The Book of Masks (Vol. 5)

A Thousand Reasons

Previously: "A Pain in the Acheson" 

"Where are you going to get a thousand dollars?" you demand.

"Look, you want it or don't you?" Russ retorts.

You feel your lip curl. "Show it to me."

"I don't have it on me," he says. "Jesus. But tomorrow. At school."

"At school?" you exclaim.

"Sure, where's your locker? Where's your locker?" he repeats when you answer him with only a stunned silence.

You give him your locker number.

"Then I'll see you there, between first and second. Bring the key. Because if I'm bringing that kind of paper in, I'm not carrying it around or carrying it out. Okay?"

He puts out his hand.

In a daze, you take it and shake it.

* * * * *

You have to hide the bottle he gave you under the bench of your truck because you've no place else to put it, and only after you have shoved it there (next to the sack where you bagged up those party clothes you wore last night) do you realize you have no place to drink it, either. You'll have to talk to Caleb and Keith about that. But that can wait until morning, when you see them at school, and when you can hide the bottle in your locker for good measure.

When morning comes, you are almost frantic with anxiety. Will Russ have remembered your bargain? Will he renege on it? Or will there be some kind of twist you didn't anticipate? And that anxiety mixes with the anticipation you feel for the cash he promised you, to make you almost nauseated on the drive to school.

In fact, so anxious are you that on getting to school you text Russ to ask him where his locker is. He replies only a minute or so later with its number and also the query Why? You're actually not sure why you want to talk to him early—you agreed to meet him after first period—but you suppose it's because you want to assure yourself as soon as possible that there will be no unhappy surprises.

But you get one anyway.

Geoff Mansfield is someone you have had the misfortune to know for most of your life, and he is acquaintance has not improved with time. He's a rich, well-groomed, well-dressed snob who gets As in all his AP classes, and talks long and loudly about the Ivy League colleges he will be applying to. He is also taller than you and very good-looking in a very preppy way, and he always seems to be looking down his nose when he looks in your direction. (And that he doesn't look in your direction very often only piles insult upon insult.)

Anyway, he's coming down the hallway where Russ's locker is located, and though you try to dodge him, he goes out of his way to bump you in the shoulder. "Got something for the time capsule?" he asks you.

You stop dead.

The time capsule! The fucking time capsule! You forgot to get something for it! And it's due today!

You hurl yourself into the nearest restroom, for you've the urge to throw up, but the fit quickly passes. You still feel ill, though, as on wobbly feet you head for Mr. Walberg's classroom. Maybe if you throw yourself on his mercy, he won't kill you before your dad has a chance to.

But as you're turning the final corner into B wing, you remember Russ's gift last night, and that it is out in your truck.

* * * * *

"The fuck does Walberg want to see you after school for?" Caleb asks when you catch up to him again in fourth period English. "And why does he want to see Kirk too?"

"I dunno," you say as you collapse into the desk next to him. "And to tell you the fucking truth, man, I don't fucking care."

You are too serene for worry.

Yes, it was a very fraught moment as you advanced on Mr. Walberg's desk when he made the "final call" for submissions, and you hung back until all the other students had shuffled back to their desks. Only then, when you had his complete attention, did you set your backpack on his desk, unzip it, and pull out the bottle of Scotch and set it before him so that both your body and your backpack were between you and the eyes of the rest of the class. He stared at it, then lifted his face to look at you from under his brows.

"Are you serious?" he said.

"Is there something wrong with it?" you asked with a hammering heart.

It looked like he was about to reply. But instead he took the bottle and—like you, shielding it from the rest of the class—put it in the bottom drawer of his desk. Then he dismissed you.

But then, once you were in your seat, he leaned forward across his desk with folded hands and announced, in a loud, rumbling voice, "Mr. Prescott, I need you to come talk to me after final bell. Mr. Kirk, I need you to come in as well."

Unconsciously, you had looked over at Anthony Kirk, who is another one of the Ivy League/preppie/country club AP twats, and maybe the biggest twat of the bunch. Geoff Mansfield with sneer at you; Kelsey Blankenship will make faces at you; Amanda Ferguson will stab you in the eyeballs with her cold, dagger-like glare. But as far as you can tell, Anthony Kirk is so lofty that he has never even noticed you. And not even today, when your name is paired with his, does he look in your direction. Probably because, not knowing you exist, he doesn't know in which direction to look.

But all that was forgotten when Russ found you at your locker after first.

He started by asking why you wanted to talk to him earlier, and what happened to you, but you said you got distracted by some other business that came up before you could find him, and that it wound up not mattering anyway. Then you asked him if he had something for you.

With a cool but slightly crooked smile, he told you to look in your locker. Warily, you opened it while he lounged against the locker next to yours, smirking into the crowd.

There was a white envelope resting on top of your stuff—clearly it had been pushed into your locker through one of the ventilation slits.

Cautiously, putting your back to the corridor and almost squeezing your whole torso into the locker, you had opened it and felt inside it. Your eyes nearly popped from your head as you fanned out the crisp new bills that were inside it: twenties, fifties, and hundreds. Eagerly, and with shaking hands, you pulled the bills out far enough that, with a wetted thumb tip, you could count them.

Ten twenties, four fifties, and six hundreds!

You looked over at Russ. He just continued to smile faintly at the hallway without paying the slightest attention to you.

You slid the money back into the envelope, closed it up, and then shoved it down the front of your boxer shorts. No way you were going to leave it inside your locker, or anywhere else off your person!

"Got something for me?" Russ murmured at you.

You nodded, and took out your key ring. After taking the padlock key from you, he studied it in the palm of his hand, then with a parting smirk squeezed into the surging crowd of the hallway and vanished toward C wing.

You have been trying to convince yourself in the periods since that what happened really did happen.

* * * * *

Caleb has guessed that Mr. Walberg's summons has something to do with your time capsule submission, so at lunch he presses you as to what it was. That's when you tell him about the bottle of Scotch you got from Russ. He of course wants to know why a high school junior was giving you alcohol, and why you even had it in the truck with you this morning. You retort that that is your business, not his.

But in the end you can't resist sharing your good fortune with them, and tell them of selling that basement key to Russ. And you top it off by pulling that envelope out showing them what is inside.

"Fuck me," Keith gasps, and Caleb agrees. "Where the fuck does a kid like that get that kind of money?" he wonders. You shrug, and ask if it matters.

It doesn't. What matters, they decide, is what you're going to do with it.

"Well, first of all," you tell them, "we're gonna find a way of getting another bottle of whatever it was I gave to Mr. Walberg. I wrote down what was on the label before I took it in to him, so that won't be a problem. As for after that—"

You just roll your tongue around inside your mouth, and start to daydream over the possibilities.

* * * * *

In the end, your meeting with Mr. Walberg proves anticlimactic. It turns out that you and Anthony Kirk had the same idea for the time capsule: to contribute a bottle of expensive liquor. You both even gave him Scotch. Each of you protest that you didn't know what the other was doing; and though you can tell that Mr. Walberg believes Anthony and doesn't quite believe you, he relents and says he will accept both submissions. Still, Anthony—now that he knows who you are—disfavors you with a glare as you leave the classroom together.

Caleb is waiting by your truck when you come out into the parking lot, as the plan had been for the three of you to drive out to Keith's house so he could get his fake ID, and then you'd all drive out to a shady liquor store south of town to get a replacement bottle. But now that he's been thinking about it, Caleb has a question.

"I thought you went into town last week to get something for the time capsule," he says. "So why did you give Mr. Walberg the bottle of Scotch instead?"

That of course reminds you of the book you found at Arnholm's. You tell him of it, and have a hard enough time describing it that he demands to see it. "Sounds like something you should have given to Walberg instead," he snorts, "if it's that useless."

That's all for now

*
"Table of Contents (Vol. 5)" 
"The Book of Masks (Vol. 5)"