The Book of Masks (Abridged)

The Phony Party Crasher

YOU PULL OUT YOUR CELL PHONE and log in to x2z.com.

x2z just might be the shittiest, most baleful social media site ever invented. It's a variation on Tumblr, where people can post pictures and memes and Twitter-type posts that they can upvote and downvote and out of which sub-streams can be formed dedicated to particular topics via hash tags.

The difference is that x2z does not allow users to register individually. Rather, it grants "charters" to communities: usually schools, clubs, churches, and the like, who are supposed to patrol their members. Unfortunately, once the charters are granted, then individuals can register, which means in practice that "communities" like the Westside x2z stream become gorged with the usual filth-plying trolls and character assassins. After a bad experience your freshman year, you have stayed far away from it.

But there's no better place to find out where the local parties are, and inside of two minutes you've followed the never-long-submerged "party" hash tags and jotted down the addresses for three this-night parties where you can have fun and mayhem without getting in trouble—because it will be "Caleb Johansson" who attends.

"Going out for a little while," you announce as you saunter through the living room.

"Remember your curfew," your dad says without looking away from the television.

"Yessir."

He turns his head, maybe at the unusual "sir" that popped out of your mouth. (Did that come from Caleb? You've still got that memory band inside your head.) But it's your clothes he comments on. "Where did you get those? Are those yours?"

"They're Caleb's."

His eyebrows go up. "Why are you wearing Caleb's clothes? Aren't the ones we buy for you good enough?"

"Harris," your mom says in a low voice. He gives her a bewildered look, then shrugs and turns back to the TV.

For your part, you can't believe that he recognizes which clothes are his and which are yours.

Well, whatever. You drive your truck down to the old elementary school. That's where put Caleb's mask to your face.

* * * * *

You have no idea who Alexis Lachance is, which is the fact that recommends her party as one to crash. You also liked the address, up in the expensive, northwest part of town. And you especially like her house when you see it. It's a big brick pile with lots of gables that all by itself occupies the end of a cul-de-sac. Cars are piled up in the empty lots that flank it—lots of them, so it's a big party. A steady drone and thump of music emanates from it.

You don't smoke, but Caleb sometimes does, so you pause at the end of the lighted walk long enough to pull out a cigarette from the pack you bought on the way over. You draw down half of it as you study the house, which blazes in the night, then toss it away and stub it out with your toe. Time for some consequence-free douchery! you tell yourself as you swagger up to the front door and push inside without bothering to ring the bell.

The driving beat of the music engulfs you like a soft, deafening wave. Half a dozen couples sprawl on the stairs at the end of the foyer; those without paper plates and cups in their laps are nuzzling. A shrimpy kid is treating the staircase like playground equipment, clambering up its side on his tiptoes and clinging to the bannister for support. But a beefy kid with beard stubble whacks at the kid's hands, and he falls into the hallway below with a soft thump.

Rooms to the left, right and rear. And upstairs, but that's for later if you're lucky.

Very lucky, for you're looking like Caleb Johansson, who with his tight, curly hair, protuberant eyes, and fish lips could play Egon Spengler in a high school production of Ghostbusters.

The kid who got knocked off the stairs comes sauntering over. He's short—probably a freshman—with sloppy brown locks that cover his ears and fall almost to his eyes. He barely gives you a look, but you hold up your hand for a high-five. "Wassup?" you ask.

He fakes a return, then throws a fist into your stomach. You hunch double, but he pulls the punch at the last second. "Shit," he mutters, and looks around with a bored expression.

"Where's the girls?"

"Fuck. Come on." He struts through a double doorway

In the dusky light, the room beyond is a blanket of shadows pocked here and there with islands of burnished lamplight. Couples entangled in various degrees of embrace sprawl across three sofas, pile up in two easy chairs, or lean against an upright piano. Some you recognize as football players; the girls, in their skimpy shorts and tops, could be from any class in the school.

"Watch this," your new friend mutters into your ear. He waves his hand between the faces of a boy and a girl on a sofa. "Vrrt, vrrt," he says.

The guy catches your friend around the back of the neck with a brawny arm and pulls him onto his shoulder; you leap aside as he stands up and carries his struggling captive out the door. You narrowly miss getting kicked in the head by the kid's flailing legs.

But there's now an empty spot on the sofa, and on an impulse you hop into the still-warm spot and smile brightly into the face of a girl with long blonde hair.

"Hi," you exclaim. "This spot taken?"

"Brownie'll be back in a minute," she tells you.

"No he won't. My friend'll kick his ass."

She grins. It's a toothy thing, but attractive. "Did he do that for you? So you could get rid of Brownie?"

"Sure. People do favors for me all the time." You twine your hands behind your head. "I'm a popular guy."

Her eyebrows tent skeptically. Someone yells, "Take it somewhere else, Johansson."

"Brownie'll be back in a minute," the girl says again.

"So come out in the back yard with me."

"I'm waiting for him."

"You can wait for him in the back yard."

A shadow falls across you, and you look up. It's Brownie. From your sitting position, he looks even bigger, like a foothill that decided to take a stroll. "You're in my light," you tell him.

With a sigh he grabs you by the belt buckle and hauls you onto his shoulder. "Come look for me," you shout at the girl as he carries you out. "I still need to get your phone number!"

Brownie deposits you on an outside patio, gives you a chuck under the chin, and abandons you to a skuzzy crowd of kids with bad hair and zits. The loser crowd, you think unhappily to yourself.

"How'd you piss Brownie off?" You turn at the question.

The girl who asked it is small and bony, with great puffs of curly brown hair give her the look of a gangly dandelion. She's not very attractive, so you figure that you—meaning Caleb—might have a chance with her.

"I didn't," you tell her. "I won a bet."

"What kind of bet?"

"That I wouldn't just walk up to a girl and kiss her."

Her lips curls. "Who'd you kiss?"

"Lots of girls. It's your turn now."

With the calm abandon of a horny high-school boy with nothing to lose and no fear of the consequences, you mash your lips onto hers and grab her ass with one hand while laying the other against her chest.

"F'muck!" she yells, and when you lean back with a grin, she whales you on the side of the jaw with a tiny fist. It jars you a lot harder than you'd have expected.

"Hey, what's going on over there?" someone calls.

"Fucking sexual assault, that's what!" your once-but-no-longer-future girlfriend yells.

"None of your business," you yell back over your shoulder. "Let's keep going," you tell the girl, who stares back with haggard eyes and mouth. "If you want to go any faster, though, I'll have to take my pants off."

She gives a low shriek.

Then a couple of hands grab you and loft you into the air.

You've just time to make out their faces, but none of them are built like your previous playmate. But they don't have to be. They hurl you over a fence that separates the patio from the side yard, and you tumble head over heels down a shallow slope until you hit the bottom. But the turf is soft and springy, and you bounce off it to your feet. Your eyes are briefly dazzled by the flash of a cell phone camera.

"Just spell the name right when you post it!" you yell up at them. "That's Caleb Johansson! Two Ss, two Ns—" You grab your crotch. "And one package for when you wanna come find me!"

Someone yells a cuss word back. You just shrug and light another cigarette.

* * * * *

That was some kind of fun, but not as much as you were hoping for. Maybe you're just not as good at being a douchebag as you'd hoped. You could just hit another party (or return to Alexis's) and try for more mayhem, but you could try something else.

You could, for instance, go out to the Warehouse. That's a really dangerous party spot in the most dangerous part of town, where the bravest kids party without any kind of adult supervision at all, and where drugs, alcohol, and really regrettable kinds of sex are rumored to abound.

Or—and this would be a really evil prank on Caleb—you could go sneaking around the high school at night. The alpha-est jocks have 24/7 access to the gym, including the infamous "fuck room." That's a loft where they get to take girls any time they want. You could get in so much trouble—or rather, Caleb could get in so much trouble—if you tried breaking in there.