The Book of Masks (Vol. 2)

Are You There, Chelsea? It's Me, Will Prescott!

Previously: "A Coup in the Coop" 

Oof. Headache, you murmur to yourself. Stupid headache. Your brain wires are too tangled up think any more coherently than that.

With a grimace you pry your eyes open. Not that it does much good. Your hair has fallen into your face. With a groan and a grunt you push it back and lift your face. Your head wobbles, like it's trying to fall off your neck.

Oh, God, what the fuck? you wonder as you peer around. How did I fall asleep sitting up? And what am I doing in my car? Why am I—?

You gasp and jump in your seat, banging your crown against the roof. You're naked from the neck down!

You gulp and swallow and spin your seat, looking around and trying to spot where you are and who's spying on you and playing this sick, sick prank. You find you're parked next to a green commercial dumpster—Oh! Ick!—with the nose of your car pressed against a blank brick wall. You're in a narrow commercial parking lot, likely behind a strip center or something. There's other cars around, but no people.

Oh, Jesus! Gordon! You ass! you squeal to yourself. This is exactly the kind of stupid shit prank he'd try playing!

Your clothes are piled up in the passenger seat, and you whimper as you paw through them, looking for your underthings. Oh, Jesus! If someone comes along and finds you like this—frantically you hike your legs through your panties and hoist them up around your butt—you will fucking kill whatever shit-for-brains did this to you! Probably it was Steve and Jason. Those two asswipes are always—

You pause as you are wrapping your bra around you. Steve and Jason. I was just with them at the school. You resume dressing, distractedly. They couldn't have done this. They've even been, like, halfway decent recently, what with Gordon sailing off the deep end into whatever and wherever his brain is now. You were just with them and with Kendra and Gloria because you all were talking to that dipshit pot-smoker Dane Matthias about—

Dane Matthias. You pause again, this time with your fuzzy white sweater only halfway down around your boobs. Why the fuck does that name make me want to scream and retch? Aside from the obvious reasons. You've pulled down the sweater and are picking up your hose when you remember.

Dane Matthias came and banged on the loft door after the others left, and then he came barging inside and he hit me in the face with—!

Your fingers go numb. There's a memory there, somewhere, struggling to get out. Don't force it, Chelsea, you tell yourself as you slowly pull the golden hose on. Just let it come. You'll remember. He came barging in, a horrible grin on his face, and he pushed something at me, and—

And now I'm here.

You glance around again, fearfully. Dane hangs out with a really bad crowd. If they're around— If he brought you and them all out here so they could—

You scramble for the door lock. It's already locked, but you don't relax even after looking in the back seat for— For— Ulp!

Well, whoever brought you out here, at least they left you in the driver's seat and they left the key in the ignition. Your hand is trembling as you start it, and you zip out from behind the strip center and onto a main boulevard without even bothering to put on your skirt or your shoes. You're trembling all over as steer down— Okay, it looks like you're on Borman Avenue. Where can you go that's safe? Not back to the school! Okay, home is the best choice. But you can't pull up at your house half undressed this way.

You hook a right onto Thirtieth Street and sail past the city government buildings—paranoid the whole time that a cop will stop you—steering in the vague direction of home, until, lacking any other choice, you pull behind another strip center—the South Creek Shopping Center—to finish dressing.

It's weird that you feel guilty as you finish fumbling your skirt around your waist.

It's not until you're reaching for your shoes that you notice the tan, canvas book bag in the passenger seat. It was under your clothes, but you only glanced at it in your rush to get dressed. But now you give it a direct look.

It stirs a memory. Something to do with Dane ... or with somebody else. You open it up and look inside. There's a Rubbermaid container containing something white and gooey, and a paint brush that's sticky with the stuff. You put it back in the bag, frown, and—

Oh God. It's like being slammed in the back of the head with a sledgehammer.

* * * * *

You pace beside the car, shaking out your clothes and hair and getting everything tucked and straightened out. The clothes feel good—tight hose on your legs, scrumptious sneakers on your feet; the skirt and floppy sweater; the bra to lift and support your awesome chest jugs. You take out your cell phone and turn the camera on yourself, to admire the bright eyes and the little pug nose, the glossy lips and the tousled, golden hair. It was totally worth that thirty-minute freakout, you tell yourself, to get to where I am now!

Even now, having recovered your sense of self, you are feeling a little ill and shaky from the effects of that emotional storm. Waking up naked, with no notion of how you got that way, was bad enough. But then came the recovery of your own memories. It was like someone vomiting up black sludge in the back of your skull, and it rose and rose and overwhelmed you, leaving you gasping and wanting to faint. Oh God, I'm not Chelsea Cooper, my real name is Will Prescott! The thought filled your brain and drowned your personality, then overflowed and gushed down your spine and into your shoulders, spreading under your skin like a tarry oil slick, until it had filled your insides with another presence—another body. And then—

Mmm. I'm Will Prescott, you groaned with an aching pleasure. And I'm finally inside Chelsea Cooper's body! Oh God! You grabbed fistfuls of hair and lifted your face and moaned. I've got her body and everything else! I can be her! I am her!

You squirmed and shifted in the car seat, trying to work yourself into every crevice, every capillary, every nerve and muscle fiber, of the body of Chelsea Cooper, making it your own. You wormed into every fold of her brain, wrapping your own thoughts around hers and making them yours. Oh God, I'm not me anymore! you squealed to yourself with delicious horror. I'm a girl called Chelsea Cooper. And no one can ever say I'm not!

That's when you climbed out of the car to finish putting yourself together. Straightening the seams of your hose and twisting your skirt and sweater to get them settled right. Tucking your feet into the new sneakers and tying them tight. Pushing your hair around until it settled into a comfortable heap around your ears and shoulders. Then you stretched all over and jogged in place until your new muscles had completely warmed up.

You study your face in the cell phone. It still looks blotchy and a little cracked from the stress of the afternoon—it's nearly three o'clock—and you need to repair your makeup. You squint at the back of the strip center. There will be restrooms inside one of the stores, but they'll be nasty little places with harsh neon lights and funny smells. Eww! So you prop the phone on the roof of your car, pull out your purse, and make what repairs you can with a powder brush and a little gloss. Then you put everything away and climb back in the car.

It fits around you a lot better now, the seat exactly far enough from the wheel and pedals. You turn the motor over, and drive back out onto Thirtieth.

I was heading "home," you recall with a frown. Funny, then, that you took Thirtieth, which dead-ends into South Creek Park, instead of Twentieth, which is Chelsea's usual route back to her house. You idly wonder if, unconsciously, your original personality wasn't trying to steer you back to your own house.

You take Orlando to Twentieth, then turn south. You've every intention of returning to Chelsea's house—there's no place for you to be—but as you approach the intersection with Albion, where you will make a left, you slow down.

Turn left on Albion, and you'll go to your new home, where your new parents and your new brother and your new bedroom and new life and friends await. Turning right, though, will take you back to Acheson, and to the community center.

I should tell Caleb what I've done, you think.

Well, yes. Obviously! But you don't have to do that right away. You can wait until tomorrow, at school. Make it a big surprise when Chelsea Cooper of all people comes bounding up to him, to tell him ...

To tell him I heard he's a math whiz, and ask if we can get together tonight at the library so he can help me with my homework! 'I'll totally make it worth your while!'"

Next: "Guess Who!" 

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