and scattered its shit all over the quad."

Because, you learned when you walked in to school this morning, that's what happened sometime over the weekend.

* * * * *

No one can say for sure when it happened or when it was discovered, but the janitors were out before class and during first period cleaning it all up. The hole is still there, though some metal bars and some yellow tape has been put up around the shallow hole that got left behind.

You've also heard that some of the other students in the class—like Kelsey Blankenship, naturally—are absolutely shitting themselves with rage that their submissions got stolen.

"Like it fucking matters," Carson says when you mention this. "Whatever she put it in is gonna be more use to whoever took it than it would be down inside a hole. Same definitely goes for that bottle of hooch."

"What bottle of hooch?" asks Paul Davis, who has silent up until this point.

Carson looks at Keith, who stares blankly back.

"Someone gave your teacher a bottle of something," Carson says after a pregnant silence. "Scotch or brandy or something expensive. Something that would age while it was in there."

"What?" You wheel on Keith, who now turns that dumb, blank face of his toward you.

"Yeah, at least that's what I heard from someone," Carson says, turning back toward Keith.

"Yeah, so?" Keith says.

"Well, doesn't that sound like a prime motive for digging the thing up? To get it out?"

"They'd have to know it was in there," James says.

"Oh, they'd know," Carson says. "Because someone was gassing on about it pretty openly last week."

Keith's jaw drops, and he gasps.

"I wasn't gassing on about it!" he protests.

"You told me about it."

"When?" Keith juts out his jaw.

"Last Friday, outside Kowalski's classroom. You came barging up on me and Jenny, asking if it was true that—" Carson catches himself briefly. "That someone gave Mr. Walberg a bottle of Scotch for the time capsule."

"You're the only guys I asked or said anything about it to! Maybe it was Jenny who went 'gassing' it around!"

"Maybe that's how come Jenny's not here," Caleb dryly suggests, drawing an ugly look from James. It's true: Jenny Ashton, who usually eats with Carson and James, is notably absent today.

"Point is, word got out and around," Carson says. "Something like that gets out and around, and—"

"Maybe you came up to school and dug it up?" Caleb suggests. "Or James?"

"Or Jenny?" Keith blurts out.

"I know only one person who said anything out loud about it," Carson says, "and that was Keith. Not that I'm saying Keith caused it—"

"You practically are!" Keith says. "And I wasn't the only one! I heard about it in English 'cos—!"

* * * * *

Keith leaves abruptly when the bell rings, but you follow him because you've got a bone to pick with him. At his locker you confront him directly: "Did you hear about that bottle of booze before or after you told me I should give Mr. Walberg a bottle of wine?" you ask.

Keith smokes you with a hot glance.

"I was just trying to help you!" he snarls.

"Jesus! It would look like I was copying Anthony! Not cool, man."

"Well fuck me for trying to help! And fuck Carson with all his—!"

"Oh, forget Carson. He said he wasn't blaming you."

"Sure sounded like he was!"

"Well, if you want to feel bad about something you should feel bad about, feel bad about almost getting me in worse trouble with Mr. Walberg. Christ, man!"

Keith mutters something under his breath, slams his locker shut, and pushes off into the crowd.

But in sixth period math, which you share with Carson, you lean in to tell him that it wasn't cool to try blaming the theft on Keith. Especially not after the way he'd told you last week that Tilley was usually pretty good about being discreet.

"That's what's got me pissed," he fumes at you. "Yeah, I'm pretty sure it wasn't someone who overheard him talking at the door of the classroom. But he should've known better than to go around asking and talking about it."

"He knew better than to tell us where he heard it from," you point out. "He was just one word away from blurting it out, and he still managed to catch himself."

"Oh, I know where he heard it from. 'Cos he told me and Jenny when he asked us about it."

"Where?"

Carson smiles tightly at you.

"Think I'll tell you when Tilley wouldn't? Anyway, it's all over and pointless and doesn't have anything to do with you or anyone else. Unless you're worried the thing you gave Walberg got stolen too, in which case go ask about it in the office like everyone else."

That's all for now.

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