The Book of Masks (Vol. 1)

How to Get to Know Someone

Previously: "Show and Tell at the Old School" 

Are you gay? Did Maria really just ask you that?

"No!" you sputter. "I mean—! Look, I told you, I'm not a sicko or a pervert!"

"You think gays are perverts?"

"NO! I just— You're flustering me!" You push a long, lank lock of hair from your face before it can plaster itself there with the sweat that's pouring off you.

Maria laughs. The sound startles you. It comes to you that this might be the first time you've ever heard her laugh.

"I guess I am," she says. "But—"

"Look, do you want to try this out yourself?"

She blinks, as though she's been slapped. "What did you say?"

"You heard me! Do you want to try this out yourself? Because turnabout's fair play," you gabble. "If I'm going to turn myself into you, it's only fair you get a chance to turn yourself into me! Then you can maybe get the appeal. Or," you hastily correct yourself, "you'll understand how come—"

"Oh, I think I get the appeal. For you, I mean." Maria puts her fist to her mouth to hide a smile. "I don't think it would be the same for me. But still," she adds before breaking off to rake you up and down with a querying gaze.

Oh God, she's going to ask me to make out with her, you think, and you don't know whether to slap yourself or to faint from ecstasy. She's going to ask me to make out because she sees how gorgeous she is and she can't resist it, or maybe she's wondering what it would be like to make out with herself but Jesus Christ would I be able to make out with myself if she insists on—?


"Zursj fitr sd pmh sd upitr pggrtomh," Maria says.

"Uh, pardon?" you gasp. You hardly understand your own words through the roaring in your ears.

Maria gives you a puzzled look. "I said, sure, as long as you're offering." She takes a step back. "What do we have to do?"

* * * * *

It takes you a surprisingly long time to explain the procedure to her, because she's full of questions, not only about how the stuff is supposed to work, but why it works that way and why the book sets things up the way it does. It embarrasses you to have to admit how little of it you know or understand, and Maria grows impatient, both with you and with the book, particularly with the fact that the pages won't turn until you execute a spell. You can tell that she'd like to press on deeper into the book and doesn't seem to be really interested in your offer to set her up with a "Will Prescott" disguise to match the "Maria Vasquez" disguise that you made. But when you try backing out, she replies, in an abstracted way, "I think I should, though. It'll make you feel better." It sounds like an insight into your feelings of guilt, and it leaves you feeling worse.

For a mask you have the one that you made in the coffee shop parking lot, but you will have to make another one of those brain-copying strips if you're going to give her the matching experience. You also caution that it will take a full week, probably, to polish the mask before it can be used. She offers (rather sweetly, you think) to do the polishing if you'll make the metal strip. When you part for the day, you present her with the mask of herself, and promise to bring in the copy of her brain to school tomorrow.

"Thanks," she says as she starts to get in her car. "So I guess I'll see you in class."

"Uh, we don't share any classes."

"We don't?"

"No. But you have my friend Caleb in a couple of them, so I guess I could—

"I'll just text you and set up a time and place," she says, then pulls her car door shut. You bite your tongue, and nod and wave as she turns on the motor. Maybe I'll still go find her, you're thinking, when she rolls down the window and beckons you over. "There's one more thing I should ask you," she says.

"Yeah?"

"What's your name again?"

* * * * *

There's no reason to finish the new brain-thing before the mask is done, but you want to show your good faith, so you pour all your energy into it that night, and the next morning you are able to take with you to school a metal strip with the name WILLIAM MARTIN PRESCOTT floating over its surface. In first period, as you're waiting for class to start, you text Maria, telling her you have something for her. Got thing for u too, she texts back. Meet in theater after school?

You get more and more frightened and excited as the school day trundles forward, so much so that both Caleb and Keith ask if there's something wrong. You just tell them you've got something on your mind, then change the subject. By the time the last bell rings, your hands are trembling so hard that all your books fall from them as you're changing your stuff out at your locker; and a minute later, in front of the office, when you think you hear someone calling your name, you bolt out the nearest exit and sprint around the front of the school rather than risk getting caught and delayed. Only when, panting, you hit the theater portico does it occur to you that it might have been Maria calling.

But it wasn't. When you wrench open the theater door, you spot her sitting in the back row, staring at the stage. She looks over and gives you a small smile and wave.

"You got her fast," you gasp as you collapse into the seat next to her. Sitting beside her this way, here at school, makes this new acquaintance feel both more and less real. More real, because school itself feels like a more real place than a coffee shop; less real, because the hard reality of Westside High makes your new acquaintance feel even more improbable.

She only shrugs. "I finished that mask," she murmurs as she pulls her bag into her lap. As you gape, she unzips a pocket and pulls out a mask that glows with a soft blue light.

Your jaw drops. "How'd you get it done so fast?"

"I used a car buffer. Did I do it wrong?"

"No." You're feeling faint as you take the mask from her, and your eyes bulge as you turn it over and over in your hands. It seems even more beautiful than the one you made. You groan. "I wish I'd thought of that!"

"Did you make the other part to go with it?" she asks. You pull two metal strips from your bag: one with her name and the other with yours. "Wow," she says as she takes them. "Vasquez y Lorca," she murmurs as she studies them. "That's funny. That's not really my name, but—"

"But what?"

She bites her lip, then shrugs. "That would be the very old style of doing it, I think. Huh. So how do these things work?"

"You put one of them onto your forehead. It'll knock you out. Then, when you wake up—"

"Oh, right you've done this before. With the one that has my name on it."

"Yes." You feel your face redden.

She gives you a small, puckish smile. "Then let's see what it was like for you."

Before you can react, she puts one of the metal strips to her forehead. You suppress a cry as her eyes lose focus, and catch her as she sags in her seat. Luckily, there are only a few people down on stage below, moving furniture about, and none of them are paying attention to you. You prop Maria up, and then as you did last time you pull her head onto your shoulder so that she will look more natural. For the next ten minutes you stare vacantly at the stage below, sweating hard and waiting for her to wake up.

You first realize she's woken up when she lifts her head. She ignores you though, to stare with a hard frown down at the stage. "Maria?" you croak. "Maria?"

She turns that hard frown on you, and you cringe. It's like she's seeing you for the first time. Oh God, you think, she really knows me now, doesn't she? Everything about me. And it's—

She jumps up, tripping hard on your feet, and runs for the door. You come half out of your chair to follow her, then remember to grab her bag and yours. She's racing toward the main building by the time you emerge onto the grassy quad. You follow her back into the school and just glimpse her before she vanishes into a girls' restroom. You fall back against the wall opposite to catch your breath. What is she doing in there? you wonder. Your scalp prickles as the answer comes. She's scoping herself out, like I'd do if I was inside her body.

Or she's throwing up.

But she's not long in emerging, and her expression is still very hard. She does a double take at you, and marches up. You steel yourself for a punch in the balls.

Instead, she says, "Come on, we should switch clothes and make that mask of you."

You jump. "What? Why?"

She gives you an annoyed look. "You're joking, right?" She glances around and drops her voice. "So we can turn ourselves into each other. For fuck's sake, don't tell me you don't want to."

"G'uh? Umngh!"

"We'll do it in your truck, it'll be faster that way." She grabs a fistful of your t-shirt. "Come on, Will."

"What's the rush?" you squeak.

"The rush is, first, I don't wanna get caught here by Chelsea. Second, because today's your first day at your dad's work, and you're going to be late if we don't get a move on."

Your eyes nearly pop from your head. Your first day at Salopek! You totally forgot!

"And it's pretty obvious you don't want to go in," Maria is saying as your knees buckle. "Or are you such a fucking airhead that it totally slipped your mind?"

Next: "The Girl Who Wants to Be You" 

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