The Book of Masks (Vol. 5)

A Pain in the Acheson

Previously: "Ex- Marks the Sore Spot" 

You must have dozed off, for you bolt upright with a bleary-eyed start when your phone buzzes in your hand. You blink stupidly down it, then with a groan turn onto your side and lift it to your face to read the message.

It's a text from Patrick: Hey u meeting Dean and guys?

Confirmation that you must have dozed off comes when you check the time: It's almost three.

No guess not, you text back. Fell asleep.

Lol, he replies. Then: Come meet play basketball if u feel like.

You don't particularly feel like, but you don't want to be rude so you ask him where and when, figuring that he'll be on the other side of town and you can use that as an excuse to decline.

So imagine your surprise and chagrin when he says, Acheson there's a playground here where we r.

The community center? you ask. His sure guess so sounds like a confirmation.

You could still pretend that's on the other side of town, but the excuse sounds weak and easy to break now, so you text back: c u in few.

* * * * *

The Acheson Community Center used to be an elementary school, and so it sits in a park-like block of land in the middle of the village. The main building is itself almost a hundred years old, if not more, and is built of faded brick and stucco; and though it looks in good repair, there is an undeniable air of age and decay about it. "Shabby," you suppose, would be the right word to use to describe it.

After it closed as a school—which was decades before you were born—it was converted into a community center. Or it's cafeteria was, because that's the only part of the building you've been in, and that only a few times, a long time ago, and briefly. The "playground" was mostly what you used growing up: a sandbox, some monkey-bars and swings, a blacktop with basketball hoops, and a field big enough to play soccer on, with some rusty goal bars that long ago lost what was left of their rope nets. The park-like feel of the grounds is enhanced by the trees that have grown up and aged around it.

It's also close enough that you can ride your bike over.

Patrick is on the blacktop with two other guys when you arrive, hustling a ball underneath a hoop. The guys he's with notice as you brake to stop nearby but don't stop, so it's left to Patrick to greet you after he spots you with a double-take.

"Will!" he shouts. "Fuck, do you live around here?"

"Yeah, back that way." You point.

"Hey, well come on. We can have some two-on-two play now, none of this one-on-one-on-one bullshit!"

You drop your bike and saunter over as the other two pause to regard you with wary but amused glances.

Your sinks when you recognize them from last night. They're two of the guys who chased you off from Patrick's table when you came back looking for him from talking to Carson and James.

At least one of them isn't that Hispanic kid who snickered at you, but one of them is the kid with the joint who laughed at you. He looks as cool and confident here on the basketball court as he did last night, with not one hair of his lushly combed crewcut out of place, and his brows and the corners of his mouth all lift in an amused smirk as he watches you approach. His friend is tall—a bit taller than you, though he's far from a giant—with a lanky way of holding himself. The loose curls of his dark hair are still plastered against his forehead, and his doughy face is curled up in a leering smile.

"Dough Face" and "Smirk Boy." Those almost instantly become your private names for them when no introductions get made.

"Two on two?" Smirk Boy says. "Shirts versus skins." He peels his tan-colored t-shirt off over his head—disturbing not a hair—to expose a smooth torso with well-shaped pecs and a groove (though no abs) down the center of his stomach.

Patrick laughs. "I ain't takin' my shirt off!" he exclaims as he pats his gut.

"Mares just wants a chance to show off," jeers Dough Face with a laugh.

"Why? Will's not gay," Patrick says, then guffaws.

Smirk Boy just takes the ribbing. Indeed, his smirk deepens, and he turns to subtly thrust his chest out at you, as though inviting you to admire it.

"Me and Patrick against you guys," you suggest. "That way we don't need 'shirts' or 'skins'."

"You any good?" Patrick asks. "'Cos I suck!"

"Sure," Smirk Boy says. "Juniors versus seniors. You're a senior, right?" he asks you. "Okay. But I'm leaving my shirt off anyway," he adds. "In case one of you is secretly gay."

Much laughter from the other guys. But you have to force yourself to smile.

* * * * *

The game that follows is very one-sided. You're barely adequate with a basketball, and Patrick, though forceful and enthusiastic, can hardly stop himself from dribbling the ball on his foot. Dough Face is only a little better than either of you, and if Smirk Boy was only as good as him the score would have been pretty close. But that fourth of your quartet handles the ball with a natural and enviable ease, being able to drop it through the hoop from halfway down the court, and can burrow and blur past your defenses like a squirrel through tall grass. The score is more than three-to-one against you when Patrick, hot and blown, forfeits the game with a call. He takes the loss in good spirits, but you're not amused by the blow out; and though you try to keep your tone light, you do ask Smirk Boy if he's on the school's JV basketball squad. He only answers with a laugh.

After the game with the hoops, you all go into the community center, where you find they've installed both some pool tables and old-style arcade games since you were in last. A company of old guys is busy at one of the pool tables, so you start with the video games. (Not having brought any money, you have to borrow some quarters off of Patrick.) Though you put up a respectable showing in the informal competition that follows, here again Smirk Boy wins both on points and style, rattling his fingers over the buttons and knocking the joysticks around like a pro. And when, having run out of money, you move onto one of the pool tables, here too he proves better than the rest of you, being able to handle the cue with a practiced ease.

And maybe he has sensed your hostile attitude, for after straightening up from a shot that put two balls into different pockets, he squints at you and says, "If you hung out here as often as I do, you might be as good at this stuff too." You bridle, but curb your tongue.

"Does he live around here or something?" you quietly ask Patrick after that, as you are waiting for Dough Face to screw up his shot.

"Who, Russ?" he asks. "Yeah, he lives over— That way." He waves loosely off in the direction opposite your own house. "You never seen him around?"

"Guess not."

"Well, he does. You should hang out with him, if you live around here too. Hey Russ," he calls he moves in to take Dough Boy's place. "When're you supposed to get your license back?"

"End of October," Smirk Boy (Russ?) says. He casually tosses and catches the pool chalk. "'Cept my dad's talking about keeping it back until Christmas. Fuckin' asshole."

"Something happen?" you ask when no one says anything else. (Patrick is intent on lining up his shot.)

"Yeah, I went off the road and into someone's yard at the start of summer. I was driving wasted too."

"Shit."

"Yeah, an' I'd only had my license, like, six months. But it's fine." He shrugs. "I get friends to pick me up, take me home from school, drive me around. Half the time I make them let me do the driving."

He snatches the chalk out of mid-air and gives you a very even look, as though daring you to object to this violation of his punishment.

Which you don't.

"Yeah, it's all pretty fucking pointless," Patrick says after he straightens up from messing up his last shot. "Russ's getting more time behind the wheel than I am, probably." Smirk Boy shrugs. You take your turn.

* * * * *

You spent most of the afternoon bracing against talk of the previous night. It surprised you when it never came up. Given Smirk Boy's—Russ's—smooth and louche manner, you would have expected him to have carried off a girl almost carelessly; and Patrick was hot to hook up. But no one says anything until after you've exhausted the entertainment possibilities afforded by the community center, and Patrick is busy on the phone looking for someone else to go see.

And it's Dough Face—whose real name is Ryan—who brings it up. "So, you wind up with anyone last night?" he asks you with a trashy leer.

"Nah," you confess. "I actually wound up leaving early. I wasn't in the mood."

That's when Russ says, with casual insolence, "Pussy."

"What?" You round on him.

He wasn't even looking at you when he said it, but now he does, sidelong. "I said, 'Pussy'."

You put your hands on your hips and glower at him.

"Imagine not being in the mood for pussy," he says.

The world starts to blur, and your pulse pounds behind your eyeballs. You've had just about enough of him.

"That's not what you meant," you growl.

"No, it isn't," he coolly agrees. "What I meant was, Pussy."

You start to tremble all over. But before you can start anything—or can even decide to—he touches your chest with his forefinger.

"Rest of this building is closed off," he says. "Just go get me a piece of chalk from one of the old classrooms, and we'll talk about how much of a pussy you are."

Is that all you have to do? Because you can do better than that, because you've got a key to the school basement.

* To take them to the basement: "The Basement" 
* To blow off this asshole: "A Delayed Revenge Is the Coldest Revenge" 

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