The Book of Masks (Vol. 1)

The Cheerleader from Outer Space

Previously: "A Return to the Scene of the Crime" 

You're still studying your reflection—a reflection that seems both familiar and unfamiliar—when footsteps sound in the hall and a fist bangs against your door. "Will!" Robert bawls. "Mom's been calling you for, like, twenty minutes now!"

Gotta hide! you think. Can't let them find me like—!

Then your own native sense reasserts itself: As long as I don't say anything about cheerleading practice, they'll never suspect there's anything different about me! "Coming!" you shout, and fight down a grin.

Robert follows you downstairs, treading on your heels. "Sorry," you tell your parents, who are nestling together on the sofa. "Just catching a quick nap." You pretend to stifle a yawn.

Your mom says, "I was just wondering if you wanted to run over to Kendra's and pick up some ice cream for us all."

Ice cream? I can't have ice cream! you think. "Sure," you stammer. "What do you guys want?"

Then you exult: Wait, I can have ice cream as long as I'm looking like this!

* * * * *

You pull the metal strip out of your brain before going to bed—the same trick that pulls a mask off also pulls off the strip—because you don't want to wake up confused. But the next morning (which is a Saturday), you take it with you when you drive up to the university library.

The choice of destination suggests you are still feeling a shadow of its influence from last night.

You almost didn't make it over to the gourmet ice cream shop last night, and you almost didn't make it home. On the way out you made several wrong turns because you were momentarily baffled about how to get out of Acheson, and on the way back you drove halfway to Maria Vasquez's house before catching yourself and adjusting your course. Afterward, you spent a thoughtful half hour at your desk, scooping up spoonful after spoonful of a softening sundae while scrolling through social media sites that you never check. What you found, not online but in Maria's borrowed memories, left you wanting to take a closer, more careful look at her in the light of the day.

Because Maria Vasquez is not the girl you and your friends always took her for.

Though it's a weekend, you still have to park half a mile from the university library and hike over. Scruffy college students—the guys in shorts and sandals and weird facial hair; the guys and girls both in unflattering buns—shuffle in and out of the foyer with worried, distracted frowns, but you ignore them to take the stairs two at a time up to the third floor. Something like instinct, not memory, draws you to the bay window that looks westward toward downtown. You drop onto the dumpy sofa that sits in front of it, open your bag, and take out the memory strip. You study Maria's name for a moment, then stretch out on the sofa and return it to your forehead.

* * * * *

You feel as though you've woken from deep and restful sleep when you open your eyes, and you smile to yourself as you stretch. My favorite spot in the library, you think, but how did I get here? Then you remember who you are and what you are doing here. Well, good. Now for some good, unhurried thinking, you tell yourself as you draw your knees up to your chin and wrap your arms around your shins.

(And then you force yourself to unbend. The pose felt natural but also way too girly.)

It's a funny thing, to find yourself concentrated in this way on the puzzle and surprise that is that grimoire and its magic. Up until this point you have only concentrated on the very practical problem of what you could make and what you could do with it. The philosophical and scientific ramifications—

Like: Magic is real, and it can do all kinds of unnatural and impossible things!

—you have scarcely noticed.

But Maria Vasquez would notice them.

And that's the other funny thing. You would never have thought of Maria Vasquez as the sort of girl who would even be able to formulate the phrase "philosophical and scientific ramifications," let alone be bothered by it.

That's because Maria Vasquez has the reputation for being the dumbest, ditziest, and most empty-headed girl at Westside.

Maria is a girl who, when called on in an English class, once went up to the blackboard and started doing algebra problems.

She is a girl who, in the middle of the school cafeteria, once exclaimed, out of the blue, "Why would you even say there isn't a rhinoceros under the table?"

She is a girl who sometimes has to be reminded to chew the gum in her mouth.

Not that you've witnessed any of this behavior yourself. You've only heard about it, in sniggers and snatches of gossip, from friends like Carson Ioeger and Jenny Ashton, who either saw it themselves or heard about it from other friends. Your own impression of Maria, aside from her having awesome boobs, great hair, and a pair of thighs you'd love to suffocate yourself between, is that she is very quiet, likes to stare off vacantly into nothingness, and usually has to have her attention summoned back with a snap of the fingers in her face.

But now—

—as you stare vacantly into space, your attention so far away its distance can't be measured in light-years, parsecs, or any other physical unit—

—you understand that she's usually just preoccupied with the kind of thoughts it doesn't pay to share with others.

That time in English? She was bored with the poem they were supposed to be reading, and was entertaining herself by trying to recast the quadratic formula with b as the solved-for term. Impatient with herself, she had take the problem with her to the board when called, and only realized where she was and what she was doing when called on it by the teacher.

That time in the cafeteria? She had been reading an essay online about a problem in philosophy, which tried arguing that sentences like "There is no rhinoceros under the table" aren't actually meaningful. She didn't understand why that should be, until it occurred to her, in the middle of lunch, that it though a sentence like that was grammatical and each word had a meaning, it would be almost always be a meaningless thing to say.

And as for forgetting to chew her gum— Well, don't most people stop doing whatever they're doing when they're concentrating on a tricky question, like what would happen if you tugged on a taut light-bulb chain that was a light year long? Would you see the bulb—a light year away—light up a year later? Or two years later? Or would you have to wait even longer than that?

Anyway, her reputation for being a ditz and a ding-a-ling ought to be refuted simply by the fact that she's taking AP Calculus, AP Chemistry II, AP English IV, and AP Forensic Sciences. And she's getting A's in all of them. (Okay, except for the English class, where she's getting a B, but literature bores her.) Not that she particularly cares what people think, and when her friends giggle and call her a space cadet she just sighs and goes back to pondering questions like,

If it's possible to stereotype people, isn't it possible to stereotype the world? Like, isn't that what false scientific theories are? Bad stereotypes? And if stereotypes of people are common and lazy, wouldn't stereotypes about the world be similarly common and lazy? But then, how do you tell the difference between a true theory and a lazy stereotype? Or is there no difference? Like, if we we just treat true scientific theories as things so obvious that no one even thinks about them, isn't that just the same kind of thing as treating people according to a stereotype, as a type so obvious it isn't even worth noticing when the stereotype is false? "Of course the theory of evolution is true! And of course all blondes are dumb! Everyone knows that, and there's something wrong with you if you argue otherwise!" So if stereotypes are bad, shouldn't you not stereotype in science? And how do you stop doing that?

You jerk your attention back to reality. (Or to the stereotype of it.) It's right about now that Chelsea or one of the other girls would be shouting "Think fast" and too late I'd see the volleyball hurtling at my face. "Jeez, Maria, where were you, on Mars? Wherever you were, it sure took you long enough to get back!"

You dig the heels of your hands into your eyes, then check the time on your phone. What felt like two minutes of concentrated thinking turns out to have consumed closer to twenty. Vaguely, you wonder if that means you really are a ditz. Or does it only confirm that subjective time is different from objective time? Well, of course it is, everyone knows that! But then, what does it mean to distinguish between "subjective" and "objective" time? If the experience is different from the thing, how do you ever get outside the experience to see the objective thing? In saying that I'm now experiencing "objective" time and not just "subjective" time, am I not just saying that I'm now subjectively experiencing objective time, which is to say I'm only experiencing subjective time when I think I'm experiencing objective time? And doesn't that make the difference between them—?

Gah! You clench your eyes, settle your hand across your brow, and chant an incantation under your breath.

* * * * *

Okay, you've learned this much about Maria Vasquez: She's a lot smarter than she appears. Also, it's easy for her to get lost inside questions about the difference between the way things are, and the way they appear. Such a girl would probably be interested in these masks, and in the magic of them.

And if you're right, and you showed this stuff to her, you'd soon be hanging out with a cheerleader!

Next: "Maria Meets Magic" 

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