The Book of Masks (Vol. 3)

A Banquet of Babel

Previously: "A Heel Turns" 

"What happened to you?" Keith asks at the start of lunch. You're at your locker when he comes sidling up, and his question gives you a start. Is there something the matter with your face? Did the fight with Chen leave you with bruises?

But it turns out he just wants to know where you were second period. "Yeah, you missed a good one," he drawls. "Mr. Hawks got really sarcastic with me." You just grunt.

Caleb joins too as you squeeze your way through the crowded hallways. "I wanna eat with Carson and them," he says. That would be Carson Ioeger, James Lamont and Paul Davis, who like to eat out on the front quad. Jenny Ashton is usually with them, and sometimes—

Your heart goes whump in your chest. Sometimes Yumi eats with them too. Sometimes Eva and Jessica do as well, since they're all friendly with Jenny. (And friendly with Carson and James, to an extent. (At least to a greater extent than they are friendly with you. (Which wouldn't be hard.)))

So whereas Keith says, "Somethin' wrong with our company, Johansson?" you say, "Sounds good to me."

"Great," Caleb replies without any obvious enthusiasm. "And there's nothing wrong with you, Tilley, that a personality transplant wouldn't fix."

As usual, the crew you're looking for is already lounging on the grass between A wing and the library. Carson and James sprawl lazily on their sides, while Paul hunches up and directly watches the girls.

It's multiple girls today. Yumi is there, and another girl who has her back to you, and a third girl with long, shimmering blonde hair. You can't identify that last one until she turns her profile toward you.

"Holy shit," Caleb snickers as you approach. "It's Cindy!"

Your jaw slackens. It sure is. Cindy Vredenburg, a hot-as-burning-ice cheerleader, and one of the most desirable girls in school. She's one of those girls who occasionally eats with Jenny, but it's a rare thing nevertheless.

Keith stops dead. "Yeah, I think I'm gonna go eat somewhere else," he says. He gets a stricken look and starts backpedaling.

"Cindy won't beat you up," Caleb says.

"But what if her if boyfriend shows up?" Keith retorts. And, as if he's afraid even that indirect reference might summon his special nemesis—Seth Javits, Cindy's beau, and a basketball player who has made the torture of Keith his special project for a couple of years now—he wheels around with a look of alert panic and sprints back the way you all came.

Caleb rolls his eyes and on an equally rolling gait lopes on toward the company.

"Hola!" Carson calls as you approach. "Como esta bien? Y tu madre? Cui bono y adios, muchachos!"

"Someone fuck up your language module, Ioeger?" Caleb asks as he drops onto the grass.

"Carson lost a bet," Paul says. His tone is disapproving. "He's not allowed to speak English today."

"Then he must'a lost the bet a long time ago," Caleb says as he pulls his lunch from a brown paper sack.

"Yo pero est un cabrio maquis. Comprende?"

"What language is that?" you ask.

"Fake Spanish," says James as he takes a bite from an apple. "Thank God. Him and Christian Knouse were babbling High Elvish at each other before school."

You turn your attention to the girls, who are staring very intently at a patch of ground between them without talking. Except for the third girl, the one who looks familiar but whose name you don't know. She gives you a vacant smile before turning back to the others. "Maybe it doesn't mean anything," she says.

"Oh, it means something," Yumi replies. Her tone is very dark. "It always means something when Chelsea's being nice."

"She's always been nice to me."

"You're not on the cheerleading squad. No one on the squad is ever good enough for Chelsea."

Cindy stretches out onto her side and sighs. "And she's had it in for me ever since, well, ever."

Normally you'd concentrate your attention on Cindy, who is slim and bosomy and has sheets of platinum hair cascading down the sides of a her face. But instead, under lowered brows, you turn your attention to Yumi.

She is small and springy and Japanese, with a pixie-ish pie-pan face under a short, dark bob. Despite her stature she is powerfully built with strong thighs and calves, but there's nothing troll-like about her hourglass figure. Her eyes flash as they rake past your face when she turns to answer a question from Paul. "Maybe someone finally straightened her out?" he says.

"You don't know what you're talking about," she snaps. "No one can straighten out Chelsea. She thinks she's perfect and that her job is to remind us of it by highlighting our shortcomings."

"But maybe someone told her—"

"Oy! Paolo! Du mouthenstein ist attracten zie bluenflein gesesalstach. Schottenzie aer stupido provenmach douten feharenver!"

"What he said," Jenny interjects.

"Chelsea was being nice to you?" you ask Yumi. "When?"

"This morning during practice." Yumi wrinkles her nose. "All cooing and going on about how good me and Cindy were, how we were such a credit to the squad." She turns to Cindy. "No offense, but I thought you were a little off, and I kept feeling like my feet were about to go out from under me."

"I was off," Cindy sighs. Her eyes are locked onto the grass. "Me and Seth ..." She trails off.

That signals a change in the conversational topic. You lapse into a thoughtful silence of your own while eating your lunch.

It's a well-known fact around school that Chelsea Cooper is more than a little bit of a bitch. You've seen enough of her behavior over the years to be of the same opinion, but you've also seen enough of her behavior up close recently to have developed a more, well, nuanced opinion. She is brusque and impatient and demanding. But when she's not being that way she's also got ...

Breasts. Huge breasts. And big eyes. And great legs.

You twitch. No! What you were trying to remind yourself that she's also got—

Well, it would be wrong to call it a "caring" side. But she was very interested in you and your problem with Lisa yesterday, and she spent a long time talking to you about it and getting you to better understand your own feelings.

And she even wants to use the magic to help you out, instead of hogging it to herself.

As for her being "nice" today toward Yumi and Cindy—which, from what you've heard in the past from Yumi and Jessica and Eva, is a real rarity—it could be that her newfound habit of being nice to you has rubbed off on her attitude toward them.

But it doesn't take you long to settle on another, more cynical hypothesis. She is setting it up for you to "body swap" with one of these girls, so it would make sense if she "spread a little sugar" as a prelude to inviting them out to her house.

When Yumi and Cindy get up to go, you scramble up to follow them. "Hey, can I ask you a question?" you ask Yumi.

"Knock yourself out."

"It's about Lisa." Your throat tightens as Yumi shoots you a hooded glance from way down where her face is. "You still hang out with her?"

"Sure, I guess." Her pace quickens, and you have to quicken yours.

"Like, how often?"

"I don't know, Will. I don't keep track in my workout journal."

"Well, you were hanging out with her yesterday, and—"

"I was?"

"After school? In the library?"

"Oh yeah."

"Yumi, slow up," Cindy complains. "What's the rush?"

"Well, I know you used to hang out with her a lot over the summer. You and her and Jessica and Eva." You give Cindy a sidelong glance. "You too," you add, but Cindy ignores you. "I was just wondering if that was still a regular thing."

"I guess so," says Yumi. "Will, is this going any place?"

"Um, well, I was thinking, maybe, we could get together to talk sometime? When Lisa's not around and you're not busy with—"

"Lisa's not around now. What do you want to talk about?" She picks up the pace again.

It's pretty clear she's trying to lose you, so you just mumble, "I'll try to catch you later," and drop back behind. Neither she nor Cindy slow down or look back for you. You hear them talking in low tones, and your ears turn red. They're likely talking about you.

Well, fuck it and fuck them. You found out what you wanted, that it wasn't a rare thing for Yumi to be with Lisa. That and the cold attitude Yumi has just shown to you firm up your intention to go through with that body swap. You shoot Chelsea a text confirming that you want the swap to go through that night.

But that will mean getting two more masks done. You can cut that down to one mask, though, if you can get the mask of you that Caleb surely has at his house.

So when you pass Caleb in the door to the library between sixth and seventh periods, as he's exiting his study hall and you're entering your, you pause to regard him speculatively when he asks, "What'd you run off with Yumi and Cindy for after lunch?"

You can sneak over to his house after school. No one will be there, and you know where the spare house key is.

Or you could take him into your (and Chelsea's) confidence, and arrange for him to have a body swap as well. He was clearly interested in it back when he had the book, before he lost it to Gordon. He couldn't get with Chelsea through Gordon, but you could surely arrange for him to get close to Cindy through Seth.

* To continue: "Masked Masks" 

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"Table of Contents (Vol. 3)" 
"The Book of Masks (Vol. 3)"