Chapter 26

After lunch, while on my way to my first lesson I was intercepted by Cayenne Proctor. “Did you get a tuxedo okay?” she asked.

“Not yet. It’s having a couple of alterations made, but it should be ready this afternoon, subject to a final fitting,” I replied. Then a thought occurred to me. “Shouldn’t I have the receipt for the prom package with me in case the rental shop wants to check it?”

Cayenne sighed with annoyance. “I promised Marcus I wouldn’t let the receipt out of my hands. I guess I’ll have to drive you again. Meet me in the car park after lessons.”

The afternoon was mercifully incident free, although we got some more homework dumped on us. Afterwards, I took my books back to my locker. Mr Peters had obviously made an effort to hammer out the dents and, when I opened the door, it didn’t squeal. And for once the baleful presence of Mr Peters himself wasn’t hovering nearby.

As the previous day, Cayenne was ready and waiting for me in the student car park and she didn’t look pleased. “I’m missing a cheerleaders’ meeting for this,” she groused.

“You could lend me the receipt. I wouldn’t tell anyone.”

Cayenne shot me a contemptuous glare. “Get in,” she ordered.

The drive to the suit rental shop was even more parlous than the previous afternoon because Cayenne was clearly in a hurry. I sighed with relief that we were still alive when we arrived.

Cayenne stomped into the shop, with me trailing meekly behind. “Do you have my partner’s tuxedo ready for a final fitting?” she asked.

When I caught up with her, I found that she’d addressed the question to the handsy assistant. He blanched when he saw me.

“Perhaps you’d better fetch the manager,” I suggested to him.

The assistant disappeared into the back room at a substantial rate of knots. Cayenne frowned at me. She seemed to be just about to say something when the manager appeared.

“Welcome back, Mr Kafkasian,” he beamed. “The adjustments are finished and the tuxedo is ready for you to try on.”

“This is Mr Randell,” said Cayenne. “My boyfriend can’t make it to the prom and Kevin here is deputising.” She flourished the receipt at the manager, who took it and checked it carefully.

The manager handed back the receipt. “No matter, we pride ourselves on giving the same excellent service to all our customers. I’ll fetch the tuxedo.” Nevertheless, his smile seemed several degrees frostier as he disappeared into the back of the shop.

“Did you tell him your name was Kafkasian?” hissed Cayenne.

“No, but he may have jumped to that conclusion because I told him that was the name on the prom package.”

“And what was that about with the assistant?” she pressed.

I was spared from having to answer immediately because the manager returned with the tuxedo wrapped in a polythene cover. The manager removed the cover and handed me the tuxedo. I took it into a changing room and put it on. The slight bagginess had gone: the tuxedo fitted like a glove. Cayenne smiled when I emerged; she obviously approved of the way the tuxedo looked on me.

The manager fussed around me, thoroughly checking the fitting. And yes, he did check the fit at my crotch. I wondered whether he too was gay like his nephew. “Everything seems to be satisfactory,” he said. “Does it feel alright?”

“Yes. Your tailor has done an amazing job,” I replied.

I changed back into my school clothes and handed the tuxedo back to the manager, who reinserted it into the polythene wrapper for me. “I’ll just update the receipt,” he said. He inserted the plastic card into a terminal and tapped on some keys. A moment later the terminal spewed out some paper. The manager tore off the paper and handed it to Cayenne along with the plastic card. “That’s your paper copy of the receipt for the tuxedo,” the manager informed her, correctly deducing she was in charge.

Once again I felt relieved when we were outside the shop but Cayenne wasn’t going to let things drop. “What happened between you and the assistant?” she demanded.

“The assistant is gay and thought I was too, and he decided to take liberties with me.”

“But you are gay!” said Cayenne. “Aren’t you flattered when men hit on you?”

I didn’t reacting to the ‘gay’ claim because that might have caused more complications than I wanted to handle. “Are you flattered when boys grope you without invitation?” I asked.

“No! Yes. Well, sort of,” she admitted. “I hate the groping but it is kind of flattering.”

“That’s how I felt.” Apart from the flattering part. “But the manager sorted it out.”

“You know that as a condition of the prom package trial you have to give comprehensive feedback on every aspect, don’t you,” said Cayenne.

“No, you didn’t tell me that. Your only stipulation was a couple of dances. But don’t worry, I’ll give the rental shop a good write-up.”

That seemed to satisfy Cayenne, who looked at her watch. “If I hurry, I can just make the end of the cheerleaders’ meeting,” she said. “You’ll have to walk home.”

When I got home, burdened with my backpack and the tuxedo in its polythene wrapper, I was immediately pounced on by my mum.

“Go and put it on,” she insisted. “I want to see my little boy looking all grown up.”

By the time I had changed into the tuxedo in my bedroom then returned downstairs, Terri and Dad were waiting to inspect me too. I gave a little twirl.

“Seven point five,” said Terri. “Not bad for a dork.”

“You look very smart,” said Mum. “At least you’ll look the part.”

Dad just nodded.

I still had the problem of how to explain the the shirt and tie.

After dinner, I found that Dimitri had compressed the entire text-converted newspaper archive and e-mailed it to me. After I had polished off what little homework I had for the night, I downloaded and decompressed the archive. It took up more room than I was comfortable with, but I was able to run a couple of text searches before bedtime. The summaries weren’t enlightening and it would have taken some considerable time to plough through every individual result returned so I abandoned my efforts for the night.

I met up with my nerd friends for the walk to school next morning.

“I completed the genealogical tree and linked Judge Rhuairidh Calhoun to a descendant named Jacobian Calhoun,” said Dimitri. “He’s the right age to be Jay so that’s probably a contraction of his name.”

“Fantastic,” I replied. “I wonder if Jacobian is going to return to school anytime soon. I don’t fancy paying him a home visit.”

“I also ran a couple of image searches overnight,” continued Dimitri. “They turned up some more references to ‘The Witch of the Mountain’, but they petered out around the time of the Second World War.”

“Perhaps living through a war makes people less likely to believe in the supernatural,” said Michael.

“I found lots of references to missing girls,” said Dennis. “Perhaps you could correlate them with sightings of the witch and see whether there’s a pattern.”

“Now I’ve got the tuxedo sorted, I don’t have much on this evening,” I said. “Would anyone be interested in meeting up after school to go through some of these?”

“I have a better idea,” said Dennis. “Why don’t we go to the mall after school.”

“Why?” asked Michael. “Weren’t we humiliated enough last time?”

“The mall is where we saw the witch,” said Dennis. “Perhaps she’s there every Friday.”

“And do what?” asked Dimitri. “Are we going to ask her nicely to cancel the spell she’s put on Kevin because he’s having far too much success with girls?”

That generated a round of fist bumps.