The Book of Masks (Vol. 1)

The Start of an Unlikely Partnership

Previously: "Butterfingers" 

You feel your eyes bulging from your head. It's the mask you made, but it's been altered since yesterday.

At least, you have to assume it's been altered. You don't remember it having a 3D image of Jamie Rennerhoff inside it.

You blink at it a couple of times, and twist it about so that the light plays over it from a different angle. Some of the highlights shift and scatter, but the lines that make up Rennerhoff's face keep their shape. You rub the surface.

"Are you seeing it?" he asks. "Like a face?"

"Uh huh."

"Cool. Glad it's not just me. That's how come I'm asking where you got it."

"Did you do something with it?" you squeak. "'Cos it wasn't like this when I made it!"

His eyebrows pop up. "You made it?"

Damn!

And yet you're not really sorry you made the slip.

For as you look at Rennerhoff, you don't see a psychotic bully anymore.

For a start, he isn't grinning. Without that horrifying Joker rictus distending his face, he looks like a normal kid, one not even all that different from you and your friends. He's dressed in a plain t-shirt, jeans and sneakers, and his brown hair is actually more neatly cut and combed than yours. His face is lean, and his pointed nose tilts a little bit to the side, but his skin is clear, and he hasn't got any piercings or tattoos or bruises or scars. His eyes are very bright.

But it's his eyes which hold your attention. They are clear, and they show no emotion scarier than curiosity and surprise. There's no leer or sneer in them, none of the careful scrutiny that the Molester shows when he's deciding just how hard to kick you in the nuts.

Hell, you've seen more contempt in the eyes of Geoff Mansfield when he looks at you.

It would be too much to say that you suddenly like and trust Jamie Rennerhoff. But he does look civilized. And, cautiously, you decide to gamble that, if you treat him fair and friendly, he might reciprocate.

"You said you made it?" he asks again as you drop your own bag to the grass.

"Yeah. What did you do with it yesterday, while you had it?" From your bag you pull out the grimoire, which you brought to school because you felt funny leaving it in your room where your mom might find it.

"Nothing. Goofed around with it. What's that?"

"It's the book that showed me how to make that mask." You open it to the spell, and blink. A light stain, in the shape of an oval—a mask-shaped oval—has appeared on it.

"Like an arts and crafts book?"

"Sure." You pull at the corner of the page, but it still won't come away. "A really old arts and crafts book," you mutter.

Jamie says something, but you're concentrating on the book. On a hunch, you gingerly lay the mask atop the open page, atop the stain. When you pick it back up again, your heart jumps, for the page flutters. With a beating heart, you turn it over.

There's a lot more Latin on the other side, and on the facing page is more Latin, and another funny sigil thing: a circle bound all around with lots of ornate curlicues.

"So what's the deal?" Jamie says.

You squint up at him. "When you were goofing off with it yesterday, did you put it up to your face? Like this?" You raise the mask, as though to put it on, but are careful to keep it hovering a couple of inches away.

"Sure, that's what you're supposed to do with masks, right?"

It's like an avalanche inside your chest: Everything turns loose as you decide to trust him. After all, you've already let him see the book, and he's seen how freaky the mask is.

"I gotta check the book to see what's going on," you tell him. "But can you hang out after school? Don't bring Spencer or any of them along," you add.

"Sure," Jammie says. He looks puzzled, but not offended.

* * * * *

You can't skip Calculus, though you might as well have, for all the attention you pay in it. But seventh period brings a study hall, into which you hurl all your energy and concentration as you decipher the pages you have uncovered. The newly uncovered spell remains tightly bound to the pages that follow, but you're quickly able to determine that it is demanding a list of ingredients and giving instructions on how to combine them. A quick comparison to the earlier spell shows that it doesn't call for anything you don't already have on hand, and that it calls for smaller quantities of them, too.

That leaves you with lots of time to figure out the rest of the first spell. What you read leaves you hopping so hard with excitement that you sprint for your Astronomy class so you can meet Rennerhoff early. He grins when he sees you running up.

But now that grin doesn't remind you of the Joker. It's still kind of creepy, because it's so big and full of teeth. But now he just looks excited.

"I'm skipping school early," you tell him. "Take notes for me in here? And gimme your number, so I can text you where to meet up. I'll have something to tell you then, but I need to find a place no one'll bother us."

"We can use the portables."

"Too many people hang out there. But I got an idea of my own, I just need to check up on it." You pat him on the shoulder.

He replies with a short, whinnying laugh. You return it with a laugh of your own.

Not to mock him, but because you feel the same surge of mad hilarity.

* * * * *

It feels as though you are thinking very quickly, as though your thoughts are super-oxygenated and burning hotly. Otherwise, you probably never would have got the idea for where to meet up with Rennerhoff.

There's an elementary school a couple of blocks from your house. It used to be the Acheson Elementary School, but it closed decades ago. The cafeteria was renovated into a community center, but the rest of the building is abandoned.

That includes the basement.

You found a door to that basement last year, when in a mood of mild vandalism you were creeping all around the grounds looking for something to break. You found an exterior door half-sunk into the ground at the bottom of a short staircase, and next to it a row of narrow windows that peeked out just above ground through the long grass and weeds. The door had a padlock on it, but after fetching a crowbar from home—yes, you really were in a mood to do some mischievous damage—you'd gotten it off and the door open. On the other side you found the other half of the staircase, which led down into a very large basement. It was cluttered up to the ceiling, practically, with old furniture: school desks, conference tables, gymnastics equipment, cabinets, and book cases. It was horribly dusty and set you sneezing as you wended your way between tottering stacks of furniture. These you moved around a little, creating a "hidden fort" against one of the walls, and after leaving you came back with a padlock of your own which you put on the door. A few days later, when you checked, you saw that your padlock was still there.

You showed the basement to Caleb and Keith, and you hung out there off and on with them over the next few weeks, drinking and smoking and snarling cuss words at each other. You even had a makeshift Halloween party when you camped out for the night there.

But it's been many months since you've been back, and you'd almost forgotten about it.

So you're delighted to find that the building maintenance guys are even more forgetful than you. Your padlock is still on the door. You text Jamie the address, then run into Acheson's tiny retail district to pick up some Cokes and snacks.

Your mom is surprised when you walk in only a few minutes after the school bell would have rung, but you fob her off with a story about getting into the parking lot early and hitting an amazing series of green lights. You retrieve the old padlock key from your chest of drawers, and are sitting inside the basement with all the materials you bought to make the mask, when you hear tires on the grass outside.

Jamie's smile is bright but a little lop-sided as you come popping out of the basement. "What is this place?" he asks.

"Secret clubhouse. Come on." You're gratified to find that he's as entranced by it as you first were, though he's a little more destructive, and pushes over a couple of stacked desks with a shrieking laugh. "Now, lemme show you some real fun stuff," you tell him with a grin.

* * * * *

Jamie is breathing heavily through his nose as he fingers the newly made mask. It seemed like the best way to convince him that the magic is real. There, in his presence, you mixed up the ingredients, fired them, poured them over the mirror, then invited him to hold the hemispherical shell as it twisted itself into the shape of a mask.

"It'll take forever to polish," you tell him. "Like, a week. But this one's all done," you say, indicating the first mask. "And it's already got your face in it. We can seal it up," you explain, "or we can mix your face and mine in it to make a new kind of face."

Next: "Sealing the Deal" 

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"Table of Contents (Vol. 1)" 
"The Book of Masks (Vol. 1)"