Thirteen #2
His costume was more flesh than fabric and very much proved my point.
It also, regrettably, disproved Annalisa’s.
She gave a low whistle and rubbed consoling circles into my back.
“You’re checking him out a little,” she whispered. “A lot. Just wanted to let you know.”
I shushed her urgently, tapping my ear to remind her—dog ears. But Mason was occupied with Cella, adjusting the black bow on her headband, telling her how great she looked.
It was immediately obvious why they had chosen Mason as the rabbit and not me.
Only one of us would ever agree to go out in public wearing bunny ears, a red button-up vest that hardly covered his navel, and white shorts with at max four inches of inseam.
He had on white shoes and nothing else besides a bow tie around his neck. His skin was everywhere.
“Oh wow,” murmured Annalisa when Mason turned just enough to show his back. Correction: nothing else besides his bow tie and a fluffy white tail.
Mason wore round glasses. A pocket watch was clipped to his button. He did look ridiculous. But he didn’t look bad, not even close. It was hard to, when he seemed so stoked to be wearing it.
I’d learned, over the last weeks, to lower my head whenever he walked into a room. But Mason had caught me off guard this time.
His gaze slid impassively over mine to Annalisa. There was a clamping feeling in my chest.
“I don’t think we’ve met.” He offered a hand with that easy grin—always easy for him. “I’m Mason Kane.”
Annalisa took it, though she first studied it the way one studied a suspicious stain inside a cup, weighing whether to drink from it.
She was experiencing the itch for the first time.
I didn’t miss the feeling, but I would take it back in a heartbeat in exchange for everything else I’d felt since being around Mason Kane had stopped making my head hurt.
“Annalisa. Kier’s cousin.”
“I can . . . tell.”
***
The theme was Out of This World. In the lawn, surrounded by scattered green Solo cups, were two twelve-foot inflatables: an alien and a UFO with a cow getting levitated into it.
A trap remix of “Somebody’s Watching Me” blared from inside the house.
Fog billowed through the open windows to crawl over the grass, and four boys in Spider-Verse-style Spidey suits jogged through it, sloppily tossing a skull around like a football.
It all really complimented the upper-middle class suburbia of Snake’s cul-de-sac.
I parked behind Mason’s truck. He, Cella, and Lara were already halfway up the drive, rushing to get out of the cold.
One of the Spider-Boys hollered and chucked the skull at him.
Terrible throw, but he caught and returned it seamlessly, and they all howled about it.
Annalisa raised an eyebrow at me as if to say, That’s what you’re into?
The light inside was green and purple, milky from the fog.
The entire house seemed to vibrate with the heavy bass.
A human-sized inflatable alien was surfing the thick crowd in the living room.
Another was getting humped by some guy dressed like an alien.
Another was being made to hump a skeleton by two girls on the stairs, also dressed like aliens.
A lot of people were dressed like aliens.
It was the kind of place where catastrophes happened.
As soon as I thought that, a gun was pointed at Mason’s head. Neo from The Matrix made a gunshot noise with his mouth and pretended to blow Mason’s head off. Raising his dark shades, he said to Cella, “This guy bothering you?”
“Blake!” Lara laughed and hugged the party’s host.
“Birthday boy!” Blake shouted, pointing his gun at me. “Looking good. Closet party animal, eh?”
“Please stop talking,” I said, and Blake laughed riotously.
“That’s the spirit!” he said. “Less talking, more drinking.” He was already leading the way to the kitchen.
He shouldered through the crowd to the counter and, upon learning this would be Cella’s first-ever shot, made a big ritual over it.
I was pretty sure he quoted Shakespeare again, albeit in a slurred, giggly way.
Marcella Gibson’s first shot was a marvel to behold. It was flavored rum, sub-thirty ABV, but her face grew lines I had never seen before.
“Another,” she said, still coughing and shuddering.
Lara put a hand on Cella’s shoulder. “Slow down,” she said, and I sent her silent thanks. “And give me one.”
I took back my gratitude.
Blake poured six shots, but before we could take them, something brown flew in from another room and hit someone wearing a draping black cloak and a No-Face mask. It was one of those eerie baby dolls, naked butt and smooth genitals and all.
Immediately, Blake bellowed, “A blessing by Cupid, Roman god of love!”
Everyone in the kitchen started banging on surfaces and shouting, “KISS! KISS! KISS!” No-Face took off her mask and grabbed the nearest person, a girl in a holographic alien’s dress and neon-green wig. Alien girl grabbed No-Face back, and they kissed like they were probing each other’s throats.
“The legendary baby!” laughed Mason. “I thought it was just a myth.”
“First rule of the house,” Blake announced to the five of us.
“Cupid’s arrow is not to be ignored, on pain of death!
Recipients of the blessing must pucker up for their closest neighbor.
” Out of the side of his mouth, he added in undertone, “If either party refuses the blessing, you can kiss a shot glass instead.”
“Are there other house rules?” asked Cella.
“Nope!” He poured another round and ended up taking two of the shots himself—Lara had, as I’d predicted, disappeared.
Shouted conversations started and were forgotten as Blake gave a sporadic tour of the first floor, dragging whoever stood nearest in and out of conversation.
Annalisa and I hung back as a defense mechanism.
She was constantly looking around in horrified awe, almost studying, learning the American public-school crowd in its most animal form.
Up ahead, Mason’s bare shoulders shook when he laughed, rolled when he raised his cup in cheers, coiled as he pounded the wall and shouted, “KISS! KISS! KISS!”
Lara found us and herded us toward the pong table.
Mason stayed behind, caught up with Blake, and by the time he found us again, Annalisa and I were already celebrating our crushing victory over the other team.
Lara belched loudly after draining the last cup while Cella fumed across the table like she used to do in the pool whenever I used my supernatural senses to cheat at Marco Polo.
Lara dragged Mason by the arm to her end of the table. I was about to duck out and ask Cella to take my place when Annalisa beat me to it.
“Traitor,” I whispered.
“It’ll be cathartic,” Annalisa whispered back. She thought for a second. “Y’know. Rage pong.”
Mason made a show of cracking his knuckles, rolling his neck, and throwing back the rest of his drink. He was attractive in such a tragic way.
He still lost, though.