The Book of Masks (Vol. 2)

Anyone for Tennis?

Previously: "Someone to Watch Over Me" 

You've only one lead on the crowd that the new "Will Prescott" is hanging out with: Sean Wilcox, the guy at the Sunshine Diner who told you about a party where your doppelganger might be showing up. You look up Sean online.

Thank God for social media, you think as you scroll through Instagram, Twitter, x2z, Facebook, and other places. You also shudder a little at how much is out there about your classmates, and how easy it is to find out about them. You yourself were never much into into social media—you kept in touch with Caleb and Keith, and with Carson Ioeger and a few other people mainly through texts—and a quick glance at your own profiles shows that Gordon hasn't updated them since his transformation. (Of course not. He doesn't know your passwords.) But Sean and his friends ...

Well, Sean himself mostly shows up when tagged by others, and except for an occasional tweet about the latest anime series that he's fallen in love with, he hasn't got much to say about himself. By inference you glean that his family actually owns The Sunshine Diner, and that he's on the school tennis team. And through the team's webpage you find some of his friends.

That Terry guy with the blue bangs, for instance, is one of them. He's on the tennis team with Wilcox, and he also works at the diner. It also looks like he's the "Colson" that Caleb told you is having a party tonight.

That cinches it for you. You don't know if Terry Colson has a life worth taking over, but he can get you close to Gordon. From there you can scout out a better impersonation if you need another place.

* * * * *

"So if your truck's not running, how'd you get down here?" Terry asks. You follow as he lopes around the corner of the Sunshine Diner, toward a low-slung sedan in the corner of the lot. It was probably once navy-blue, but the sun has bleached all the brightness from it so that it now looks covered with a film of fine dust.

"My friend Caleb dropped me off. Johansson?" you prompt, but Terry only puts a cigarette to his lips and peers at you from under his heavy lids. Am I going to want to smoke when I'm him? you wonder. "I told my folks I'd be hanging out with him instead coming out with you. What they don't know won't hurt them," you add with a blush.

And the lies I'm telling you now won't matter when I am you.

"I hear you," he says around the cigarette. "Can you stay out all night?"

"I can if you can. But we gotta stop someplace first."

"Cool. Me too."

His car is unlocked, and it rides so low you almost have to sit on the asphalt in order to slide in. The seats are covered with a furry plush—It's like something that a pimp would drive, you think—that stinks of stale tobacco smoke. A plastic Jesus dangles from the rearview mirror, and before you can stop yourself you touch it and set it swinging.

"You like it?" Terry says. "Came with the car." He jabs Plastic Jesus with a long finger. "I'm looking for a new one, maybe one with a cord you pull and his tits light up." He laughs. Or maybe it's a cough.

"Where'd you get it? The car, I mean?" You're making conversation, not because you need to know.

"Bought from Luis Castillo. You know? I'll text him later, see if I can get him out tonight. He's always up for cerveza." He buckles himself in. "Anyway, I left everything just the way I bought it. A shrine to Luis's granddad." He runs a fingertip over the dashboard.

"Something special about his granddad?"

"I don't give a shit about his granddad. I just like the idea of driving around in a shrine to him." He inhales half the cigarette, then grinds the rest of it out in the dash-mounted ashtray. "Buckle up, man." He exhales a thick stream of smoke.

* * * * *

It's only a block back over to the Layzee-Nites, where you ask him to come into your room to help you pick up some stuff. He asks what you're doing with a room there. By now you're too nervous to trouble over a lie, and only mutter something about needing "a place just to get away from it all for a couple of days." Terry says, "I hear that. You know I got a sofa—"

But if there's an invitation at the end of that sentence, you'll have to deliver it yourself, for you've picked up a mask off the bed, and on the word "sofa" you wheel and smash it into Terry's face. You catch him around the shoulders and fall back with him onto the bed.

As the mask copies him, you shift all of your belongings into the back seat of his car. In the room, you pull his clothes off him. He's a tall, lanky fellow, not much different in build from yourself, but he does seem to have more muscles than you, and his stomach shows a faint four-pack. You pull your own clothes off, and put his clothes on.

The rest goes quickly. After the mask comes out of him, you put one of those brain band things onto him, and when that's done you drop the mask of Dane Matthias onto him. "So what's the plan, boss?" the fake Dane asks when it sits up. His eyes are clear and his brow only slightly furrowed, for you updated it with your own memories just before going out to meet Colson.

"Same plan you know about," you reply as you point to his face. "Terry Colson's car is out front."

"Cool. So what's he like?" Dane peers down at his hair-matted chest, as though trying to discern Terry Colson through it.

"Dunno yet. How about you?"

"I think everything's working." The furrow in his brow deepens. "I'm not too sure about trying to fake my way through as Dane, though."

"You'll do fine. Just remember you're supposed to be stoned and happy about it. And, uh, your mom will be moving out, so you won't have to worry about fooling her."

He makes a face. "Yeah, about that. How am I supposed to eat? I don't know if either of 'em had a job. Wasn't, like, Dwayne taking care of them or something?"

"Maybe you should get a job. Or, I dunno," you add as his eyes pop in alarm. "Maybe I'll have you over at Terry's. I get the impression he has lots of guys like you over. And we've still got the cash we took off'a Dwayne. I can pass you some of that."

He opens his mouth to reply, but you quiet him with a raised finger. "I have to finish changing. You should too." You point to the pile of clothing—Dane's—that you saved out for him. He scoots over to let you onto the bed. You stretch out on your back, turn the brain band so that the name—TERRY PATRICK COLSON—faces you, then close your eyes and set it on your forehead.

* * * * *

How weird is that? you think as you loose a fast stream of piss into the toilet bowl. I get his body, so I get his bladder, so I get what was in his bladder too. Terry had been holding it back, and you have the impression he was going to ask if he could use your bathroom. You ought to feel funny holding his penis between your forefinger and thumb. But Terry Colson's mind has merged so completely with yours that you have to remind yourself that it ought to feel weird playing with another guy's sausage.

Oh, you can tell the difference between his brain and yours, just as you had no trouble distinguishing between yours and Dwayne Macaulay's, or yours and Bhodi Weaver's. But it's not because your brains are separate. It's like—

You pinch off the flow, then let it shoot back out again. The rush of pee hitting the toilet water echoes against the hard floor and hard walls of the bathroom.

It's like one of those optical illusions where the lines look one way, then look like something else. First a duck, then a rabbit. You can think one way, and it will feel perfectly natural—

I'm Will Prescott, and I just took over the identity of Terry Colson. I'll need to give my contact info to Caleb at least, and maybe to Bhodi and the rest of the guys in case they need to find me. It sucks that I got myself into this mess, but it's my own fault, I guess. Well, Caleb's fault, because he's the one who—

Then, with just a little push, you can think the other way and it'll feel perfectly natural too.

I'm Terry Colson, and I'm out here at the Layzee-Nites 'cos Will Prescott asked me to pick him up for the party tonight. I need to call Dorothy, make sure she comes out too; Will would like that. Should I call Sophie? She was being pretty weird last time we talked. Maybe I should wait 'til tomorrow, get her alone, maybe go to the park? Jesus, even if we just wind up holding hands, I'd—

You flip back to your own native outlook, but it's no use. Terry's cock is still rising, pinching off the stream of piss. Terry and Sophie, naked as can be; F-U-C-K-I-N-G!

You shake off the last drops, and flush. Then you lean across the sink and look at yourself in the mirror. You push over your blue-tinged bangs, and let your jaw relax. When your face lengthens, your heavy-lidded eyes look more mournful and more stoned than usual.

Though as Terry Colson you've got reason to be both.

Next: "Chez Colson" 

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