The Book of Masks (Vol. 4)

To Know the Mind of Natalie

Previously: "Bands of Silver" 

[Text by Nostrum]

Why does Natalie want to try this so much...? It's a spooky thing, getting into each other's heads.

On the other hand, if you do get into her mind ... Then you'd know why she wants to try this stuff out so much!

Yes, she'd get inside yours, too, into your deepest and darkest secrets. So it's a kind of mutually assured destruction, which you suppose makes it fair.

—

You are cold all over when you pry your eyes open and sit up, and you are surrounded by darkness. There is a smell of old wood and cold grease, and you are sitting on concrete. It is all very startling but for some reason not alarming. I know where I am, you assure yourself. I just have to put my finger on it.

You put out a hand instead. It touches a table and brushes over your phone. You pull it to yourself and click it on.

A text from Lisa is the first thing to pop up: wats up w u n teh ws kid? u collectin karters?

Kid? you think. Why would Lisa call Will a kid?

Then vertigo overwhelms you. Of course Lisa thought I was just a kid! That's why she dumped me!

You clench your eyes shut, for that doesn't make any sense either. Lisa's not talking about anyone who got dumped, unless she's hinting that Adam Karter dumped you. Why else would she compare Karter to Will? Okay, there's a kind of physical resemblance—both skinny guys with a shock of blonde hair and a mouth full of teeth when they grin—but Will isn't anything like Adam. Well, the physical resemblance is probably enough for Lisa Rickover, who is superficial that way, and as for Lisa Yarborough, Will told you that he was the one who broke up with her, except it was really the other way around which is how come you've been walking around with something like the broken-off tip of an arrow lodged in your heart ...

There's a rustle from somewhere else in the basement—

Yes! The basement under the old elementary school, that's where you are!

—and a groan. You shine the phone around, and by it's very dim glow you pick out the naked form of a skinny guy lying atop a nearby work table. He raises his head and peers at you. He has the face of Will Prescott.

And like two fuzzy, flat photographs snapping together to make a crisp 3-D image, you suddenly remember who you are and what's going on.

You make no attempt to hide your own nakedness, even though you've got boobs flopping out.

"So you put your mask on me while I was still knocked out," you tell Natalie Dawkins, which is the boy's real name.

"Yeah," he grunts. "I got tired of waiting for you to wake up, so I thought, let's do it all at once, masks and—" He draws a forefinger across his forehead. "Then I did the same with me." He sits up, stiffly. "Izz'at my phone?"

"My phone now. I was just about to tell Lisa she's full of— Oo!" You dimple at the boy, who has alertly lifted his chin by the fraction of an inch. "Which Lisa do you think I was talking about?"

"How many Lisas do I know?" He frowns deeply. But after a moment he says, "Oh. I see what you mean." Then the side of his mouth goes up in a grin. "Want me to talk to Caleb again, see if I can push him into finding out how come—?"

"Which Caleb? Johansson or Ryerson?"

"Fuck! I don't know no Caleb Ryerson," he jeers. "Just my best bud back at—"

Then, to your mild alarm, he scrambles off the table and catches you up in his arms to hold you close. His ... thing ... traces a line up your thigh as it rises.

You push him back. "Stop that! I wouldn't do that to you!"

"You wouldn't? I think I know what you'd do!"

"I think you don't!"

You stare at each other, breathing hard. You're very aware of the fact that he's taller than you.

"Well, maybe not," he allows. "But it'd be interesting! We could fool around a little—"

"Are you forgetting you've got a curfew?"

He blinks, then rolls his head around on his neck. "Hang on, stuff's still coming. Oh yeah. Huh. That sucks."

"Then we better get dressed." You look around for your clothes. "Where do you want to meet tomorrow, to switch back?"

"I can pick you up from Eastman, like you—I—did today," he chortles.

"Before school. And you can't pick me up at my house, your dad—"

"Your dad!" he corrects you, and waggles his eyebrows at you. "And I think your dad maybe has the right idea about Will Prescott!"

—

"Hi Dad," you call as you switch out your shoes in the foyer.

"Who brought you home?" he asks.

"An Uber! And Kelly's picking me up tomorrow! You don't have to worry about Will Prescott molesting me!"

He flinches a little at the directness of your retort, but consents to let you kiss him on the forehead. Then you breeze into the kitchen long enough to tell your mom that you're stuffed and will be in your room.

It is (as you knew it would be) hung with posters of assorted anime series, and the bookshelves groan with neatly arranged rows of comics and trade paperback omnibuses of manga series in strict order. But one is lying on her desk—a manhwa that Natalie is translating as practice for her Introduction to Korean class.

As usual, she has left Algebra for the last minute, so you settle in to polish that off. You still remember how to do the math, of course, but it's fresher in her mind, and you get the exercises done in a jiffy. You're pleased to note that you are imitating her handwriting exactly.

Afterward, as you are gazing distractedly at her bookcase—and marveling to yourself that I really am Natalie Dawkins and am doing this!—your eye falls upon one title, and you leap out to pull it down for quick glance over. Pretty Face is about a good-natured delinquent—Rando—whose face is repaired after an accident into the exact copy of a girl, Rina, that he likes. Though you’re no Rando—not "violent", as his name suggests, nor as random as she is—you can't help smiling at the similarity of his situation and yours.

You take a quick shower before bed. You’ve been so absorbed trying to act like Natalie that it’s only as the hot water touches you that you again become conscious of her body. Natalie’s no bombshell—certainly no Cindy Vredenburg or Becky Torres—but she’s still rather cute. Supple skin, firm mochi boobs, slim... You feel a hot rush overcoming you as you rub soap all over yourself, and you rinse it off, barely patting off with a towel. Back in the bedroom, you drop the towel to admire yourself in the vanity mirror. You never realized you like freckles so much, and that only makes your innards itch and throb.

You're still wakeful, so you pull out the sketchbook that Natalie uses both to practice her skills and record her life visually. ("My Life as a Manga," maybe.) It records, for instance, the end of her brief stint with the roguishly handsome Adam Karter by showing him leaping at another girl with the same words he had used on her. Round-table gossip-sessions at school with Alyssa Randal and the rest of the "Rumormati" are summarized visually as well, with word and thought balloons showing the ironic contrast between what is said and what (Natalie suspects) is really being thought.

This is all familiar to you, but you are still given pause when you flip to a page dramatizing Gillian and Braydon. Natalie has drawn him as a malevolent warlock seducing and hypnotizing the innocent Gillian, for that is exactly how she sees them. She and Gillian were almost inseparable until the start of summer, when—

You feel your eyes screw up with anger.

Well, there's no other way to describe Natalie's feelings. When Braydon stole Natalie's best friend away, using whatever "dark arts" he's gotten hidden behind his trashy personality. It really does seem like he's cast a spell over her, because why can't she see what a shallow, garbage-y human being he is?

And this is when you finally do feel real embarrassment and a little mortification at being so ... intimate ... with Natalie. You quickly flip through the sketchbook, trying to dodge the recognition that Natalie was pushing you at Gillian because she thought maybe you might come between Gillian and her "hubby."

Well, I don't blame her, you tell yourself, and you're pretty sure you don't.

You stop flipping near the end the sketchbook, when you trip over the sketches that she made of you. You were so distracted that they almost come as a real surprise.

She has drawn you from multiple angles and in multiple poses in a very flattering way, balancing yourself on stilt-like legs like a young deer, with a bashful grin under a shock of hair. She has also imagined you in more flattering clothes. Around the sketches she has written some character notes—"mysterious, spontaneous, level-headed, caring,"—including the note she added last night: "should be wilder." Well, you hope tonight's adventure counts toward that!

And if she really wants you to get wilder ...

Before crawling into bed, you pull out the little box she's hidden under her bed, the one containing the silicone dildo Mandy gave her as a prank.

—

The next morning, Kelly Trask texts to tell you she's running late. Which is very bad, because you need for her to get you to Eastman in time for you to meet Natalie so you can switch back. But now, given Kelley's ETA, there's no way you'll be able to switch back and get to Westside in time for your first-period class.

Next: "Naturally Natalie" 

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"Table of Contents (Vol. 4)" 
"The Book of Masks (Vol. 4)"