The Book of Masks (Vol. 1)

More Pieces for a Homemade Puzzle

Previously: "The Inside, Looking Out" 

You've invested too much into "Will Chang" to just abandon him, so the next day at school you go looking for Christian Knouse.

You got to know Knouse earlier in your high school career, when you briefly got interested in table-top gaming. He's one of the computer nerds, and an RPG player, so he's exactly the kind of person who could help you craft a fake identity online. You've seen him walking into your math classroom just as you're walking out, so today you loiter in the doorway when class lets out, watching for him. He hardly glances as you as he comes swooping down the hallway, and you have to stop him with a shout before he can sweep on past you. He fixes you with a sharp look after coming to a stop. "What are you doing after school?" you ask.

"Gaming," he retorts. "What is this, a pop quiz?"

"You got time to hang out for a minute? I need a favor."

"When? I got class now!"

"After school."

Knouse fixes you with a very beady glance. There's something very fox-like about him—the narrow, pointed nose, and the sharp intelligence behind his eyes. He is also small but lithe, and his whitish-blonde hair has a silky sheen. Right now, you have the discomfiting feeling that he's weighing whether to blow you off or raid your chicken coop.

"Yeah, sure," he says. "If it doesn't take too long."

"Well, I'll tell you now it's about—"

You break off as Darrell Parsons materializes behind Christian, to stop and listen to you. "I'll look for you at your locker," you tell Knouse.

"Good luck finding me there," he says. "I head straight home from my government class."

"Oh. Well, then I'll—"

But Christian has already turned and darted into the classroom. Darrell gives you a doubtful look, then follows his friend in.

* * * * *

It was a clumsy start, but it pays off after class. Knouse is impatient to get off to his gaming session, so he doesn't hide his impatience when you intercept him on his way out to the parking lot.

"Yeah, that's easy," he says after you've explained your request. "I'll set it up for you and send you the log-in shit when I'm done." He dances from foot to foot like he has to pee. "Oh, God, no!" he cries when you ask if he needs the name you want to set it up under. "I'll send you a temp ID, and you change everything when you're inside! Now are you done already?" He springs away when you nod.

He takes his sweet time getting it set up for you, though. It's not that night but the next—and after you've sent him a text reminding him—that he sends you the log-in credentials for your fake account. Clearly, he wasn't thrilled about being poked with a reminder, as is evident from the temporary ID he crafted for you. Username: fuckmyface. Password: withabarbeddildo. The first thing you do is to change both.

In the meantime you have already done some other work. Immediately after leaving Knouse on Monday you went on a shopping trip for materials for the third spell, doing it while wearing your alter-ego's mask and clothes. (You did this, not because you were expecting to meet Mindy or Cassie or any of the other girls, but simply so you could have fun in your new guise, and also so you could take some selfies to populate your new x2z account with.) Then, the next day after school, you got your homework done early so you could tackle the next spell. You have no idea if it can help you with the crafting of this extra identity, but you figure it can't hurt either.

Fortunately, it doesn't take nearly as long to make as the mask did, and though it takes several hours of grinding tedium, by the time you're ready for bed you have a new dingus to play with.

It's a metal band, about five inches long and two inches wide, made of a strip that turned flexible after you sealed it up between two pocket mirrors and did some incantations over it. The longest and hardest part of the work was the carving of runes into it, for the scratches had to be dug repeatedly into the metal before they would stick and not fade out. The instructions in the book do not say what the thing is for, but it does say that you have to lay it across someone's forehead. You have the foreboding sense that it will knock you out, the way the mask does when you put it on, so you wait until bedtime, when you're between the sheets and blinking in the dark, before you lay it across your brow.

It's the next morning before you wake again, and in your morning muddle you manage to forget about the thing you made until after you've showered, and you have hunt inside the bedsheets, where it wormed itself away during the night, before you find and examine what you made.

The runes have faded from the oily surface of the thing, to be replaced by Roman letters that seem to float above the surface. They spell out your name in full: WILLIAM MARTIN PRESCOTT.

It fairly makes your hair stand on end, and you tuck the thing safely away in the recesses of your calculus book—where no one with any sense is likely to go snooping—after you have laid the thing across the open grimoire, and unlocked the page. On the reverse is only a single sentence, which your phone quickly translates as: to know the mind of another.

* * * * *

"Who's that guy you were talking with?"

It's the break between seventh and eighth periods, and you've bumped into Cassie on your way into Astronomy. Since the weekend you've made a point of talking to her and Melissa before the start of class, and today you ask her about the gay Asian-American guy, who she was chatting with in the hallway outside Mr. Krohling's classroom. She'd broken off to join you as you trudged past on your way to Mr. Cash's.

"Jack?" She giggles. "You know Jack!"

"I don't know Jack."

"Everyone knows Jack!" Cassie insists.

"Everyone else knows Jack, but I don't know Jack."

Jamie Rennerhoff—a grinning lowlife who likes to hang out with the thugs behind the school, and who is loitering now in the classroom doorway—sniggers. "You sure as fuck don't know jack," he says.

You roll your eyes and ignore him as you brush past.

"Jack Li!" Cassie says. "I thought everyone knew Jack! Melissa!" She flops down next to her friend. "Tell Will that everyone knows Jack!"

"Everyone knows Jack," Melissa dutifully repeats, though she's clearly preoccupied with her cell phone. Then: "Here, look at this!" She turns her phone to show Cassie. Cassie takes it, scrolls around the page, then squeals.

It's rude of you, but you twist around to see what's set her off.

Your heart ricochets around inside your ribcage. They found the "Will Chang" profile you set up!

You didn't alert anyone to it, you just set it up last night and added some of those selfies you took. But Melissa has managed to find it already!

All at once, both girls start gabbling. "Oh my God!" Cassie gushes. "Have you DMed him yet?"
"No, but Mindy has." "Mindy always grabs everything first!" "I'm tagging him in on our Warehouse stream." "You sent Jack a link yet?" "Oh my God, I'll do that now!" "No, I want to!"

"Will you quiet down over there?" Stephanie Wyatt hollers from a few seats over. She glares at Cassie and Melissa, who ignore her. "Jeez!"

"It's a guy they like," you tell Stephanie. "But they think he's gay and they're trying to set him up with—"

You trail off. Stephanie is one of the butch girls at school, a member of the girls' varsity basketball squad, and she fixes you with a hard, dull glare that quickly dries you up. After you shrug, she shoots Melissa and Cassie a dirty look, then slumps in her desk and returns her attention to her own cell phone. You move on to your own seat.

There, in the few moments left before class, you surreptitiously log in to the "Will Chang" account to read the handful of DMs that have already accumulated. Most of them are just variations on "Hi!" and "Hey!" but there is one very pointed question in Mindy's DM: Are you at WHS now? How did u an acct here? You cuss at yourself for overlooking that obvious issue. If Will Chang is being homeschooled, how could he get credentials for a Westside x2z account?

* * * * *

You mull it over that evening as you field a barrage of greetings and invites from your new Westside friends. While you do that, and your homework, you also give some thought to the new spell you unlocked, and the item it made.

To know the mind of another. The obvious implication is that it copies minds and memories the way that masks copy bodies. There is no further implication, though, that you can use the spell to merge several different minds together.

But does it only copy memories? Or does it also copy personalities? you wonder. You pull the thing you made out from inside your math book and study it. There's no way to test it on yourself—you'd either have to put the thing onto someone else, to see if they got your mind and memories (and other things), or else you'd have to copy someone else into a new strip and try it on yourself.

The first path would be a bad idea—that person would learn everything that you've done—and you'd have to share your discoveries with them. But as for the second ...

Well, maybe "Will Chang" should get a fake brain to go with his fake body.

Next: "Personalities on Parade" 

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