The Book of Masks (Vol. 1)

Tackling a Teacher

Previously: "The Leftovers" 

You need a test subject for this mask that you made. You're going to have to put it onto someone's face—that much is obvious—but how are you going to talk someone into doing that? And if you can't talk them into doing it, how are you going to force it onto them? By mugging them with it?

Either way, you need to get someone alone, which is a pretty good reason not to go looking in the theater or the library; and though that girl in the tutor's office was by herself, she was obviously waiting for the tutor to come back.

No, as dangerous as it seems, your safest option is to try the experiment on a teacher.

But who?

Not one of the teachers you currently have. You don't want your fingerprints on whatever happens. For the same reason you shouldn't try it on a teacher you had last year, or the year before. Maybe one of your freshman teachers wouldn't remember you, but that still seems too risky.

Also, you probably shouldn't try it on a teacher whose room is in a wing where you currently have a class, for they might remember you if they see you struggling through the hallways between classes. So that rules out an English teacher or a math teacher or a science teacher—

Then it hits you. You know exactly where to find a teacher who doesn't know you and will probably never see you again.

* * * * *

You flinch at the slap of shoes on the hardwood floors; the bang of a ball hitting the backboard; the hoarse, shouted curses, echoing off the bleachers and rafters. The horror of your freshman and sophomore P.E. classes comes washing back over you even before you step from the gym foyer onto the court.

It's after-school practice, but they're playing a full-on game, five against five. A full contact game, too. As you watch, Gordon Black, the hulking captain of the basketball team, wheels with the ball and knocks Jonas Martin clean off his feet and out of bounds. But Black doesn't pause, and drives down the court toward the basket on your end of the gym. Three opposing players rendezvous to block him, but he explodes past them, like a semi blowing through a roadblock of police cruisers, and hoists the ball through the basket. Jeremy Richards—who used to be your friend back in middle school, before a growth spurt went to his head—retrieves the ball, and the players race back down to the other end.

You watch for another minute, then let your eye drift up to the bleachers opposite you. There's maybe two dozen students sitting there. Most of them are occupied with their cell phones, but they lift their eyes occasionally to watch the practice. There are more guys than girls, but the spectators that count (assuredly!) are the three cheerleaders sitting halfway up at the half-court line: Chelsea Cooper, Kendra Saunders, and Gloria Rea. Chelsea is at the very center, naturally, for she's not only the squad captain, she's also dating Gordon Black, and that, you suppose, makes her the queen of the school. She's snooty enough to be royalty, anyway. The only times she's ever looked at you is to sneer, and it's a tired sneer, too, as though she resents even the effort to put you in your place with a look.

Shit! You've been staring at her and her friends too long, and they've noticed. To your horror, Kendra, her eyes still locked on you, leans over to whisper to Chelsea, and she looks up from her phone stare at you. You lower your eyes and fight the mortifying blush you feel stealing up your neck and face. You hope she doesn't decide to do anything about this social faux pas. There are plenty of stories of her siccing her brutal boyfriend on people who have offended her; and Gordon Black—all six and a half feet of burly muscle—is the jealous type anyway.

You duck your head and hurry to where you were going: the offices of the P.E. coaches.

They're on this side of the court, inside the wide mezzanine that separates the gym's two full-sized basketball courts. You pass through a doorway and hook a right. Before you stretches a narrow hall, with office doors, like the entrances to rabbit holes, on either side.

The first few doors are closed: Coach Tesla, Coach Stokes, Coach Porter. Coach Acuna's door is ajar, but when you knock softly and push it open you find it empty.

But the next door down is wide open. "Coach Schell," says the name plate on the door, but you concentrate on the woman behind the desk.

And well might you concentrate on her!

Half the PE coaches are men: grizzled and hairy when they aren't grizzled and balding. The female coaches, in general, aren't much better. Coach Tesla, for instance, looks like an old bag lady, and has the face and voice of a bullfrog. Coach Carter was probably once a real looker, but twenty years of hard sunlight have turned her skin to stiff leather. But Coach Schell ...

Well, she immediately reminds you of Chelsea Cooper. She could be Chelsea's older sister. Or an older cousin.

She's in her twenties, you'd bet, and her oval face is framed by dirty blonde hair that falls to her elbows. Her eyes are dark green, and her unblemished skin glows a light gold. She's wearing a tight blue t-shirt under a jeans jacket—a large, neon-pink backpack rests on her desk, so it looks like she's getting ready to leave—and her large breasts strain against the fabric of her shirt.

She must be a new hire. You surely would have noticed her your freshman or sophomore years, when you had to troop out to the gym for P.E. classes.

She looks up before you can knock, and if she's caught you gaping at her, she pretends not to notice. "Yeah?" she says, and her eyebrows go up.

"Guh ... Uh ... Hi," you squeak. All the bearings in your brain seize up. Now that the moment has come, you realize that you have absolutely no idea what to do or say. Your face starts to burn.

"I, uh, found this thing," you stammer as you swing your backpack around and set it on the desk. The coach's eyebrows rise further; she probably thinks you're about to have a stroke or something. "Uh, I found it out ... Uh ... There." You wave your hand in the general direction of New Jersey. "And I thought maybe someone should, uh, look at it? Say what it is? Maybe you know whose it is?" With fumbling fingers you get your pack open and yank the mask out. Your bag falls off the desk, dumping books and papers all over the floor.

"We have a lost and found," she says. But you ignore her, and drop the mask onto the desk and dive to retrieve your stuff.

"Oh, do you?" you gasp as you scoop your shit together. Your heart hammers at your breastbone. "I guess I could drop it there. But I thought maybe you, uh, might know whose it is."

Dammit, dammit, dammit, you think to yourself. How the fuck are you going to talk her into putting the mask to her face when you can't even get your tongue to work right? As for jumping at her and putting it on her yourself, even to you that would feel like one step short of rape.

As you pull your stuff together, you're aware that she's fallen silent, and you sit up and peek over the top of the desk, to find her holding the mask and examining it curiously. "It's, uh, like a Halloween mask," you croak.

She gives you a look. "No eye holes," she says.

"Sure there are," you blurt out. "It's transparent. Behind the eyes. You have get it up real close to your face," you add as she cocks a skeptical eyebrow at you. "Seriously, I freaked out when I noticed it."

Her brow furrows and her lips twist into a skeptical smile. But she raises the mask up and peers into it. "It doesn't look translucent," she says.

"You have to get it close." Sweat pops out all over your body, and you rise into a crouch.

She pulls it closer to her face.

For a hanging moment you do nothing.

Then, you reach up and shove the mask at her. It and your hand meet her face with a hard blow.

The mask vanishes, and you stifle a yelp.

* * * * *

It went into her. By God, it went into her! There's no other way to describe what happened. You pushed the mask onto her face and it ... sank through the skin and bone and went right inside her. Like pushing a grape into a bowl of Jell-O.

Except it didn't leave a hole or indentation behind.

Then her eyes crossed and she face-planted right onto the desk. After staring at her in mute horror for a solid minute, you finally had the presence of mind to slam the office door shut and lock it.

You are now pacing the narrow space in front of her desk. Oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck! What to do? Panic? You're already doing that. Call for help? Get the school nurse? And tell them what, that you punched a coach in the face with a magical mask? That you were passing on by and you found her like this?

She is still alive, at least. You checked her for breathing and a pulse, and she's still got those. Her eyes are open, but unseeing.

Should you run away? No one saw you come in. If you could get away without being seen, then someone would find Coach Schell and take her to the hospital and no one would know you had anything to do with it.

Except you and your conscience.

How did you fuck up? Maybe you weren't supposed to put the mask onto her face. But what else were you supposed to do with it? Why couldn't that dumb book have clearer instructions?

Or maybe—and this really feels like you're grasping at straws—it's doing exactly what it's supposed to do, and if you stick around you'll see it all turn out okay.

Next: "The First Mask" 

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