The Book of Masks (Abridged)

Confusions, Confessions, Temptations

ACTUALLY, YOU DON'T MAKE ANY CONSCIOUS DECISIONS about what to do—or what not to do—so on Monday afternoon, when Gordon hauls you into the bathroom to tell you that he's got a bunch of sandbags that need to be moved from his VW Bug into your truck—

"Right now?" you squeak. He's got you pinned inside one of the toilet stalls, and even though he's only a duplicate of Gordon, he's enough like the real one that you can't help squeaking when he glares at you.

"When the fuck else would I mean? If I say I got—"

"You weren't supposed to pick them up until tonight!"

"You arguing with me, you little shit?" he snarls, and bends your head toward the open toilet. "I say I got—"

"Alright, alright! I'll help you move them!"

"Uh-uh." He pushes your head down until your nose is only an inch from the quivering water. The stench of piss and dirty porcelain fills your nostrils. "You're gonna move that shit and I'm gonna watch. Chelsea didn't say nothin' about me having to move it, only about me getting it and bringing it up here."

You accede (like you have a choice) and Gordon, with his hand clapped on the back of your neck, frog-marches you down the front hallway that runs past the library, main office, cafeteria and gym, out into the student parking lot. He refuses to move his Bug to where your truck is parked, and there are no empty spots near his car, so you're forced to lug four hundred pounds of graveyard earth two sacks at a time halfway across the parking lot.

"Oh, and Chelsea says she wants to see that book or whatever it is," Gordon tells you when you're done.

You nod glumly, get a tardy slip from the office, and walk into Calculus late.

* * * * *

You figured Chelsea wanted to see you after school, but she doesn't answer your texts. Instead, you find her in the gym after the final bell rings. You were meaning to look for her in the fuck room, but she's sitting on the bleachers with Kendra Saunders and Gloria Rea, and from the narrowed look she shoots you, you can tell that she doesn't want you talking to her in public. And when you notice the basketball team trudging out of the boys' locker room in their uniforms, you hurriedly run out.

You're almost to your truck—if she doesn't want to talk to you, you'll be happy to go home—when you get her text: wait in library til u hear from me. You grumble at the bossiness of the directive, but trudge back the length of the school as ordered. At least you'll be able to get some homework done, assuming that Chelsea means to sit all through after-school basketball practice.

But you stop dead in the doorway when you see the four girls sitting at a table in the middle of the library.

* * * * *

Chelsea listens with a thoughtful but puzzled expression as you explain the new spell to her. Her arms and legs are crossed, but that's clearly on account of the chill, not because she's mad at you. You're sitting on her back patio—did you ever think you'd be at Chelsea Cooper's house, alone with her? No!—by the swimming pool. But the weather is far too cool to think about swimming. You're out here, away from her family, for the privacy it affords.

She nods, but you're far from sure that she's understood what you told her about the new spell. But then, you're not sure you understand it either. After a moment's thought, though, she gives the explanation back to you in a slightly different form.

"So let's say we had two of these masks," she says after a long pause. "One of, um, you, and one of Steve." You assume she means Steve Patterson, Gordon's goonish best friend, but it doesn't really matter. You nod as she holds her hands up, palm forward.

"And let's say," she continues as she moves her hands through the air, "that we put this stuff, the stuff this spell makes, inside your mask. And we put your mask on Steve. It turns him into you, right?"

"Uh huh. But the new sealant—"

"Yeah, the new sealant," Chelsea says, and her eyes narrow. "What happens to Steve? I mean, is it still him, he's just disguised as you?"

"Well, yes. Sort of." You wet your lips with the tip of your tongue. "But I think he kind of goes away. Anyway, he would act like me, not like himself. I mean, he wouldn't act like he's Steve-but-disguised-like-me. He'd just be, well, me." Which, you think miserably, is a pretty stupid thing to be. "So there'd be two us."

Chelsea nods again. "Until you put on his mask, right? Then you'd be disguised as him."

"I think so." You scratch your back, which has started to itch fiercely. "You know, I'm not—"

"So it'd like one of those body swap episodes they sometimes have on TV shows," Chelsea says. "Except in this case, only you know you've been body swapped. Right? 'Cos Steve's been, like, hypnotized into acting like you."

You bob your head up and down. She's got it, she's repeated what you told her, using her own examples instead of the examples that you used.

"This is very interesting, Will," she says, and she lets her gaze go distant. You don't know what she's thinking, but the implications seem obvious.

You could use the new spell to take over someone else's life without yourself disappearing.

When the silence is unbearable, you start to say something, but she silences you with a gesture. You slouch back in your patio chair and stare at the back of her house—it's a very nice house, in one of the tonier parts of the city, not far from where your aunt and uncle live—and drum your fingers.

"Who were those girls in the library, again?" Chelsea asks, and fixes her attention on you.

You gape at the unexpected question.

Those girls in the library. The ones you saw when you went in to do homework while waiting for Chelsea. That's who she's asking about.

Yumi Saito, Jenny Ashton, Eva Garner. And Lisa Yarborough.

At a table, talking and laughing, the way friends do.

Before you and Lisa broke up—

You wince. She said you were never even dating in the first place.

—it would have been a very natural and easy thing to join them. To sit and laugh and joke and be friendly with them all, maybe with your arm around Lisa's shoulders.

But now? With you and Lisa busted up—or whatever—you couldn't do that. It would be way too awkward. What would Lisa say or think? And what would the other girls say or think if you barged in on them? How rude! Did you actually think you were still the same kind of friends as before????

But you couldn't sit at another table, either. They'd see you, and they'd know why you didn't join them. Even if they didn't buzz about it in front of Lisa, the other three would talk about it afterward. They'd talk about you, and what a loser you are, and how pathetic you looked sitting by yourself with your back to them, and how you really should just go away ...

For a moment you stood paralyzed in the doorway.

Then you slunk away, and wound up sitting behind the music wing, knees drawn up to your face, and feeling like you'd sprained your heart.

"Uh, Yumi Saito," you murmur. "Jenny Ashton, Eva Garner and, uh—" You feel your ears redden. "Lisa Yarborough."

Chelsea remains grave. "And you and Lisa used to go out?"

You shrug stiffly, and your eyes drop.

Chelsea drew it out of you, somehow. When you got to her house—she'd texted you at four-thirty, telling you where to meet—she asked how you kept busy while waiting for her to finish in the gym. You'd said something that caught her attention, and then something about the way she listened, with a very intense look on her face when you mentioned the names of those girls ... Well, your first cryptic words had thickened into a stream and then burst into a torrential confession of all your romantic confusions and frustrations.

And Chelsea listened, and asked exactly the right questions to get you to tell her everything. Not once did she seem bored or contemptuous, which amazed you and left you feeling shamefaced but weirdly grateful ...

She pats your knee now, and you tense and thrill all over. "And they never even told you why Lisa ended it." She clucks her tongue. "Girls can be such cunts about things like that. I know, I'm one of them." She flashes you a conspiratorial smile.

"And you know," she adds as she stretches and relaxes in her chair, "we could do something about that. With these masks, I mean. And the new spell."

Your blink. "Like what?"

"Like spying. Or getting back at Lisa, if that's what you want. Oh, but you probably don't want that. But if you did—"

She pauses, then suddenly leans forward. "Cindy," she says. "Vredenburg, I mean. She's a nasty gossip. She could really ruin Lisa's reputation if she wanted to, just by talking, by stirring things up, you know. But you probably don't want to do that."

You stare at Chelsea, and feel the hairs on the back of your neck go up. What is she suggesting? "Do what?" you echo. "How could I get Cindy to—?"

"By being her, obviously." Chelsea smiles. "With the masks, only instead of you and Steve, it's you and Cindy. Then you, as Cindy, could go around and— Oh!" She sits back again. "But you don't want to do that. Probably. You just want to find out what Lisa was thinking.

"And that would be easy too," she continues. "The same trick, but with you body-swapping with Yumi. Or with Jenny. You and Eva? No, you and Yumi." She nods, as though that's the final word. "Yumi's ears are full of grasshoppers, is what my grandmother would say."

If you weren't in a daze before, you're in a daze after Chelsea smiles brightly at you.