The Book of Masks (Vol. 2)

Some Suspect Behavior by Sophomores and Seniors

Previously: "The Sophomore Scheme" 

It's an intriguing idea: Pulling the sophomore guys you're now friends with up into the senior class, where you could take over and manipulate some of the gangs up there. And the more you think about it, the more you like it.

So you call Caleb.

"Yeah?" he says when he answers.

You can barely hear him over a buzzing noise. "What's that sound?" you ask.

"'ushing my teeth," he mumbles.

"It sounds like you're running an electric shaver."

"It's a'lectric 'oot'rush."

"Jesus, are you trying to talk to me and brush your teeth at the same time?"

"'at's 'ot I 'aid, 'indzy."

You roll your eyes.

"Well then just listen, if you can hear me. I've got an idea for something to do with the masks, I wanna know if you like it and if you think we could sell it to the guys." He grunts, and you tell him your idea, reminding him of what he said about you and him and your friends using the masks to take over and manage people in the senior class.

"We can do that, with these guys, with Paulina and Bhodi and Joe and them," you conclude. "Do you think we could sell them on the idea?"

"I dunno," he says, and it's a lot easier to understand him, as he's rinsed his mouth out by now. "They don't know the people up in the senior class, they know the people in their class, and they probably don't want to move up or into some place they don't know. Listen, I gotta sign off in about ten seconds. I'm coming up on my phone curfew."

"Your phone curfew?"

"Yeah, no cell phone after ten o'clock."

"What are Michael's parents, Mormon or something?"

"No, they're just— Alright, alright!" he yells out. "I'm hanging up now! Bye, Lindsay, talk to you tomorrow." The line goes dead.

You look at your phone before tossing it away with a snort. You'll probably be just as glad as Caleb to see him housed inside a new identity.

* * * * *

Paulina and Bhodi are waiting out front when you arrive at school the next morning, and for a moment you think they are there to ask if you've decided on a new identity.

But then: Oh, right. They think I really am Lindsay.

"Hey," you greet them. "What's wrong?" you ask Paulina, who is frowning at you hard.

"You ran out on Andrew yesterday," she says.

"I didn't run out on him!"

"He was going to go get food with you, Lindsay! And you ditched him and then you didn't come back."

"I had to go home, I—"

"He's really upset with you!"

You can't help crumpling a little under her glare. "He was totally creeping on me," you mutter.

"He was not." She puts her hand on her hip. "Look, can you at least be nice to Andrew? If you're not interested in going out with him, can you at least tell him? In a nice way?"

"Yeah, alright," you mutter.

"And can you be friendly with him?"

"Yeah, why is everyone suddenly friends with him?" you demand. You instantly regret it, but, helplessly, you follow it up with the obvious sequel, for you've let Lindsay's personality loose. "Up until a few days ago he was the biggest asshole in school, and everyone, especially you!" You punch Bhodi in the chest with a sharp fingertip. "Wanted to see him kiss a speeding locomotive. What's going on, all of a sudden?"

Paulina pales, and so does Bhodi.

"Nothing's going on," Paulina stammers. "It's just we've— You know, we've kind of started hanging out with guys that he knows, so we're hanging out with him. And it turns out—" She rolls her shoulders. "He likes you. Is that so weird?"

You glare. "It's very weird. But everything's been weird," you add darkly, "since Evie had her little adventure."

Paulina bites her lip, and Bhodi looks like he wants to throw up.

So this seems like a good place to end things, before they start to think that you—Lindsay Cho—have figured out that they're using the book and the masks to replace some of your schoolmates.

"If you'll excuse me," you growl, "I need to go to my locker. My backpack is compressing my spine."

They move aside to let you blunder past.

* * * * *

"Paulina and all of them are gonna go out to Dane's tonight," Michael tells you after school. He's driving you again. "To talk about the plan, maybe do like you suggested, move everyone up to the senior class. So you're gonna have to get out to Dane's early, to switch into his mask."

"Cool. Come pick me up and take me out to supper?"

He nods.

You pause, waiting for the follow-up. "And?" you prod when he says nothing. "You said there were two things we needed to talk about."

"Oh, there was only that. The other thing's just a piece of gossip. I figure you're not interested."

"Well, try me."

He shrugs. "Will Prescott tried out for the basketball squad yesterday. You know there were tryouts, because they have to reshuffle the team?"

"I heard something about that," you allow. You feel cold all over. Gordon has your body now, so you suppose it makes sense he'd use it to try to get back on the team. But you can wait a long time before having to listen to Caleb gloat about how he humiliated himself.

But that's not what he tells you. "He made it."

"What?"

"Yeah. Will Prescott is now on the school basketball squad. Ain't that something?"

"It's something," you admit, and that's all you can admit, too.

"He's replacing Jeremy Richards."

"What?" Jeremy was an old friend in middle-school, before he turned into a beanpole and an asshole and decided to be a jock.

"Yep. Gonna be interesting when we're all seniors again."

* * * * *

Dane grabs you by the collar and hauls you into his trailer. Then he grabs Michael by the shoulder and pulls him in to. He puts his head out, looks around, then slams the door shut and locks it. His eyes are wide, and his closely-shorn hair is bristling like a cat's.

"Does anyone else know about what's going on?" he asks in a husky voice. "With the, you know, masks and everything." He waves his hand in front of his face.

You blink at him, then look up at Michael. He returns your puzzled glance with one of his own.

"No," you tell Dane. "Just those guys. You know. And Paulina, apparently." You make a face.

A hard tremble passes through his shoulders. "What about those new guys? The one that moved over to our school from Eastman? Those basketball players?"

"The fuck are you talking about?" Michael demands.

"I'm talking about those basketball players! Joe and Frank Durras!"

"Calm the fuck down," you snap at him. "Tell us what—"

You break off as a hard spasm wracks the fake Dane's body, and his head almost twists off his shoulders. But his expression is calmer when he opens his eyes again. "Tell you what?" he asks. The fear has gone from his voice.

Well, that's interesting, you think. Apparently you can set these things' moods as well as give them orders.

"Tell us from the beginning," you instruct Dane. "Whatever you need to tell us about."

"Oh. Right." You add a mental note to not use the mood-changing power any more than you have to.

His story starts with a text he got immediately after school. It was from Joe Durras, a new student at WHS, just transferred from Eastman with his brother, Frank. The two are basketball players and are joining the Westside team, much to the excitement of many of the students at the school, because it's rare for one crosstown rival to poach players from the other.

"He wanted to know if I had any weed I could sell or share," Dane says. "I told him I didn't, but he wanted to come over anyway, hang out. So—" He shrugs. "I told him to come on by."

He sucks in his upper lip. "And it started off okay. One of 'em, Joe, he's all smiles and friendly and 'Dude, where you get your stash?' and 'Can you set me up with some too?' The other one's a lot quieter. Like, too quiet. Real intense. It started to give me a bad vibe, I'm wondering if maybe they're undercover cops or something."

"Is that what freaked out?" Michael asks. "They turn out to be cops?"

"I don't know what they are," Dane says, and a nervous edge creeps back into his voice. "But suddenly they just switched off on me. Like, Joe was all joking and laughing—we were playing with tongue-twisters, fuck me, it sounds kind of dopey, but we were—and then suddenly he just froze up on me. Got mad at me, almost. And then—"

He twists around on his feet, to stare back into the kitchen/dinette. That's when you notice it looks like it's been ransacked, with cabinet doors open and dishes and food pulled out and scattered on the floor.

"Then they start talking about the basketball team, and about Gordon," Dane says. "'Cos the squad had these tryouts to replace him and they were redoing the whole thing. 'Cos Gordon, well, you know, suddenly turned into a pothead."

You nod. You've had some adventures since then, but you remember how they all started, with you turning Gordon Black into a copy of yourself, and Dane Matthias into a copy of Gordon. Dane, at least, kept his original personality after transforming into Gordon.

"So they started talking about Gordon and Gordon's life, and why maybe he'd want to just say 'fuck it' to sports and to school, and that maybe he'd like to have my kind of life instead and maybe would even want to steal it."

He licks his lips. "Then Joe says to me, 'You didn't steal Dane's life, did you, Gordon?'"

Next: "Magic on the Loose?" 

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