The Book of Masks (Vol. 3)

New Bosses, Practically the Same as the Old Bosses

Previously: "Senior Secrets" 

Keith is already at the school, jogging across the Westside student parking lot, when you arrive that evening. It's after seven, but that's the earliest that everyone could meet for the club meeting. Patterson was tied up at Eastman until five o'clock, by which point dinner plans started to intrude.

"Hey, you're late!" you shout at Tilley as you hustle to catch up to him.

"Fuck you," he shouts back. "You and Johansson can go fuck yourselves!"

"What did I do?"

"You told me to go fuck myself at lunch!"

"No, I didn't!"

"Yes you did! I told you I wanted to shake off—!" He makes a face as you catch up to him. "I wound up having to eat lunch with Hollister and Montoya and them!"

"Who?"

"My YouTube buddies."

"I don't know who you're talking about."

"Fuck you." He wheels and stalks off toward the gym. You hang back with a grimace to let him build up a lead again, then trudge slowly after.

* * * * *

The others are already up in the loft, waiting impatiently: Gordon Black, Jason Lynch, Seth Javits (really Caleb); Patterson is there too, but now he's done up like Frank Durras.

"There you are," he snaps as you enter. "I've just been explaining how things are going to change around here," he says, and folds his arms and leans against a crate.

"Gordon and I are moving over to Eastman," he continues. "That'll leave Johansson and Prescott in charge here until Tilley and Lynch gets their jobs done. Since Johansson is playing Javits now, talk to him if you want to schedule time up here."

Seth flashes you a surreptitious grin.

"But that doesn't mean you slack off on getting masks," Patterson continues. "You'll want more masks anyway. That's the whole fucking point of this club. Making copies of girls that you can fuck. And have your fun while you can," he goes on. "I'm researching some new spells in that book, and we may have to re-calibrate our hierarchy, add more levels."

"You mean we might have to go back to doing jobs?" Seth asks.

"Maybe. Depends on what else turns up in the book."

"Do I have to do my jobs by myself?" Keith bluntly asks, and you wince at the challenge in his tone. "Or do these guys get to help me?" He jerks his chin at you and Seth.

"Junior members gotta prove they can handle it without help from the senior guys," Patterson says. "Lynch is still junior, you and him can help each other."

"Pfft," Jason says. Keith flushes and hangs his head.

Any other questions, Patterson asks. You hesitate, then say, "I need a new mask of myself."

He nods. "That's right. There's blanks in the cabinet. Make one, get it over to me, and I'll finish it up for you." He looks around. "Is that all? Okay then."

He and Gordon and Jason leave together. There's silence for a moment after they've gone, then Seth raises his fists over his head and dances in place. "Score! The school is ours now, bitches!"

"You mean it's yours," Keith retorts. "Come on, you guys gotta help me get Yumi!"

"No we don't," Seth says. "You heard Steve. Do it yourself."

"I helped you guys! I helped you get Cindy!"

The argument makes you tired, and you turn on your heel and stalk out of the loft and down the stairs. You're hunched on one of the bleachers when Seth finds you a little later. "Who pissed in your cereal?" he asks.

"No one. I just got sick of Keith." And you, you don't add.

"Oh yeah!" He chortles. "Man, I really do get it these days, how come Javits so much wants to twist Tilley's head off his neck and use it as a football."

You make a face. "That's the biggest reason you should be helping him out. Get him up to our level so he can stop being himself."

"Rules are rules, man." He drops down next to you and slaps your thigh. "So who are you gonna be? You're not gonna keep on like this, are you?"

"I have to think about it," you reply, and get to your feet. "And I need someplace quiet to think about it."

* * * * *

But you have the hardest time concentrating.

The trouble, you decide, is that you have too many choices. You know where you don't want to be: in a situation close to the others. But there's a whole world out there where you wouldn't be close to them.

At the same time, it's pretty clear that Patterson isn't going to let you just vanish completely into a new life. You are still going to be a member of the club, and you're going to have to have a plausible excuse for picking someone who keeps aloof from the other members.

Which means you'll have to pick someone who (you can tell Patterson) will be a big help in scoring him those masks he is asking for.

It's when you get that insight that you figure out how to start narrowing your choices down.

The first option is to simply find someone who is part of some very distant social group. With his "YouTube buddies," Keith has already hinted at one way of doing this. You don't know who these guys are he's talking about, but you could probably make a secret deal with him, trading your help in getting a copy of Yumi in return for his help in replacing one of these other "buddies." Or, if he's unhelpful about that, you can just find some other place to hide. In the marching band or orchestra, or in the theater set, or somewhere like that.

A second option is to follow Patterson's lead, and move into a new school.

And if Patterson doesn't want you to leave Westside, you could just move down a couple of grades, where (you could tell him) it would be easier to get copies of juniors and sophomores and even freshmen.

It's while thinking about how to get sophomores or freshmen that a really out-of-the-box idea comes to you: How about being a teacher? You'd have your choice of students then, and as a teacher you'd naturally be aloof from the others.

You get one more idea the next morning, on the way in to school, when you catch sight of Carson Ioeger and James Lamont loping along in front of you. They're friends that you could get to real easily, and they're a couple of pranksters, and Javits, Patterson, Black and Lynch are their most frequent victims. Patterson would probably approve if you told him you wanted to replace Carson or James directly, or one of their friends.

* * * * *

Regardless of where you move, you are going to have to leave a golem of yourself behind. So, as you have twenty minutes before first period is due to start, you decide to get a start on that by slipping up to the loft to get a blank mask.

The varsity basketball team is at practice when you look inside the gym, and nothing about it looks out of the ordinary. There's Gordon Black and Steve Patterson, running the team in drills up and down the court. It's not the real Patterson, of course, and you doubt it's the real Gordon. And you know the Seth Javits who catches your eye with a cold look is a fake. So you're not shy about slipping around the corner to the staircase that goes up to the fuck room. At the top, you let yourself in.

You have a blank mask and are just closing up the cabinet when you hear footsteps on the stairs outside, but still you don't panic. But neither do you relax when Javits appears in the doorway. "Hey," he says. "What are you doing up here?"

"Getting started on the day," you reply. "You got a problem with that?"

He glances back down the stairs, then beckons you over.

"Stow it in your bag," he says, indicating the mask. "And brace yourself. I'm gonna have to make this look good."

"Make what look good?" you ask.

Instead of answering, he beckons you out onto the small landing, then closes and locks the loft door. He points again at your bag. Slowly—and now with a creeping dread—you pack the mask in your bag. Javits picks it up, and hurls it down the stairs.

Then he seizes you by the back of the shirt and throws you down the stairs after it. Only by catching yourself halfway down do you save yourself (perhaps) from a broken neck at the bottom.

Javits jumps down after you, and with a shove to the ribs knocks you the rest of the way down. At the bottom he grabs you by the shirt and drags you onto the gym floor. "And you stay the fuck outta where you're not supposed to be!" he screams as he throws you at the gym doors.

You get to your feet with a burning face, retrieve your pack, and hurry out.

But that's only the start. Javits is waiting for you outside Mr. Walberg's class when first period ends, and he seizes and hustles you through the hallways and all the way back to the gym. Even then he doesn't relent, but kicks and punches you in the back as he forces you up the stairs. Only at the top, outside the fuck room door, does he relent. And even then he has a pinched look on his face as he opens the loft door and pushes you inside.

"Okay, are we done here?" you demand as you nurse your bruises. Seth closes the door behind him, and locks it.

"Sorry, man," he says. "I told you, I had to make it look good. Gordon was watching me."

"Is that the real Gordon?"

"Fuck if I know. Does it matter?" He shakes his head. "I thought I was gonna be in charge, but—" He bites off the thought. "You got a new place picked out for yourself?"

* To find a distant spot in the senior class: "Gimme Space" 
* To move to a different school: "Schools of Thought" 
* To move to a different class inside Westside: "Young Guns" 
* To swap places with a teacher: "Please, Teacher!" 
* To infiltrate Carson's group: "With Friends Like These" 

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