“Oh shit! Please! Please don’t kill me!” Kristen Wright-Wallace practically scrambles away from you on the floor. You’ve seen golems switch into their owner’s standard mode pretty instantly, but this is the first time you’ve seen one become a blubbering heap in less than three seconds. You lean back, folding your arms sternly as you watch the girl that was, moments ago, Rae Caldwell try and get to safety. “Please! Fuck! Don’t do anything to me!”
“Like what?” you say, Rae’s sardonic amusement creeping into your consciousness and tilting your mouth into the slightest of smiles. In truth, it’s all you can really muster. You feel like someone’s taken your body and put it through a printing press. Right now you’re surviving on nicotine and caffeine. Even so, it’s better than the brief, awful time you were between the Gail mask and your new persona. When this is over, when you finally emerge from under the layers of identity you’ve buried yourself, you’re going to unmask in a hospital.
“I…” Kristen stops blubbering for a moment and looks at you. “Well, uh… beat me… or something!”
You shake your head and throw the spare clothes at her – the loose, oversized garb that Vee had used to take you to the motel last night. “Why would I do that? Just get dressed. Must be freezing your pasty ass off down there.”
“Tha… thank you!” The golem scrambles for the clothes, and you tap your new nails on the counter, a little morse beat that Rae sometimes uses for centering herself. Not that she often needs it. Of all the girls she – now you – hang with, she’s by far the most composed thanks to one simple secret. I don’t give a fuck. If Rae’s Instagram blows up, great. If not, she doesn’t care. Nor is she interested in the size of your wallet, your sexual peccadillos, whether she excels in high school or whether the sports team with a goofy mascot is beating the sports team with the racist one. Insult Rae Caldwell and expect her to either ignore you or laugh at you. It’s an almost Zen existence.
“You know where you are?” you ask, flicking some dust off your Donna Karan. OK, so there’s one thing you care about. Clothes. Proper, stylish, well cut clothes, chosen for body shape, season and occasion.
“I’m…” Kristen pauses and glances around. “Wait, this is the basement of the cathedral!”
“Yup,” you agree. “Any guess who I am?”
Kristen furrows her brow, even as she pulls on the sweater top. “Uh… I don’t… you’re not Todd or Chris, they’re planning something else. And you’re not me, because I’m Abi. So you must be…” her eyes shoot wide. “Oh God, Will? Will! Please! Will! I was just messing around with you in the basement, I swear! It was… Abi! It was like Abi had taken control of my brain! It wasn’t my fault, what happened, it was…”
“Vee already told me,” you say, propping yourself up, a very real anger boiling inside. Sure, this is just a golem, a facsimile of the real Kristen Wright-Wallace. But it still thinks and acts like the genuine article, even if under Vee’s command. “About how you planned to kill me?”
“What?” Kristen shakes her head furiously. “No! No, I didn’t! I swear! You were just going to be me, and…”
“No, no,” you say, Rae’s voice hushed, scolding. You stand up, letting her thin form tower over Kristen. “I mean my identity. It was Abigail Steiner you wanted to shove under a train, right?”
“No! I mean! Yes! But not…”
“Oh, and that’s ignoring the torture, Kristen. How the fuck would you like it if I chained you up in the cold and damp, without food or water, until the cramp gave way to fever and you wanted to curl up into a ball and fucking die?”
The eyes go wider, her face turning pale as you hit on the truth. “OhmygodpleaseI’msorryplease…”
You roll your eyes and shake your head. You don’t have time for this. Alex and Izzy were due 20 minutes ago, which means they’ll probably be showing up right about now. “Fuck,” you say, shaking your head. “Pull yourself together. When you get back to that fucking rich-ass school, tell Macklin I’m a girl called Rae Caldwell. Here,” you fish out the remainder of your Gail Lattimore money. “Get a cab. Just… get out of my sight before I really do something.”
Kristen nods, gathering herself up off the floor and wiping away the tears. You have no idea if they’re real or fake and, given her instinct was to go almost immediately into full murder, you don’t really care. Instead, you brush yourself off, opening your new phone to check your appearance. Fuck, I look half-dead without makeup. It’s not true, but Rae’s own opinion of herself whips through your mind. Kristen dealt with, you walk over to the sheet – Shelly underneath – and pull it back to check on it. It’s a sight that makes you recoil in horror.
Someone has stuck a large, bright yellow post-it note on Shelly’s forehead. “Your brain, Will!” Shit. You go over to the supplies, and realize that anything of use has already been taken, along with the Acuna mask. Vee must have headed straight to the basement after she dropped you off.
It’s with a pounding, juddering heartbeat that you turn and head back up the stairs and out into the parking lot, bending down into a squat to scoop up your ice coffee. You take a quick slurp, then, narrowing your eyes against the fading sun, pull out a cigarette and light it. It’s a strange experience – new for Will Prescott, old for Rae Caldwell – but the instant nicotine hit calms you a little after Vee’s surprise. Then, slipping into Rae’s posture, you walk back down the street to the Bakery.
As you saunter around, it doesn’t take too long to spot two girls who are waiting for you. Yeah, my bitches. Izzy looks exactly like her photos, short with beestung lips and a mop of unruly hair in a center-parted bob, half black, half purple. She’s a year below you in Eastman, but you’ve all planned and schemed to end up in many of the same classes, settling down into a small clique of utter disinterest in whatever’s being taught. She was friends with Alex before you, having long taken to hanging around with her thanks to her brother Gabe going to St.X. Apparently the church isn’t generous enough to fund two Latinx kids to go to the land of rich white privilege.
“Fuck you been!” Alex says, waving you over. You walk down the street, sauntering without a care as you take another drag on your cigarette and blow it off to the side. Alex Day. The girl who has it all and wants none of it. A virtual rap sheet of offenses tumbles through your admiring brain, like the time she broke into the old theater to ‘feel inspired’, or drew a big Fuck You to Westside down by the river to show ‘em school pride is dumb. You’ve known her since she was transferred to Eastman, dumping her pint-sized ass on the desk next to you in English, then collapsing her head onto it in sheer boredom at whatever Atwater was droning on about.
“Do I look like I’ve got nothing better to do than wait around for your pocket-sized ass?” you reply, bringing up your caffeine hit in turn. Drink. Smoke. Drink. Smoke.
“Yeah, pretty much,” Izzy shoots. You roll your eyes a little.
“Well. I am here. What’s the big surprise?” You’re on Rae autopilot now. Alex has promised something ‘epic’. You’ve no idea what it could be, and the Rae half of you, even if she’s not showing it on the surface, is dying to find out what hell you’re going to raise.
“Surprise?” Alex feigns. “Did I say surprise? I thought I was just hangin’ with my girls on a Saturday night, getting up to what my dad euphemistically refers to as 'malarkey'.”
You don’t look impressed. “I may be hungover as fuck, but that does not mean I’m losing my mind,” you retort. Suddenly the coffee, nicotine and general feeling ill makes sense. Memories flash through your mind of last night’s wild and crazy Halloween adventure.
Izzy, somehow still full of energy despite what she got up to the previous night, grins. “Tell her.”
Alex’s face lights up. “Well, if you’re not too hungover, what say we go for round two? It’s what you might call…uh… ah… ghoulish sequel to last night’s fun.”
“Halloween Two,” Izzy grins.
“Electric Spookaloo,” you add, almost in some telepathic call-and-respond. You’ve no idea what Alex is planning… but it might fit exactly into Vee’s scheme. Or you could call it off, let Rae’s hangover pass, and see if you can’t snare Alex Day another time.
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