The Book of Masks (Vol. 1)

Weird Science

Previously: "Someone's Fake Girlfriend" 

At dinner your dad surprises you by asking if Carson ever figured out what the deal was with that old book. You don't even remember what you told your dad about it—save that you passed it along to Carson—and can only shrug. He asks you to remember to ask him about it, and to see about getting it back if he gave up on solving the puzzle.

The question has one effect on you: It dampens your enthusiasm to do anything too radical, for fear that your dad will notice you working on something strange and occult. You're not fully stifled, though. In fact, the approving way that he speaks of Carson incites your envy. You decide to make another one of those brain-copying metal strips. That won't require any polishing, either with a rag or a car buffer.

So after supper you ride your bike down to the old school. The evening is rapidly fading, but by the light from your phone you are able to able to quickly put together the supplies that you need, and transport them back to your house. It's a Friday night, and when Caleb texts to suggest getting together, you tell him you've got a date—Lol as if, he texts back—and settle at your desk to make the strip and carve the runes into it.

* * * * *

You have to stay up past midnight to finish it, and you're woken late the next morning by your phone. It's an actual call, and it shocks you awake when you see Cindy's name on your cell phone screen. "H'lo," you slur as you sit up and try rubbing the sleep (and the hair) from your eyes.

"Where are you?" she grouses. "And haven't you been checking your DMs?"

"What DMs? I— What?" Your brain is befogged.

"The DMs to Yeni," she hisses. "I've only been DMing you since nine o'clock last night—"

You bolt upright. "What happened?"

She sighs. "You tell me, Will. Did you talk to your friends?"

"Carson and James? Yeah, they want us to get together. All of us." You lean over to grab your clothes, fall out of bed, and sprawl on the floor. "To talk about—"

"What time and where?"

"They didn't say."

She sighs again. "Well, DM me from Yeni's account when you do know something. But it better be quick. I'm supposed to meet up with Seth at five."

She hangs up before you can ask how things went with her and Seth—with Yeni and Seth—last night.

* * * * *

Carson is furious when you call to tell him about the deadline: "This is freaking exactly what I knew would happen!" he explodes. Then he tells you to get your ass over to his house ASAP, because it will be an all-hands job getting the balloons ready.

Carson lives in an old, leafy neighborhood not far from Keith's place. The houses are small, old, and kind of shabby, but the Ioegers's land encompasses two lots, and their backyard stretches all the way to the street on the other side of the block. "We had a huge garden when I was growing up," he explained to you back in middle school, when you went to his place for a birthday party. Nowadays it is all grass, save for a ramshackle maintenance shed.

That's where Carson has his "laboratory," and he and James have already wheeled the equipment out onto the grassy yard and are setting up when you arrive. They've got a couple of metal gas tanks—like the kind helium comes in—and lots of glass and plastic bottles. It's all tied together by narrow rubber hoses with clamps on them, and meters for measuring air flow and pressure. There are also bottles of ammonia and bags of sulfur.

Also, bags of party balloons.

The plan, Carson explained to you, is to fill the balloons with a mixture of ordinary air and ammonium sulfide. "Just a little of the swamp gas," he explained. "We want to piss the assholes off, not kill them." You couldn't exactly follow the chemistry of it all, and grasped only the general outlines of the scheme. But the way you understand it:

Once the balloons—dozens and dozens of them—are up in the gym loft, the ammonium sulfide will slowly leak out, and that lighter-than-air gas will disperse and react over time with the humidity in the air. This will turn it into a slightly heavier gas, hydrogen sulfide, which is the stuff that comes out of rotten eggs and goes into stink bombs. Gradually, the stuff will permeate the entire loft, but there will be no obvious source for the stink. Patterson, who is taking the same chemistry class as Ioeger, might be able to figure out more or less what is going on, but by then it will be too late.

The hard trick is getting the party balloons up into the fuck room under some innocent pretext that can't be linked back to Carson and James (and you). Your job was to convince Cindy to throw an "unbirthday party" for her boyfriend in the loft, with her (and you behind her) providing the "unbirthday party balloons."

Well, however she did it, Cindy is now ready for the balloons.

It doesn't take long to fill them once you get a system going. Your job is to shove a nozzle into a limp balloon and hold it there while James—who is running the complicated machinery that has been making the ammonium sulfide—releases clamps and watches the air flow indicators. When he gives the signal, you pinch the balloon shut and hand it off to Carson, who finishes filling it either with ordinary air or with helium. "We want at least half of them floating," Carson says. "Drifting into corners or up in the rafters out of reach. For maximal spread."

But you've just got started when your trio is joined by a fourth. You nearly swallow your tongue when she comes swaying out of Carson's back door, and the other two stop dead as well.

It's Yeni Mojdeh.

She's in a new set of clothes: olive-green short-shorts, and a white peasant shirt that drapes to just under her belly button. She's wearing canvas tennis shoes, and there's a beaded friendship bracelet around her slim wrist. She smiles brightly at you as she walks up. "Hey guys," she calls. "Whatcha doin'?"

No one answers. You're still groping for words when she puts her hand around your bicep, and then your voice box closes up entirely.

"Hey, Will," she says, and pecks you lightly on the cheek. The balloon you're holding squirts away with a sodden thpppbbbbtt! "Aren't you going to introduce me?" Yeni asks you with a girly smile.

You turn wide eyes onto Carson and James, neither of whom so much as glance at you. "Uh, uh, uh," you stammer. "This's, uh, uh—"

"Yeni," the girl says, and turns the same shy smile onto your companions. "Which one of you's Carson and which one of you's James?"

Carson's hand shoots up. "I'm James. I mean, Carson!"

"I'm James," his friend says with more composure. His eyes flick in your direction. "I thought Cindy was coming over."

"She's busy with her boyfriend," Yeni says. "So she asked me to come out and help." She bends to inspect the tubes and stoppered bottles spread out on the worktable. "So, how can I help?"

"You're friends with Cindy?" Carson asks.

"Kind of," Yeni says. "More friends with Will." She pinches your side, and you jump half a foot.

"We, we, we ... met," you stutter. "Um ...?" You stare at the girl and work your eyebrows like you are sending her a message in Morse code. "It was, uh—"

"Day before yesterday." Yeni slips her arm around your waist, and your cock almost tears its way through your zipper. "Coffee shop. Him and me got to talking, and—" She puts her nose in your ear, and you nearly faint. "He's cute, isn't he?"

"He's adorable," Carson says, and he grabs you by the shoulders and pulls you away from the worktable before you can pitch face-first into it. "And he told you about this, huh?"

"Yeah. Him and Cindy and this prank. It sounded like fun, so I volunteered to help. Cindy was supposed to come out here," she says, and turns a bright, brittle glance onto you, "but then she got to thinking it wouldn't be a good idea, her coming out here. So she sent me. Aren't you happy to see me, Will?"

"Great!" you gurgle.

"Anyway," Yeni continues, "I think things are all set up on her end. She and Seth are supposed to meet up at the school at around seven, have a picnic supper up there, and then—" She giggles. "Well, I didn't ask for details."

"And we're supposed to have the balloons up there by—?" James asks.

"Anytime after five. Oh, here." She digs a key out of her pocket. "This'll get us in. Cindy told Seth she wanted to set up a surprise for him."

That's nothing on the surprise she gave you.

* * * * *

It's half an hour before you're able to get Yeni alone inside Carson's house for a hissed consultation. You start by confirming that she really is Cindy. The question causes her to roll her eyes. "Who else would it be?"

"So what's the deal?"

"I explained it to you out there! I don't want to be seen anywhere near you guys, especially not after they figure out where that stink gas came from!"

"Okay. But, um, not that I mind, but what's all the, uh—?"

"The what?"

"The touching and flirting." You blush.

She stares at you. "You're joking, right?"

"No."

Again she rolls her eyes. "You're all over x2z, you and Yeni," she says. "Fucking Kelsey. Which means I couldn't do what I was going to do, which was to get with Seth like this." She gestures at herself. "I'm going to have to be me with him!"

But you're not listening. Your hand has gone to your phone, and when Cindy runs out of breath, you excuse yourself to the bathroom, there to sit on the toilet and scroll through x2z.

Sure enough, "Will Prescott" and "Yeni Mojdeh" are a trending topic.

Next: "Public Parts and Private Parties" 

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"Table of Contents (Vol. 1)" 
"The Book of Masks (Vol. 1)"