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A high school student finds a grimoire that shows how to make magical disguises. |
Previously: "Thieves We Be"  You and Owen argue long into the night, not only about who you should swap with—it's a given that he will do a body-swap with Brett Landon—but now to handle the swaps. You go so far as to intricately war-game out various choices and scenarios, so that you'll be able to anticipate problems and eventualities. That at least helps you settle on a new identity for yourself. The simplest swaps, you and Owen figure, are for him and Brett, and for you with one of Brett's parents. * * * * * Even then a number of moving parts have to come together just right, and you discover some goofy problems while war-gaming it out the next evening, which you and Owen devote to making the necessary masks and memory strips. For it all to work, for instance, Owen will have to go in to Westside as Mrs. Welch. Luckily, he decides to try on Shannon's mask before he has to, and that's when he discovers that, just as Caleb had trouble getting Stephan Welch's memories, he has trouble getting Shannon's. But he sleeps in the mask and picks up Mrs. Welch's memories during the night. You, meanwhile, get to spend the next day as a college professor. You are amazed at how light the work is, as you only have one class to teach—Intermediate Microeconomic Theory at 9:30—though you do have some office work that keeps you occupied until you go home at 3:00. The busy part comes that afternoon. It starts for you at four-thirty when Will Prescott shows up at the house. "Oh, hey boss," he says when you answer his knock at the door. "I was supposed to come out here, right? This lady at the office— Whoop!" He almost falls off his feet as you haul him inside by the front of his t-shirt. For all your war-gaming, though, you hadn't really anticipated how weird it would be to see him. Is that your face, or is it the face of the asshole who stole your face and stuck you with his? Being all mixed up inside with Will Prescott's memories and personality, either answer opens a yawning uncanny valley. Just the sight of him—his sloppy clothes and his sloppy cap; his squinty eyes and lopsided smile; his scruffy whiskers and his stiffly unkempt hair—unsettle you. That's me, you think with a shiver. All I have to do is take off Mr. Welch's mask and clothes, and put on that guy's, because I already am him: body, brain, and everything. Except for my soul? you try to reassure yourself. Because that's the only part that counts? You have a lot of time to restlessly contemplate these conundrums, because it's close to five-thirty before Barbara Meek arrives. Her eyes pop when you open the door to her. "Oh, hi there, boss!" she chirps. "So here you are! You know, when Shannon came to talk to me this morning, I thought, There's something not quite right here I can't put my finger on. But you know, I'm so used to— What? What are you pointing at?" she asks. "Go upstairs," you tell her, and point at the staircase again. "Go in the master bedroom, and get undressed. Tell the kid who's up there to get undressed too. And both of you get into bed." Alarm shows on her face, but with a hollowly cheerful You're the boss, boss! she obliges. You pull out Stephan's phone and text Shannon, asking where she is and how long she's going to be. Just being dropped off now, she texts back five minutes later. Except it's not your wife who comes in through the door. It's a high school senior who looks like Caleb Johansson. * * * * * That's because he's already been through the complicated switch-offs at his end: Ms. Meek had to drive Shannon's car to your place so that Owen could drop of Ms. Meek's car at hers. The fake "Caleb Johansson" (from school) and the fake "Harris Prescott" (from Salopek) were already there waiting, so that Owen could take Harris's mask off of Ms. Meeks and put it onto the petrified Mr. Prescott who had been hidden under "Caleb's" mask. He had then taken off Shannon's mask and let Harris drive him out to the Welches's. That put Ms. Meeks back to normal while still keeping Harris Prescott in circulation. Owen picks up the box of magical stuff you already packed and takes it out to Will's truck while you run upstairs to pull off Stephan's clothes and dump them in the hamper. Then you lay out on the cold floor of the bathroom and rip his mask off your face .... ... and wake to find Will Prescott's clothes in a heap on your chest. You pull them on and with a beating heart hop out into the hallway. Owen is waiting for you in the bedroom, and after you have ordered Will and Ms. Meeks—who are naked in bed together—to lay down, you and he pull the masks off them, exposing Shannon Welch where Ms. Meek had been, and Stephan Welch where— The fake Will Prescott? Or the fake "you"? —had been. Then, with the masks you retrieved from the now-unconscious couple, you and Owen hustle quickly and quietly downstairs and out the front door. Now, having stripped yourselves of one set of fake identities, comes the part where you and Owen get yourselves some new ones. * * * * * "Oh, fucking hell," Owen gasps as you peel away from the Welches. He giggles with relief. "What a freaking mess those guys made!" "And we're gonna make our own mess?" you reply. "Yeah, but it's gonna be ours! Oh, fuck me," he sighs again. "I'm gonna be so glad when we're settled in!" He wriggles down in his seat and puts his feet on the console of the truck, as Caleb always used to do when riding with Will. "You have any trouble with Brett?" you ask. "Nah! Ms. Meek's got, like, total control of that conference room, no one bothered me when I went in to— Oh, and—!" He lunges over to punch you in the shoulder. "That's for trying to tell me all last night how to put that mask on him! I fucking know how to do it, bruh, I told you!" You laugh despite the blow. I just wanted to make sure you knew how!" "If you know how, then I know how! I got—" He breaks off to grab his face between his hands and push it around. "D'jever feel like these things are masks too," he asks, "and you can just, you know, take 'em off? Like we was taking off those other ones?" "All the time!" you confess. You grind a knuckle into your temple. "But does it freak you out at the same time, thinking that, like, this is your body? Your real body? You know? Not like those masks?" "Oh yeah!" Owen wriggles down a little further into his seat, and picks at the knee of his pants. "But I'm gonna have fun with the next new body when I get it on!" "Is it gonna be okay when we get out there? Wha'd Brett say when you asked him about his family?" "That it's just him and his parents. They'll both be home by the time we get out there, so—" His expression tightens. "I guess we're gonna have to bust in on them or something." He squints over at you. "We didn't think about that." "'Cos we didn't know what might be going on at his house! But do we have to bust in on them? And where are we going?" "Out to Acheson. Yeah," he adds in a kind of jeer. "Out close to where 'Will Prescott' lives!" "Bite me! But can't we stop by their place, say we're picking up Brett to take him somewhere, like, for school? And then you can swap with him wherever we take him? Then after, when you go home, you can sneak the masks onto his parents later. It'd be less of a mess that way." "S'up to you, bruh," Owen replies with a shrug. "If you don't mind waiting." It seems easiest, and you talk over the excuse to give Brett Landon's parents for taking their son out. * * * * * Brett Landon seems shorter when he clambers up into the truck to sit between you and Caleb. Certainly a lot more smug than when you picked him up at his house thirty minutes ago. "Bruh," he says as he plucks his t-shirt. "Look at me now." He smirks at you. "I know what you look like," you retort. "I know what you look like under that thing, too." You drove out to the Acheson Community Center to do the swap, and Owen climbed into the truck bed with the mask-enslaved Brett Landon to accomplish it while you killed time in the truck cab with your phone while only occasionally peeping out the back window to see how things were progressing. And now that it's done, as you drive out to the Johanssons's to drop off the golem-Caleb (where the real Brett Landon is now hidden) he whiles away the time by plunging into his phone. "Hey, check it out," he says as he shows you a photo on the phone screen. "This's me 'n Brittany out at Caden's pool party last July." You glance over long enough to take in the picture of the shirtless Brett standing next to Brittany Fitzsimmons, one of the prettiest girls in the WHS freshman class. "Yeah, you do anything with her?" you ask. "I dunno," he says. "I'm gonna have to sleep in this thing, I guess, same as I did with Mrs. Welch last night." He giggles. "But I'm definitely gonna do something with Brittany, first chance I get! You sure you don't wanna be Elijah or Austin? Bruh, we could have so much fun!" "We'll talk about it later," you tell him. "Right now, just make sure you get those masks onto Brett's parents." "Fast as I can, bruh," he says, and goes back to gloating over the photo album that goes with his new life. Next: "Breaking and Entering" |
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