The Book of Masks (Vol. 2)

Caleb the Kirkham

Previously: "A Final Confrontation" 

You're the one holding the mask that you made of Kirkham before you ... did the thing to him. It's not your choice to make, but someone's got to say something.

So you thrust the mask at Caleb. "Put it on," you tell him in a husky voice.

His eyes pop. "What?"

"Someone's gotta be him. He was a motherfucking asshole—" You swallow and flinch as you stare down at the ... thing ... that the spell turned Kirkham into. "But he can't just disappear. Especially 'cos we'd probably get the blame."

"Wh—?" Caleb sputters. "Why do I gotta—? What are you picking me for?" He looks between you and Gordon. "And who says that you get to pick?"

"Just do it. Just for a week, man." You feel cold all over. "You're the only one of us— Me and Gordon— You're the only one of us who hasn't pretended to be someone else."

"Yeah, but I don't wanna be—!"

"Suck it up, Johansson," Gordon growls. "We all gotta pay a price." He glances darkly between you and Caleb. "We'll take turns. But you go first."

Caleb turns red. "How come?"

"Because," you answer, thinking quickly, "you got a replacement back at the school. That thing we made. It obeys you. So we can put your mask on it and it can be you while you're—"

"One of you could put your mask on it!" Caleb retorts in a near-shriek. "Gordon did! He—"

But he abruptly claps his mouth shut as Gordon looms over him.

"It's just for a week," you assure Caleb before Gordon can utter any kind of threat. "And we'll check out the next spell. I assume we unlocked it when we—" You gulp as you look down at Kirkham again. "Maybe there's a way to reverse this."

"Ain't no way," Caleb mutters, "that we wanna bring Kirkham back, not after we set him on fire!" He shivers. "I don't need to turn myself into him to know what he'd think of all this!"

* * * * *

The purple burst of flame that enveloped the room vanished as quickly as it had bloomed, leaving no odor, no heat, no mark of its passage behind, except for what it did to David Kirkham. Where once had lain your lithe, tanned and mostly hairless classmate, there was now something cold and stiff and stone-like. It is the color of the thing you and the other made, now sitting back at the elementary school, and just as rigid. The only difference between it and this is the shape: This thing preserves his face and form so exactly that the closest inspection of his face reveals the pores and the peach fuzz on his cheeks, and each hair on his head seems to have been flash-fossilized in its minute individuation. Caleb even swore, after putting his ear to the thing's chest, that there was the shallowest breath to be detected, but you are dubious. You and the others waited—you feeling ill, and Caleb and Gordon looking it—for a quarter hour to see if he would wake or move or otherwise come to life. He never did.

So you have to conclude that the spell turned him to stone. Apparently, at least. Given the kind of stuff you're working with, you can't really be sure.

* * * * *

You need to get him replaced before someone misses him, and you need to get what's left of him under cover. But after talking about it, you all decided that there's no way you're going to chance moving this ... thing ... until after it's dark, but that you can at least get started on putting his doppelganger into action. So while Gordon waits in the portable and guards what's left of Kirkham, you and Caleb make a run in your truck for the elementary school. You take Kirkham's phone with you, so that Caleb can get a start on researching his upcoming impersonation.

"Oh, fuck me," he says on the drive, as he studies Kirkham's texts. "He's calling you the f-word. In his texts to his friends."

"Fucker?"

"No, faggot. Little faggot wants a fight, el-oh-el."

"Maybe it's some other faggot."

"No, I'm pretty sure it's you." He scrolls back. "Yeah, he's talking about you, here he is setting it up with Mendoza. I want little faggot out here third, you and Thomason get him. Fuck you up if you don't bring him. What a charming motherfucker you're asking me to turn myself into."

"Well, you're not going to do any of that stuff to me after you're him."

"We'll see if I don't. I'm not feeling really happy with you, Will." A minute later he adds, "Huh, here he is telling Mendoza to get his 'motherfucking ass in gear' and start moving some weed. I didn't know he dealt."

"You knew Mendoza deals."

"I was talking about Kirkham."

"Well, why wouldn't he?" You shiver. "He seems the type."

"You think so? It doesn't seem his style to me. It seems more like he'd take than deal. Oh my God."

"What now?"

"Nothing. Just the way he talks to his friends. I sometimes feel like I give you too much shit, but I'm pretty sure it's not as much as he gives his friends. His texts are all dickface this and cunt-mouth that. Listen to this. You ever open that cunt you use for a mouth again and I'll put my—"

"Okay, I don't need to hear this! You're gonna be talking to me that way soon enough, right?"

You catch him giving you a side-eye. "You could be the one putting on his mask, Will."

"Yeah, I could," you admit. "And if we're gonna take turns, I guess I will, if we can't find a way to fix him. But someone's gotta go first—"

"And it's gotta be me. How come?"

"Because I just got back to being myself. Same with Gordon. It's nice being back." Besides, you add, just not aloud, I'm kind of enjoying getting to go up to the loft and be Gordon's friend, and I don't want some magical robot having that fun instead of me.

"Well, I'll do it for a week," Caleb says, "just to be a pal about it. But next Monday, you or Gordon are gonna—"

"What if you wind up liking it?" you shoot back. You don't know why you said it, except to be contrary, but you did.

"Me? Like being this cunt-mouthed dick-face?" Caleb replies, incredulous.

"It can't be that much of a change of pace for you."

He gives you a look. "Fuck you too, man."

* * * * *

The sun is down and the western sky is awash with violets and purples when you and Caleb get back to Westside. You've told your parents that you're eating over at Caleb's, and a new Caleb Johansson has gone home to take your friend's place. Caleb, in a change of clothes that you snagged on your way out to the old school, has finished going through all the most recent of Kirkham's texts. They're all nasty, even the ones to his brother, except for a handful that he has exchanged with Nathan Cruz. That by itself is a surprise, that Kirkham should be on courteous terms with a member of the swim team, but the real surprise, which Caleb only confirmed after checking Kirkham's calendar, is that your nemesis plays and studies the cello, and is a member of an amateur string quartet. It's like discovering that Jeffrey Dahmer dabbles in watercolors in his spare time.

You turn into the teacher's lot, and bump your truck over the curb to drive it between the main building and the Music Annex out toward the portables. Gordon, alerted by text ahead of time, is standing guard at the corner of the closest one. The fossilized David Kirkham is ... "standing" ... next to him, leaning against the wall of the portable.

You and Caleb hop out to help, but Gordon with astonishing ease simply grabs the statue around the hips and groin and heaves it up, so that you only have to lower the gate to the truck bed and then help Gordon lower the thing into the back. You cover it with a tarp, then hop out as Caleb closes the gate. You say nothing as Gordon lumbers back over to the portable, to sweep up a mask and a set of clothes, which he hands to Caleb.

"So what are you two queers gonna do now?" he asks.

You blink at the echo of the epithets that Kirkham liked to throw at his friends, and it reminds you now that not all name-calling is sincere. It depends on context. Only a few weeks ago, if Gordon had called you and Caleb "queers," he would have meant it in the worst possible way, and you'd have taken it that way. Now, it's almost like an endearment, even though his face is a cold and unsmiling mask as he says it.

"I already sent my guy home," Caleb says. There's a slight quaver in his voice, so maybe he didn't read Gordon's insult the way you did. "I guess you can go home, hang out with him."

"I have homework," you say. "I should go home."

"What'll I do?" Caleb then asks.

"Pff! Put the mask on and go back to Kirkham's house. Dur. Oh. Before I forget." From your back pocket you pull Kirkham's wallet, and add it to the pile that Caleb is holding.

"I'm not gonna know anything about him," Caleb protests. "Not if the same thing happens with this mask as with the others. Not until, like, tomorrow morning?"

"You can't do a sleepover at my place," you retort.

"But I could hang out at your place," Caleb says. Then he looks at Gordon. "Or—"

At that moment Kirkham's phone chimes. Caleb almost drops everything as he shifts his burden to take it out. He pales as he reads the text. "Shit, it's his mom, she's asking where supper is. The fuck? I don't have any idea what's supposed to be going on out there!"

Next: "Anticipation and Transfiguration" 

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