The Book of Masks (Vol. 3)

The Sister's Surprise

Previously: "The Old College Try" 

From the way Caleb describes her, Lucy Vredenburg sounds like a luscious choice: Not only as a body to inhabit, but as a personality. Someone who dominates.

"She is the biggest cunt I've ever known," he chortles. "Seriously, she acts like she's a fucking movie star, way up here and everyone else is down in the shit. No one's good enough for her. Cindy's not. I'm not. I mean, Seth isn't."

As Caleb is, at the moment, looking exactly like Seth Javits, maybe he does need to clarify. But it's not like he would have to tell you that Caleb Johansson can't possibly live up to Lucy's standards.

She was a senior when you were a sophomore, and was the head cheerleader. Like her sister, Lucy was blonde and pale and voluptuous, and though you never got close enough to her to get a sniff, you always imagined her smelling faintly of strawberries and sugar. Like Cindy, too, she carried herself with an air of superiority. But if Cindy acts like a princess, Lucy seemed like an empress.

"I don't know what she does all day, but she's never at home," Caleb continues. "Which is fine, 'cos she treats Cindy like shit too. I get the impression she's always off with boys and her girlfriends, at parties if she's not in class. I don't even know if she goes to classes. Wouldn't surprise me if she didn't. Oh, God!" He closes his eyes and his face flushes with some kind of imagined ecstasy. "I would love to fuck her for hours on end. Just to put her in her place—which is under me!—if nothing else."

"Yeah, well, don't look for anything like that from me," you tell him.

His eyes pop open. "Yeah, but you just make sure you make two copies of her when we do it, un'erstand?" he says, and his eyes are cold and hard. "One for you to wear, and one for me to—"

"So how are we going to do this?" you ask. "I mean, if you never see her."

He sucks hard on his lower lip. "I'll have to think about it," he says.

"You gonna let me get back to class in the meantime?"

He gives you a look. Then he seizes you by the neck and forces you out of the loft and down the stairs.

* * * * *

Caleb says he's in charge of getting ahold of Lucy for you, but that doesn't mean you have to sit around waiting. You take lunch on the grassy quad out front, so you can broach the subject of Cindy's sister with Jenny Ashton, who is one of Cindy's friends.

Carson Ioeger, naturally, has to horn in. "God, I still have sexy dreams about Lucy almost every night," he says.

"What are you, still stuck in the tenth grade?" Jenny retorts.

"No, I'm still stuck in the ninth grade. That was the best one, wasn't it?" He nudges his friend James. "There were four fucking classes full of whack-off material back then. Literally every other person you passed in the hall—"

"Ewwww!" Jenny cries.

"There's still four classes of whack-off fantasies," Keith interrupts. He came along too, though he made a point (you noticed) of putting you between himself and "robot Johansson," as he has taken to calling Caleb's golem replacement. "In summa my classes there's—"

"You're a fucking perv and a pedophile, you know that?" Carson retorts. "God, what kind of a sicko jerks off to freshmen girls?"

Keith turns beet-red. "So what were you jerking off to back in your freshmen year?" he yells at Carson.

"Freshman girls. And sophomore girls. And junior girls and senior—"

"So what's the—?"

"There's nothing sick about jerking off to girls your own age," James informs Keith. He's looking very smug as he says it. "But three years younger?"

"Fuck that," Carson says. "Two years younger—"

"You mean 'Don't fuck that'," James corrects him. "That's how come your freshman year is the best," he continues, turning back to Keith. "You got the girls in your class to jerk off to, plus all the ones in the classes up above, all just begging to be unpeeled in your fantasies after—"

"Will, why were you asking about Lucy?" Jenny hollers.

"Because he's not gay," Carson answers for you with a snort. Then: "Are you, Prescott?"

"I was just wondering if you ever see her or hang out with her. When you're hanging out with Cindy."

Carson sits up very sharply, and leans in on Jenny, who does a double take at him. "Well?" Carson demands when she says nothing. "Answer the man!"

"I saw her once or twice over summer," Jenny says. "Why?"

"Because he's not gay," Carson says.

"I was just wondering, like, if I wanted to talk to her, whether you could set something up."

"Jesus!" Carson exclaims. He gets up on his knees. "Could you?" he asks Jenny.

She glares at him while answering you. "What do you want to talk to her about?"

"Well, like, Keyserling," you improvise. "The classes she's taking, the—"

"Oh, Christ," James snorts. "That's not why you want to—"

Carson punches him in the shoulder. "All of us want to talk to Lucy about the college," he tells Jenny. He's puffing hard. "You need to set up a group meeting with her for us. You need to—"

"No! I'm not gonna—!"

"We're talking about our academic futures here!" Carson yells at her.

"You wanna talk about the college, go bother your buddies Connor and Justin!"

"We're not gay, Ashton!" Carson hollers.

* * * * *

So that all wound up being a waste. Fortunately, it doesn't matter. Caleb comes through. He finds you immediately after lunch and drags you back up into the gym loft, where he smashes a blank mask into your face. You're alone when you wake up, to find a piece of paper pinned to your chest: Taking your shit to Patt'n after school to get made.

"I was in a hurry," he tells you later that evening, when you meet up with him at Potsdam Park, near the river. "I didn't have time to—"

"Fuck you, you were just having fun with Javits's muscles."

"Well, true," he replies with a cocky grin. "But I got it for you!" He pulls a blue mask from out of his bag.

It gives you the creeps to hold it, even though it's not the first time you've held a mask that copies yourself. But this is going to be another me, you think. A replacement. It's going to take over for me while I take over for— "What did Patterson say about the plan?" you ask Caleb as you stare down at the mask.

"I didn't. I told him you were being a dildo, and that I wanted to get the thing made so maybe you'd get off your ass and get to work."

You look up sharply. "Why'd you tell him that?"

He shrugs. "It made me sound like a bad ass. Also, I wanted it to be a surprise for him. I figure we might be able to prank him somehow if you show up as Lucy without him knowing it's you."

"I'm not sucking him off."

"You say that now, but—"

"How are we getting Lucy?"

"I'm texting her now," he says as he takes out his cell phone. "Gonna tell her I'm out here with Cindy and we had a break down and could she come out here to get us."

"What is she, Triple-A?"

"Shut up, Prescott. I know what I'm doing."

Well, you have to take his word for it, though maybe he's got doubts of his own, for of his own volition he volunteers that Lucy would never miss out on a chance to come out and gloat viciously at Seth in front of Cindy.

And maybe he's right, because he blanches when he sees her reply, and his face passes through a couple of other colors as he back-and-forths with her. Finally, after ten minutes: "Okay, she's on her way."

But is she? He has to text her twice more to confirm she's coming, and it's still an hour before an SUV pulls up. Caleb has a blank mask in his hand. "Let me handle this," he growls at you. "This is gonna feel so good."

Lucy is as beautiful as you remember, even though there's an ugly sneer on her face as she jumps from the SUV. "Oh, for fuck's sake, Seth," she hisses. "You're such a cock up—"

"And you're an ugly cunt," he retorts with a heat that surprises you. In two steps he's on top of her, throwing the mask onto her face. You've just time to see her look of surprise before he covers it with the mask. She falls back against the side of her SUV, and slides down it to the grass.

But the mask, instead of vanishing into her, stays stuck to her face as she lolls like a broken doll on the ground. You stare at it numbly, willing it to sink into her and copy her, but it only remains stuck there.

"The fuck?" Caleb says. He kneels and pulls the mask off her. Lucy's eyes swim in and out of focus, but she is clearly still conscious. Caleb jams the mask back onto her, but again it only rests on her face, shining in the fading evening light.

You and he exchange a horrified glance. "The thing's busted," he groans.

You don't know where you get the inspiration, but with trembling fingers you peel the mask off her, then grab Lucy's forehead and pull while muttering some magic words. You almost shout aloud when her face comes away in your hand, revealing a lumpy and misshapen golem.

"Fuck!" you gasp. "Patterson already got her!"

Next: "Life Inside Lucy" 

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