The Book of Masks (Vol. 3)

A Girl Who's Unsure of Herself

Previously: "A Girlfriend Becomes a Best Friend" 

"Will?" says the thing that looks like your girlfriend. She pulls the bedspread tighter around her naked form. Across the room, the person who looks like Kelsey Blankenship peeps out from between the bathroom door and the frame with an anxious look.

"Okay," you say, "everyone here just keep calm." You point at the girl on the bed. "What do you think is going on here?"

She bites her lip. "Um, I thought we were getting together to—" She winces at the girl behind the bathroom door.

"That's right," you say. "That's what we're doing and that's what we did. You're the ... um ..."

"Oh my God!" the pedisequos squeals.

"Will," says the girl who looks like Kelsey, "what is going on out here?"

"We're having a little identity crisis."

"Well, can you give me Kelsey's clothes while you're taking care of it?"

You want to tell her that she's got to help, but she's looking more than a little freaked out herself, so you scoop up Kelsey's things—which are neatly folded in a small pile—and hustle them over to her. She takes them, and shuts the door in your face.

You turn to the Sydney who is scrunched up on the bed. She is very pale beneath her fading tan, and her eyes are very wide. "Um—" you say again.

She covers her face with her hands. "Oh, God," she says. "I should have known this was going to happen."

"What was?"

She looks up at you from between her fingers. "That I—" She swallows. "That I—" But she can't get any further. When she drops her hands, you see that her eyes are puffy and red.

Before you can find any words, she jumps up—showing you her small, taut body in all its naked beauty—and runs to the dresser. "Never mind," she mumbles. "I should get dressed and just get on with it. Just get on with being—" She swallows again.

You ache all over as you watch her fumble herself into panties and bra and t-shirt and jeans. She is acting just like Sydney would. Or, rather, like Sydney would if she had just discovered that she wasn't the real Sydney, that she was a fake version of herself, created to take her place and keep it warm while the real girl is off being someone else.

You are torn between the urge to put your arms around her and comfort her, and the intuition that you should leave well enough alone. It's not real, you tell yourself. Nothing about it is real. It's just doing the things that Sydney would do, but it doesn't really feel or think anything.

But that's a hard belief to hang on to when it keeps sniffling and brushing its hair from its face and intentionally not looking at you.

Very quickly it is dressed, and it lifts a brave face toward you after it has a pair of ratty sneakers tied onto its bare feet. "Okay, Will," it says, "I suppose my job now is to just carry on like nothing's changed. I suppose that's what—" There's that same heavy flutter at her throat. "What I'm going to be told to do," she concludes somewhat lamely. "So I'll—"

She turns toward the bedroom door, but before she can reach it the bathroom door opens and Kelsey Blankenship comes out. Her expression is wary and her tread tentative. Again, the two versions of Sydney McGlynn freeze when they see each other.

You break the silence with "Look, you're going to have to say something to each other," and when neither one answers, you say, "There's nothing else for me to do here." That only earns you some grimaces from the girls.

And that's enough for you.

"I'm serious," you say as you brush past them. "Whatever you need to say to each other, work it out without me. As long as I'm here, I'm probably stopping you."

You go down the stairs and out the front door. You get in your car, and because it's no fun waiting in a warm car for who knows how long the Sydneys will be at it, you pull out into the street and just start driving.

You don't stop until you're on the other side of the city at Cafe Oro, the ritzy coffee bar that is Amanda and Kelsey's favorite hangout.

Even though you feel that you made the right call in running out on that scene in Sydney's bedroom, you can't help dreading the sequel. What words will Sydney have for you when you see her again, under the influence of Kelsey's personality? Luckily (or not) you're not given long to wonder, for you've just sat at a small table by a window looking out over Fells Lake when a text pops up from Kelsey's account: Where are you?

Cafe Oro, you reply. Meet me up here?

Your first inkling that things are even more dire than you'd feared comes when Sydney replies, Where's that?

* * * * *

"I'm sorry, Will!" Sydney exclaims once she's seated across the table from you at Cafe Oro. "I've never heard of this place before!"

"Amanda," you correct her. "Let's keep our names straight."

But it's going to be hard thinking of the girl sitting across from you as anyone but "Sydney," despite her having the face and figure of Kelsey Blankenship, and despite her sounding nettled and exasperated.

You had to give her directions—Imagine! Giving Kelsey Blankenship directions to The Shoppes at Fells Lake!—and she was looking blown and pissed when she came bustling in. It's not unusual for Kelsey to have a blustery expression when she appears, but today she is disordered all over with "off" notes.

Her clothes aren't on right, for a start. Oh, she's not wearing her sandals on her hands and her skirt over her head. But her lines are crooked, and your eye keeps traveling the front of her blouse to find the button that (you're sure) has been slipped through the wrong hole. Her skirt was twisted just a little too far to the side, and the tiny braids in her hair flow in the wrong direction, like she's wearing a wig that hasn't been set on straight.

Her expression is wrong, too. Kelsey "gives ulcers instead of getting them," as the saying goes, but there's real worry in her gray eyes, and her frown is softer than is its wont. There's a tentativeness in her movements, she keeps twitching her shoulders, as though the straps of her bra are binding or slipping off.

She's also much more soft-spoken. She's exasperated, yes, but with fear rather than anger.

And you can't blame Sydney—for despite the fear and worry and exasperation, she still radiates Sydney's air of confidence and ease—for being upset. Not only has she no knowledge or memory of Cafe Oro, as Kelsey should have, she has no knowledge or memories of anything that Kelsey should.

"Does it feel like there's a block?" you ask after she's explained the depth and dimension of her ignorance. "Like, there's something between you and—?"

"No! I don't think so." She sips from her coffee, holding it with both hands—another non-Kelsey habit. "It's like, there's just me inside here. What's it feel like for you?" Her glance turns sharp.

You have to shrug. It's like you're you and like you're Amanda, all at once, all at the same time. Like those optical illusions where the picture can look one way or another, it has occurred to you. Like a rabbit or a duck, depending on how you want to see. Sometimes you can force yourself to think in a very Amanda-like way, and sometimes you can force yourself to be yourself. But sometimes you slip from one to the other without realizing it.

Right now you're trying to balance between the two. As Will Prescott you have grave sympathy for Sydney; but Amanda has a cooler head in a crisis. "Maybe if we got you to relax," you suggest. "Just forget about what's going on, who you're supposed to be. Like when you try to remember a name or where you put something. If you concentrate you can't get it, if you relax it'll come to you."

Sydney makes a face. "Hard to forget what's happened. I feel funny all over." She rolls her shoulders again.

"What's wrong?"

"Like I'm wearing the wrong clothes. I am, sort of, these aren't mine, you know. But like I'm in the wrong body." She frowns. "I had the same feeling when I put on that mask of your friend, but I figured it was only because, you know, it was a guy's body."

You glance around. She's talking in a low voice, but it's not a subject that should be talked of aloud. But the tiny cafe is almost empty.

"You couldn't get Caleb's memories either," you remind her.

"So what is it with these masks, that you can get them but I can't?" The question is querulous, but her tone isn't. "Is it because you're the technical owner of the book?"

The thought had occurred to you. But then, why would the masks work to make the physical disguise but not the mental disguise? "Maybe we should run some experiments. But let's give the mask a chance to do its work first. You can stay out all night if you have to."

"I don't know if I can," she protests.

"I'm telling you that you can. Kelsey's parents let her run around doing whatever, you can stay over at my place if you want. But what happened with your pedisequos after I left?"

"I wish you hadn't run out on my like that," she grumbles, "but we're okay. It was freaking weird, I'll tell you that much."

"It was weird for me too."

Sydney nods, and gazes vacantly past your ear. She sips some more coffee, then says after setting the cup back down, "I had to give Nicholas a good talking-to."

"How do you mean?"

"So he'd leave the fake me alone. I could see it in his eyes, Will, when we ran into him in the living room. He was like a rabid wolf, and he wanted to tear into her."

Fear shows in her eyes. "I'm starting to think I'm not cut out for this impersonation business."

Next: "A Call Across the Dimensions" 

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