The Book of Masks (Vol. 1)

The Mother of All Suggestions

Previously: "The Boy with Two Faces" 

Jamie's suggestion—his mom!—flabbergasts you, so you can only stammer in reply. "Well, you know, I was figuring we, uh, that we'd, mm, try it out on me."

"What's the fun in that?" Jamie retorts over the phone. "We already know it works on guys. Besides, if we try it out on you, what do we got? Just masks of you and me."

But you want to try it on your mom? you want to blurt out. Like that would be fun?

But the alternative is to try to get it onto someone at school. You tried that with Jamie and look how that turned out. So it would probably be safest to do it with someone at home. And since he's already suggested his mom ...

"You serious about trying it out on your mom?" you ask.

"Sure." But he sounds guarded.

"Well, if you think that'll work," you concede. "I mean, if you can do it without getting, you know, caught. It's just to, uh, test it out," you add, more for you benefit than for Jamie's.

"Yeah I know. So you cool with me doing that?"

"I'm down with it if you are." You gulp a little.

"Awesome. So I'll see you tomorrow, let you know if it worked."

"You're going to, uh, try doing the thing tonight?"

"Fuck, like, yeah!"

"Well, remember you have to seal it up before you can put it on."

There's a pause. "So can you bring that shit over tonight?"

"I'll give it to you at school tomorrow."

"Oh, come on!"

"I got a stupid early curfew on weeknights," you lie. "By the way, you got any money?"

"For what?"

"Supplies. I'm looking at this new spell"—you glance over at your desk, where the grimoire is sitting—"and I don't think I got enough to cover what we need to buy."

"So bring out the other shit, and I'll give you my cash stash tonight."

You pinch the bridge of your nose. "I don't need the money tonight. No, okay," you interrupt yourself, and hop off your bed. "I'll be out there as soon as I can. Where's your house?"

"Sweet!" Jamie gives you his address. "We'll go shopping tomorrow. What's the new spell do?"

"Dunno. Have to do it first before we find out."

Jamie squeals like a stuck baby pig.

* * * * *

"S'gonna be s'way cool when it's done," Jamie says. He nods and thrusts his head in and out like a chicken. "S'way cool," he repeats.

"We don't know what it does yet," you retort. Your temper is a little short, because it seems like you're the one doing all the work.

It's Wednesday afternoon, and you're back at the elementary school basement, and have just finished forging two samples of the new item: a metal band that shimmers with a greasy light. But you are far from finished, for the bands need to have some runes carved into them, and as you concentrate on scraping at one of the bands with a steel nail file, you have the feeling that it might take as long to scratch the runes as it took you to polish a mask. And this time a car buffer won't be able to shorten the job.

"It's gonna do something way cool," Jamie assures you. "Dat book ain't let us down yet."

You grunt.

It's not quite fair to complain that Jamie's not helping. You and he split the shopping list between you so you could cover the ground in half the time, and after you used the book to forge one of the bands, he used it to forge the other. Still, he's made no move toward adding runes to it.

"So whadja think of my mom?" he asks after a lengthy silence.

You tense. That was another reason you suggested splitting up to do the shopping. It kept you in separate cars in separate parts of the city. You just knew he was going to talk about what he must have got up to last night.

It was his mom who answered the door last night when you went over to his place. She looked too young to be his mom, and at first you took her for a friend of the family. It wasn't until Jamie popped up behind her shoulder that you saw the resemblance between them. They have the same narrow face and narrow nose, and when she smiled you saw the same spread of piano-like teeth. But where Jamie is pale with short, rust-colored hair, his mother has an olive complexion, and long, black hair. She looked Italian or Greek. Mediterranean, anyway.

"She was nice," you tell Jamie.

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. What do you want me to say?"

"I 'unno." He hops up onto the table and jogs a leg. "The mask worked, did I tell you?"

"Yeah, in Astronomy." That's when you decided to suggest splitting up for the shopping trip.

"Oh yeah." He nods again. "I can bring it out and you can borrow it if you want."

Okay, what's the polite reply to that? you wonder. That's okay, you probably don't want me turning myself into your mother? Or: Dude, that'd be awesome. She is such a MILF.

Because, yeah, Meghan Rennerhoff is practically the dictionary's illustration of a MILF.

What was she, fourteen when she had Jamie? She didn't look like she's in her twenties, but to your (confessedly amateur) eye, she didn't look like she was that much farther on the other side of thirty. It was dim inside their foyer, but she didn't look like she had an obvious lines on her face, and her hair looked lustrous. Her body shape, inside a white, sleeveless blouse and distressed jeans, had curves in all the right places. It hadn't occurred to you, until you saw her, that there was fun to be had by putting on a mask of a girl. But you twinged hard when you thought how it was Jamie's mom who got you to see that.

"I don't know what I'd do with it," is what you finally reply.

Jamie sniggers. "You'd put it on."

"I get that. But I got people at home."

"So do it here. Or do it after everyone's gone to bed. That's what I did."

I really don't want to know what you did, you want to retort. And yet, you are getting stiff (and not just from stress) the more he talks about it.

"Let's just concentrate on one thing at a time," you tell him. "You wanna try your hand at finishing the other one of these?"

"Huh? Oh, sure." He hops to his feet and grabs at the other band. But he stops to check his phone first. "Tch. I gotta get home. Early supper tonight."

"You wanna copy down the runes, so you can work on it after supper?"

"Sure, I s'pose." He digs through is pockets. "Hang on, I'll go get a notebook outta my car."

Jeez, he's like an even skankier version of Tilley, you find yourself thinking while he's gone. You were scared of him before, but now he just seems dopey, the way Tilley is. That makes him easier to be around at least, even though he's trying your patience the way Keith does. But then you remember that he hangs around and is friends with guys like Joshua Call. So there must be a touch of the genuine psycho in him. Best to keep on his good side, you remind yourself.

So when he hops back down into the basement, you tell him, "Look, if you don't got time to work on the thing, I can handle it myself."

"No no," he protests. "If I get it done, maybe I'll try it out."

"You don't know what it does."

"You're gonna work on yours?" he asks, and you nod. "So when you get done, you gotta check the book to find what it does?" Again, you nod. "So text me when you get done, so I'll know what to do with it."

You can't think of an objection, so you nod. And since you should get home too, you pack up to accompany him out.

"I'm serious about the mask thing," he shouts out to you as you get into your cars. "Maybe this weekend we can get together, have some fun with 'em."

Jesus. Your stomach plunges. What kind of fun does he want to have with masks of himself and his mom?

* * * * *

It doesn't take as long to finish the runes as you'd feared, but between them, your homework, and helping your mom clean up the kitchen after supper, it's well after midnight before you push the crick from your neck, press the completed band into the book, and turn the page to find what you've made.

There's only a single sentence on the other side, but it seems easy to translate: To know the mind of another.

But what does it mean? It's not until you've crawled into bed that a plausible answer comes to you. If a mask copies the form and body of another person, perhaps this metal band copies their mind—their memories? That would be a way of "knowing the mind of another." And it would complement the mask.

Jamie's eyes light up the next day before school when you share your surmise with him.

That afternoon, at the elementary school, you are able to whip out the next spell with the stuff you've got on hand. It's a simple thing that makes a glue you can use to attach one of those metal bands to the inner surface of a mask. That way you can copy and wear both at the same time.

But the spell after that throws you back on your heels. The prices of the ingredients, when you check them out online, are completely out of your budget, and out of Jamie's too.

But he's got an idea for handling it. "My 'mom' can buy the stuff," he grins as he makes air quotes around the word "mom." "We can go shopping Saturday with her credit cards. You can go as her. Or I can go as her and you can go as me."

Next: "Dark Talk on a Dark Night" 

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