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A high school student finds a grimoire that shows how to make magical disguises. |
Previously: "Doom Hangs on a Dinner Date"  On the drive home from Balducci's, you tell Gordon that you talked to Cindy about talking to Jenny. He only grunts, then observes that you didn't talk a lot at supper. "I didn't have anything to say," you reply. "I don't know that much about basketball or the team." "We could fix that," Gordon says. Yeah, you could do that, you reflect. Same as you're teaching me about the weight machines. Aloud, you just say that you'll talk to him later. * * * * * At home, up in your bedroom, you bend your thought toward how to make the switch that you talked about with Gordon. He as much as said that he wasn't going to help with you with anything like that, and you don't see how Caleb—either as himself or as David Kirkham—could help get you get close to any of the girls you mean to target. But you're going to need help, because none of the three girls in question would so much as talk to you, let alone let you get them someplace alone so you could hit one of them with a mask. The only person who might be able to help you is Jason Lynch. He warned you what Kendra said, so he wouldn't be surprised if you asked him to set up a meeting between you and her, so you could talk to her directly. And he could probably swing such a meeting for you. And that's what settles you on picking Kendra Saunders as the girl you will switch places with. * * * * * It's nearly eleven-thirty the next morning before Jason replies to the text you sent him at nine. He wants to know why you want to meet with Kendra, and you explain that you just want to talk to her about Chelsea. After a bit of back and forth, Jason calls you directly. "Look, here's the thing, Will old boy," he says. "Kendra ain't gonna want talk to you, no matter how much I sugar-talk her." "Well, will she talk to you? Meet up with you at school, I mean, if you ask her?" "Sure," he says, sounding a little taken aback. "Kendra and me, we— You know." "So can you ask her to meet you up at the school?" "I don't wanna get in the middle o' this," he warns. "It's just to get her up there so I can see her," you say, thinking more rapidly than you ever have thought in your life. "You ask Kendra to meet you up at the school at, like two o'clock or something. You pick the time, just tell me what time you pick. Then I'll show up there, you know, 'accidentally' be there at that time. But you text Kendra right around then, telling her you'll be a little late. And you show up—" You make a rapid calculation in your head. "Forty-five minutes later? That'll give me time to try talking to her before you show up, and she won't know that you, uh, actually set it up." He silently turns the idea over in his head, then agrees. "But you owe me, a big one," he says, and you promise to do a favor for him some time. Thirty minutes later, he texts you to say he's set up to meet Kendra at the gym at three. * * * * * You were up at a little before seven, getting ready for the switch, and were in the elementary school basement while you talked to Jason. You have already cast and polished a mask to use on Kendra, and were working frantically on a metal band to with it. Despite deep anxiety about finishing on time, you manage to get the band finished and glued into the mask with a little less than an hour to spare. You draw up a checklist of what you'll need—double- and triple- and quadruple-checking it as you go through the necessary steps one at a time in your mind—and pack up all the supplies. Then you race out to Westside. There are more than a dozen cars in the student lot, a fact which fills you with no little worry—what if some of them are in the gym, which is where you are supposed to meet Kendra? But they seem to belong to the buff, shirtless guys who are playing some kind of ballgame out in the athletic field next to the school, and when you enter the gym—using the key Gordon gave you—it is deserted and the lights are off. It takes you ten minutes of searching before you find a well-hidden breaker box near the bleachers that turns the lights on. A cold front moved through during the night, and the temperatures are still in the upper thirties, so Kendra is dressed warmly in a puffy lavender-colored jacket when she steps into the gym. She still manages to look stunning. Kendra Saunders is black, but her skin is fairly light, and she has a Kenyan ancestry—a fact that she seems to frequently mention, because you've overheard her talk about it in class at least a half-dozen times—so her face is narrow with high cheekbones and a broad forehead, and she has the build of a fleet gazelle. She wears her kinky hair long—it tumbles down around her shoulders—and she always seems to be perfectly made up, so that her face has a slightly mask-like appearance. Her breasts are on the small side, and she is very slight of build, so that she would look more at home on the track-and-field team than the cheerleading squad. But she moves with a feline grace. Very feline, too, are the finicky glances she gives everyone at school, and the archly distant stares she uses to let people know that she wants as little to do with them as possible. She gives you one of those finicky glances now as she steps into the gym, and she visibly cringes. "Hey Kendra," you call out, and you surprise yourself with how firm your voice is. You are standing near the basketball hoop, for you were practicing some free throws while you waited for her. "Hi," she says, biting off the word without looking at you. "Is Jason around?" "I didn't know he was supposed to show up." "I guess I'll wait outside for him." She starts to turn toward the door. "No, wait, hang on," you call to her. "As long as you're here—" You glance desperately at the bag of gear you brought, sitting on the bleachers, and feeling like it's twenty miles away. "I, um, I ran into Cindy last night," you improvise, "and she told me something I want to ask you about." The promise of gossip—particularly of gossip about Cindy, who is Chelsea's great rival—catches Kendra's attention, and she not only stops, she actually gives you a quick look of interest. "It's about, um, Gordon, and a girl he's interested in," you continue as you half-lope, half-skip over to the bleachers. The plastic bag rattles loudly as you dig into it to pull the mask free. "He, um— Well, it's complicated." She's still standing by the door, looking at you with an expression of hooded curiosity. Words fail as your brain is suddenly crowded with the thought, as you look at her—puffy jacket, tight blue jeans, very white tennis shoes, frilly auburn tresses, and mask-like face—That's going to be me. When Jason gets here in an hour, I'm going to be her. Easily, almost as though you are drawn by a magnet rather than your own willpower, you run at her with the mask. She flinches, then shrieks as you grab her about the waist with one arm, and push the mask into her face. She sinks to the floor, dragging you with her. * * * * * Bump bump bump go Kendra's heels as you drag her up the wooden stairs to the loft. As you waited for her, you thought through what you were going to do and how you were going to do it. But you didn't anticipate how heavy she would be, and how many times you would have to stop to catch your breath as you hauled her—your arms under her shoulders and your hands locked together across her chest—over to and then up the stairs. At least you had the presence of mind to unlock and open the loft door first, so that you don't have to stop to handle that little chore before dragging her inside. The loft is very cold but you are hot and blown and filmy with sweat when you finally drop Kendra onto one of the old gym mats that take up the center of the crowded loft. You are a little sick at your stomach from the exertion, so that it's not as much fun as you anticipated as you start to undress her. Off first come the white sneakers, then the lime-green socks, exposing her tiny feet. You flop her over onto her face to peel off the puffy jacket, and then you have to push her arms up over her head in order to get the mint-green sweatshirt and the t-shirt underneath off her. That leaves her narrow torso naked save for the skimpy bra. You leave that on her, along with her thong-like panties after you've peeled her tight jeans from her, out of what even you'll admit is a hypocritical sense of modesty. The girl, once fully exposed, seems a lot thinner than you imagined she'd be. She looks almost underfed. And yet you shiver hard all over as you study her with watering eyes, and it's not just the chill of the loft that makes you tremble so. This is her, you think as you hold the mask in your hands after lifting it off her face. KENDRA DENISE SAUNDERS, says the name that floats over its inner surface. And when I put it on, this will be me. Next: "Kendrafication Part 2" |
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