The Book of Masks (Vol. 4)

Projects, Both Yours and Others'

Previously: "Returning a Prank with Interest" 

"Sorry I'm late, I had a test," Joey gasps as she comes whizzing into Jenny's garage on a dirt bike. You jump out of the way as she skids to a stop only inches from your ankles.

It's late afternoon, after the kind of school day that leaves you jealous of anyone who is home-schooled and who doesn't have to deal with the kind of soccer-goalie bullies who loiter around the parking lot at the end of the day just so they can trip and push and jeer at guys like you who are trying to escape the school before being caught by assholes like them.

So it's the mood talking (you tell yourself) when you snort, "What are you taking tests for, I thought you were home-schooled."

"You take tests when you're home-schooled!" Joey retorts, looking shocked and angered. "I do, at least. All the flipping time!"

Flipping. Instead of showing her how to make a magic mask, maybe you should be teaching her how to cuss.

But you're about to apologize anyway, until you see the warning look on Jenny's face. Mulishly, you shut your mouth.

"So what did I miss?" Joey asks as she drops her bike.

"Will's showing us how to polish the masks," Jenny says. She holds up the mask you made yesterday, and a cloth. "He says it's going to take awhile."

"Like how long? And then what?"

"Then we try it out," you reply.

Joey's eyes widen. "What does that mean? Try it out how?"

"Not totally sure," you confess. "The, uh, the book—" You turn toward the workbench where you set it. "It says—"

"Lemme see."

You thrust an arm out, blocking her as she leaps for it. "Hang on there."

"I just want to—!"

"You wanna ask permission first?"

"I thought we were working on this thing together!"

"Well, do you read Latin?"

"Yes!"

You blink, and look over at Jenny, who says nothing.

"I can read Latin, Will!" Joey insists.

So you withdraw your arm. "Okay. Show me."

"Can you read Latin?" Joey asks as she takes the book.

You tense up. "With an online translator."

"Peh! With an online translator."

"Hey, it's not like they teach Latin at our high school!"

"Actually, Will," Jenny says, "they do offer a Latin class."

* * * * *

It's goddamned awkward—"flipping awkward," as Joey would say—standing there while she pores over spell. "That's not an online translator?" you snark when she takes out her cell phone. "Vocabulary," she mutters back. Then she says, "It's all funky, like it's not even real Latin! Are you sure you're even doing this right?" She glances back at Jenny, who has stopped even pretending to polish the mask.

"I think I did it right," you retort. Steam threatens to start seeping out from under your collar. "I made a flipping mask!"

"Well, I don't know if I could've figured it out, based on what it says here," Joey grumbles. "I'm not even sure if it's real Latin. Or maybe the guy who wrote it didn't know any real Latin."

You roll your eyes.

Eventually Joey gives up, and admits that, yes, you're supposed to polish up the mask until it glows, and that after that it will be able to "take on" the form of a person. "What do you think it means when it says that?" she asks.

"You're the one who reads Latin."

She makes a face, but doesn't otherwise rise to the bait. "I can read what it says," she replies, and pulls at the back of her hair with both hands. "I just can't figure out the sense of it. I think it means it takes the 'form'. But what's the 'form' of a person?"

Jenny, sounding a little haggard, pipes up. "Maybe we can finish up and find out?"

So you give Joey the first mask you had made, and a cloth, and set her to work. Then, when you flop to the floor with the book in your lap, she asks what you'll be doing. "Supervising," you reply. Even with your nose buried in the book, you can hear her snort.

Ten, fifteen minutes pass, during which you decide (with the help of an online translator) that the Latin in the book makes perfect sense, though you too can't figure out what exactly it means to absorb "the form" of a person. Though, given that the book promises to show how to make magical disguises, you can make a shrewd guess.

Then—

"P'tah!" Joey exclaims. "This is taking forever!"

"Yeah, I think it's gonna take awhile," you drawl.

Joey glowers at you, then looks over at Jenny. Your friend keeps her head down.

Joey drops the mask, leaps to her feet, and runs inside, banging the door behind her.

"Will," Jenny says in a very measured tone.

"What?"

She sucks in one of her cheeks. "Nothing, I guess."

And that's all she says. But you feel well and truly rebuked.

So when Joey comes back out, you're working on the mask she dropped. She stands over you, her mouth hanging open, as you look up at her to return her stare.

Then she wheels paces the garage, looking over and under the work benches and inside the cabinets. "Do you have a car buffer?" she eventually asks.

Jenny says, "A what?"

"A car buffer. A thing." Joey mimes with her hands. "A motor with a pad. It spins and you use it to polish a car."

"Maybe in one of the cabinets?" Jenny says. "Why?"

"For working on these things. Make it go faster. Maybe."

Jenny gives you a sidelong look.

Much as you hate to admit it, but that seems like a great idea. "It's worth a try," you tell Jenny. "Definitely," you add, looking over at Joey.

So Jenny gets up and the two girls through the garage. They're not long in finding a buffer—it takes longer to find an outlet to plug it in—and you pull the supplies over to where they set it up. Joey puts out her hand to take the mask back from you.

You don't hand it over. There's a frozen moment as you stare each other down. Jenny ends the standoff by saying, quietly, "It's Will's project, Joey."

She drops her hand and shuffles back a step.

You sit cross-legged, with the motor between your legs, and with the pad, like a floppy mushroom, pointing up at your face. You turn it on, and press the mask onto it. No one speaks for five minutes as you work . When you stop to examine the results, you find that the dull white surface of the mask has acquired a pearly sheen.

"Do you think it's done?" Joey asks.

"I don't know," you admit. "I think we should keep working on it until we're sure."

"I'll go home and get our buffer!"

"I'll go with you," Jenny says.

"It doesn't need both of us to bring it back."

"No," Jenny says as she walks over to a side door. "But I could use some fresh air. And I got nothing to do here while Will's working." She gives you another very steady look.

* * * * *

Joey must live some distance away, because it's nearly forty minutes before they're back, and you've got a lot of progress to show them when they return. The face of the mask, under constant polishing, has turned from a dirty off-white to a deep and lustrous blue, the color of the sky on cloudless summer day. When it was obvious to you that it wasn't going to get any bluer, you turned it upside down and went to work on the inner surface. Jenny only shows a polite interest in the results of your work, but Joey's eyes glint and glimmer as she studies the results. She immediately sets to work on the second mask, using the buffer she and Jenny brought from her house.

"So I had a little talk with Joey on the way out to her place," Jenny says when you and she have gone inside to get a drink. The aroma of lasagna comes steaming out of the oven, and dirty dishes are stacked up by the sink, but of her parents there is no sign. "I told her that she should be a little less pushy with you."

"Is she autistic or something?" you ask. Jenny punches you in the shoulder. "Ow!"

"And you need to be a lot less of a jerk, Will Prescott. No, she's not on any spectrum or anything. She just doesn't have a lot of practice being sociable with people. Well, with people she doesn't know. That's one reason I thought you two would go well together."

"Me? How do I match up with someone like that?"

Jenny puts her hand on her hip and gives you a look. "At least Joey knows she needs to work on her social skills," she says.

Your jaw drops. But Jenny only turns around and goes back out into the garage.

* * * * *

There's another round of argument when your done, but it ends in an agreement that the only thing to do now is for one of you to try putting a polished mask to his or her face, and see what will happen.

But who gets to be the lucky volunteer?

Next: "Paranormality and Paramedics" 

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"Table of Contents (Vol. 4)" 
"The Book of Masks (Vol. 4)"