The Book of Masks (Vol. 2)

It's a Gift

Previously: "A Couple of Surprises for the Boys in Your Life" 

"If we can just get the dirt," you muse.

"The dirt?" Caleb exclaims. "You're worried about getting the dirt?"

"We'd have to break into a cemetery—"

"Forget the dirt, where are we gonna get five hundred dollars for the rest of the shit?" Caleb's eyes almost start from his head.

"Quit exaggerating, it won't cost that much. And I can kick in a hundred, at least. I'll tell my mom I need some new clothes." You shift in your seat, enjoying the feeling of your t-shirt rubbing against your boobs. Then you snap your fingers at a sudden, totally brilliant thought. "And I know how to get the rest of it!"

"How?"

"Just take me home." You dig out your cell phone (which is pink, covered with stickers, with a Mickey Mouse bangle dangling off the end). "I gotta get started."

"But we just got here!"

"And now I need to get home! I got stuff to do if we're going to get the things for this next spell!"

Caleb says and does nothing even as you scroll through your contact list, making mental notes. Only when you glance up with a squint does he turn the motor on. "You're really fucking manipulative," he grumbles.

"I know. It's a talent," you reply, and tug at the hem of your shorts, which have been riding up the sides of your taut, creamy thighs.

* * * * *

Caleb is even angrier when you foist on him the job of collecting the dirt, but you tell him that if he does that, you'll pay for the rest of the stuff yourself. He grumbles that he doesn't even want to do the spell but finally gives in, and agrees to text you in a day or two after he's collected the dirt.

The next morning, in the carpool on the way to school: "If I guess who it's for," Heaven Granberry asks as she hands you a twenty dollar bill, "will you tell me?"

"No." You slide the twenty into your billfold. "Because then it won't be a secret!"

"What's this all about?" Lucas asks from the front seat. (It's his mom's turn to drive carpool, and he always calls shotgun on those mornings.)

"Madison's throwing a surprise birthday party—"

"Unbirthday party," you correct Heaven. "That's what guarantees it'll be a surprise. No one expects an unbirthday party. We're holding it up at the minigolf course two weeks from Saturday." You lean forward to poke Lucas in the shoulder. "And you're invited too!"

"Is that what Heaven's giving you money for?"

Heaven answers for you. "It's to buy birthday— unbirthday presents for whoever the party's for," she says. A querulous tone creeps into her voice. "Except Madison's not saying who it's for."

"To keep it a surprise! If I start telling people who it's for, it's ruin the surprise because it's bound to get back to them!"

"Why can't we buy our own, uh, presents for the person?" Lucas asks.

"Because you don't know who it is! Trust me." You squeeze his shoulder. "It's going to buy something awesome, or a couple of awesome things, for them."

Lucas doesn't answer, and you don't like the mulish quality of the silence that radiates from the front of the car. You hope everyone else at school isn't going to be this tightfisted and unhappy. You need at least ten people at twenty dollars a pop to cover the cost of the magic supplies, and ten people more than that if you're going to actually buy stuff for Ethan's party.

"It's for me, isn't it?" Matthew says without preamble as he piles into the car at the next stop. He hands you a bill. "The party."

"You'd like to think so," you retort.

"I'd love it if it was for me." He leans in close enough that you can smell the mint toothpaste on his breath. "You'd love it too. I'd make sure of that."

You can't help grinning back into his face. Was this what it is like for other people in your class, back in your sophomore year? Everyone doing things with each other, making party plans, hanging out, flirting, trying to get boyfriends or girlfriends? How much you were missing!

* * * * *

Class period by class period you sweep through the school, collecting money from the people you're inviting out for the massive minigolf party you've announced for the eighteenth. Madison's best friends—Dana and Julie and Carly and Charles; Kaitlyn Page and Alexandria Hull and Tenille Howe; and more—contribute cheerfully. Others, like Courtenay Blessing and Abigail Philips, are less enthusiastic, though they do chip in. For most of Madison's guy friends and acquaintances you lower the cost to ten dollars, and even then you have flirt pretty hard, hinting heavily to Donovan Bergquist and Jared Cochran and Liam Schoonover and others that this surprise unbirthday party might be for them so they don't want to skip it.

The hardest part comes when you try pumping girls like Kaylee Mercier and Wendy Adler and Leslie Osbourne for contributions. Kaylee and Wendy, like Madison, are on track to join the cheerleading squad, and they and Madison circle each other warily. Worst is Leslie, a rich snot who's taking a bunch of AP classes, and who not only turns you down point blank when you hit her up for a contribution, but even says she's not sure she can make it out to a party on the eighteenth. "I think there's something going on at the country club," she says.

Well, you'd be happy if she didn't make it, and if Kaylee and Wendy didn't make it either, except that then you wouldn't get to see their faces when they found out that the party was for Ethan, and had to watch as he thanked you for it. Specially thanked you for it.

But though it's stressful work, by sixth period you've collected money or pledges of four hundred dollars.

* * * * *

"Hey, can do me a favor?" you ask Ethan as you sidle up to him at the end of sixth period. "Walk me to my next class? That's not the favor," you hurriedly add, although your heart is beating wildly at the prospect of having Ethan Clayborne walk you to class. "I wanna talk on the way."

Ethan looks blank for a moment, then nods curtly. God, you think, how amazing would it be to have his arm around my waist and his hand on my butt! Then, Stop it, Prescott!

But still your core flushes with an almost liquid desire, so you get a thrill as the crowds in the hallway force you to rub up next to Ethan as you shove your way through the Mr. Fernandez's class. Even better, you also have to put your mouth to the side of his head and shout in his ear to make yourself heard, so you get to tickle your nose with his hair. "There's a party going on two weeks from Saturday!"

"Yeah, I heard!" he replies. "Up at the go-kart track?"

"Minigolf! Did Bradley tell you I'm giving him tickets for the laser tag place next to it?"

"No!"

You make a face. Bradley can be such an airhead sometimes.

"Well, those tickets are for the same day as my minigolf party, so I had to get rid of them! But if you and Bradley and any of your friends, you know, used them, you and they could maybe meet up with the rest of us afterward!"

He mulls this. "Yeah, I guess!"

"Well, you should! I want everyone I know to come out!"

"Isn't it supposed to be a birthday party?"

"Unbirthday party!" Why can't people keep that straight? "Surprise party for someone!"

"Who?"

"That's the surprise!" You pull him into Mr. Fernandez's classroom.

"I'm taking up collections to buy a couple of presents for the unbirthday person," you explain, "but you don't have to give anything, since, you know, you're just going to be hanging out there separately. If you come." Your heart clambers up into the back of your throat as you look up into Ethan's face. "I just want you and Bradley and, you know, whoever else, to know you're invited too." You almost choke as your throat threatens to close up. "I— We'd really miss you if you didn't come."

"Yeah, sure," Ethan says, and you almost squirt as he flicks a stiff curl of hair from off his forehead. "It sounds like fun."

"Great! There's—!" Your voice briefly fails as you screw up the courage for the next bit. "There's kind of a reason I want you guys out there, but not, um, at the minigolf place, just close to it. Um, it's that—" Your vision swims as you feel yourself start to hyperventilate. "You guys are part of the surprise!"

Ethan's eyebrows twitch with puzzlement.

"That's all I can say," you gasp, "without ruining the surprise. Just don't— If you can make sure that you're at the laser tag place with Bradley and whoever— Well, I've got an extra special surprise for the person I'm doing this for. And I just need you guys out there, in order to get it to work. You don't have to do anything else!" The room seems to swim. "So, as a favor for me?"

"Sure. Um—" Ethan scratches the back of his head. "What do I tell the other guys?"

"Just tell them you want to go to the laser tag place on the eighteenth. Thanks! You're doing me a huuuuuge favor!" You just manage to stop yourself from throwing your arms around his rocklike torso and squeezing hard.

After he goes, you collapse into your desk, weak from all the stress and excitement. But it's all done. In one day you've managed to arrange the surprise party for Ethan and finance the next experiment. You sag with relief.

But you sit up sharply when you see Evie Cummings coming in through the door. Evie and Paulina! You haven't spared them much thought in the last few days. You told them you wanted to be friends. Maybe you should invite them out to the party too, even though they're totally not Madison's kind of acquaintance.

Next: "The Reluctant Friend" 

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