The Book of Masks (Vol. 1)

At the Mercy of a Dumbass

Previously: "Conspirators Three" 

You might as well take care of the basement now as later, but you're too lazy to. So you tell Caleb that you just want to be a vegetable the rest of the day, and that you'll pick up where you left off on Monday. Besides, until you figure out what you want to do with that one mask, there doesn't seem to be much point in polishing up two more.

* * * * *

Keith is looking very smug on Monday morning when you see him second period. He's holding something up between his fingers as you trudge in, but you ignore him until after you've dropped into your desk. "You left this in the place on Saturday," he says.

You blink at the dirty copper key he's holding out, then take it with a mumbled "Thanks." "Yeah," Keith drawls, "you're kind of careless about that place."

"I haven't been back there since, like, a year."

"Yeah, but you're still kind of careless." There's a gleam in his eye as he says it, a gleam you don't like, but he doesn't elaborate. Instead, he changes the subject. "Oh, I talked to Mike and Carlos about you yesterday."

"Mike and Carlos?"

"Yeah. You know, Hollister and Montoya."

"Oh, them." You can place the names as a couple of guys you vaguely know, and who you share English class with. "What about them?"

"I talked to 'em about you," Keith says. "About doin' extra credit in this class."

"You what?" You turn around almost all the way in your chair to stare at him.

"Dude!" He gives you a pitying look. "You know you need it. I mean, I do, and if I do then you do too!"

You make a face, but don't argue. "What kind of extra credit?"

"Makin' a video for 'em!"

"What kind of video?"

"Fuck! For their channel!"

"Mr. Tilley," a deep voice booms out, and you turn to see the teacher, Mr. Hawks, glaring at you and Keith from behind his desk. He's tall, sere man with piercing gray eyes, close-cropped white hair, and a frown like a thunderstorm. He looks like he must be seventy (though a well-preserved seventy), but he still looks like he has the sinewy strength to snap a mouthy high-school student in half with his bare, gnarled hands.

"This classroom is not rated for gutter talk," he growls, his voice deep like a couple of boulders grinding against each other. "Still less for gutter talk carried out at a shout. Take it outside if you must persist. And if you do take it outside," he darkly adds, "take an absence for the day."

After he's turned back to his paperwork, you glance back to find Keith shrinking so far down in his chair that he's practically on his shoulder blades.

* * * * *

You've forgotten what Keith told you in second period—and would have ignored it if you hadn't—but when you get to fourth you hear your name shouted, and look over to see Mike Hollister beckoning to you.

Mike is one excitable-looking dude. His hair is a reddish gold trimmed back into short spikes, so that his scalp looks like it is on fire, and the impression of burning is only amplified by his choleric coloring. He is always flushed in the face, from a light pink when he's relaxed to a fire-engine red when he's excited. Right now he looks somewhere in between, like a just-ripening tomato. His pale eyebrows fade to invisibility against his reddening brow.

"Keith was out at our studio yesterday, talkin' about you and him maybe making a extra credit video for Mr. Hawks's class," he says. "'Z'at true?"

You blink at him. "I dunno. What did he say?"

"Wha'd he say?" Mike looks surprised. "What I just said. That you and him maybe want to make a extra credit video for Mr. Hawks."

You make a face. Loathe as you are to admit it, Keith is right, you could use some extra credit in a class that you thought was going to be easy. "Well, how would that work?" you ask.

"I dunno," Mike says. "Only me and Carlos— Hey!" He nods at someone behind you, and you turn to see Carlos Montoya sauntering up. Carlos is one of those guys who could be Hispanic, Italian, or just a very tanned dude. His only other notable feature is the slight fauxhawk that he's shaped his coffee-colored hair into. "I was tellin' Will here what we were tellin' Keith yesterday."

"What, about gettin' a couple of cheerleaders on the channel?" Carlos says as he drops heavily into a desk.

"No! About how they could make a extra credit video."

"Oh, sure." Carlos turns a friendly but rather tired gaze up at you. "You and Keith just come in, by yourselves or together, and we'll film you talking about whatever movie you want. We'll put it up on the channel, and you give the link to Mr. Hawks. But after that we're gonna private it or take it down. You got a movie picked out?"

All of this is news to you, of course. "I barely even talked to Keith about this!"

"Oh. Well, get it straight with him and then let us know." He turns back to Mike. "Dude," he groans, "I was up till two editing!"

You go over to your seat by Caleb, who asks what you needed to talk to Hollister and Montoya about. "Keith's being a dipshit again," you mutter. "Oh, did I tell you? He almost locked my key in the basement yesterday. Yeah, when he put the padlock back on. I left the key down there, but he found it before he left or something." Caleb grunts, and asks if you want to go out to there after school. "Sure," you sigh. "But let's not tell Keith."

But it turns out Keith has something to tell you.

* * * * *

"So, I mean, I just saw her out by the athletic fields! Sitting on the bleachers!"

Keith's face is chalky white, and his eyes are bugging out of his head. His voice is strangled.

And if this is him now, after calming down, you wonder what he must've been like in the midst of a real panic.

His phone call came just as you were pulling into your driveway. He was nearly hysterical, and you had to tell him multiple times to calm the fuck down. At last, he made it clear he wanted to see and talk to you and Caleb. Where? After gulping down a couple of lungfuls of air, he suggested the old basement. And he asked you to call Caleb. He wouldn't say any more.

You and Caleb had a good long wait before he drove up. His car wobbled and bumped to a stop like it was driven by a drunk, and Keith himself was visibly shaking as he got out. His eyes were staring and his mouth working, and it was some time before you could get even a word out of him. At last, in drips and drabs, it came out.

He'd been loping out to his car, which was parked out in the sticks at school, when he chanced to spot her sitting on the bleachers looking out over the athletic fields. And he had with him that blue mask you had polished up and shown him—

Oh, right. He had to explain that bit too, how he came out to the basement on Sunday and fiddled the padlock open and looked around, and on a lark he took that mask out with him along with the key you'd left there. He kept thinking about what you'd told him about the mask, about how it would "absorb the form" of someone who put it on. He still didn't believe you, of course, but he thought it would be funny if he pushed it into someone's face and then told you after that he'd tried it out on someone and nothing happened—that'd really call your bluff.

Anyway, he tried on himself first, and nothing happened except that when he put it on his face it cut off his oxygen, or maybe he was a lot more tired than he thought he was, but he suddenly woke up as though from a deep sleep with the mask still resting on his face. That didn't prove anything, of course, so he took it to school with him today. He mostly forgot about it, but as he was going out to his car he saw her up on the bleachers by the athletic fields, by herself, bent over her phone. So he got the gleefully wicked idea to try sneaking the mask onto her as a joke. He always kind of liked her, and even if she got pissed and starting punching him, it would be fun to laugh and run away from her ...

So he managed to sneak onto the bleachers and got behind her without her really paying attention to him—she was really into her phone—and he got the mask onto her and—

Keith almost goes to pieces when he comes to this part.

Well, it was like the mask mashed down inside her face and disappeared! And then she fell over and almost rolled off and under the bleachers! He barely caught her, and he freaked out and just sat over her trying to wake her up, but she never did, and he couldn't find the mask and he didn't have any idea what was going on, and—

He's almost weeping as he describes this part of things.

—and he was on the point of going to find someone when suddenly there was the mask again, resting on her face. He pulled it off her but by now he was so scared that he just took the mask and ran to his car and drove off and called you.

He doesn't even know if the girl's alright.

You and Caleb look at each other. The thing to do, of course, is to check up on her, by calling her first. Except you don't have her contact info. And, anyway, you're as scared of her as Keith says he is, and you don't think it would be fun to get punched out.

Because Stephanie Wyatt—girl jock; the female equivalent to guys like Seth Javits and Gordon Black—is exactly the type who would punch you.

Next: "Like a Key in a Lock" 

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