The Book of Masks (Vol. 4)

A New Kind of Carjacking

Previously: "Two Virgins Walk Into the Warehouse" 

Ryder Hillberger? The guy who molested you and then insulted your tits? You’ve already aiming to revenge yourself on one football-playing asshole—Kelly’s brother—and you’re taking aim at Madison Crawford too. You don’t a third target, especially when the very sight of Ryder now makes you want to puke.

“Let’s just go for Avery or Dana or one of them,” you mutter to Bridget.

“Got a preference?” she murmurs back.

Do you? Dana and Avery, as near as you can tell, are equally gaga over Madison—trailing her around, laughing at her jokes, giving her and each other makeup and beauty tips while gossiping about boys. At least they’re not mean with you and the other girls the way Madison is. And sometimes—though maybe this is just your imagination—you’ve seen them wince just the tiniest little bit when Madison lets fly with one of her put-downs.

“Whichever one we can get to,” you tell Bridget.

“And I’ll take the other?”

That stops you cold. You’d not thought beyond the point of getting one of them. We’ll see, you tell yourself.

* * * * *

It’s late afternoon by this point, and more and more kids are filtering in to the Warehouse. At least one fight breaks out, right there in the saloon, when two guys jump a third. Girls squeal and scream, and a couple of the brawnier guys, including Ryder, dive in to separate them, and one of the brawlers gets dragged into a back room when he tries fighting the guys who grabbed him. You didn’t like the place when you walked in, and now that it’s filling up and getting feisty again, you’re starting to get nervous. Blake had to work out here last night, but he’ll be out again tonight to party and drink and to try to pick up a quick and easy lay with his bomber jacket and those soulful, staring looks that Kelly has spotted him giving to girls at school. You don’t want him to catch you out here.

Bridget, though, is in her element, and when you find her (for she’s wandered off while you weren’t looking) she is laughing and flirting (yes, that’s what it looks like to you) with a couple of the guys who, if their shining grins and glinting eyes are anything to go by, are getting pretty deeply into her.

You pluck at her elbow until she stops jabbering at them about something funny that someone did up at the school. “Can you take me home?” you ask.

“What?” She turns a blank and uncomprehending face on you.

“I need to go home. Like, soon.”

“Well, okay. Right now?”

“Yeah,” says Charles Sweeney, a classmate who combines the paunch and curly-headed ‘fro of a hobbit with the sharp glance and grin of an half-elven sex pervert. “Does it have to be now?”

“Soon.” Into Bridget’s ear: “Before Blake gets here.”

She sighs. “Alright. I wanna dance when I get back,” she tells Charles.

“After midnight,” he says.

“Why?” She giggles. “You turn into a pumpkin or something?”

“No, I just don’t want you going home early, want you hanging out here.”

Then he turns that sharp glance onto you. “Hey, your brother works out here, right? Yeah!” He snaps his fingers and points at you. “He put a guy in the hole last night. Had him up like this.” He gestures with his hands. “Back of the shirt, back of his pants. It was awesome, guy looked so funny trying to walk on tiptoes while your brother was hustling him into the back. Were you here last night?”

“No.”

“How come? Your brother works here, ain’t no one gonna mess with you.”

Ryder Hillberger might, you think.

And you should have said it aloud, it would have been better than what Bridget lets fly. “Blake doesn’t let Kelly come out here,” she says.

“What?” Charles’s eyebrows go up.

“It’s not like that.” You also grab Bridget by the upper arm, digging your nails into the soft flesh. “You won’t be able to get your car out if we don’t go soon.”

“But then I won’t have a parking place for when I get back!”

“I’ll follow you out,” Charles says. “They want us to carpool in anyway. Sure!” His eyes light up and again he snaps his fingers and points. “Hey, let’s get a bunch of people, go do something. Get something to eat, go hang out awhile, then we ca all come back together.”

Bridget looks over at you. You give up. “Sure,” you say.

* * * * *

Even then, Bridget and Charles have to round up the people they want to go along, and then those people have to round up other people. First Charles wanders off, and then his friend Benjamin disappears, and then Bridget goes off in search of more friends to take along. When Charles comes back into the saloon, his head is down as he texts on his phone. “Trying to get Matthew to come meet us,” he mutters when you ask what he’s doing. Which Matthew it is, he doesn’t clarify.

After fifteen minutes of this, you can’t take it anymore, and stride out of the Warehouse to wait in Bridget’s car. You find it already boxed in on both sides and behind, which will mean a further delays as you try to track down the people who parked behind.

While you’re fuming, the front doors open up and Dana DiBenedetto comes out. Your heart skips when you see her.

Dana is almost as short as you are (in this body). Like you she has long, brown hair that falls past her shoulder blades, and like you she is almost boyishly slender.

And yet, somehow, she manages to be, like, five times as feminine and sexy as Kelly O’Brien. Maybe her bust is just that tiny bit bigger. Maybe her hips are just that tiny bit wider. Maybe her torso curves that tiny extra bit more, so as to suggest an hourglass and not a warped plank.

And maybe you should wave her over while you’ve got a chance to get her alone.

“Hey, here you are,” she says as joins you. She doesn’t sound that interested, and cranes her neck to watch as an SUV turns into the lot. “Bridget is looking for you.”

“She can find me out here. We have to take her car anyway.”

“Can I get a ride with you guys?” she asks, neatly anticipating your offer. She clucks her tongue softly. “Kaylee’s being a bitch.”

“Yeah, sure, no problem.” You open the back door of Bridget’s car for her. She gives you a direct look—one of puzzlement—then climbs in. “Don’t mind the stuff,” you add as she sits on the plastic bag carrying the mask and your supplies.

She scoots off and over. “I hope we don’t have to wait much longer,” she says. “I’m starving.” She gives you another puzzled look as you clamber into the car after her, then takes out her phone. “Kaylee is such a butt sometimes.”

She would have to poke you with a sharp stick in order to prompt you any harder. “Yeah? What’s she being a butt about?” you ask as you pull the mask from the bag.

“Okay, get this. Ethan’s got a birthday coming up, you know, and a bunch of us are planning to—“

“Hold that thought,” you interrupt her. “I want to be you when you tell me.”

Dana manages to blink once—she surely didn’t even register what you said—before you lift and gently smush the mask into her face.

* * * * *

Your timing couldn’t have been worse. Not a minute later, the Warehouse doors open again and Charles comes out. He looks around, then catches sight and locks eyes directly with you. You cuss under your breath as he starts to come over.

You scramble out of the car. “You seen Dana around?” he says as you rush up to him. “She was coming out to look for you.”

“No,” you stammer. “I was waiting in the car. I guess she didn’t see me.”

“Well, she didn’t come back inside.” He looks around the lot.

“Are you sure?”

“I was standing just inside the door. We’re about ready to go.”

“We can’t go yet.” You point to Bridget’s car. “We have to get that guy behind us to move.”

He squints at it. “You know whose car it is?” You shake your head. “Then we’re gonna have to take someone else’s.”

“But we have to move Bridget’s!” you protest. “You said she has to move her car so we can carpool back!”

“Nobody has to move anything. She can get it out tomorrow. We have to find Dana now.”

You start to shake all over. “Well, you go look for her. I have to get my stuff out of the car. Who are we driving with?”

“You and Bridget can come with me. Dana too, if she wants. Her and Kaylee are, like, pthbpt!” He looks around again with a frown, then trudges off toward the far end of the lot.

You hurry back over to the car and dive in the back seat. With trembling thumbs you start to text Bridget, then change your mind and call her directly. The band has started up again inside, and you can barely hear her over the thumping beat when she answers. “Hey, where are you?” she asks without preamble.

“I’m outside. Listen, you need to call Charles and pretend like you found Dana inside, and then when he comes back in tell him that she wandered off again.”

“Wait, what?”

“I’m in your car with Dana! I put the mask on her! But Charles is wandering around out here looking for her!”

Silence. Then Bridget says, “We’re all here, Kelly. We’re just waiting for you and Dana before we can go.”

Next: "An Exercise in Substitution" 

*
"Table of Contents (Vol. 4)" 
"The Book of Masks (Vol. 4)"