The Book of Masks (Abridged)

Inside the Actors' Studio

YOU HAVEN'T FORGOTTEN about the next spell, or the pile of dirt in the school and your need to get the chemicals to complete the spell; but your discovery that you can use the mind bands to alter your social persona is interesting enough that you feel less impatient to get to it. It'll take two weeks or a month of work to scrounge up the money you need, but you feel you can use the time profitably to explore the potential inherent in the mind bands.

So you spend the rest of Monday evening and all of Tuesday evening using the rest of your supplies to make up a small batch of bands. To best use them, though, you'll need the brain of someone who knows the social hierarchy inside and out. It's a grim fact to face, but your best bet would be Charles Hartlein.

* * * * *

He looks up at you with arched eyebrows as you step into the school auditorium. "Yeah?" he drawls.

"I heard you were having, like, tryouts or auditions or stuff?"

"And who told you that?" His tone isn't nasty, exactly, but it insinuates that he isn't pleased that you are a person to whom such word has come.

"I think Sean Mitchell mentioned it." It's another of Sean's eccentric sides: not only is he on the football and wrestling teams, he is in the drama club as well.

"Mm-hmm." Hartlein looks you up and down. "Well, if we were doing The Wizard of Oz, maybe you'd make a good Scarecrow." He sighs. "We could use some help backstage."

"Can't you give me a chance? What are you doing?" you ask, as though you don't know.

"The Man Who Came to Dinner." He sighs again. "We've got one part that isn't too hard. Character is supposed to be as stiff as a redwood anyway." He summons you up to table he's sitting at and points to a script. "Not too hard to do it cold. Let's see what you've got."

You flip through the pages to the place he indicates, and bite your lip when you see the role: It's the part that Sean himself is set to play. On the one hand, that's mighty convenient, since Sean's mind band is still inside your head, but you bridle a bit on your friend's behalf to see that Charles might be blithely willing to give it away. You glance through the familiar lines until Charles taps the table impatiently and asks you to start reading. You launch into them while Hartlein himself reads the other parts.

"Well, not bad," he says when you're done. "Even cold, you're as good as the guy who's supposed to play him." Again, you bridle. "I'll let you understudy for this part and maybe a few others. The father, maybe."

"Do I need to talk to Mr. Wilkes?" That's the theater teacher.

He shakes his head. "Any asshole can walk in. Usually, they do." This time the tone is unmistakably nasty. He stares at you. "Anything else?"

Clearly he's trying to get rid of you, but you refuse to budge. "I'll just look around, if you don't mind. Never been in here before." He makes a face, but doesn't stop you from wandering around the stage and into the wings and then backstage.

You reemerge a few minutes later on the other side, to find him sitting at the table with his back to you, hunched over some papers and marking them. Stealthily you creep up behind him. He senses your presence at the last moment, but you reach around his head and palm the band onto his forehead. Gently, you let his head fall to the table and bend next to him, pretending to study his notes, until the band clatters onto the table again. You pick it up, and quickly and quietly exit through the wings.

* * * * *

Hartlein is openly and rather obviously gay, so he's not popular, but he has a reputation for having his fingers on the pulse of the school. You're not especially eager to bind his mind to yours--if Mitchell's band could turn you effortlessly into a jock, what will Hartlein's do?--so you wait until after work, when you're back at the elementary school, before putting it on.

"Bert Jefferson my ass," you mutter as you peer at yourself in the mirror. You drop into a chair and sneer into the mirror. "My great aunt Jennifer ate a whole box of candy every day of her life," you expostulate, quoting from Hartlein's own role as the title character in the play. "She lived to be 102, and when she'd been dead three days, she looked better than you do now. And now, will you all leave quietly, or must I ask Miss Cutler to pass among you with a baseball bat?"

"Well, not bad," you conclude, and continue to regard yourself in the mirror. You should be quite a lot fatter and older to pull off the role, but it's a goddamned high school performance and besides, you don't really care. The play is an old chestnut that you're putting on only because the parents expect it. You rip the band from your forehead and return home, content for the moment to know that the copying process was successful.

* * * * *

But you've got it with you the next morning, and you step into the restroom before lunch to put it back on. You spotted Eva Garner going into the library, and you think you'll need Hartlein's insolent confidence to broach the subject you want to talk with her about.

"Eva, what was that shit about at my locker the other day?" you ask, dropping your backpack on the table.

She looks up at you in surprise. "What shit?"

"You know, with Chelsea and Kendra." You tilt your head and peer down at her.

She winces. "It was just shit, Will. I didn't even know what she was going to do."

"Well, what was it, exactly, that she wanted to do?"

"She doesn't give a shit about you. It was about Lisa."

"What about Lisa?"

"Not really your business," she says, looking around uncomfortably.

"You mean because she broke up with me. Yeah, and why did she do that, exactly?"

"I don't know. Maybe she just didn't think you were her type." Your own bluntness seems to have encouraged bluntness in Eva.

You snort. "So what is her type? Tall, dark and gruesome?"

Her jaw briefly falls open, then makes a face at you. "Don't be so bitchy, Will. It doesn't suit you."

You force yourself to uncross your arms and lower your chin. "I was just being myself with her. Apparently that wasn't enough. If I knew what she wanted, maybe I could give it to her."

"If you were being yourself and couldn't figure out what to give her, then— Oh, I don't know."

You roll your eyes. "Whatever, Eva. Is Jeremy giving it to you?"

She turns pink. "I liked it better when you had Caleb snooping around for you," she snaps.

* * * * *

As you pass through the halls, it's like you have an antennae crackling in your head. Virgin nerd. Likes it sloppy. Hasn't even discovered girls yet. Likes to crossdress. Bee-yoop, there goes the gaydar. In the latter case you duck to the side so Jason Lynch doesn't see you. That one knows how to give a party. That one steals cars and goes on joyrides. That one is smarter than he pretends to be. That one is just a loser. "Oh hey, Caleb." You lean against the locker next to his.

"Hey." He follows your glance. "What are you looking at?"

You shrug. "Just taking in the madding crowd. I love this dirty school. It's like a--" You search for a metaphor that Caleb will understand that can convey the impressions that Hartlein's mind is giving you. "It's like a giant ecosystem."

He eyes the crowd with you. "A fucking jungle, that's for sure."

The student body was just a bunch of assholes and ciphers when you'd looked at it before. Now you can appreciate it for its subtleties and complexities. It's not just a pyramid with Chelsea and the cheerleaders and Gordon Black and the basketball players at the top, which is all that you could see before. It's dozens of little niches, all unaware of each other, many of which don't even pay attention to the putative A-listers.

That's good, because the only way to become universally visible would be to go out for sports, and a mind band won't give you the body you'd need. But there are lots of interesting little places you could try to fit into. The smart, upwardly mobile set. The brainy, academic striving set. The little clubs of enthusiasts. The partiers. The artsy bohemians. The good kids. The bad kids. The weird, underground ones with interests and fetishes that they will not display or admit to in public. Getting into each, and being known to swim comfortably with each, would be the only alternative to sports, if you wanted school-wide acceptance and familiarity.

But your mind also goes back to what Eva said, about being the kind of person that would appeal to Lisa. Well, maybe you don't want to appeal to Lisa, particularly, any more. But there are more than a few guys who are very skilled at getting girls to notice and like and want to be with them.