The Book of Masks (Vol. 4)

Lily at Play

Previously: "The Party Hearty Girl" 

You grab the edge of the sink and hoist yourself to your feet. Your head and shoulders throb, and you roll your head around on your shoulder, trying to loosen things up. With clenched teeth you open your eyes to regard your reflection.

Oh. Right.

There had been a moment of confusion when you opened your eyes and sat up on one elbow, to blink stupidly at the toilet bowl next to your head. You were naked, and you wondered what you were doing naked in a strange bathroom.

Then you felt the pendulous weight—two of them—hanging off your chest, and looked down to find your pecs melting and oozing into two small bags of flesh that wobbled a little as they slid down and pointed at the floor. For a moment you were dumbstruck.

Then: Oh. Right.

Lily Whatsername.

And just thinking the name was like setting off a soft, wet explosion inside your head. A great flume of memories shot up from the base of your neck, flooding your brain from back to front. You felt the memories coming—rushing at you—even before they struck in all their detail.

Of a little ranch house out west of town with two ugly, middle-aged people ...

Bill and Lori Hallet, who love you and you love them, and they aren't ugly anymore, just prematurely aged and wrinkly, but with a warm and tender love in their eyes and smiles.

Of a couple of girls, skinny, way too skinny, sitting in or around a tire swing, hunching furtively ...

Because you and Audrey and Ella and Olivia are thirteen and are sneaking a smoke in Ella's back yard while her parents are away.

Of a couple of guys lurking in the corner of a room while dance music plays, and they keep looking over at you, then one of them saunters over—walking as though he's stepping on hot coals—and ...

Noah Baker asks you to dance and you say sure, and so you dance, and eventually you wind up out on Olivia's patio where you spend a lot more time talking than you did dancing, and that's going to count as your first date, you decide later, after you've hung out a couple of times and started holding hands and touching lips.

As their prickling novelty settled over and inside your brain, you laid back on your elbows and reminded yourself that you were Will Prescott and that you were in your girlfriend's bathroom, and that when you go out into the bedroom it won't be Sydney waiting for you but a kind of magical robot that has taken her place.

And you were so good at reestablishing your sense of self that when you grabbed the edge of the sink and hoisted yourself up to grimace in the mirror ...

Oh. Right. Lily Hallet.

And, as if you'd snapped on a pair of sunglasses, the world again takes on a different-colored hue.

A Lily-colored one.

* * * * *

Fake-Sydney is leaning back in a chair with her feet on the bed when you emerge, now dressed, from the bathroom. She's tapping a message into her phone, but she pauses to look up and give you a steady, silent look. You hesitate under her stare, then sweep the room with outstretched arms, as though to say, "Ta-da!"

Fake-Sydney drops her feet to the floor. "Are we going to have to stay in together tonight?" she asks, sounding as if she dreads a positive reply.

"For what? Why?"

"Think you can pass yourself off as Lily with her friends?"

"Why not?"

"Jeez, Will." She stands up, and her expression hardens with skepticism. "I'm asking if you can remember anything, if you can be like Lily, if— Because you know, mm, with Catherine's mask?" Her eyebrows arch.

Oh. Right. (Is this what it's like being Lily? Constantly being reminded of things you shouldn't have to be reminded of?) "No, it's all working fine, I think."

"Yeah?"

You stare at her, this ... thing ... that looks and acts exactly like your girlfriend.

Then you blurt it out, almost without realizing that you were going to say anything: "You know, you're kind of a snot, Sydney."

Her eyebrows arch even higher. "What did you say?"

"You're kind of a snot." Your heart beats hard, and you start to gabble.

"I don't mean you're a snob," you tell her. "There's a difference, you know. Being a snot's better than being a snob. But there's definitely this, like, chasm that you put yourself on the other side of with people. Well, with some people."

"Really." Fake-Sydney's tone is studiously neutral. "I didn't know that."

"Yeah, I didn't think you did. Maybe it's the girls you hang out with. Like Reagan." You can't help making a face. "She's a snot too. God, I hope you don't hang out with her because she's a snot and you're a snot, and it's like snots will only hang out with other snots."

"I didn't know I came across like that."

"Well, you do. You're doing it now. Oh, you're nice enough, Sydney, and you really seem pretty cool. That's how come I wish you weren't a snot. I bet you're a lot of fun to hang out with. Oh, God! You know, I'll tell you I was all kinds of excited when you texted me to come out so we could go do something. I thought, Wow, you were, like, bridging that chasm. God." You rub a skinny arm. "And it turns out it was only 'cos your boyfriend wanted to hijack my body. Tch. Way to be way off the beam, Lily." You mime shooting yourself in the temple. "Pchoo!"

If Fake-Sydney's eyebrows rose any higher, they'd touch her hairline. "So this is Lily talking?" she says. "Not you, Will?"

"Oh God no! You just asked if I could do Lily." You make a crude, quick, satirical curtsey. "That's what she'd tell you, probably. If she had the nerve."

"Jebus." She glances down at her cell as it dings with a text. "Hang loose for a minute, then we'll talk about what comes next."

Except you know what comes next, don't you? A trip out to the mall or someplace to shop for clothes; then meeting up with Noah and Audrey and Chuck and a bunch of other people for dinner—probably Mexican—then out to Legends and some other places, climaxing in a visit to the Warehouse.

But like a good girl you hang back as Fake-Sydney returns to her cell.

* * * * *

"Oh my God, no!" You burst out laughing as—bent almost double—you peer into the back seat of the green sedan that's pulled up in front of your house. There's four people in back, one of them—Audrey Briscoe—sprawled over the laps of the other three. "I'll get a ride with— Who else is coming?"

But your grinning boyfriend, Noah Baker, stretches out to grab your hand and draw you toward the sardine-can-on-wheels. You bump your head on the roof as you try to crawl in atop him.

Then you pull back. "No! There's no room!"

"Room for one more," says someone from deep inside.

You peer in, and squeal in surprise. "Rachel! I thought you weren't coming! Is there a story here? Are you—?"

"No," says Rachel Bell. "Yes," says Mitchell Belz, who is squeezed in next to her. "You have to get in to find out," laughs Noah.

"You guys are awful! Ow!"

Somehow you manage to worm your way headfirst into the ridiculously overpacked compartment of Chuck Johnson's SUV, ending up straddled across three pairs of knees with your face in Audrey's sneakers. "Don't get us in a wreck!" you holler as Chuck, who's up front with his girlfriend, swerves back into the street.

There's too much laughing and chortling and poking and squealing for you to carry on any kind of conversation, and not until you tumble out into the parking lot of La Cocina some thirty minutes later can you catch your breath and hope to have a real talk with anyone.

Of course, by that point you've forgotten anything you might have wanted to talk to anyone about. Besides, you're distracted by—

"Ooh! Vaqueros!" You flick your chin at the dance club across the street. "I forgot about them! We wanna try getting in there before we go down to Legends?"

"You need an ID to get in there," Chuck says. He resettles the seed cap on his head and puts his arm around Ella. It's a brawny arm, coppery bronze, to go with the farm boy tan that still shows in his face.

"I got an ID," Mitchell smirks.

"A real one. They're pretty strict out there."

"Why, you ever try getting in?"

"My brother did, a few years back. The bouncer confiscated his ID and said he'd break his arm if he ever tried getting in again."

Mitchell chortles.

"He said it in Spanish, too. I wouldn't fuck with those guys."

"How much you wanna bet I could get in?"

You don't hear Chuck's answer, for Noah distracts you with an arm around your waist. You jump a little, for although Lily and Noah have been seeing each other almost since the start of the year, they are still very shy about grabbing onto each other. You cover your surprise by saying "Hey you" to him.

Noah is cute, you suppose. Not in a "pretty" way, like a teen pop star, but in a restful way, like a favorite stuffed animal. His lips are a little thick, and his nose is a little big, and his face—thrusting out from under a too-short, surfer-style cut—is a little too fat. But it's easy to rest in his dark eyes, and his smile is soft and warm.

There's already a twelve-top prepared in the largest dining room, and a quartet of your friends is bunched at one end. Greetings are shouted over the Mexican polka that blasts from the speakers, and in all the noise and confusion you almost miss the chime of your phone.

The text is from Catherine: Want me to bring will n sydny too?

That's all for now.

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