The Book of Masks (Vol. 5)

Partners from Crime

Previously: "Stealing a Friend" 

You've thrown the bedclothes across Caleb Johansson's naked crotch, but that doesn't make it any easier when his eyelids flutter open. His brow furrows and he glares at the ceiling a moment before looking over at you.

He does a massive double-take and scrambles away, blinking wildly at you.

Your own heart is exploding out of your chest from anxiety. You struggled all afternoon to figure out what you would say to Owen when he woke in a new body—presuming you didn't fuck up the spell. Yet now that the moment has come (you hope) you've no idea what to say.

Finally, you croak out two words. "Owen? Bruh?"

Caleb blinks and goggles at you. "Owen?" you repeat.

He swallows hard, but only stares at you.

You point to your temple and say, "Do you—? Do you know, um, Owen Smith? Goes to our school?"

He only looks more alarmed, and tenses.

Fuck me, what if I fucked up? you ask yourself. Better try to cover things up!

"We— I— You know the, um, the new thingums we made?" you say. "I put one on, I was testing it on—?" You swallow. "On Oliver Kelly? Well, I made another one and I tried on—" Again, you have to swallow. "Owen Smith. He's Oliver's best friend." You hold Caleb's eye. "And I put it on you. To ... test out. To ... see if it did the same thing to you—" Your heart nearly fails in your chest. "That it did to ... me."

Caleb's eyes go distant, and his mouth forms an "O."

Then he bolts for the bathroom, where he locks himself in.

* * * * *

It's a very fraught quarter-hour that passes, with you talking to him "bruh to bruh" through the door. You do most of the talking, doing your best to fudge the issue of who you are. Whether you are Oliver Kelly, who has possessed the body of Will Prescott, or if you are Will Prescott (friend of Caleb Johansson) who has borrowed the personality of Oliver Kelly. You, naturally, are in no doubt that you're Oliver. But the silences from the guy on the other side of the door fill you with dread and anxiety.

Finally, haltingly, through the door, a brief conversation develops.

You're saying you still got that thing on you that you got off Oliver? he asks.

Yeah.

And you did one of them to Owen, and you put it on me?

Uh huh.

And it's pretty powerful? Like, it makes you really feel like you're Oliver?

Yeah.

And almost, kind of, like you're really him?

Right.

Well, if you were testing it on, um, me, to see— Well, the same thing happened on me. I think.

Really?

Yeah.

It's in this slow, step-by-step series of mutual confessions that you proceed, until at last Caleb unlocks the bathroom door and comes out. He is so pale he is almost green, and when he sits on the edge of the bed he doesn't even bother to cover his nakedness.

"I gotta tell you, bruh," he says in a near-whisper, "it's so fricking weird. I— I feel almost like I—" He looks up at you, eyes wide with terror. "Like I jumped into this body!" He splays a hand over his bony chest. "Like I'm not me anymore, like I'm here instead!"

Relief floods you.

"Same with me, bruh! The whole time, since I— since I woke up like this— I feel like I moved bodies!"

His eyes are so wide they almost start from his head. He licks his lips and says, in a small, faltering voice, "Oliver?"

"Owen?" you reply.

"Uuuggghhhhh! he gasps, and goes limp. Then he leaps at you, and you leap at him. Briefly you embrace before falling awkwardly apart.

* * * * *

After that, everything rapidly tumbles out. You compare notes on experiences, and confirm that both of you are intimately familiar with the memories and personalities of the seniors whose bodies you now inhabit. Owen inquires anxiously about his own body, and what Caleb Johansson might be doing with it. You have to confess that you have no idea, nor do you have any idea what Will Prescott might be doing with yours.

"Bruh, what the fuck?" he exclaims. "You didn't DM him or anything?"

"No, and I never heard from him either! He never came to see me at school, and he could DM me if he wanted to!"

"So why doesn't he want to?"

"Beats the fuck outta me! Bruh!" You feel yourself pale. "What if he likes it where it is?"

Owen stares at you, then shoves you. "No way! No one'd like—"

"So how come he dun't come looking for me? Did he call up at your office? At—" You wave a finger around the bedroom that the Welches share. "At this professor's office?"

"Nuh, I never heard anything. Bruh, this doesn't make sense!" He looks around. "We got all their shit here! They'd want their shit back, right, they'd gotta come talk to us!"

That's true. Unless Will Prescott wants to forget all about his dad and what he did to him, and about fixing it, he'd want to come back and get his shit. And that means talking to you. Because he'd have to know that if his soul is now in your body, that your soul must be in his, and that you know all about this shit.

"Maybe he's scared to," you suggest. "Like, he's scared what we'll do to him."

"We could do it to him anyway," Owen retorts. "Unless he runs away from home."

"Shit! You don't think he'd do that, do you?"

"Bruh, wouldn't you? If you had someone pissed off at you, and they had magical whackjob-thingies to fuck you up with?"

You let your eye turn inward, trying to gauge, based on your intimacy with his personality, what Will Prescott is likely to do. You end up shaking your head.

"Nah, I don't think he'd do that. He'd try talking first. Explaining. Promising to put things back."

Then you cock your head and ask, "Your phone turned on? His friend's gotta had plenty time to figure out what's going on."

Owen dives for the phone buried in Stephan Welch's clothes, but there's no texts from Caleb Johansson—or Owen Smith—on it.

And so you are left baffled.

* * * * *

You spend the balance of the evening speculating fruitlessly over what has happened and why neither of the others involved seems interested in doing anything about it. It looks like it will be up to you to make the first move.

But Owen asks if you even want to do that.

"Bruh," he says, "it's their own fault if they fucked things up. They basically lost their shit and handed it to us. They want it back, they should come talk to us."

"So what do we do, just forget about them?"

"I dunno. Forget about 'em until they stop ignoring us?"

"Yeah, but what if they get up to something? Like do something to our families? I still think we oughta talk to them! I mean, maybe they're sitting around, wondering how come we haven't tried talking to them!"

"Okay, so how do you want to do that?"

The only thing to do, you decide, is to get ahold of them at school, the same way that Will got ahold of you and you got ahold of Owen.

You and he sleep in the same bed, but outside the masks of the Welches, like it's a weekend sleepover, and you don't get dressed as these imposters until the next morning. You are very awkward with each other, and it's with relief that you drive out to the school. But once you are away, you find yourself relaxing.

I'm Shannon Welch, you tell yourself as you lock the car and stride off smartly toward the school. Maybe she doesn't like her job, but I can like being her. Surreptitiously you adjust your blouse and shift your breasts. Fuck me, but I'm really digging these high heels!

Ms. Meek is again very helpful when you talk to her, and agrees to summon Oliver Kelly for another conference.

But it doesn't go well.

"He just kept staring at me," you report to Owen later that night. (You are again out of the masks. It is still strange, because you are not in your own bodies, but at least you don't have any interference from the personalities inside the masks.) "I kept asking him if there was anything he wanted to tell me. If he 'took something' by accident. And he just said—"

You flinch at the memory. Was that what you were really like? A whiny, bleating little kid asking if he's supposed to have done something wrong, because he didn't?

"I told him I'd understand, that I wanted to help him fix it. But he just kept insisting he didn't know what I was talking about, that he hadn't done anything. Bruh, I thought he was gonna start crying!"

"He was scared 'cos we got the magic now?" Owen suggests.

You're glad he interpreted it that way, and not that you are the kind to start crying when a teacher or administrator accuses you of doing something wrong.

"Same thing with his friend, when I talked to him," you continue. "Except he didn't act like he was gonna start crying. He just kept telling me he didn't know what I was talking about. Even when I said I could help out him and his friend Will. He said he didn't know who Will Prescott was!"

Owen spends some time meditating over that. Maybe he uses Johansson's brain, because when he speaks again, it was with a wild idea.

Maybe we should just try taking those metal bands off each other, he suggests. Maybe that will just put things back to normal.

But you are strangely reluctant to try. If you want to go back to normal (you were thinking up at the school), you could just use masks to "replace" the boys who have replaced you.

Unless you don't want to become yourself again.

Next: "Thieves We Be" 

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"Table of Contents (Vol. 5)" 
"The Book of Masks (Vol. 5)"