Scheduled for Friday
by Anton M.

5: Secret Club


Saturday, January 14

I would've never imagined that I'd voluntarily give up a free Saturday night to spend it with virtual strangers (thank you, post-production), but here I was, in full, professional gargoyle costume by our world-renowned costume designer Seth Hanning, as ready as I was going to get.

Since I spoke to Edward on Thursday, I'd spent every waking moment reading articles and watching videos about Dungeons and Dragons (and getting coached by Seth, who was almost more excited about my D&D adventures than I was), and I still felt like I barely scratched the surface of my role as a Dungeon Master (and yes, of course I found porn when I googled what the hell a Don Jon Master was). I got the coaching, the stories Seth's Dungeon Master had created a few years ago, the rulebook, and all the possible cheat-y help I could get. I was, after all, an actress. Hopefully that would help.

When Edward (and Jasper) agreed to have Alice join us as an observer, Alice persuaded her parents to leave her aunt Gina a few hours earlier, but she was coming straight from Augusta, so unfortunately, we couldn't coordinate our arrival to be at the same time.

My mom, looking half-amused and half-worried, helped me and my bat-like wings into the front seat of the car, but she hesitated.

"Sweetie, I don't mean to worry you, but… you have seen those movies where they tell a person that it's a costume party and when they show up, they're the only ones in a costume?"

"Yes, mom."

"And…?"

"And if they're the kinds of people who'd do that they're not the kinds of people I want to hang out with," I replied.

She eyed me as she started the ignition, a small smile playing on her lips. "You are cut from a different cloth than I am."

Five minutes later, I stood in front of Jasper Hale's giant white house on Springgrove Courts with my heart in my throat. Footsteps followed my knock on the side door of the garage, and Jasper, the curly-haired owner of a fancy motorcycle, jumped back and let out a high-pitched squeal when he saw me.

Deep laughter echoed in the garage before a guy in glasses rounded the corner. "Anyone who can make Jasper squeal like a—aaahh!"

The guy jumped a solid ten inches off the ground when he saw me before everyone came to see what happened.

The darkening sky provided a perfect backdrop for me as I leaned against the doorframe and removed the head of my costume, grinning.

"Heard you were in need of a Dungeon Master."

That came out way smoother than I'd anticipated.

Thankfully, they'd all made cute home-made costumes for themselves, and I introduced myself to all four of Edward's friends I hadn't met before: Tyler, a guy a year older than me with generous 4a hair and a slouch my mom would've beaten me up for (a monk), Eric, a Korean-born boy with frameless glasses and impeccably coiffed hair (a druid), Lauren, a beautiful, bleached-blonde, straight-A student who had a distinctive giggle and played with her hair a lot (definitely a wizard), and Angela, a tall, quiet girl who was always tapping her foot in the classes I shared with her (a barbarian).

Jasper (a cleric) and Edward (a ranger) I'd already met, of course, but it was nice to see Edward in a different ragged hoodie, a forest green one. He had a pointy hood over his buzz cut and a cool black line drawn from his forehead through the center of his eye to his jaw. He rubbed the material of my wings between his fingers, and instead of reeking like a boiling can of Pine Sol, he smelled like… leather and campfire, and my insides grew wings when our eyes met.

"You weren't in school yesterday," he said quietly, his voice unrecognizable from his Darth Vader breathing two days ago.

Taken aback by his effect on me, I lost words for a moment and smiled instead. "I was—"

"That is a wicked costume," Tyler admired, walking around me. "Totally wasted on an NPC, though. Who are you?"

"A gargoyle," I answered, recovering from Edward's proximity.

"A what?"

"A gargoyle."

He paused, squinting at the others. "What's that?"

"Never mind him, it's his second time playing," Angela said in her slightly-awkward, slightly-too-silent way. She ran her fingers over the intricate handiwork on my forearm. "Technically it's a spout creature on Gothic architecture, but it can appear as a monster in D&D. This is beautiful handiwork. Who made this?"

"I have a friend who's into costumes," I bent the truth a little.

"Your friend should definitely go professional," Lauren said. "She'd get rich on Etsy. That's some wasted talent right there."

Little do you know…

"I feel sad for mine now," Jasper continued, his cape flying around as he lifted his gold-tipped fire rod for a staff and tapped his make-do headpiece with it.

"Please don't," I replied.

"Definitely don't," Tyler agreed, scooting a chair from the table and straddling it. "Feel sad for the girly little squeal I heard from you when she arrived. Or the one from Eric. If this was all for real, Masen and I would have to save you all as the only two men in the room."

"Excuse me?" all three of us, Lauren, Angela and I said at the same time before we grinned at each other.

Tyler raised his arms. "Not what I meant! Not what I meant," he apologized. "Masen, tell them that's not what I meant."

I felt practically giddy when Edward tipped his head to the side and stifled his smile at me, as if to say, 'What can you do?'

The room (well, garage, really) was dimly lit with mismatched lamps. Two couches and multiple chairs surrounded the scraped round table with endless chips, candy, seven dice and now my rulebook on it. We took our places just as a costume-less Alice arrived, and I introduced her to everyone before she, too, took a seat next to me.

"Before we start I must warn you that I'm still learning," I said, relieved to finally align their expectations to reality.

"But Masen said you've been the DM lots of times," Jasper argued.

"But did I say I was good at it?"

"That's fine," Tyler said, swinging his hat on his finger. "Anyone who can make Jasper and Eric squeal like little girls gets a pass. I've no clue what's going on half the time, anyway."

"And the other two guys who were interested only wanted to join to get into Lauren's pants," Angela said. "So the fact that you're interested in being the DM is pretty awesome. I'm sure it'll be fine."

"How do you know I'm not doing it to get into Lauren's pants?"

"Are you?" Eric asked.

"Maybe if she was wearing them," I replied, to the cough-covered laughing of all the guys.

Alice curled herself into a ball and rested her chin on her folded arms, tapping her fingers nervously against her elbows. She smiled as I gave her the headpiece of my costume to twiddle with, and everyone watched Edward quietly surround himself with a quilted blanket covered in flowers.

"Cute blankie, Masen," Tyler quipped.

"You're just jealous your late gran-gran didn't hand-sew you the world's warmest blanket," Edward replied, squeezing it around himself. It was the sweetest, oddest sentence to hear from a guy with a barbell and a buzz cut, and it squeezed my heart when he turned to the rest of us, "Isn't this the manliest blanket?"

"Definitely," "Absolutely," "Wish I was that manly," we all agreed, to the huffing, amused annoyance of Tyler. A few minutes of shuffling and drink-getting later, I took out our story for the night and cleared my throat.

"You are on a sinking ship with a pod of mermaids chasing after the elixir of health you stole from them," I began. "What do you do?"

Five hours of arguing, laughter, and surreal discussions later—and Angela helping me out at least half a dozen times in my DM role—the players concluded the game for the night by saving a paralyzed old wizard from a wine cellar, and I let out the world's biggest sigh. After a pee break, Angela, Eric and Tyler leaving, and the arrival of a six pack of Terrapin Wake-n-Bake beer, I found myself curled up on the couch next to Edward, beginning to regret my costume choice. It got hot and stuffy around the neck while leaving my legs to freeze, and I was getting cold, but I just could not believe I'd survived the ordeal of a D&D game without getting laughed out of the garage.

More than that, I couldn't believe I'd ended up on a couch next to a tall, warm, attractive boy whose silent gaze made me feel like crawling out of my skin. He was having a beer, and when he offered me a sip, I thoughtlessly took one, conscious of touching my lips where he'd drank before I slowly turned to him, eyes wide.

"Did you just give me your death virus?"

He paused and made a sheepish face. "Sorry. I… didn't think."

"Oh, well. When in Rome," I took another gulp of the god-awful beer (this was definitely not the first time for me to taste beer, oh, no) before reading the alcohol content (9.4%, holy shit) and handing it back to him.

"Not a fan?" he asked, smiling at my barely-disguised grimace.

"No."

"What do you like?"

"Gin and tonic," I replied, hoping that that was a cool enough answer without a clue in the world what it was or how it was different from beer.

Edward's secret smile turned me inside out. "Next time," he said, lifting his can of beer in my direction and taking a sip. I felt his gaze in my bones when his eyes followed my palms rubbing my thighs. "Cold?"

In my second of hesitation, Edward had already scooted a little bit closer and covered my lap with his gran-gran's quilted blanket, and it was the warmest thing ever.

I didn't quite know how to not feel nervous around him, and he still intimidated the hell out of me. I felt nauseated with nerves but also like I could fly away any moment. Edward, annoyingly, looked cool and casual and totally at ease next to me, and I lost myself staring at his lips when he spoke.

"Oh I almost forgot," he said, shifting as he fished out a folded ten-dollar bill from his pocket. He held it out to me. "Keep the change."

"Please don't."

A smile played on his lips as he squinted at me. Next, he stood on his knees, tucked the bill between my costume and my neck, and I felt it fall into the stiff, unreachable back of my costume.

"You did not just do that." I said, feeling too giddy that he'd touched my neck to be angry at him.

"I think I just did," he replied, his teasing eyes glistening with the alcohol in his system. He shifted so that his knees brushed against my thighs, facing me, and his quiet voice lit me up inside. "You weren't in school yesterday."

"I had—work."

"Work?" Edward repeated. "Aren't you, like—" he squinted, assessing my face. "How old are you?"

"Almost sixteen," I replied, a bit defensively. "I'm in a small indie drama. It's not a big deal."

"You're an actress?"

"A little bit."

Outright admitting it always felt too snobbish.

Edward pressed his lips against the side of the beer can as he assessed my face, almost in wonder, and his intense gaze made me feel a bit breathless.

"What's it called? Is it based on a book? Have I heard of it? What's your role?"

"Probably not. It's an original screenplay," I lied. "And I kind of… can't talk about it before the teaser comes out. I signed an NDA."

Biting the edge of his beer can, Edward paused. "Wow."

"It's not a big deal," I repeated.

"An NDA," Edward repeated in a low voice, lifting his shoulder as his green eyes locked with mine. "Sounds like a big deal. So how drunk do we have to get you to hear anything about its contents?" he joked.

Lauren plopped down on the other side of him and sat with her legs underneath her. "Hey, Edward, tell me, where do you live? Jasper says you're also technically Pebblebrook High School district but how come you're at Willie W. Smith, then?"

Turning to face the table, Edward shot Jasper a look I didn't understand before he drank beer and cleared his throat.

"Gold Park Trail," he said, and I almost spat out the water I was using to rinse the awful beer taste from my mouth.

He was lying.

Gold Park Trail did not exist.

Back when I lived in the Sunrise Forest trailer park (well, Sunrise Forest Mobile Home Park, to be fancy, just next to Trailwood Mobile Home Park), we had a new cul-de-sac forming towards Gold Courts, and I quickly learned the fancy, fake name for the new street whenever I didn't want to admit I lived in Sunrise Forest trailer park.

"Hey, I used to live there," I said before I could stop myself, and Edward spilled a bit of his beer on his blanket as he turned to see my face. His eyes narrowed in a warning, and I felt my stomach twist at his fear but I smiled. "Is Billy Black still scaring away all the children with his wooden leg?"

I've got you.

Relieved, Edward slumped a little, but his eyes didn't stop assessing mine as he realized that yes, I had actually lived in Sunrise Forest, but I also had no intention of outing him. Honestly, worse than living in a trailer park was the stigma of living in one. (And hurricanes. Those were always the nastiest in trailer parks.)

I observed him as he patiently answered Lauren's question, but I realized that he was nervous around her in a way he wasn't around me, and my heart sank as I started to admit to myself what I hadn't wanted to admit during our D&D game.

Edward had a crush on Lauren.

In the same way that my eyes lingered on his face when I made a joke and wanted him to find me funny, his eyes lingered on hers, and he had a quieter, softer, more unsure way of speaking when he addressed her. I nearly cried when he trailed his fingers over Lauren's elvish bracelet, asking her about it.

I felt betrayed.

It made no sense—I hadn't even known him for more than a few days, and all he did was talk to me like a normal human and share his gran-gran's blanket when I got cold. But I couldn't help but wish I could've spent an evening with him, getting to know him, asking about his life and his motorcycle and all the things nobody else got to hear. He was interesting to me. Kind of intimidating, too, but I had so little experience with boys that two kind words and a smile, and I was melting into a puddle of goo.

"Show me where the bathroom is," Alice said, squeezing my shoulder, saving me, and when Alice had locked the bathroom door behind herself, she sat on the cold floor next to me.

"It's okay," I said, resting my chin on my folded arms and swallowing the tightness in my throat.

Alice wrapped her arm around my shoulders. "Bee-Bee…"

"It's okay," I repeated. "I didn't even know him or whatever."

"It's not okay," Alice said, ever the best friend. "You never have crushes on guys, and now that you found one you like… I'm sorry."

"When did you notice?" I asked.

"Jasper told me. Edward's been into her for a year, I think. Her best friend moved away during Christmas, and Lauren is Eric's cousin, so… she started hanging out with Jasper and, you know."

A year.

I shut my eyes because I couldn't believe I was pathetic enough to have to blink back tears for a guy I barely knew. How sad was I? I didn't even know him. I was just never around guys I was attracted to, so of course if one paid me any attention at all, I was all stupid and starry-eyed inside, thinking that every little thing meant something.

I'd so hoped I could have my first kiss with a guy I liked, at least, but… that was clearly not in the cards.

"She's beautiful," I couldn't help but admit.

"They're both seniors, straight-A students and—"

"It's okay," I interrupted, not wanting to hear how perfect for each other the two were. "It's whatever."

Every few seconds, a drop of water splashed on the tiles from the shower head, and I blinked at the floor until I no longer felt teary. Alice rested her head on my shoulder, waiting for me to gather myself.

"For what it's worth, you could totally beat her," Alice whispered, trying to lift my spirits.

"I think that's illegal."

She snorted a laugh, giving my shoulder one final squeeze. "Never change, Bee-Bee."

I called my mom to pick me up, and felt a bit less pathetic when I returned to the garage until I saw the gorgeous couple talking quietly. Lauren was in a pretty wizard costume, brushing her fingers through her blonde hair, and Edward had that black line on his face, looking all dangerous and handsome as he licked his lips, listening to her. I would've turned to dust had he ever looked at my lips the way his eyes lingered on hers.

They just, they fit, and when Alice returned to Jasper, flirting effortlessly, I suddenly felt like everyone was a part of a secret club that I couldn't enter.