The Book of Masks (Vol. 2)

Stuff That Comes Out of Storage

Previously: "A Fetch Quest" 

"Something come up?" Jack murmurs as you tap a reply—B thr whn I can—into your phone. Charles goes back to snarking at the two girls.

"No," you tell him, "just telling a guy to fuck off. But I do need to go. Can we—?"

Jack raises his hand and whistles through his teeth. Charles whirls on him with a glare.

"Hey, I just need five seconds," Jack calmly tells him. "Where's Christian? Me and my man here are looking for a prop book he bought offa us."

Your cell goes off again, with Caleb's reply: Need u now dpsht/

You grimace at it, and text back, Smthnng cam up cant doit do it tmrw. When you look up again, Jack and one of the girls have gone. But the second girl has sidled up close, and is giving you a mirthful look. "Someone's popular," she says.

Suddenly, you recognize her with a shock. "Gah! Laura!" you squeak.

"Took you long enough to remember me," she says. But she smiles as she says it.

You knew Laura MacGregor back in middle school, where you shared lots of classes, and even had a bit of a crush on her. She was never a great beauty, for her features, though regular, are a little sharp, and she could never do much with her mousy brown hair, which falls lankly to just below her jawline. You notice that she has also picked up quite a bit of weight, so that she's little roly-poly. But she had a wicked sense of humor back when you knew her, and a way of glancing at you that made you feel like you weren't wearing any clothes.

That's the look that she's giving you now.

"I just wasn't expecting to run into you back here," you tell her.

"I wasn't expecting to run into you either, but at least I knew who you were right away."

"Oh, Jesus, I—"

"I'm just giving you a hard time, Will. Come on," she says, "if we don't catch up to them, Elle and Jack are gonna think we stayed behind to make out." She slides her arm through yours and pulls herself close. Your heart ricochets off the back of your throat.

"So, uh, you're in the drama program?" you squeak as you let her lead you out through a curtained doorway and back out into the auditorium. You're too dizzy to ask where Jack got off to, and where Laura is leading you.

"Mm-hmm. You know me, I was taking drama back at Schuyler. Your brother goes there now, right?"

"Uh, yeah." She knows about Robert and where he goes to school? you wonder. "Oh, right, you had theater right after lunch," you recall. "I remember, there were all those days you were too nervous to eat."

"I got over it."

Yeah, I can see, you think, and wince at the ungallant thought. You glance back at the stage, where Charles Hartlein is still standing, hands on his hips, directing that Chris guy to move the sofa first this way and then that. "I'd wanna throw up if I had to work with Hartlein," you murmur.

"He's my boyfriend," Laura coldly informs you. She drops your arm and comes to a halt.

You lurch to a stop, and return her hard look with a frozen one of your own. Hartlein? Her boyfriend? You're groping for an apology when you feel a hot prickle of blood go rushing up over your scalp.

"Oh, bullshit," you exclaim. "There's no way that—!"

Laura bursts into laughter and picks your arm up again. "I had you going! Admit it, Will, I had you going!"

"If you're going to bullshit me, at least come up with something even a tiny bit believable!"

"I had you going!"

"Only 'cos you actually looked like you meant it!"

"Yeah, it's called 'acting'. That's what the guy said, you know. 'Why doesn't the dear boy try acting'?"

You have no idea what she's talking about, so you distract her by nodding at Maria Vasquez, who is still sitting in the back row, gazing down at the stage with a distracted frown. "You guys already have an audience," you tell her.

"She's just flirting long distance with Chris," Laura sniffs. She grips your arm and twists so as to put her and your backs to Maria.

* * * * *

As you walk out to the student parking lot, Laura explains that although Westside and Eastman have separate drama programs, Westside stores its props on the Eastman campus. In fact, all the drama programs in town, including those at the middle schools, draw from a common stock.

So the four of you—Jack, Laura, you, and the other girl, a doughy-faced redhead named Elle Moore—pile into Jack's cherry-colored minivan to drive out to Eastman to look for the book. You and Laura plop in the back, where you reminisce about middle school classes and catch up on your current classes. You're not so into the conversation, though, that you miss Jack glancing back at you in the rearview mirror, and grinning at you.

Elle has the key and lets you all into the dusty storage room in a warehouse annex out back of the high school. "When was the last time you guys updated your furniture?" Jack asks. He wrinkles his nose as he surveys a jumble of moldy sofas and chairs. "Jesus, this is like stuff I've seen in my friends' grandmothers' houses!"

"It's good for when we're putting on period pieces," Laura retorts as she picks up and discards from a pile of throw pillows. "Like the one we're doing now."

"You have a wooden horse for when you do the Iliad?" Jack asks. "Harpsichords for when you're doing Shakespeare?"

"No, but we have a box full of cod pieces for when we for Shakespeare." Laura presses a throw pillow over Jack's crotch, and studies the effect. "You'd look great in a cod piece, Jack. You've got the legs for it."

"He should totally audition for a part," a voice murmurs in your ear, and you jump back with a start. It's Elle. She flashes you a small smile before turning a dreamy gaze back on Jack. "He's got, like, ten times the stage presence that Charles has."

You don't know what she means by that, so you extemporize. "He was being kind of a shit to you back there, you know? Charles, I mean. About the throw pillows," you add when Elle turns a puzzled frown on you.

"Oh, that's just the way he is. Queen bee. One of these days, though, Chris is going to punch him out. What are you guys looking for? A book?"

"Yeah. About this big." You illustrate with your hands. "Red leather covers."

"Sounds like an encyclopedia. I think we keep stuff like that against the back wall." You follow as she climbs her way over the furniture and between shelves stacked with cardboard boxes. "What do you need it for?" she asks.

"I'm trying to buy it back. I sold it on accident. Well, Jack sold it to you guys on accident. I gave it to Jack to— Well, it's complicated." You clam up at the look that Elle is giving you.

With her help, you sort through two boxes and a bookshelf of prop books and magazines, none of which even remotely resemble the book that you picked up at Arnholms.

"Well, Christian probably just hasn't transferred it back here," Jack says when you and Elle return to report. (In the meantime, he and Laura have picked out three new throw pillows to take back to Westside.) "You guys are doing Bell, Book, and Candle for your Christmas show, right?" he asks the girls. "Christian picked it up for that. I'll talk to him tonight, ask him where he put it." Your quartet troops back outside.

Laura is talking to Jack as you walk back to the parking lot, but Elle walks with you. "You were going out with Lisa Yarborough over the summer, weren't you?" she asks.

"Yes." You feel your face heating up.

"I thought I remembered seeing you with her. You still seeing each other?"

"No."

"Why not?"

You shrug. "We broke up."

"I'm sorry. But I guess that means you're available, huh?"

Your heart skips. "Uh, yeah, I guess. Jack's available too, right?" Instantly you regret your hasty reply.

And Elle runs with it. "Oh!" she laughs. "Is Jack someone you—?"

"No!"

She laughs again. "Well, that's too bad. He's needs to find a good guy and stop mooning over football players."

You can't help tensing up all over.

* * * * *

On the drive back to Westside, you get full details on Christian Padilla, who is the guy that bought the book off Jack. Jack says he's going to find him, but maybe you should contact him yourself.

Next: "Just a Perfect Friendship" 

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