This choice: Get some money out of Carlos's envelope • Go Back...Chapter #10Twice a Thief by: Seuzz   "Hey, are you talking to me again?"
That's your question for Keith when you plop down next to him in second period the next day. That dumb face of his curls up in an expression of scornful befuddlement. Privately, you make a note to practice it inside his mask the next time you have it on.
"When the fuck was I not speaking to you?" he demands.
"Yesterday. And the day before, on account of fuck if I know."
"Because of that shit you pulled on Monday," he shoots back. "And fuck-wye-eye—"
Fuck-wye-eye? That's an expression you'll have to remember to use the next time you're impersonating him. You were having the hardest time talking like him yesterday.
"—so just remember that!" Keith glares sullenly at you.
"Sorry, can you repeat that part in the middle?" you ask. "After that thing you said, that fuck-wye-eye thing," you explain as Tilley enpurples. "I was thinking how clever that was, how I want to start using it."
His glower deepens with suspicion, but you put on your most innocent and pleasant smile. Slowly he loses the eggplant coloring.
"Yeah, well, I just made that expression up." He says it in a grumble, but he sounds pleased underneath. "Right now. Sometimes these things just come to me, you know. On account of my talent."
Somehow you manage to keep a straight face. "Yeah, I've noticed. You're pretty good at coming up with this stuff."
Andy Tackett is sitting behind Keith, and it's hard to not catch his eye, for he's openly listening with unhinged astonishment—and barely concealed hilarity—at Keith's ludicrous boasts.
"So what did you say after you said that? That 'fuck-wye-eye' thing."
"Oh, nothing." Keith shrugs. "What are you doing after school?"
"What I was gonna ask you. Hey, how about you and me skip eating with Caleb again. He's being totally gay for Carson and James these days."
Across in the other row, Tim Gerard clucks his tongue and gives you a dirty look. "You shouldn't use expressions like that, Will," he says. "It's homophobic and it's hate speech."
"Sorry," you tell Tim. To Keith: "What I meant to say is, Caleb is being homosexual with his engorged penis up Carson's and James's asses these days."
Tim makes a noise, and Tackett doesn't look like he approves either. But Keith high-fives you.
* * * * *
So in this way you manage to talk Keith into meeting you at the IHOP by the movie theater after class. You set a rendezvous time of four-thirty, which will not give you enough time for what you mean to do, but will keep him out of the way and put him in a place where you can text him plausible excuses.
At a little before four you pull your truck into the loading alley behind the Carriage Hills Shopping Center, which is just on the other side of the Carl's Jr. you parked at yesterday. You learned your lesson from that experience and have sought out a more isolated spot in which to put on the mask.
Ten minutes later you wake in Keith's body again. You check yourself out in the rearview mirror, and practice that face you saw him pull in Mr. Hawks's class. It looks unconvincing, but that's probably because you're trying to "act" like him in a vacuum. Just wait till you have an opportunity.
Five minutes later you are in front of the Top S(h)elf Storage complex. You don't have a code to get into the complex itself, so you swagger into the office. "Yo," you ask the girl at the front in your best imitation of Keith Tilley being an insolent prick. "I'mma s'posed to meet a guy inside the complex here. Name of Carlos Montoya." You chuck your chin at her. "I don't got the code to get in."
It's pretty obvious from the way her expression cools that you've made a bad impression. But so what? She points down a short hallway. "You can get in going through the door in back."
"Thanks, babe," you say, and shoot a wink at her. She's in her thirties, at least, and pretty fat, and her resemblance to a pile of ice cream stacked onto a denim-clad cone only increases as her frostiness deepens. You swagger out that back door and across the lot to the climate-controlled building.
It worries you that there's a car parked out front, but you press on. You punch in the door code—1776—and saunter inside. It worries you more when you notice that the doors have locks on them: for some reason you were assuming that because they were on the inside of the unit that they wouldn't.
You slow up as you near the center of the building. There are doors open right around where they were yesterday.
You peek into the first one. Carlos is there, sitting on his bench in a muscle shirt, doing curls. He looks over, does a double take, and grins.
Or maybe it's a grimace. There's not a lot of happiness in it, and it's a hefty weight. "Hey man," he grunts.
"Yo. T'sup?"
"Ungh." Carlos drops the weight with a clang and clasps his bicep while making a face. "Thirty reps, man," he says. "How many can you do? Oh, are you not crazy anymore?"
"When the fuck was I crazy?"
"This morning, fucker. About that movie we watched yesterday."
Shit. They must've talked to Keith about that fucking weird-ass movie he was supposed to have watched with them.
"Nah, I was just jerking your chains. Oh, and fuck-wye-eye—"
Yes!
"—I'mma decided you're right and it was ass on a shit sandwich."
Carlos gives you a queer look, then shrugs. "Yeah, well, you didn't have to call it 'no fucking movie', though. That wasn't called for."
"When did I call it 'no fucking movie'?"
"When we talked this morning." Now he's sounding exasperated. "You said you watched no fucking movie with me and Mike yesterday, and then you—"
"Right. 'Cos I was like, pfft! You get it." It seems like the right moment, so you try out that hyper-scornful look.
"Uh huh. But it's the 'fucking' that hurt. I mean Jesus, even I didn't like it, but—"
"Oh, sure. But for your inf— I mean, fuck-wye-eye, I said that—"
"Fuck-wye-eye, what the fuck is this 'fuck-wye-eye' you keep saying?" Carlos picks up the weight again, this time in his left hand.
"It means eff-wye-eye. Like, for your information. But, you know, for your fucking information." You demonstrate by thrusting out your crotch. "Yeah," you say as Carlos's eyes bug out. "It's a new thing I'm'a tryin' out, on account of my talent. Gonna get everyone using it, collect me a quarter every time someone says it."
"In ten years you'll be able to buy a Kit-Kat bar."
"Well, for fuck-wye-eye, I already got Will Prescott using it. What are you doing?"
"My workout."
"No, I mean after. I'm not that big a dumbass." Your cell rings.
"I dunno." He grunts as you check your phone. "Got some stuff with Philip to work on. You?"
"Bleeps the fuck outta me." Is it your imagination, or are you actually doing pretty good at coming up with Tilley-level kinds of verbal stupidity? "Hang on." You text Keith back a short note telling him you got caught by someone. "Say, 'at reminds me, about that ten dollars you tried giving me yesterday."
"You still want it?" Carlos asks. "Mike was being a dick, on account of he hated that we didn't think that movie was an Omega threat level of awesomeness."
"Love to take it. And can I borrow, like, fifty from you? I got someone I wanna impress."
He flinches in mid-curl. "Fuck, I'm impressed you got the balls to ask, but sure. Hang on."
So you wait for him to finish three sets of ten reps, then follow him into the other bay. This wasn't how you intended to get money from him, but it comes to the same thing, since it's not like you're going to pay him back. "Who are you trying to impress?" he asks as he hands it over, along with the ten, to make an even sixty.
You waggle your eyebrows. "That's for my fuck-wye-eye. And after, when I tell you who, it'll be your turn to fuck-wye-eye. I mean, be impressed."
* * * * *
After changing back into your own face, you send Tilley a note saying you got trapped at home by your mom and won't be able to meet him. Then you hit a couple of supply stores for the shit you need. After dinner you tackle the next spell.
It takes several hours, for after prepping a metal strip over the sigil, you have to carve a bunch of runes into it. This takes forever, and it's coming up on one o'clock in the morning before you lean back, pop your neck, and drop the strip onto the book to test whether you're done. To your relief, the page turns loose, and you eagerly turn it over to find out what you've made. There's only one line printed there, a Latin phrase which translates as "To know the mind of another."
It takes you a moment to puzzle out what it means. Then your jaw drops.
It copies minds! That's got to be what it does! As a mask copies the body, this doohickey must copy minds, so you'll know what other people know.
Put something like that together with a mask, and you'd have a complete disguise.
Or you could use it just to snoop and learn things that would be useful.
Like when a certain storage bay is likely to be empty, and what the combination to the lock on it is.   indicates the next chapter needs to be written. |
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