The Book of Masks (Vol. 3)

New Friends for Old

Previously: "Three by Three" 

The cheerleaders! you almost shout.

But you restrain yourself. It seems too obvious. And if you really want some cheerleaders in this coven, you can always circle back to them later.

So you affect an indifferent shrug. "If you know some of these girls already," you tell Sydney, "I guess we can start with them."

"You mean the volleyball team?" she says. "Oh, I can definitely get to some of them. Reagan, Ellie." She trails off into a thoughtful but bright-eyed silence.

"Reagan?" you echo. "Isn't she one of your friends?"

"Oh, yeah!"

"And you'd be okay with that? With turning her into—?"

Sydney stares at you, then laughs.

"It's not like she's one of my friend friends. It's not like we grew up in Kansas City together! Anyway," she continues with a smile that has turned smug, "we'd be even better friends, you know if—" She squeezes your arm. "If it was you being her."

You warm and stiffen all over. Especially in your pants.

* * * * *

Sydney doesn't believe in wasting time, so after shooting a text to Reagan, she gives you a bright but steady look and tells you to make yourself useful.

"Put together a shopping list," she tells you. "While I get things set up with Reagan, you go buy us some stuff to make more masks." You've already got two masks—which is all you need to make a replacement—ready to go, but you scramble to your feet anyway. Running errands would be better than sitting around, waiting and watching, while Sydney taps away at her phone.

You've only picked up half the things you need, though, when you get a text from Sydney, urging you to get over to her house ASAP. Text me when ur five min away, she instructs you.

She must have Reagan all ready to go for you, so you drop your shopping basket in the middle of the aisle and hightail it for the exit. Not until you're out in your truck do you realize that you've never actually been out to Sydney's house. So you text her for directions. She gives you an address, and tells you to plug it into a maps app.

She lives on the northwest side of town, in turns out, where the subdivisions fade into rolling countryside with woodland stands. It's country where the McMansions stand aloof from each other with pastures and grazing land to buffer their borders. Sydney's place is a rambling, asymmetrical house of white stone walls and gray shingled roofs, with a tower with a cupola rearing up over the front door. There's a red minivan parked out front, with one of those "My Kid Is an Honor Student" bumper stickers slapped onto its ass.

You haven't even knocked before Sydney, flushed and breathless, yanks the door open. "It's another friend from school!" she shouts back into the house, and she grabs you by the wrist. "We'll be out of here in a little while!" She hauls you inside, twists you around, and shoves you toward a staircase. "Upstairs!" she growls. "Be with you in a minute."

Of course, you're baffled by the hallways on the upper floor, not knowing which of three different ways to turn, so you loiter helplessly at the head of the stairs, waiting for Sydney to rescue you. "This way," she says when she joins you, and pulls you down the hallway on your left. "I'm not supposed to have boys up in my bedroom, so I'm using Nicholas's study." She shivers. "God, I'm so glad we dealt with him!"

She pushes you into a spacious room that's the size of the living room, dining room and kitchen back at your own house. In fact—and you do a double take when you notice—there's a small kitchenette, complete with refrigerator, sink, and cabinets, in a far corner. Otherwise it is furnished with a desk the size of an aircraft carrier, and a glass-topped coffee table with two chairs on one side and a small sofa on the other, and there is still vast, open acreage to walk around in. Big, bright windows look out over the street in front, and a hillocky yard in the back.

There's also a girl in the room. She is reclining on the sofa with her feet on the floor but her head tilted back, her blank, staring eyes turned to the ceiling.

It takes you a moment to recognize her, for it's like all the life has flowed out of her, leaving a flabby flesh-suit behind, but it's that girl Reagan you've seen hanging around with Sydney. "How long has she been out?" you ask Sydney.

"Since you texted me." Sydney pulls at her own hair nervously. "Five minutes?"

You bend to grasp Reagan by the ankles, and heave her around so that she's lying face up on the sofa. Sydney says, "I'll guard the door, make sure my mom doesn't come busting in on us."

That leaves you time to study the body you're about make into your own.

The girl isn't fat, exactly, but she is big, and there is something whale-like about the way she's beached on the sofa. She's wearing shorts and a t-shirt, exposing large thighs and arms. Her expression is lifeless, but you remember it being animated with a bold expression and a bold gaze, behind a bold, prow-like nose. Her hair is long and blonde (with dark streaks) and it trails off limply somewhere below her shoulders.

With nothing else to do, you strip her of socks and sneakers, then pull off your own.

Only then do you remember that you need to copy yourself into a mask, so that you can put it onto Reagan.

* * * * *

There's a throbbing behind your left eye when you wake, and you lay still for several seconds, taking careful breaths. The pain is like a marble pushing at your eyeball from behind, trying to dislodge it.

"Are you awake there, Will?" a voice says. It's familiar but you can't quite place it. You frown to yourself. And who are they talking to? you wonder.

"Will?" the voice says.

You make a face and pry your eyes open. Sydney McGlynn smiles down at you. You stare at her.

"Sydney?" you grumble. "What the—? What was that—?" Except you don't know what to call it, what she did to you.

She had ushered you into her stepfather's study, and you were cooing and gushing enviously over it, when you turned around to find Sydney pushing at you. You stumbled backward, wondering at her but giggling, then fell back onto a sofa. Sydney had something in her hand, and she pressed it to your face as she sat on your lap. There was an expression on her face that frightened you. A kind of hungry expression ...

"Oh!" You feel all the blood rush from your brain and face, and you almost faint even as you sit upright. You put your face to your knees. Your hair falls forward, and brushes against your bare calves. "Ohhhhhh!"

"What's wrong?" Sydney asks.

"Blood rush," you mumble back. "And memory rush."

That's the only way to describe the avalanche that threatens to tear your brain away. It's a mudslide of memories, of friends and birthdays and vacations and parents and school rooms and playgrounds. They belong to two different people though, and slide together into a heaping wreck, mangled up and mixed in with each other, so that you remember attending a school in California with your best friend Caleb Johansson, vacationing in the Caribbean with your other good friend Keith, and changing workout clothes in both the boys' and girls' changing rooms during middle school P.E.

Then, like metal filing plucked from a pile of wood shavings, everything springs apart again, and you feel two distinct brains and personalities within you. One that is yours, and the other that is—

Well, you're not sure what it is, or even what it's like. All you know for sure is that it feels like Reagan Hackett's mind and personality idling inside you, waiting to be driven. All you have to do is—

You slide into her, and feel a sense of mischief (and a little peevishness) wash over you. You look up at Sydney and smirk at her. "I'm going to get you for this, Sydney," you tease her.

Her eyes widen. "Get me for what?"

"For what you did to me! You and your boyfriend!"

Now Sydney looks alarmed, even frightened. "Um—"

"Don't worry, I'm just teasing. It's me, I'm just— What did you do with my clothes?" You are completely naked, and you look down at Reagan's very full-figured body: floppy, melon-like breasts, jiggly belly, and immense hips. Plus-sized, but not unhealthy, you remind yourself with a certain bright desperation.

"I— Whose clothes, exactly?" Sydney still looks wary.

You sigh. "Well, if I'm going to be Reagan, I'd better put on Reagan's clothes, am I right?" You give Sydney a look. "I can't exactly put on— Where's, um—?" You snap your fingers. "What am I going to call him? The guy who looks like me?"

"You mean Will?" Sydney's tone turns sarcastic. "If you're going to 'be' Reagan, you'd better start calling him that."

You make a face. "It sounds funny. Calling someone else by my name." Not to mention, you don't add aloud, thinking of that funny little guy as Sydney's boyfriend.

"I sent him out to finish picking up supplies, to get him out of the way while we talk. Is there anything we need to talk about?"

You've got lots of gossip about the life of Will Prescott you could share. Blake's friends, who dragged you outside for some humiliation. David Kirkham, who promises you the same. Your friends, who are now no longer your friends. "Reagan" would love to spill it all.

Next: "Avalanche Girl" 

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"Table of Contents (Vol. 3)" 
"The Book of Masks (Vol. 3)"