The Book of Masks (Vol. 4)

Dramas, Private and Public

Previously: "Vanishing Tricks" 

Even at first glance, the new spell differs from the earlier ones. All the earlier spells—like the recipes in a cook book—start with a list of ingredients and directions at the top of the page, and conclude with a wheel-like sigil covering the bottom half.

But this one doesn't contain a sigil, only a lot of blurry words and symbols where the sigil should be. Actually, "blurry" doesn't even begin to describe it. It's not like the paragraphs are badly printed or smudged; instead, they seem to shift and skitter across the page, as though deliberately trying to dodge your gaze. Your eyes start to water and cross the longer you stare at them.

Well, maybe it's just late. You lay the new mind-strip across the new spell as a makeshift book mark, and close it for the night.

* * * * *

The next day is a Sunday, but there's no Sabbath for the wicked as you and Sarah Pak get dragged to church by your parents. Your cousins go to the same church, so you get to see Yumi there. You have to act in character with her, though, and she with you. You ask if you're going to get together this afternoon, but with a laugh she tells you she can't—she's got a date! Well, it's not a serious date, she adds, not like that! But she's getting together with a guy, and so—

You press her for details—Dana would, and you yourself feel a pit of dread in your stomach as you wonder what Chelsea is getting up to—but she turns impishly mum. You feel your fingernails digging into the palms of your hands as you part for the day, and for the rest of the weekend.

Which leaves you only with Dana's own friends for distraction.

* * * * *

"We need to find a new study place," David Johnson says. You're only listening with half an ear as you stare across the IHOP at the table where Shawn Gregory and his friends are huddling. Like you and your friends, he and his have school books and papers scattered in front of them; and like you and your friends, they don't seem to be doing much studying. Too much grinning, and laughing, and flicking of pieces of trash at each other.

"What's wrong with here?" Caleb Ryerson asks.

"Too many distractions."

Something in David's voice causes you to turn around. He's giving you a hooded look from under lowered brows.

David's a good-looking kid, you'd have to admit. He's tall and spare without being skinny, with dark hair and a narrow nose. And he's smart and sweet-tempered, with a dry sense of humor. Dana wishes that he dressed better, or at least not like he was still a sophomore. Right now, for instance, he's in a t-shirt, wind-breaker, and shorts, with a trucker cap perched atop his head.

Of course, Shawn Gregory is dressed almost the same. But David's nerd, while Shawn's a basketball player, with legs and chest and arms that bear looking at.

Oh, crap. Dana was at the wheel again, wasn't she? Once you go into the act, it's so easy to go farther with the impersonation than you need to.

"I wasn't distracted," you protest. "I was just thinking about—" You tap the math problem in front of you.

"Sure," David snorts. He holds your eye. Then with a visible wince and an audible sigh, he heaves onto his feet and trudges to the restroom.

You feel the expression of guilt on your face as you glance over at Ryerson. His face and features are smaller than Johansson's—smaller nose, smaller mouth, closer-set eyes behind Coke-bottle glasses—but he's got the same shock of curly hair, and the same hip-nerd ego. Is there a character type that goes with the name? you wonder. Or is Eastman like an alternate-universe version of Westside, with WHS equivalents? If Ryerson is alt-Johansson, would that make David alt-you? Except he looks more like Geoff Mansfield, it shocks you to think.

"What's wrong, you cold?" Ryerson asks, for you jumped and jerked.

"No. I'm just— I don't know."

Ryerson takes a long drink of water. He doesn't look at you when he says, "I get excited when I stare at my crushes, too."

* * * * *

So that's what your day is like: Dana's little melodramas.

It's late before you return home to your bedroom, and later still before you open the book back up again. And when you do you, you spend a good few minutes staring silently at the new spell. Were you seeing things last night? Or are you seeing things now?

Where's all that blurry text that covered the bottom of the page? Last night you could hardly look straight at it without getting a headache, because the bottom of the page was a blurry, shifting, skittery mass of indistinct lettering.

But now it's blank. The bottom of the page is a creamy and unblemished white.

And that mind-strip you made and used as a book mark? It's gone. Just plain vanished, it seems. You search everywhere and can't find it.

Almost you storm over to Dana's sister's bedroom, to accuse Sarah of snooping through your stuff. But Sarah, unlike Robert at home, has always been one to respect a sibling's privacy. Besides, you had the book hidden on a shelf in the closet, behind some spare bedding, where someone would have to look hard and purposefully to find it.

Okay, whatever, you gulp to yourself. As long as I can turn the page to the next spell. You damp a fingertip against you tongue, and pull at the corner.

It turns. Again, you gulp.

Yikes! A solid wall of text glares up at you from the next page, without a line break, paragraph break, or even a sigil for relief. You grimace at it, then take out your cell phone and a pencil, and get down to the business of translating it, one word at a time.

An hour later you lift your head and push the crick out of your neck. In a minute you'll fetch some aspirin from the bathroom to deal with the headache that's begun to grip your temples.

Individually, the words are translatable, but they make no sense when put together into sentences. Some of them appear to be ingredients. Others are the names of runes, like you put inside mind bands. But there seems no logic to putting them all together. There are complete, grammatical sentences, let alone a set of instructions.

But the ingredients mentioned are the same as those for a mind strip, so on a hunch you dig through the bag of supplies you got from your double last night, for you found more than one mind-strip in it last night. You idly wonder why Chelsea made so many as you pull out a blank one, and set to work carving into it the runes that the new spell seems to mention.

But you can't find a way to rearrange the remaining words of the spell into a set of instructions. And there's still no sigil.

Hmm.

You set a bowl on the page, and fill it with the new band and the remaining ingredients. You strike a match and drop it into the bowl. Nothing happens.

A second match. Again, nothing. Nor on the third time.

Okay, so this looks like really advanced stuff; it's like the book has started to assume that its reader knows a lot more about magic than you do.

It's probably a really bad idea to experiment with magic when you have no idea what you're doing. But you're starting to feel impatient, even a little angry. (That headache doesn't help.) You lay the metal strip you just made across the page, as you did with the strip last night. Again, nothing happens. You lay it against the spine of the book. Still nothing.

What about an ordinary mind strip, like you used last night? Again you go looking, hoping to find one that already has rune-work on it. And again you have to wonder why Chelsea made so many extras. Was she practicing at making them?

You get the answer, maybe, when you find your own name blaring up from one of them in bold blue letters: WILLIAM MARTIN PRESCOTT.

* * * * *

For a long time you hold it, staring at it, as your nerves twitch all up and down your spine, like little spiders. Chelsea had a copy of your brain—just the way Caleb had a copy of it.

Why? And when did she make it? You chew your lower lip, trying to figure out when she would have been able to use it on you. The only time you can remember being unconscious around her was at the department store, during the switch with Dana. And if that's when she made this memory strip—

You feel your face twisting up into a hard grimace.

Okay, she would have learned quite a bit if she put it on afterward. She would have learned that it was Caleb, not you, who actually tried using the masks against her and Gordon; and that Caleb still wants to use the masks against her and Gordon. She would also learn that you are trying to protect her from him and Keith. But that's cold comfort—she would likely still feel threatened and betrayed. And she would also learn the real reason that you wanted you and her to switch places with a Westside cheerleader.

Your heart sinks in your chest, weighed by fear and guilt. But is there anything to be done? Could you even confront Chelsea with the strip, and ask her about it? Or should you just pretend like you didn't find it? Chelsea is bound to hear soon that her doppelganger passed it on to your doppelganger, and thence to you. Maybe you should get rid of it, so that she won't know that you know what she knows.

You're stretching for the waste paper basket when you have a sudden thought. The last time you laid a memory strip across a troublesome spell, it (the strip) disappeared. Maybe the same thing will happen now. And you were looking for a memory strip to experiment with anyway.

Next: "Like You Know What You're Doing" 

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