The Book of Masks (Vol. 2)

A Very Merry Re-Birthday

Previously: "Girls Galore" 

"Oh my God," Leslie Osbourne moans as she studies herself on her camera phone. She strokes her throat with her free hand, and her head lolls to one side. "I can't fucking believe this! Just look at me!"

Kaylee Mercier giggles and reaches for Leslie's bosom. "Touching is believing," she says, but Leslie slaps her away before she tweak her friend's nipple.

Ethan Clayborne and Andrew Webb exchange sniggering grins, and blush. Their eyes are shining hard.

The swaps were all completed in the back bedrooms while you and Caleb held down the front. From out of the back there first emerged a person who looked like Grant Lowery, blushing and grinning beneath his cherry-dyed hair, but he only said, "Wish they'd let me stay" before he hurried out the door. A little while after that, someone who looked like Mrs. Matthias came stumbling out. She looked a lot less happy, and gave you a hard squint before grabbing up her purse and keys and going out too. Then it was quiet for a bit, except for snatches of muttered conversation that echoed distinctly from the back of the trailer.

Then there was lots of squealing, and Ethan and Andrew, blushing like ripe tomatoes, came shambling out and threw themselves onto the dumpy sofas. They only guffawed and slapped at each other when you asked how things were going in the back.

Kaylee Mercier was the first to emerge. She came on shy, mincing steps, a mad grin spread across her face. Her hair was tousled, but she was modestly made up too. For a moment she stood in the middle of the living room, hands clasped behind her ass, fidgeting as she balanced on the sides of her feet, grinning at Ethan and Andrew. Then with a shriek she fell into the chair opposite them and covered her blushing face with her hands. When she dropped them, tears of laughter were streaming down her cheeks.

The boys laughed with her, and stared hard at her. Pretty clearly, it seemed to you, they were hard tempted to lunge over and perch by her side, where they could lean over to plunge a forefinger down the front of her blouse and between her boobs.

Because that's what you were sorely tempted to do.

Instead, she and the boys laughed and cackled. Between fits of laughter they gossiped briefly about teachers and classes they shared, which would set them off laughing again. Andrew almost passed out and fell off the sofa at one point, he was laughing so hard.

You and Caleb could only exchanged pained grimaces, which the others ignored.

But when Leslie came out, everyone sobered up.

She seemed more comfortable on her feet than Kaylee had been, so that she glided in. But there was something very self-conscious about it, too, and there was something self-conscious about the way she tilted her head and lifted her chin to smile at the rest of the company. She was more neatly coiffed than Kaylee, with thick, mouse-brown hair that fell down her back and over one shoulder. She was very pretty, with regular features, but she hadn't the bursting sunshine visage of Kaylee. (Something about her, in fact, reminds you of the snooty Kelsey Blankenship in your own class.) She was very slim, with a fairly flat chest, and thin arms and legs. But she had a beautiful neck, which is probably why it was the first thing she reached for after she was seated and had taken out her cell phone to admire herself.

Which she is doing even now.

"Happy birthday," Ethan grunts at her.

She gives him a narrow look. "What do you mean?"

"I just mean, it's like the first day of the new you. Your birth day. You know." He shrugs. "Re-birthday?"

"It's a re-birthday for you too," Leslie retorts.

"Yeah, well." He shrugs again.

"Anyway, isn't it really your birthday?" Leslie presses.

Ethan stares at her. "Well, not till tomorrow," he says.

"But aren't you going over to Dana's? Wasn't she doing a party or something for you?"

"Well, not for me," he stammers. "But, um." He leans forward with a sigh. "I guess I—"

"Well, I've got a better idea, anyway" Leslie says. "A re-birthday present for you." She leans forward. "Come with me into the back so I can ... give it to you."

Ethan's eyes widen.

Her talk is giving you a boner, so you can only imagine what it does to Ethan when she runs a tongue over her lower lip while giving him a hungry stare. Then she gets up and glides over him, and straddles his lap with his hips between her knees. She wraps her arms around his head and pulls his face to her breast.

Out of the corner of your eye, you glimpse Andrew and Kaylee exchanging shocked but shining grins.

Leslie lowers herself onto Ethan's lap, and leans over to put her mouth to his ear. She nuzzles at it and whispers into it. Ethan's eyebrows pop up, and a happy flush blooms in his cheeks.

Leslie slips back onto her feet, and extends her hands to help pull Ethan up. He staggers heavily after her, back toward the bedrooms. You and the others are left with your mouths hanging open.

"Oh my God," Andrew says, and turns his brightly blushing face toward Kaylee.

She returns him a grin like a shark. "You don't want my teeth anywhere near your dick, motherfucker," she tells him.

* * * * *

After an awkward wait, the rest of you decided to leave and come back later. You decamp to a nearby McDonalds, where Andrew and Kaylee fake flirt with each other. But they break off long enough for Andrew to ask you and Caleb about "what kind of thing" you're looking for in an "upgrade." Caleb mutters something back about wanting to "kick the tires" and "look at the showroom displays" first. Kaylee bursts out with the bright suggestion that you all should go out to Dana DiBenedetto's place for some "happening" or other.

But that doesn't work out. Andrew texts Ethan, to goad him into going out to Dana's as well, then bursts out laughing and shows you the curse words that Ethan texts back. A little later, though, after getting another text, he forces you all to drive back to Dane's, and then he disappears into the back while Ethan, looking drained but happy, comes shambling out to collapse in the living room with the look of a man who's just swam the English Channel. He won't let you and the others drag him back out, though, even after the sound of creaking mattress springs start echoing from the back of the trailer, and he instead starts texting around to invite more friends out. It'll give you and Caleb, he says, a chance to scope out some "maybes" for yourselves.

At least he gives Andrew and Leslie a warning, though, and they are back in the living room when other kids from school start to show up.

But you're not interested in looking them over, and follow Caleb out when he asks you for the grimoire so he can take it back to Bhodi. He also takes a couple of masks and brain-bands with him. Once you're on the road, you ask him who they are for.

But his answer—if it really is an answer—is indirect. "Fuck me," he snorts, "but maybe we should give them to some more moms who want to be teenage girls again."

"Jesus, yeah, I'd be up for that," you agree.

Caleb gives you a sidelong look, as though weighing whether you are serious. "What was it like for you, knowing what she was doing back there with those guys?" he asks. "I mean, in the back, with ... um ..."

"Well, pretty goddamn frustrating. Right?"

"I'm talking about Dane's mom and what she was getting up to with the guys."

"Yeah I know."

"And you wanted a piece of it?" Caleb asks. "Even though you're pretending to be her, uh, kid?"

"What?" You wheel on him. "Oh, come on, man! That's not funny!"

"So it wasn't weird for you?"

"Well, it might be if I was really Dane! But I'm not!"

Caleb stares at you. Then he snaps his fingers, "Oh, that's right. You don't have one of those, um—" He traces a line over his forehead. "So I guess it's not like you really feel like you're him."

"No! I mean—! Oh, Jesus! That'd be pure squick if I did!"

Caleb smiles. "No," he coolly replies, "pure squick would be if his mom, looking like that girl, fucked you while you were looking like Dane."

"Oh, Christ!"

"So would you?" Caleb asks. "Fuck her, I mean? While done up like her kid?"

You blanch, but don't answer. The fact is, you suspect you probably would crumble pretty quickly if tempted.

"Did Ethan tell you what she says she's going to do?" Caleb then asks.

"You mean there's more?" you gasp.

"Well, more of the same. That's what Justin was telling me, just before we left. She told him that she wants to do it with all of us afterward, after we've all got, you know, new faces. She wants to fuck all of us inside our new faces. She's calling it her 'birthday present' to us."

"No!" you gasp. "Are you fucking with me?"

"No, but like I say, apparently that's what she's going to be doing. Fucking with us. Gonna do it with Grant even—with Kaylee, I mean—soon as they have a chance too."

Caleb's news leaves you with your jaw hanging open.

And it also leaves you wondering if you shouldn't make a detour in your plans—get yourself a sophomore face so you can collect a "birthday present" before returning to your long-range plan.

Next: "Lord of Discipline" 

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"Table of Contents (Vol. 2)" 
"The Book of Masks (Vol. 2)"