The Book of Masks (Vol. 3)

The Gossip Girl

Previously: "Helping Him Helping You" 

You don't need any more rumors about Kim and Steve, thank you very much, and you tell Number Three that he can do whatever Steve would do while you take care of some other business. He shrugs, and goes back to practicing free throws.

Your mind is more or less made up for you shortly afterward, when Chelsea texts to say that she is ninety percent sure of who made those posts about Kim and Steve: It was Kelsey Blankenship. Why does she think that? Because, she explains over the course of several texts, that anonymous account has been used to make other salacious posts that Chelsea credits to Kelsey.

You're not sure you buy her reasoning—it sounds circular—but you find it plausible. Kim has caught Kelsey at a couple of underhanded things in the past, and it would be very much in character for her to have made the posts. Probably, you reflect, this is Kelsey's revenge for your failure to help her out with that bake-sale fundraising idea.

But Kelsey doesn't know who she's really dealing with, does she?

* * * * *

Kelsey is too busy to see you today (she tells you when you text) because she's got her regular Saturday night party to set up. (And why doesn't she invite you out? You don't ask.) And as for Sunday, well ... She won't know what she is doing Sunday it comes, lol.

So you spend the bulk of Saturday night making another mask while thrashing out with Chelsea, by phone, the kind of choice morsel will not only make Kelsey bite on your hook, but hurl herself from the water and into your frying pan. Eventually, you come up with a story that is calculated to the micron to be irresistible.

But she doesn't take it.

"Oh, for God's sake," she sneers when you phone her Sunday afternoon and dangle it in front of her. "Kim, I swear, sometimes you can be so gullible!"

"How am I being gullible?" you demand. "Chelsea said—"

"If Chelsea said it, you're gullible to believe it! That's just the way she is."

"Well, she's not trying to convince me!"

"She doesn't have to, you already swallowed it. Kim, I don't know how you think you're going to get ahead in politics or whatever if you're just going to— I can't even, sometimes, with you!"

"Would you like to explain it to me?" you growl out through grinding teeth.

"Pah!" You can practically hear her eyes roll. "You're just a trivial little gear in Chelsea's schemes, Kim, I don't have to explain anything to you. This is all about her getting at me!"

Could the girl be any more like herself than with what she just said? Kelsey, Kelsey, Kelsey, it's always about Kelsey!

But she continues. "So if I say 'No' to this Spirit Club thing—"

"Mentors' Club."

"Whatever. This Mentors' Club JV Cheerleader bullshit. If I say 'No', I won't help, then that makes me the bad guy, and Chelsea gets to go around talking about how I have no school spirit, and I'm selfish, and jealous of her and everything else."

"So say 'Yes'."

"Which is exactly what she wants, because then she gets to sabotage and sandbag me! I'll need her help with it, but she won't give it. Or she'll find ways to fuck it up for me. And then it'll all be, Look at Kelsey, she couldn't make it work, even with all the help I gave her! And then she'll get me kicked out and she'll get Kendra or Gloria or you to take it over, and then magically it'll all turn out great! It's a no-win situation for me!"

"So instead you're going to say 'No,' and let her go around calling you selfish and jealous and lacking in school spirit."

"I'm not going to say anything!"

"Which is the same as saying no!"

"Who the fuck's side are you on, Kim? Who the fuck's side?"

Chelsea snickers when you call her afterward with the news. "Oh my God, Kelsey's no dummy!" she giggles. "That's totally what I would have done! That was actually an idea I— Well, an idea Chelsea had, but never did anything with. That's how come I had it all ready to go for you! Well," she sighs, "give me a little while, boss, and I'll see if I can come up with another idea for you."

But you come up with one on your own.

* * * * *

Anthony Kirk is one of Kelsey's country club cronies, a preppy with close-cropped blonde hair and a golfer's tan; the kind of guy who even for school dresses in polo shirts and slacks and loafers. You yourself always thought him a snob, though a marginally less repulsive snob that Geoff Mansfield or Martin Gardinhire, because at least he only ignored you instead of sneering at you. Which in a way made it worse.

Kim, though, always found him polite and decent and friendly. Quiet and maybe a little smug on account of his grades and his family's long-time membership in the city elites, but always there to help out.

So an hour later he's helping out by giving you a ride to Kelsey's estate. You have given him the story, and it's left him shaking his head.

"She's paranoid," he says. "I mean, I've heard stories about Chelsea, but nothing like that. A whole plan to make a JV cheerleader squad, paid for through the Mentors' Club and volunteer work, just to humiliate Kelsey by— How again?"

"Sandbagging her if she says 'yes,' and attacking her if she says 'no'."

"Oh, Jesus. What do you think, Kim?"

"I think there's something else going on, but Kelsey won't talk to me."

He gives you a sidelong look. "Is there some kind of bad blood between you and her?"

"I don't know. I couldn't help her with a bake sale idea she had—"

"Oh, God, I heard about that, too. With Brianna Kirschke's parents? That was never going to work!"

For the first time—maybe because of a sudden similarity you see between Kelsey's bake-sale idea and the JV cheerleader squad proposal—you wonder about that. "Maybe it wasn't supposed to work," you muse aloud.

"What do you mean?"

"Oh, nothing. I'd sound paranoid if I told you. Can you pull around the other way?" you ask as Anthony starts to turn into the carriage drive that circles in front of Kelsey's house. "That way she can't see me from her window."

Anthony obliges, and also gets out to push the button on the intercom that connects to Kelsey's wing of her stupidly big house, out here in the country where the "horsey set" live. He talks into it, then returns to the car with a big thumb's up. "Thanks, luv," you tell him as he climbs in and you climb out, hefting your bag with you. "You're like a butterscotch teddy bear."

"I'll pretend I like butterscotch, then," he grumbles good-naturedly.

You push open the double front doors (now unlocked) and step into the immense entry way behind them, turning only long enough to wave at Anthony before he drives off. There are four arched exits leading out: to a living area, the dining kitchen area, the wing with the master suite, and the wing where Kelsey has her suite. The staircase leading up to the latter is directly on the other side of the arch, and as she descends you get to see Kelsey's long, slim, summer-tanned legs before the girl's head comes into view.

She's beaming until she sees it's you; then her face falls. "What are you doing here, Kim?" she demands.

"Having it out with you. And Anthony's on my side, so don't bother bitching at him." You brush past her up the stairway, bumping her shoulder with your bag. At the top is her suite: a short corridor with doors leading to her bedroom, her bath, and the "game room" where she entertains her friends. It's into this one that you stride.

You're waiting by the plate-glass window overlooking the giant back yard when she appears in the doorway. You crook a finger, and she steps all the way inside. So you make the long walk over to push the door shut, then return to the game table where you had set your bag. You point to one of the seats.

"Sit down, Kelsey. I want to talk to you about the shit you've been spreading about me online, and about Karl and what you've been doing with him at the Donna."

She pales at the revelation that you know about her shenanigans at the motel, and walks stiffly over. She doesn't sit, though, until you push her back against the chair. Even after she's set herself in it, she sits straight and rigid and glares at you.

You pull out the mask you finished last night, and it feels so good to mash it into her face.

* * * * *

"Who told Kelsey about me and Steve?"

"Kendra Saunders."

"How did Kendra find out?"

"She didn't tell Kelsey how."

"Kelsey just believed her?"

"I don't know. I guess she wanted to believe it."

"Why did she post about it online?"

"It was dirt. She used to post every bit of dirt she could find on Kim."

"Why?"

Number Four's gaze goes distant.

"She never asked herself that," she answers after a lengthy and searching pause. "She just did it." Her gaze refocuses on you. "Maybe t's like something she once told Amanda. I get a sour stomach every time I look at Kim."

Well, Kim and Kelsey are both gone and replaced, and so is the animosity between them. But if what Number Four has told you is true, it would look odd if "Kelsey" stopped undercutting Kim behind her back, so you instruct the doppelganger to continue doing as Kelsey had been doing.

"Sure thing, boss," Number Four says. "Is there anything else I can do to help out?"

You sit beside her, and explain your plans. She drinks it all in with deep fascination, looking more and more like the real Kelsey as you outline how you intend to get control the school by duplicating and replacing key people. People like the girl whose place she has taken.

Next: "Stormy Weather, Part 1" 

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