The Book of Masks (Vol. 1)

Faces All Around

Previously: "Your New Face" 

No one you know comes into the restaurant, so the meal is actually pretty boring. Afterward, you all return to the school so you can take off the mask. Caleb shows you how: it involves grasping your own forehead with your forefingers at one temple and your thumb on the other, and pulling while chanting some weird phrase three times. The first few times you try, your hand slips. But eventually you succeed. The act of taking the mask off knocks you out, but you emerge restored and apparently no worse for wear.

Keith is hot to take the mask home so he can try it out, but you and Caleb refuse to let him, telling him it's too risky, and he sulks when you press the newest mask onto him with orders to start polishing it up: The sooner you get it polished, Caleb tells him, the sooner you can start having fun with us. Caleb takes his own nearly completed mask home also. The false face that Keith made you leave in the basement, hidden inside a desk drawer along with all your supplies. You then break for the night.

You yourself take the book home with you, but you don't get much time with it, because your dad is instantly on your ass about your homework. You make a half-assed job of it, because you don't have much time before bed and you want to at least glance at the next spell. It's a disappointment when you do, for a quick study of the ingredients shows that it calls for a completely new batch of materials, which you don't have the money for. Caleb probably doesn't have the money for it either, which would leave you at Keith's mercy. But you suppose that something will turn up, maybe after you've finished those other masks.

* * * * *

Keith is kind of a dick at school the next day, peevishly asking you in second period if you and Caleb are gonna take the "thing" out and have fun with it after school while leaving him with "scut work." You'd like to tell him to suck it up, but content yourself with telling him that the sooner he gets done working on his "thing" the sooner you all can go out and have "fun" together.

Still, he's got the sulks at lunch, which may be in part because you warned Caleb that he was in a mood, and so instead of going off to eat with just the three of you (as you commonly do), you and he decided that you'd all be joining Carson Ioeger and his friends out on the quad in front of school.

Carson and James Lamont are a couple of math-science whizzes, but they are more than that. They're troublemakers, the kind of guys who use their smarts for pranks at the expense of the jocks and bullies of the school. (They once somehow managed to glue Seth Javits's shoes to the floor of the school library while he was still in them.) They are tall and lanky, like you and your friends, but also sharper and more insolent. They don't scare you with their brains and their arrogance, but you are always aware, when you're around them, that they are smarter and more confident than you are, and that they know it.

It's never just them out front at lunch, though. Almost always they are joined by Paul Davis, a quiet, dark-haired kid who's like their pet, and Jenny Ashton, a loud-mouthed tomboy who James openly has a crush on but who studiously ignores him.

Today—Tuesday—they are lounging on the grass with sandwiches, chips, and apples, and are waspishly gossiping about a celebrity visit. "You'd think it was Tom Cruise or RDJ who stopped by," Jenny is saying. She's hunched cross-legged over her cell phone with her long brunette hair hanging almost over her face. (The red ball cap she usually sports is lying on the grass by her knee.)

Carson is leaning on his elbow, long legs stretched out, jawing on a sandwich. "Maybe it was one of them," he muses. "Has anybody ever seen them and this other guy in the same place at the same time?"

"Nobody knows who he is," Jenny retorts. "Except the drama club. They're the only fans he's got, probably," she snorts.

Caleb, as he plops down, asks what they're talking about.

But they ignore him. "How come Tilley's always getting credit for our shit?" Carson asks him. "Nice to see Seth let you come down off the gym roof," he snorts at Keith.

Keith glares. "Fuck you, man," he says. "I almost broke my neck getting down."

"Serves you fucking right for glory jumping."

"I told Javits it wasn't me that glued his books together, but he didn't believe me!"

"Yeah, he's a dumbass," James says. Like Jenny, he is hunched over his phone. "We even made a point of doing another glue prank so he'd know it was us again."

"He's got it in for me, is all," Keith mutters darkly. It does seem like there's hardly a week goes by that Seth Javits, a rangy basketball player with a nasty streak, isn't hassling Keith. "He told me the next time he sees me he's gonna use my face for a backboard."

"Looks to me like he already did," Carson drawls. Keith flips him off.

"But who were you talking about a minute ago?" you ask Jenny. It makes you tired to hear Keith complain.

"Paul Griffin."

"Who?"

"Exactly," she says as Carson laughs asthmatically. "He was on a TV show. Enchanted U." You shrug at the name. "Anyway, he went to school here way back when, and he's back in town visiting family or something, so he stopped by to say hi, and the whole freaking drama department is peeing themselves over it." She squints at you. "You still hang out with Laura MacGregor?"

You blink at a name you haven't really thought of in a year or more. Laura used to hang out with you and Caleb and some other people, but you wound up taking totally different classes and sort of drifted apart without noticing, you now realize. When you shake your head, Jenny says, "Huh. I thought you guys were going out for awhile."

"No," James jumps in, "that was Lisa Yarborough." He's still hunched over his phone, so he doesn't see you flip him off.

"Anyway, Laura's one of the ones making an O-face every time his name gets mentioned," Jenny says. "It sets my teeth on edge."

"I don't know why you're paying attention," Carson says.

"'Cos they're all over my feed," Jenny grumbles.

"What's this guy's name again?" Caleb asks. He's taken his own phone out, and taps at it when she repeats the name. "Is he still in town?"

"Beats the fuck outta me. Why do you wanna know?"

"Because he's a celebrity. Even a minor celebrity, you know—"

"If you ever caught me," Carson loudly announces, "creaming myself over a 'minor celebrity,' I'd kill myself from the shame of it."

After lunch, as you're heading back into the school, you ask Caleb why he's so interested in this Paul Griffin character. In answer, he takes out his phone and shows you a picture. It's of a raven-haired guy with a piercing gaze: handsome enough, you suppose, in a TV actor kind of way. "So?" you ask him.

"Just thinking it'd be an interesting kind of face to have in a mask," he muses. "I'm gonna have mine done in a day or two." He glances around, and that's when you notice that Keith has drifted off. "We'll be lucky if Tilley's got his done by the end of the year," he snorts.

* * * * *

You and your friends had talked about meeting at the old school after classes, but Keith has made himself scarce. So it's just you and Caleb out there for the first half hour or so, with Caleb tugging his lip as he studies the next spell, when you hear a crunch of tires outside. A moment later the basement door bursts open and Keith comes clattering down the stairs. "Guys!" he gasps with a grin. "I did it again! 'Cept this time I knew what I was doing!"

You and Caleb stare at him dumbfounded, and even after he's held up the mask you have to ask him what he's babbling about.

"This thing!" he enthuses. "I finished it last night and brought it to school today just in case, and I had a chance after school, so I grabbed it!"

This still doesn't make any sense, and it somehow makes even less sense after Caleb has wheeled, shoved his way through a lot of desk drawers, and pulled out the mask you were wearing last night. You do a double-take between it and the mask in Keith's hand. Like the one you made, it is a deep, glowing blue.

"Shut up," Caleb tells Keith as the latter starts babbling again. "Is that—? Is that the mask you were supposed to polish? How'd you get it done so quick?"

"With a car buffer," Keith says. "You know, one of those things you use on a car, buffs it all up after you wax it?"

"You used a—?"

"Isn't that what you guys did?" He snorts when you and Caleb exchange a glance. "Yeah, you guys were all, like, it'll take you a week to finish, and I knew you were full of shit 'cos it only took me an hour—"

"So why were you bitching this morning about being stuck with 'scut work'?" you demand.

"'Cos I knew you and Caleb were just giving me shit to do so you two could ditch me or something," Keith retorts. "So I went out and made my own fun. I tracked down Jenny after school, like I did with Stephanie, and look!" He points at the mask.

You and Caleb glance at each other, then scramble over to grab the mask from him.

"So," Keith asks smugly, "which one of you assholes wants to put your face in it with hers?"

* To let Keith put his face into it: "Keith Does It Again" 
* To seal it as is: "Unmasked Desires" 

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