The Book of Masks (Vol. 1)

Hired Help

Previously: "Whose Bully Stinks the Most?" 

"Hey Justin!"

Roth half turns at the sound of your call. He's dressed very causally, in a tie-dye t-shirt and jeans; around his neck hangs a long strand of cheap plastic beads—probably a playful gift of some female admirer. "Hey. Prescott," he says in a warm, gruff tone as you pant up next to him. "Lookin' to hang out some more?"

"Actually, I have somewhere I have to be, but could you do me a favor? You remember that book I showed you last Friday? You wanted to buy it?"

His expression is blank for a moment, then he shrugs. "Yeah, I'm not that interested," he says.

"Oh. Well, the thing is I don't have it anymore. Yeah," you continue as his eyebrows knit together. "I got in a fight with some guys back here at the portables this morning. Joe Thomason and a few other guys." You raise your chin and throw your shoulders back, like you're the kind of bad-ass who might get in a fight with them. "So all my shit got tossed around on the ground while we were fighting? Anyway, Mr. Barrientos came out and stopped us," you hurriedly press on as a slightly amused smile creeps into the corners of Roth's mouth. "And I got all my stuff back except for that book. It was in my backpack and it must have fallen out someplace and I can't find it."

"You want me to help you look?" Justin says.

"I'm pretty sure Thomason's friends have it. Probably Rennerhoff."

"So, why don't you ask them?"

"Well, they're not gonna give it back. Because we had that fight, you know? They'll just pretend like they don't have it."

"That's a bitch, man, but I don't know what—"

"You could ask them about it for me? Like, offer to buy it from them? Don't mention my name to them!"

An incredulous look slowly creeps onto Justin's face as you continue to babble.

"Here's what you could do," you improvise. "You could go to them and tell them that I had this book, it's bound in red and gold leather, and I was showing it to you on Friday, and you wanted to buy it but you didn't have any money. So I was bringing it back today for you, but I lost it in that fight. So when we talked, I told you I thought Rennerhoff had it, so you're going to him to try buying it from him? Like, I've totally given up on it?"

By now you're blushing deeply. Roth is grinning at you, and his shoulders are shaking with suppressed laughter. But, humiliatingly, you can't resist adding, "And I'll reimburse you, even give you, uh, ten percent more than you pay them for it?"

For a moment, Roth only stares back, then he falls back a step and throws his head back in a howl of laughter. "Oh, fuck me," he gasps when he's recovered himself. "Okay, I'll get your book for you, Prescott. Or, I dunno, I'll ask around for it." He brushes at his eyes, which are streaming. "And you can straight up reimburse me, I won't take a profit. We can go up into Sutton or someplace, split a beer and a joint." He claps you on the shoulder.

With a burning face, you watch as he trudges off, chuckling, toward the back of the portables.

* * * * *

The rest of the week passes without much excitement. Spencer and his gang of low-IQ lowlifes haven't touched or spoken to you since last Friday. Yes, it was a one-time thing with you, a bit of horseplay borne of boredom, taken up quickly and forgotten just as quickly.

For the time capsule you take in that bottle of aftershave; Mr. Walberg accepts it and enters your contribution into a notebook without comment. You talk to some of the other students about what they contributed or intend to contribute. Caleb, naturally, has the most insane plan: "Porn," he tells you with a grin when you ask. "Actual pornography."

"You can't give Walberg porn."

"I can and I already have," he says. "I just couldn't tell him I gave him porn."

"Fine. So what did you tell him were giving him?"

"Well, what I gave him was a thumb drive, and he didn't ask me about it."

"He'll look on it," you say. "And then you're gonna—"

"Yeah, but I buried it," he says carelessly. "I made, like a hundred or two hundred folders. Just kept hitting the 'create new folder' key so they're all nested in each other. Then I duplicated them about a hundred times. So there's something like ten or twenty thousand folders he'd have to look through before he found the one that has the porn in it."

"And the point of all this is?"

"To put one over on him." He snorts. "It's a hell of a lot better than Mansfield and his iPod full of political speeches."

"Anything is better than whatever Mansfield does," you say.

And you mean it. Fucking Geoff Mansfield.

He's one of the AP snobs, along with his butt buddies Martin Gardinhire and Anthony Kirk and Ricky Golia, and bitches like Kelsey Blankenship and Amanda Ferguson and—

No, Lisa isn't one of them. She's just started hanging out with them.

Lisa Yarborough.

It had started over the summer as a light flirtation. No, not even that. You'd just run into each other a few times. Lisa is curvy and soft and bosomy, and her brunette hair falls in gentle curves to her shoulders and her blue eyes are like pools, and you just couldn't stop yourself from thinking of and about her in these terribly clichéd ways, whether she was about or not. You'd risked making a pest of yourself with her by calling her up and inviting her out or inviting yourself along. And bit by bit you'd drifted closer and closer until, by the end of July you were holding hands and sitting on the grass at parks or by the river and leaning against each other, and once you'd even kissed her on the top of her head. She'd looked up quizzically at that, and dimpled.

Then came that dreadful day, not long after school had started up again. You'd come up to Lisa at her locker and casually put your arm around her shoulder. She'd turned around and wriggled out of it and told you, in a very cool way, that, you know, it's not like you'd ever agreed that you were going out together. Then she'd turned back to her friend—it was probably Kelsey; Kelsey is always standing nearby when someone drops an anvil on your head, and she always looks so goddamned pleased when it does—and said nothing more to you. She'd moved off with Kelsey—if it was Kelsey—without saying another word, and had left you gaping and gingerly touching your chest to see how big the hole was she'd torn in it when she pulled your heart out.

And then she'd started hanging out with Mansfield. Bleagh!

Anyway, that was something else you'd dealt with over the week, bothering Caleb and Keith with your obsessive autopsy of where the relationship had gone wrong. Maybe you were overdoing it, for by the end of the week even you were noticing a certain huntedexpression on their faces when you came round.

* * * * *

Friday. Start of lunch period. You turn at the sound of your name. "Where are you going?" Caleb calls down the hallway.

"Just around the corner to see a guy," you shout back. "I'll be along in a minute."

"Good, 'cos I gotta talk to you!" The swirling crowd of students cuts him off from view, but you know he's ducked outside. You turn back toward another set of doors.

These lead out onto a square patch of land bound on one side by the Health Wing and on the other by the Music Wing. It's an isolated bit of ground: only the windows from A Wing look out onto it, and it's in the middle of this patch that your Sociology class only this morning buried the time capsule. But you're not interested in that. You'd seen Justin going out these doors just a minute ago. You glance around: there are some students sitting in small clumps, but none of them is Justin. Probably he's around the corner of the music wing, where it's even more isolated. On long legs you lope in that direction.

You're about to turn the corner when you hear his characteristic, asthmatic laugh. Good, he's probably just hanging out with Small and Tsosie again, you think. You go round it and—

Oh fuck. He's there all right, but he's with Joe Thomason, Tanner Evans, and George Mendoza.

Which is the worst of the bunch? Well, it's like the old joke. When you think of spending time alone with one, you think you'd rather spend time alone with one of the others.

Thomason is tall and skinny with a skull-like head. He's tan from the summer, but there's a pallor beneath, like he's a sun-dried corpse. His blonde-white hair is shaved so close to the skull that he looks bald. His long fingers work restlessly, and he gives the impression that he's constantly squeezing bugs to death between them.

Tanner Evans has a square, almost box-like head; under his short dark hair he almost reminds you of Frankenstein. His eyes are alive, however, with malice and cruelty, and they glint harder when he lowers his beetle-brows over them. His mouth curves naturally into a sour sneer.

Then there's Mendoza. He ought to be the least scary of the trio. He has a youthful, almost baby-like face under a huge thatch of black hair. Unlike the others, whose skin is disfigured by zits, warts, stubble or pallor, his is smooth and free of defects. Even the shadow of a moustache on his upper lip makes him look like he's too young to shave, which furthers the impression of innocence. But you know from experience that he is the most skilled at finding ways of causing pain that don't leave obvious marks; and his insults, softly whispered into the ear, cut deeper than Thomason's crude japes ever could.

Justin's back is to you, but these three look over as one as you stagger to a sudden halt before them.

* To continue: "Empty Hands and Empty Heads" 

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