The Book of Masks (Vol. 4)

Personas, Grata or Not

Previously: "The Touch of Magic" 

"Where are you off to?" Mrs. Tartaglione asks. She winces as she continues to massage her foot.

You glance at the boy. His eyes crinkle up. "Up to you, Joey," he says. He hesitates just fractionally at the name.

"Um, maybe a coffee shop downtown?" you suggest. "Those are fun to study at."

"Maybe we should go to the library," the boy says. "University library."

"Be home by six-thirty," Mrs. Tartaglione says. She sighs. "I should have dinner on the table by then."

"Okay, we won't be long," Will says. He pokes you, then pokes you again, but you've no idea what he means or wants, so you just say, "Bye" to Mrs. Tartaglione and shove Will toward the door.

"Oh my God," he mutters when you're outside. "You almost messed things up so bad."

"Why, what did I do wrong?"

"A coffee shop?" he exclaims. "I can't go to a coffee shop!"

"Why not? Are you a Mormon or something?"

You're opening the door to your truck when you and Will both realize that he should be the one driving. He circles around the back of the truck while you go around the front.

"No, we're not Mormon," he grumbles when you've gotten in and are putting on your seat belts. "But you don't go to a coffee shop to study!"

"Sure you do."

"Well, I don't! At least, my parents won't let me." He feels at his jeans pockets for the keys. "I asked one time if I could go to a coffee shop to do my studying, and I got a lecture."

"Jesus, your family's weird! What's wrong with going to coffee shops?"

"They're just for goofing off in! Anyway, that's what my dad says." Will starts the truck, puts it very carefully in reverse, and backs slowly out into the street. He idles there a moment. "Do your folks let you get on the internet when you're doing homework?"

"I don't know how they'd stop me. I do my homework up in my room. And how do you do 'homework' when you're always home?"

"Assignments, I mean. But my parents don't let me get on the internet until I'm all done with my school work. They turn the wifi off." He puts the truck in drive. "And I have a classroom downstairs where I do my work."

"Did they grow you in a test tube or something?" you ask. "Because this doesn't sound human."

* * * * *

Joey gives you some of the details of her life as you drive toward the university. She attended a public school until the third grade, but she hadn't gotten along well there. The other kids bullied her, and she didn't have any friends. There was also talk of her skipping a grade. So her parents decided to take her education into their own hands. Joey's mother had studied to be a public school teacher, and her father was a professor of computer science at the university, so they were confident they could do the job. They also had the time and money. Her dad (who is quite old, in his early sixties now) did really well in the stock market, and her mom (who is twenty years younger than her dad) devoted herself to taking care of Joey and the house.

And is Joey smart? Well, she knows Latin and is studying out of college-level science and math books. But without other students to measure herself against, she's not sure how good she is. "My dad says it doesn't pay to compare yourself to other people, unless you think you're not doing good," she says. "And he says he knows I'm doing good." To your mind, her dad sounds like he's raising her the way a biologist might raise a new breed of mushroom.

You go up to the college library and find a table in a corner of the third floor that's cut off by the stacks from everything else. You've only been on the Keyserling campus a few times before, and inside the library only twice that you can remember (both times with Carson Ioeger, who was looking for some books for a research project), and you don't like it. It feels dark and dank, and there's a faint smell of wet in the air. It comes over you in a curious way: the premonition that a tentacle might slide out from between the books and grab at you.

Joey doesn't notice, and falls onto the table with barely disguised glee, to page through the book until she comes to the last sheet that will turn. "This is the one that makes the stuff we used to seal up the masks," she says. "And this one—" She turns to the facing page, and tries to pull it away. "It's really funny," she says, "the way you have to do a thing in order to get the pages to turn."

"Yeah, hilarious," you reply.

"I wonder why that is. Do you know who wrote it? Where'd you get it?" You tell her about Arnholm's. "My dad says those guys are a couple of crooks," she declares. She turns back to what passes for a title page. "And you know, I don't think the guy who wrote the book knew how to speak Latin. Not really."

"We managed to work out his instructions," you point out.

"That's no excuse. God, don't you just want to smack people who are sloppy?"

Considering that she's looking like a very scruffy teenage boy, you consider it wisest to not answer.

"So, this one right here," she says, flipping forward to the first spell, "makes a thing called a 'persona'."

"I thought it made a mask."

"Well, it does. But the guy doesn't call it a mask. He calls it a receptaculum until you put it on someone. Then it becomes a 'persona'."

"Like a person?"

"Exactly like a person. Except—" She squirms and drums her fingers on the book. "A 'persona' is like a pretend person. Like a— Well, like a mask. But not physically. You know how you sometimes pretend to be different than how you are with other people? Like, when your aunt and uncle come over, you pretend to like them? It's like that. Like an act. A character you're pretending to be with other people. That's a persona."

"Like you're pretending to be me, and I'm pretending to be you."

She raises her head to give you a direct look. Her eyes—your eyes—crinkle up again, and she grins at you. It strikes you how big and yellow your teeth are.

"Yeah," she says softly, and holds your eye. It begins to get a little creepy.

Maybe you get a look on your face, for she suddenly turns away. "Except, you know, except in this case it's not a character but a ... a disguise. But you can make up a new character."

"Like how?"

She turns the book around, flips back a few pages, and points to a paragraph.

"It explains it here. It says that after you copy someone into a receptaculum you can keep putting it on people, and their— It calls it imago, which just means 'image', you know, or 'likeness'. But the other person's imago will get added to it, and it will mix all together to make a new one. Like when you use software to merge the faces of lots of people to get a blend. You'd get someone who looks new!"

"That'd be kind of cool," you concede. Then a thought occurs to you. "What happened if you blended a guy and a girl? Like, your 'imago'"—you stumble a little over the unfamiliar word—"and mine?"

"Ewwww!" Joey slaps at your arm.

"I mean, would—?"

"I don't even want to think about it!" She pulls the book back to her. "But it would be a fun thing to try. Not putting guys and girls together, I mean!" she exclaims. "But a couple of guys or a couple of girls. Then you could seal it up and wear it and go out and no one would know who you are!"

"No one knows who we are now."

"I meant, no one would recognize you. Not who you are are or who you're supposed to be. Like, now, if one of your friends—"

She whips suddenly around, as though startled by a noise. "Do any of your friends like to come up to the library?" she asks in a strained voice.

"None of my friends like to read."

"Really?" Her brow furrows, and you wince a little. Apparently, you look like a retard when you're puzzled.

"I'm exaggerating. But you don't have to worry."

"Okay. But you get what I mean, if we made a couple of masks and filled each of them with a bunch of faces—"

"Is that what you want to do?"

Joey freezes. "Do you?"

"Well, if we're trying things out," you say.

It's when she doesn't answer that you realize what you just said. You were implying that you and she are partners or something in this project.

As though, by finishing and putting on that 'persona' you accidentally made of yourself, she hasn't already pushed her way in through the door that you opened when you showed her and Jenny the book.

"Yeah, okay," she says. "That could be—"

"Or we could just go on to the next spell."

Joey drums her fingers on the book again, then flips forward a page or two. You give her a chance to study the most recently uncovered spell before asking, "What does it do?"

"I'm not through it yet," she says. "It calls for some new stuff we don't have, though." She traces a line of text with her fingertip. "And there's some words here in another alphabet or something I don't understand." She bites her lip and looks up at you. "Maybe we should play it safe and hold off?"

Next: "The Rapunzel Protocol" 

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"Table of Contents (Vol. 4)" 
"The Book of Masks (Vol. 4)"