The Book of Masks (Vol. 4)

A Mix-Up at the McDonalds

Previously: "Do You Mind?" 

Joey gives you a lot of time to wrestle with the dilemma. You keep glancing over at her minivan, but there's no movement inside it. And the longer you wait, the less inclined you are to put the thing on. I just wanted to see if it worked with you. That's what you'll tell Joey when she gets back, and finds you still sitting here. And she'll understand, right? If she really does "know the mind of another"—yourself; gulp!—as the book promises.

But your nerve crumples when you finally do see a shadow move behind the tinted windows of the minivan. You suddenly worry you'll look like a chickenshit, so you hurriedly duck back down inside your truck. For a long moment you hold the metal strip over your head. Then you drop it across your forehead.

* * * * *

You are woozy and disoriented when you are next aware of your surroundings, and the world reels as you sit up. Your brain feels like it's on fire.

You are sitting in a truck, in a parking lot, and you feel as though you've woken from an extremely vivid dream—the kind of dream that leaves you feeling as though you're suffering from double vision. I'm here but I'm somewhere else, it feels like. I'm here in the parking lot of the McDonalds on a weekday morning, but I'm also at home, at night, working on that project with Will. I'm working on that project, and the parking lot is the dream.

You nurse your head between your palms as you are nearly capsized by a sense of vertigo. Behind one world—the world of McDonalds and parking lots; of truck cabs and your house in Saratoga Falls; of your mom and dad and little brother, and the homework stacked on a small work desk in the corner of your messy bedroom; of your friends Caleb and Keith, of your teachers, of the stink and press of the milling crowds inside Westside High, and of the life that carries you from your bed to your school to your friends' houses and back to your house and family and then back to your own bed—there is another. Like one detailed photograph superimposed over another, the life and memories of William Martin Prescott are superimposed over the vivid details of the life and memories of Josephine Marie Tartaglione.

So you have also the memories of the spacious house, cool and quiet and professionally cleaned once a week. The classroom in the downstairs den, where you sit at a desk and read books and scribble in notebooks and enter math answers into a laptop computer. A dumpling-shaped mother who checks your work with crisp professionalism, and a roly-poly father with a frizzy gray beard who works with you on weekends. Brisk walks and bike rides in the neighborhood (and for a couple of years, skateboarding too). Friends and acquaintances at church, like Jenny Ashton. Your dog, Monday.

You frown and blink at the twinge of fear. Monday is getting old. How much longer she'll live, you don't know.

And then there's Will.

You suck in a hard breath, and grab the truck console to balance yourself.

He's tall, but all the boys are taller than you. He's gangly, with a shock of blonde hair under a sloppy ball cap. He dresses sloppy too, but that's okay, because clothes don't really matter. (Your mother dresses nice, but your dad likes to shamble around the house in an undershirt, cargo shorts, and black socks.) Mostly what you notice about Will are his eyes, and the way he looks at you. He gets this weird, crinkly twist in them when he's looking at you, like he just can't believe what you just said, and you get the impression he's always impatient with you. It makes you hot when he gives you these looks, and almost every time you're with him you're tempted to yell at him, to tell him to go sit on a tack and stay there! But always you catch yourself in time, because—

Well, it's hard to explain, but there's something ... real ... about Will, the way there's something real about Jenny—a reality that's not the same kind of reality like you get at your house, with your dog and your parents, or even with most of the kids at church, who pretty much just ignore you. With Will and Jenny, it's like they bruise you when you're with them. With your mom and dad, all the talk and all the feeling just roll off. But with Will and Jenny, it's like it hurts—it hurts in a good way, like you're stubbing your toe on reality—even when you're having fun with them.

You shake your head, trying to clear it, trying to get back to that feeling that you're Will Prescott, but those alien thoughts and feelings cling to your brain like a burr in a sock. Like a skin that's been grafted onto your brain. And you jump with a shock when you glance down and catch sight of your hands. They're too big and too bony, and the fingers are too long. These aren't my hands, you think, and your breath shortens when you touch your chest. This isn't my chest either. This is Will's chest. Your heart beats harder when you remember yourself sitting with Will. Only it was you you were sitting next to. It was Will but he was looking like me, and I were looking like him.

Oh my God, you think, This is what it was like for Joey, when she was wearing my mask. This is what it was like for her to look down and see that she had my body! You have to cover your face with your hands as another wave of vertigo washes over you.

But you pull yourself together with a sharp breath, and shake yourself all over. You're still trembling as you tell yourself, Time to go find Joey. Find out how badly she's freaking out over all this. Jesus, I hope she's okay. It's bad enough for me, for her it's probably—

You glance over at the minivan, then do a hard double-take. Your jaw falls open.

A teenage boy is sauntering toward you, a crooked grin on his face. Except that he hasn't got a ball cap on, he is your twin.

* * * * *

"Yeah, sue me," he says, "for having a pretty good guess about what these things could do!"

You give him a dirty look, which he returns.

It's an exact replay of the other afternoon, when you arrived at Joey's place to find yourself waiting for you. Joey is not only back in your mask, she's back in those same clothes that you found at the thrift store when you went looking for a wardrobe to go with the mask.

You flinch. No, it's the same clothes that she found at the thrift store when she went looking for a wardrobe, you correct yourself.

So here you are, again chatting with a twin of yourself, and you can't stop from glancing uneasily around the parking lot. If someone saw us here— If someone saw two of me here—

"Yeah, so," your twin says, "I had kind of an inkling what the thing-a-bobby would do. Like, if you can copy a body, why can't you copy a brain? It kind of surprised me, actually, that the mask doesn't copy the brain too. Like, it's part of the body—"

"So you came prepared," you grumble as you glance past her ear at the restaurant entrance as the door flashes in the sunlight. Two old men come out. "Like a fucking Boy Scout."

"What are you freaking out about, dude?" your twin asks. "Isn't this cool?" He slouches and puts his dirty sneakers up on the truck console.

You knock them down, and he gives you that dirty look again. The kind of dirty look that Will gives you when—

Okay, that's probably what's got you so upset. It was one thing when Joey was just looking like you. But now it's like she's trying to act like you ... And she's doing a pretty good job of it.

"Come on," you tell her. "Fun's fun, and we can do something this afternoon, but I gotta get to school."

"One of us has to get to school," she retorts.

"Well, you got class at home too," you snap back. "I knew that before even without—"

Your voice dies in your throat as your twin just smirks back at you. "Oh my God," you mutter.

"You know what I'm thinking, dude," he says.

"No! You're not going to—"

"Come on!" He bolts upright, and Joey's squeal pops into his voice. "I can do you perfect, Will! I know your schedule! You got Mr. Walberg first period. With Caleb. And then you got Keith second period in— Pfft!" He snickers. "Your film class. Oh my God, your classes are gonna be so easy for me!"

"I don't want you to—! And what am I supposed to do while you—? And you have to go home too 'cos you've got classes too and—! Ohhhhh!"

"Yeah!" His eyes light up, and he grabs your arm with a girlish enthusiasm. "We could swap places for a day! See what it's like for each other!"

Of course, you don't have to swap to know what it's like at her house, being tutored by her mom while she does her own learning. You've got her brain and memories to tell you.

But it's for that same reason that you also know how badly Joey wants to make the swap.

So she can get out of the hothouse where she's spent the last ten years of her life, and get out with and among people who are real.

Next: "Schooled" 

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