The Book of Masks (Vol. 3)

A Girlfriend Becomes a Best Friend

Previously: "When Troubles Pile In" 

"I sure hope it was your idea to come talk to me and not Blake's," you tell Erik, "and I sure hope he doesn't know about it. 'Cos it's a chickenshit move for guy to send his friend to talk to a girl when he should be talking to her himself."

Erik turns very red, and punches a locker door. Then, with a glower, he stalks away.

It was probably a mistake to piss Blake's friend off that way, but you're willing to trust your instinct—Amanda's instinct—that it will actually goad Blake into declaring himself.

At least, that's now the only gamble you can take.

But you needed to get rid of Erik, for there's someone else more important for you to meet up with.

* * * * *

"Can't these girls ever get anyplace on time?" Sydney grumbles to you an hour later. She's perched on her windowsill, looking down into her driveway. "When I get invited to someone's house—"

"You know what Kelsey would say if she heard you saying that?" you interrupt. "She'd say you're an entitled brat who expects everyone to drop everything for your convenience." Sydney makes a face at you; you step up and brush a bang from her face. "But Kelsey's one to talk. She's always late because she's an entitled— Well, you'll find out for yourself soon."

You and Sydney hold each other's gaze. For a moment you hesitate, wondering if she'll find it weird for you to kiss her. Oh, hell, you decide. After last Saturday she'll find it weird if I don't. So you put your face into hers and pull gently at her lips with yours. She kisses you back. You tug harder, and your hand goes to the back of her head as she slips an arm around your shoulders.

You nuzzle for a bit, even after breaking off, but you're interrupted soon enough by the sound of a motor below.

Kelsey, like Amanda, drives a BMW, but hers is brand new, and it's a convertible. She's got the top up, though, and the gleam off the tinted windshield prevents you from seeing into the cabin. A text pops up on your cell: I'm here. You roll your eyes, and tell Sydney she should go downstairs so Kelsey doesn't have to risk straining her finger by ringing the bell. "She sounds so lovely, Will," Sydney tells you at the doorway. "I can't thank you enough for suggesting I turn myself into this girl."

"Hey, you're the one who—" But Sydney is gone before you can finish your protest.

You pace the room with arms tightly folded across your chest, double-checking out of the corner of your eye that the new mask is at the ready on the bed. You just have to get it on Kelsey; the one that copies Sydney is in the bathroom, prepped and ready to be slapped onto the victim.

A murmur of voices outside the door gives you a rush of anticipation; it opens and Sydney and Kelsey come in. Kelsey is smiling brightly, and her eyes dance with a keen light. "Oh my God, this is so gorgeous," she gushes. You cringe inside. Her tone isn't obviously insincere, but Amanda's ears are tuned to pick up the hidden emotions: humor, disdain, and embarrassment for Sydney's house and room.

"I love your ceiling," she says. "It's so high, makes the whole room so light and airy. And look at that," she adds, marching up to the window. "You look right out over the driveway." That will be the height of hilarity when she gossips about it later—a girl whose bedroom is right over the garage, like a chauffeur's. There will be much laughter over it, and she might even have to brush a thin stream of snot away with the back of her hand from laughing so hard when she recalls it. Poor Sydney, she'll marvel, she doesn't even know how declasse it is!

Except it won't be Kelsey when you leave here with her. It will by Sydney in a Kelsey mask.

Well, maybe she'll giggle about it anyway.

You watch with a tight smile, waiting for some sign from Sydney that she's ready for you to make a move. But she just listens and answers Kelsey's questions and asks some of her own like a good hostess. She even asks you what you'll have when Kelsey (rather pointedly) asks her for a sparkling water; "I'll have whatever," you tell her, and she beams.

"God," Kelsey says after she's gone. "I'm so sorry I'm late."

"No you're not."

"I am. Leaving you here alone with her. Here."

"Her place is nicer than mine," you dryly observe.

Kelsey gives you a look. "It's not about what you've got, it's about what you pretend you've got. You and your family don't make any pretensions, Mandy," she continues, using a grade-school nickname that Amanda hates and shook off years ago, and which Kelsey only revives when she's trying to be just-us-girls intimate. "But this place. Tch. They live on the wrong side of Rambling Oak," she concludes with a knowing look. That's the rich people's equivalent of "wrong side of the railroad tracks," meaning "Too close too town." "What have you told her?" Kelsey asks when you don't reply.

"Nothing. I got here just before you did."

"Tch. Well, I think we need to be diplomatic. Not say anything to her about Will, it'll just make her defensive. We need to tell her about some guys we can set her up with."

Your jaw falls open. "Way to spring this on me, Kelsey. Who am I to tell her she should be dating?"

"It doesn't matter. Just someone plausible. Anyone who comes into your head. No one that's going to hang out with us, though," she adds, giving you another look. "Just follow my lead," she says as the door opens and Sydney returns with two bottles of water. "Thanks so much!" Kelsey chirps at her, and puts out a hand.

And that's all you can take. You snatch up the mask, and before Kelsey can grasp the proffered water, you grab her from behind and push the mask into her. All the strength leaves her limbs, and she drags you with her as she collapses to the floor.

* * * * *

Sydney yells at you a little for having jumped in that way—"I wanted to be the one to do it!"—but soon forgets it as she helps you haul Kelsey onto the bed. "She's in pretty good shape," she mutters as she tugs Kelsey's jeans off.

"She was a cheerleader up until this year. She was going to be captain of the squad."

"What happened?"

"Chelsea Cooper happened," you snicker. "She still does gymnastics, and she plays tennis."

"I haven't seen her at afterschool practice."

"You wouldn't, Sydney. A private academy."

Sydney's shy about looking at Kelsey directly, after the clothes are off, but you settle back against the desk to drink in the form of Amanda's best friend. Kelsey is slim and sculpted by workouts, with tight abs and strong muscles in her slender arms and legs. Her breasts are large and well-formed, and her brunette hair falls in long, tapered strands past her shoulders.

"I guess this is where we make a new version of me," Sydney mutters after the mask has come again. She's been glancing nervously at the bathroom all this time, but not until you make a move toward the door does she pre-empt you by ducking into the bathroom to get the mask of herself. Still, she hesitates over Kelsey with the mask in her hand.

"You want me to do it for you?" you ask.

Sydney winces, and for a moment it looks like she's going to leap on Kelsey and jam the mask onto her. But instead—and it still surprises you when she does, despite your offer—she thrusts it at you.

"Yes," she says, sounding breathless. "I'll be in the bathroom. Finishing up." She yanks the mask of Kelsey from your hands and runs into the bathroom without waiting for your reply. The door claps shut behind her with a bang.

And now you find yourself feeling shy about putting the mask onto Kelsey, and summoning into existence another Sydney McGlynn.

Why is that? You'd rather puzzle over that question, you find, than push past it to complete the spell.

You've done worse: Somewhere in town is a duplicate of Sydney's stepfather. You've done the same: Somewhere down in Acheson is a duplicate of yourself.

But Sydney's stepfather deserved to be turned into a pedisequos. And Will Prescott ... Well, he's just a stupid teenage boy.

But Sydney is special. She's your girlfriend. Making another one of her wouldn't be like doubling a good thing. It would be like making her less special, somehow, almost as if you're dividing her in two.

And what if—

Oh God. Your mouth puckers up into a perfect "O" of horror.

What if you find yourself just as attracted to—or even more attracted to—her duplicate than to her? The duplicate will look just like her, and will act like her. Whereas Sydney will be imitating and channeling Kelsey Blankenship.

So for the longest time you're unable to move, as though petrified in amber. The mask becomes very heavy in your hands.

Not until there's a flicker of movement under Kelsey's eyelids can you stir. And then it's with a shiver of horror that you step up and place the mask onto Kelsey.

Her face vanishes and Sydney's appears. Her eyes pop open, and she does a double-take at you. Then, when she lurches up onto one elbow, she does a double-take down at her exposed body.

"Will?" she says in a do-not-fuck-with-me tone of voice.

"Yeah?"

"What is going on?"

"Don't you know?" An icicle of fear shoots up your spine.

Fake-Sydney sweeps the bedspread over herself, to hide her nakedness. Her eyes narrow into slits. "You didn't have to take my clothes off to copy me into that mask, did you? Because I don't remember taking them off before we—"

The bathroom door opens, and Kelsey Blankenship looks out. She and Sydney lock eyes.

Next: "A Girl Who's Unsure of Herself" 

*
"Table of Contents (Vol. 3)" 
"The Book of Masks (Vol. 3)"