The Book of Masks (Vol. 2)

The Naked Truth

Previously: "An After-School Ambush" 

Jenny hangs back, but the other girl puts her arms about your shoulders and tries to help you up.

"Come on, Will," she says. "Mr. Montague's gonna be back in a minute, and you need to start getting dressed."

"What— The— Fuck—?" you gasp. You can't help staring down at yourself. Your body has shriveled to nothing. It is small, slim, pale, and hairless, except for the patch where your dick has vanished. Two breasts are dangling off your chest.

"Get ahold of yourself, Will," the girl says. "You need to get dressed—"

"What is happening?"

"I don't know, but we need to dressed!" The girl shoots Jenny a hard look. "Don't we?"

Jenny shakes herself, and resumes putting her clothes on.

The other girl, though she is also only half-dressed, concentrates on you. From a nearby pile of clothing she plucks some tiny panties and a bra. She hands you the panties, which you hold numbly while she slips the bra onto you and binds it into place. "Come on, Will," she growls.

You swallow hard, and slip the panties on. They snap tightly into place, and you nearly faint at the vivid confirmation that you've lost your package.

But once the underthings are on, you find it easier to move. There's not much more to put on: a pair of jeans cut-offs, a tight, sleeveless blouse, and a plaid, long sleeve shirt. Gingerly, with your flesh crawling, you pull them all on, and end by slipping your feet into a pair of flip-flops.

You're just finishing when there's a knock at the door, and Mr. Montague puts his head in. His eyes are averted as he asks, "How are you coming in here?"

"Just about ready, Mr. Em!" the pale-faced girl squeaks back.

He lets his eyes roam quickly over the room, and apparently decides it's safe to enter. He is pale and shaking when he joins you.

"Okay, so tell me," he says in a quavering voice, "what the hell were you all doing?"

"Nothing!" Jenny squeaks.

"Nothing?" he echoes in a strangled voice. "I come back from the office and find four—" He chokes. "Four students, without any clothes on, sprawling on my classroom floor? And that's 'nothing'?"

"We weren't doing anything!" Jenny pleads. There's terror on her face. "I don't—!" She looks at you and the other girl. "What did you see? What did you—?"

"I was just coming back from— Er." The other girl bites her lip. "I was just going down the hallway and I— I mean, I was coming from, er, Ms. Willet's room? Because I got a text to go to the library?" She looks pleadingly at Jenny, then at you. "Remember, uh, Melanie?"

"Yeah," Jenny confirms with a visible gulp. "And I was just coming back from, uh, bringing you my student ID? In the office, like you asked?" she says to Mr. Montague. She touches the back of her head. "And someone hit me."

"Me too," says the other girl. "Like, I was just walking along with Melanie, and it's like I got hit in the back of the head. Like with a bat, it felt like."

Mr. Montague looks at you. "I don't remember," you plead.

The teacher puts his hands on his hips and looks from one to the other of you.

"Okay," he says, "I don't know what's going on here. But you stay out of my room, and you stay away from me. I don't need—" He puts up his hands, as though to push you all away. "And you don't need any trouble either. Okay? I don't want to have to— And you don't either— Report on— You'd all probably get suspended! Or expelled! You understand?"

"Yes sir," Jenny says in a small voice.

"How's your heads feel now?"

"Fine," Jenny mumbles after a pause. "Fine," says the other girl. You mumble, "Okay." It's only then that you notice that that headache is gone.

"Okay, so that's how I know your story is bullshit," Mr. Montague says. "You don't get hit on the back of the head, and then everything is fine. So if I hear one word about this bullshit!" Froth and spittle flies from his lips, and he turns very red. "Just get the fuck out of my classroom. I really ought to report this, I really fucking should. But we'll all just pretend this didn't happen, and your fucking prank just— just— Get out!"

You all flee the room.

Out in the hall, the other girl grabs you around the waist and hauls you down the corridor to the restroom. You flinch when you see it's the girl's room, but she drags you inside.

"Okay, Will," she says. "I know it's a shock, but you need to snap out of it. Okay?" She presses the flats of her palms to the side of your head and puts her face right into yours. "Okay?"

"Okay." You are utterly bewildered, but by this point you're just eager to get your feet back under you. Even if the dainty pink feet in question look nothing like yours.

"Right." She turns you to face the mirrors behind the sinks. "That's you now."

There's two people reflected there. Neither of them has your face.

One is this girl who's been hauling you around. She's dressed in dark, skinny jeans and a sleeveless blouse a lot like yours. Her dark red hair trails limply past her shoulders. She is very pale, and she is wearing too much mascara, but she's not unattractive.

The other girl, whose movements mimic your own—

She's also a red-head, but it's a lighter shade, and it's tied back in a long braid. (So that's what's been bumping against your back all this time!) Her eyes are green and her complexion mostly clear, save for one zit on her chin and another on her cheek. There is something cat-like about the shape of her eyes, and when her eyebrows go up, there's a certain cool slinkiness in her expression, even though she also looks like she's about to vomit.

"Oh, Jesus," you mutter, and her mouth moves in time with yours.

"Okay now, what's her name, Will?" the girl says.

"I don't know. How would I know?"

"Well, you know your name, right?"

"Yeah! But how I would I know hers? I've never seen—" You pause. Maybe you have, but you're not sure. It would have been in the hallways, if you had. "I don't think I've ever seen her. But who are you?"

The girl presses her temples between her hands, and sighs.

"Okay, what do you remember, Will, what do you remember after—" She swallows. "After Jenny left you?"

You shiver. "Well, I was sitting in that classroom, waiting for her to come back. She's the girl out there." Your companion nods impatiently. "And— I think someone snuck up behind me. They knocked my cap off— I was wearing my cap— Oh God!" You grab the sink and fight down the nausea. The girl strokes your back until it passes. "And then it was like someone bopped me on the back of the head."

"You don't remember anything else?"

"No."

"You don't remember being bopped on the head out in the hallway?"

"No!"

"Do you remember being in Ms. Willet's classroom with me? You were working on your project and we were waiting for Eric to show up?"

"Eric who?"

The girl loses what little color is left in her complexion. "Oh God," she says. "Oh Jesus!" She grabs you by the wrist and pulls you back toward the door. "We have to find—

"Okay, hold up," she interrupts herself, and pulls to a stop. She closes her eyes, and appears to count to five. "First of all, you're Will Prescott, right? Even though you look like—"

"I know who I am!" you insist, even though are rippling from head to toe with doubts.

"What were we talking about before I left the classroom?"

"I don't know!"

"Before Jenny left the classroom! You were asking ... her ... about—?"

"We were talking about two friends of ours. Uh, Paul Davis and Yumi Saito."

"Oh God. Okay, that's good, believe it or not. See here's the thing." She swallows, and leans toward you.

"The same thing happened to me and this other girl, what happened to you," she murmurs. "Okay? We got hit on the back of the head, and when we woke up, we were ... different."

"How?" If the world wasn't going crazy, you'd suspect she was.

"The same as you. Different. Except she's now me, and I'm ... her. It's me, Will," she says, tapping her chest. "Jenny. And that girl out there, who looks like me? That's this girl. Brianna Gould. It's like we—" She draws in a deep, shuddering breath. "Swapped bodies."

* * * * *

Well, that tears it, and the girl has to help you stop again from screaming. Because if the same thing that happened to her has happened to you—

The girl—Brianna, you can't help thinking of her as "Brianna," because she looks nothing like Jenny—opens the door and peers out before closing it.

"Okay, he's out there," she says, and shivers. "Brianna is with him. I guess they're ... comparing notes. Like us." She squints at you. "Are you sure you can't remember anything about, um, Melanie?"

"Melanie who?"

"Saxon. She plays in the marching band."

"No."

She looks extremely vexed. "Well, then I wonder what's going on with him."

She starts to open the door, but you grab her. "Do you really think her and me, um, that we switched bodies?"

"Look in the mirror again, Will."

You do. You don't look any different. Feeling weak and ill, you follow Brianna out of the restroom.

There's two figures hunching at the end of the wing, talking. It makes you dizzy to look at them. Because one of them is Jenny Ashton. And the other—

—in his floppy t-shirt, cargo shorts, ratty sneakers, and sloppy ball cap—

—is the spitting image of Will Prescott.

Next: "Streams of Consciousness" 

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