The Book of Masks (Vol. 2)

The Party Boy

Previously: "Chez Colson" 

The open doorway is a rectangle of light spilling out into the night. It makes for a kid of optical illusion: Standing on the dark stoop and looking into the brightly lit house is like looking outside onto the world from inside a dark tunnel.

It gives you a touch of vertigo to recognize a house that you've never seen before, and to recognize the faces, names, and partial personal histories of people that you barely remember seeing before, and to understand people you have never talked to. For a moment the old expression about being "beside one's self" almost makes sense, for you feel as though you are two separate people with two separate brains, standing next to each other. One is a stranger to the place, a little frightened, who would just as soon sneak off. The other knows everyone inside, and has talked with them, sat with them, danced with them, rubbed against them, and slept with some of them. He has even got naked with and exchanged hand jobs with one of the guys. He feels a little funny standing out here instead of being inside with everyone else.

"No, I'm still feeling around," you tell Brianna Gould. You take the cigarette from her and draw a hit from it. You almost lean in to kiss her, but she'd probably take it as more meaningful than you want her to. "Why does anyone have to decide anything?"

"I guess that's my philosophy too, how come I'm still feeling around."

No, you think. That's not why you're alone, Brianna. You're just so desperate to be with a guy that you wind up scaring them all off.

Then you think: But if you want to pretend for tonight that you're not in the mood to make final decisions, I could go along with you.

Before you can stop yourself, you've put your hand on the small of her back, and given her a single, hard rub down all the way to her ass, which you pat. "Some nights it just doesn't pay to think too hard," you tell her as you give the cigarette back.

"I'll say amen to that." She takes another hit off the cigarette and hisses the smoke out through clenched teeth.

So when she drops the cigarette and grinds it out under her heel, you put your arm around her waist and lead her back inside. You feel Andrew Harding's eyes on you—he was the last one to collide with Brianna—but a moment later he turns back to Emily, who is putting a crick her neck as she glares up into his face.

* * * * *

It's not a rowdy crowd. Most of them take AP classes, and many of them—like Cody and Sophie—come from old money.

But they're still not the sorts of people that—with your intimate knowledge of him—you'd expect Will Prescott to hang out with.

Yet even here, in the midst of a party so intimate that everyone, if they wanted to, could concentrate on him, he stands aloof somehow. He doesn't withdraw into a corner, as you might do if you were being yourself, but perches in the center of the room where the pizza and beer are spread out. He drapes his arms loosely around Mia, but he looks past her, over her head, watching the others with an uplifted chin; he listens intently and unsmilingly, only grunting the occasional response when anyone speaks to him; and just as often turning away from whoever is talking to penetrate Mia with a hard gaze, and to draw her up to his face for a long, nourishing nuzzle.

* * * * *

"Jesus," Spencer grumbles at one such point, when Will turns away in the middle of his monologue about the time Kyle Kent skateboarded off the roof of the middle school and broke his collar bone. Spencer catches you smirking at him. "Are you listening to this, Colson?"

"Meh," you reply, and turn your full attention to Brianna, who is half-nestled in your lap. "Jesus," Spencer mutters again, and plops onto the other side of the girl.

"Why are you trying so hard to impress him?" you ask Spencer. "Prescott, I mean."

"I'm not trying to impress him."

Brianna snorts. "Oh, please," she says. "If you were trying any harder you'd have to pull his pants down and suck him off."

"I am not—!"

"Would you suck him off?" you ask Brianna.

She turns away with a curve of her lip. "He's occupied tonight."

"Hey Prescott! Will!" you shout. He looks around Mia long enough to return you a dead-eyed stare. "What about her?" You jab a finger at Brianna, who slaps it away and smacks you in the leg.

Will's eyes shift to Brianna, then shift back to Mia. His lips twitch up in a half smile, and he pulls her after him. You feel your eyes widen as they step into the bedroom and shut the door behind them.

For a long moment you can do nothing. He did not just do that! wrestles with He just did! The need to do something about it tangles with the desire to not cause a scene. Your offense at Will's presumption grapples with a terrified reluctance to confront him.

Spencer hoots, and leans around Brianna to waggle his eyebrows at you. "What are you gonna do about that, man?" he jeers. "Gonna do anything? Gonna tell him he's got permission?" He sniggers.

Cody catches your eye with a frown and jerks his head at the closed door. "Will and Mia," you shout back at him over the music. His expression shifts from puzzlement to alarm, and he gives the door a hard stare before turning back to you. With a vast effort that almost cracks your frozen muscles, you shrug and look away.

No one else shouts the news over the music, but word about the bedroom door and what is presumably going on behind it gradually but unmistakably filters through the room, like a person-to-person virus. After a quarter hour an open space has formed in front of the door—a spot that no one want to stand in or walk through. You watch faces, and notice that no one will look at you. Even Brianna has fallen silent.

The fatal break occurs when Dorothy Harmon runs from the house, followed closely by Emily Sparks. You feel your face burning, and the sofa under your butt gets warmer and warmer. Maybe it's getting warmer because you're squirming, but you're definitely squirming because it's getting hot.

Finally you can't take it anymore, and leap off the sofa and follow them out. Brianna doesn't follow.

It takes you a moment to spot Dorothy and Emily out in the street, next to Will's truck. It gives you a pang to realize that it's not your truck any more.

Dorothy is snuffling hard as you approach. Emily does a double take at you, and she has such an expression on her face that you slow up. Not that she's a formidable girl: she's a small thing—a Munchkin, practically—with long brunette hair that drapes out from under a ski cap, and dark-framed glasses. Terry doesn't care that she dresses up like she's trying to look less pretty (he'd hump her anyway, if she was the type to put out), but you can't help thinking that she'd look totally adorable if she put away the cap and glasses and ditched the pea coat, the twill trousers, and the Doc Martens for a short-skirted dress and maybe some strappy sandals.

Oh, wait. That's a fantasy that Terry has.

"Yeah, so, hey," you stammer as you slow up to join them. "You gonna be okay, Dorothea?" you ask, using Terry's playful name for her.

"What do you think?" Emily spits in answer. Dorothy murmurs something, but Emily stills her with a hand on her arm. "Jesus, do you just let anyone do it in your bedroom?"

"It's not my bedroom," you correct her. "It's Andrew's, and he's letting me—"

"Do you know what motherfucking sophistry that is? It's bullshit, God damn it!"

"So what do you want me to do? I can't bust in on them, and even if I did, they'd just—"

"You could not be such a limp-dicked pushover for him!"

Speaking of being a pushover, someone pushes you aside now. It's Cody, and Emily leaps back as he pulls Dorothy into an embrace. It's too dark to read the face he shows you over her shoulder, but his brows are lowered.

You shift from foot to foot, and for a lack of anyplace better to turn your eyes, you look back at the house. Everyone seems to be crowded around the doorway.

"Maybe we should move things," you suggest.

"Jesus," Cody growls. "Move them where?" You shrug. No one else has a house that can be repurposed for a party on such short notice. It sounds lame, but all you can suggest is, "The Warehouse?"

"I'm gonna go home," Dorothy murmurs. Cody says that he'll take her. Emily, with a parting glare at you, says she'll go too.

You return to the door and tell people that the party is moving to the Warehouse. Still, it takes you a couple of minutes to push and prod people out of the house.

Spencer's the last one out, and in the doorway he grins back at you with gleeful malice. "What about Prescott?" he asks.

"I'll kick him out."

Spencer just laughs in your face.

Next: "Playing Ball with the New Will Prescott" 

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"Table of Contents (Vol. 2)" 
"The Book of Masks (Vol. 2)"