The Masquerade (4 page)

“Oh,” I managed and swallowed. What else could I do? I wasn’t shocked as much as I was disappointed. Clearly, I was too young and too nerdy for him, but the rumours still hurt my chest. Some part of me wished he didn’t want any girl if not me.

By
that Monday after the last bell and after lunch when I didn’t see Cara at all, she came bounding up to me at the bus stop, breathless.

“What, what?” I asked, patting her back.

She keeled over and held her finger up, heaving. “You won’t believe it.”

“Won’t believe what?”

“You just
won’t
believe what I found out.”

I thought that I very well—at least—had a clue.

I wish I hadn’t. I preferred my fantasies untainted.

My stomach ha
dn’t turned once when I helped him as he was sick, but it turned endlessly that night as I tried to sleep.

• • •

I hadn’t seen Justin
on Monday at school after the party, but he came in Tuesday, one black eye and a cut lip looking like he hadn’t slept.

I rushed to him to see how badly he was hurt, but he wouldn’t speak of it until that night when we texted, and he said he got in a punch up with his brother.

‘Brotherly shit
.’ he called it. And he wouldn’t go into details.

Conversation withered after he built that invisible wall between us, so I said my goodbyes with a simple ‘Sleep tight. See ya tomorrow.’ He sent, ‘Night, gorgeous. XO.’

I didn’t see him the next day, instead dreaming of his unattainable brother and avoiding run-ins with the wrong Delaney. My heart did a funny flip-flop every time Rick popped into my thoughts—dressed sharply in that shirt, thin tie, hair grazing his forehead, and those rich brown, piercing eyes.

Was there such thing as a mo
urning period for crushing?

• • •

The party was some senior’s, a year twelve student everyone called Hot-Shot Rod.
Upon walking through his front door, I saw HSR for the first time, his intense medium-brown hair that shimmered shades of copper under his crystal chandelier in the entrance dome.

Justin’s hand clutched mine while he used the other to shake HSR’s. Then he turned to me and kissed my temple, introducing me
, “This is my Vee Wyland.”

My
Vee Wyland? I asked myself afterward as Justin fell away into a group of guys I didn’t know. They departed with stern, conversational eyes that I couldn’t interpret. I wasn’t Justin’s—we were after-school and party-friends—and definitely not Rick’s whom I had seen just a few times since the masquerade party last year.

My heart leapt out at the thought of being as close to him as I was then, like it had been starved of oxygen ever since the party. I remembered that night at times, like a fading dream as I woke up. The reaches of my mind flailed at the memories for something concrete
, but it all swirled in a dwindling state of flux.

I sat on the couch with one of my girlfriends who
also remained dry like me. Cara, who got a C-minus and a D on a test and an assignment, needed to chill out. And she ‘chilled’ in the back section with Justin, Hot-Shot Rod, and half a dozen other guys and girls while I pretended to check my make-up in my mobile phone’s screen reflection—and not the time.

Rick
said he’d pick Justin and me up tonight. I sipped cups of cordial and munched on gummy snakes to keep busy. I checked my phone for the umpteenth time.

Rick was in his second year of university
, and I was in my second last year at high school. Put that way, it didn’t seem bad. I grinned to myself and excused myself from my girlfriend, pulling out my phone to call him even before I swung the door open only to gasp at his arrival.

Rick was in a crisp baby blue shirt with sleeves rolled at the elbows. It was the end of summer, and the night air was thick and balmy. He wore cropped khakis and dark loafers.

T
he crackling tension with which he stared at me ran a shiver down my back. He sported thick stubble across his sharp jawline, which made every other guys’ attempt to do so laughable. I blinked down at my phone to try to erase the thought of testing out how the stubble would feel under my grazing fingers.

I didn’t tell Justin that Rick came half an hour earlier.

And,
Justin didn’t emerge from his cloud of smoke either. Their cackles boomed through to the house and to Rick and I, hands over knees, chatting on the front steps. We stayed there amongst regular passing partygoers, so I couldn’t find a moment to ask him anything I wanted to. Jealousy crackled like burning embers in my gut. Oh, how I scorned the timing.

Rick asked,
“Is Justin behaving?”

“I don’t think so
.”

His
shoulders tensed and perked up as if he were about to leave. I placed a soothing hand on him, and his eyes followed the path up my arm and stopped to watch my eyes.

“He’ll do what he likes anyway,” I said, clarifying.

“Do you know what he likes, Vee?”

He spotlighted me with those words. And I still had my hand on him! I snatched it back, burned with embarrassment.

“Hmm?”

“I reckon so,” I said, firm. “He tends to hang around with people he doesn’t at school.”

“I see.”

“And,” I said, fuelled with more confidence, “he’s a bit wild.”

Rick studied my mouth. “You like him.”

I shrugged.

“Okay.”

I pinched my lips together and nodded, but focused on the steps, not him. I also wanted to get to know Rick the same way I had Justin. When I was with his brother, I didn’t feel any of the ways my body fluttered, shivered, quaked, or radiated like I did when I was around Rick. Justin was sweet, and I let him hug me or give me a quick peck at parties, but all the odd times we spent together in class, after class, on weekends—it didn’t match up to the few times I’d seen or spoken to Rick.

“That’s great, Vee.” Rick brushed off his thighs and stood.

Looking up at him, he extended his hand to me. Rick was surely over six foot. I drew my eyes all the way up his form to his pearly white smile and took his hand. He lifted me to my feet before I could assist him, his jaw and forearms hardly tensing.

My legs shook, so I grabbed onto the handrail. “Um, how’s uni going?”

“I might drop out. Only got a couple of weeks to make a final decision before cutoff. It’s …”

“…
not for you?”

“Right. I’d rather travel, learn
real
shit, start a career, meet people.”

My jaw must have gaped open. Travel seemed scary unless I went with my parents and Robert
. I didn’t know what he meant by
real
and what then was
fake
. A career seemed like a job, and I knew people from high school. He bit the side of his lip as he looked at mine. Something twitched in his jaw, and there was a glint in his eye. Neither of us moved, but I felt the air shift like his thoughts had reached and had closed my mouth.

I blinked, then looked down to the porch and shuffled my feet.
Damn it, Vee, couldn’t you look mature and intelligent for just
one
second?
But no matter how many times I scalded my slow wittedness, it wouldn’t change the sloping frown that passed his face—dark and ominous like a greying cloud overhead, heavy with the forecast of an onslaught.

Soon after,
Rick and I exchanged polite smiles, and then I went out back to retrieve Justin. It was fifteen minutes past the time that we had agreed to call Rick, but he laughed with his friends, not the slightest concern in his body language.

“Justin.” I tapped his shoulder. “
Justin
.” I shook his shoulder and twisted him around to look him in the eyes.

“Hey, baby girl,” he slurred and fell onto my lips, sloppy tongue trying to find mine though my lips were closed. He searched for a few seconds while I waited, eyeing the chuckling girl behind him. As he parted, he stared off at the house.

I turned, but no one was there. Just a slamming fly screen door and a departing streak from someone with khakis similar to Rick’s. Was he watching? Was that Rick leaving?

“Yeah, okay, I’m ready to go.”

I held Justin’s hand so he wouldn’t topple, but in the backseat of Rick’s car, he toppled anyway, lips falling into the hollow of my neck. I giggled, pushing him back, but he came at me again, growling like a mean bear and pretending to devour me.

“Keep it together, guys,” from the driver’s seat, “it’s just a quarter-hour trip home.”

“Do you want me to keep it together?” Justin queried, eyes twinkling. They seemed odd, pupils large, and his breath stunk. I wasn’t sure how much booze he’d consumed, but it didn’t seem to be what was affecting him. I preferred him at school. At parties, he acted strange, interchangeable, so much so that I couldn’t tell if he used weed or pills or just truly loved letting loose while sober.

Rick said no more
, pulling up at my house wordless. He turned back in his seat, positioning himself with his elbow on the centre console.

One brother glanced around my face
, and his gaze hit me so hard it felt as though his hands cupped my cheeks. His eyes were dull brown and burdened by something. And the other brother turned my face and pecked my chin. He went again, trying to get my lips, but I spoke up.

“All right, all right. I’m going.” I opened my door and climbed out, adjusting my skirt lower on my thighs. Justin lay back on his seat, hand flapping in the formation of a wobbly wave. Rick met my eyes one last time, but dropped his gaze to his hands on the wheel, and never saw me step inside, or the door closing him out.

I wished I could tell him he shouldn’t worry about Justin’s partying hard around me. I’d make my own decisions and look after myself.

Yet,
I wished he would never lose that gaze, holding me captive. I’d never felt so protected.

• • •

It was a game we played
—the trio of the Delaney brothers and me. Rick would come by to drop or pick us up from somewhere, rarely stay. But when he hung around, Justin would inch closer or flirt with me. Until one night, not sober, he said, “Be my girlfriend.”

I scoffed.
“You’re meant to pose it as a question.”

“Be my girlfriend?” His tone was softer.

“I don’t think so.” Yet despite my sureness, I couldn’t forget the sadness in his expression, so afterward, I ran away with his wallet and he chased me to grab it back.

By the time spring came along again, we had progressed to good friends, and one evening, he had dropped by my house with Cara. Mum cooked dinner for our family and my friends, and we fit snugly at the six-seater table setting. Mum and Dad departed to watch a ‘movie’ in their room, Robert studied for his final exams, and Cara, Justin, and I debated whether ‘movie’ was a euphemism for sex. I was opposing counsel. But we soon got bored and watched a movie ourselves. We sat on the carpet, backs against the metal frame of my bed, each about a foot apart and with me in the middle.

Justin crept up so close by the time Cara left that his hip touched mine
, and his arm lay around my shoulders. And the kisses—lips to neck, lips to ear, lips to cheek. Justin had never nuzzled me so closely in a private setting. Weather was sweltering for a spring night, and his proximity hindered the above cooling vent. Not that he minded whispering close-by cheesy lines. “Do you know,” he whispered in my ear, “that last spring, I first kissed you?”

The movie was one of the
Men in Black
movies, and I’d seen it half a dozen times, so I faced him, ignoring it. “Really?”

“Yup.” He leant closer. His breath smelt of mint.

Wait, when had he popped one?

“Time flies,” I said, voice all stuttered. To lighten the mood, I added, “It was the first time I went home with
two
guys.”

He cleared his throat.
“You didn’t do anything with my brother, did you?”

“When?” I asked though I knew exactly.