The Book of Masks (Vol. 4)

Five Little Maids from School

Previously: "Freshman Frolics" 

Sydney wasn't much interested in talking about potential recruits when you got together with her after school. Instead, she passed the hours both before and after dinner by rutting inside you, furrowing Hannah Cho with Michael Hagerman's cock and despoiling you from every direction. When you told her you wanted to start by finding a girl for her, she only grunted and said that she hoped you were taking notes on how she wanted to be treated after you and her had a couple of new bodies.

If anything worries you, it is that you might pick a girl for Sydney who suffers hidden disadvantages: an unhappy home life, or certain invisible handicaps. True, your plan will give each of you half a dozen identities to shuffle between, and you suppose you can always discard a recruit—by releasing the original from the enchanted sleep under a mask—if you make a really bad choice, but you want to be sure of picking a good and plausible identity for your girlfriend.

Fortunately, the next morning as you are getting ready for school, you have a bright idea on how to get to know your candidates better.

* * * * *

"So tell me," you ask Addison Ricci after you've completed the quick-and-dirty spelling quiz, "why aren't you in the AP class?" You smile warmly at her, so she'll know you mean the query as a compliment.

You're sitting outside in the hallway, in a couple of desks that face each other, while the rest of the class is engaged in a free-writing exercise. It's probably a bad idea to leave them unsupervised, but it's only for one day. One by one you are pulling out the students you have jotted down as likely recruits, and are giving them short quizzes. The real goal, though, is to interview them to find out as much as you can.

Addison blushes at your question, which makes her look even more adorable. Addison has a bright smile in a pretty face framed by long, honey-colored hair, and she is already using makeup, though her skin is smooth and unblemished. She wears a turquoise choker around her slim throat, a piece of jewelry that blends well with her expensive but understated top.

"Well, you have to take a placement exam before they let you into the AP class," she says. "I kind of bombed it when I took it."

"Did you panic?" you ask.

"I guess," she shyly murmurs. "I always get nervous on tests, and that one, um, I was just—" She squirms in her seat.

"What are some other classes you're taking?" you ask.

She rattles off her schedule. It sounds like the usual freshman set—history, algebra, PE, science, a language (German in her case), but the "Art Design" class intrigues you. Her face lights up when you ask her about it. She wants to be a designer of some sort when she grows up. Maybe a decorator, or a clothes designer—she plucks self-consciously at her top—maybe even an architect!

You beam at her and send her back to class. Your questions to Willa McBride and Courtney Ireton are less probing, because Addison so clearly outshines them as a candidate.

* * * * *

"Don't you like any other books?" you ask Shelly Nolan after she's finished rattling off the plot to Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone to you. "Even any other fantasy books?"

Shelly giggles and rolls her eyes. "Sure! But I like to read!"

"Well, what other books do you like? Do you like the book we're reading now?" There aren't many books more different from Harry Potter, you'd wager, than To Kill a Mockingbird.

"It's okay," Shelly says. She grins and kicks nervously at the floor.

"Well, what is it you like so much about Harry Potter?"

"Oh, wow. Gosh!" Shelly takes a deep breath. "I love the—"

You let the surging surf of her enthusiasm wash over you without paying much attention to the actual words. You concentrate on the girl instead. She's a pasty-faced red-head with a crinkly smile and green eyes that carry a mad glint. A little too mad, maybe. Her fascination for all things Potter—her backpack is crusted over with Hogwarts iron-on patches, and Harry's bespectacled visage is scrawled all over the covers of her notebooks—unnerves you slightly.

When she pauses to catch her breath, you ask, "If I recommended you some other books about magic and fantasy, would you be interested in them."

"Sure," she says. "But I've already read The Lord of the Rings and Narnia books and—!"

The list leaves you in a daze. Shelly is probably even more into magic and fantasy than Sydney is.

* * * * *

It wasn't all sex and screwing last night. You talked a little about the kind of kids you should recruit for the Brotherhood, and Sydney told you that she thought you should be picking kids of various backgrounds and personality types. So even though you are impressed with Emily Yates in your third-period class, you can't help comparing her unfavorably to Addison Ricci. They are both of the same "type": girls from upper-middle, professional class families, with large allowances and a subtle but unmistakable sense of entitlement. But Addison is prettier and more poised. Emily has the kind of nose that would benefit from cosmetic surgery, and thick-framed glasses.

Hailey Branson, on the other hand, is a sweet-tempered ditz. Physically, she and Addison are poured from the same mold—skinny, with long, dirty-blonde hair, and wide, white smiles. But where Addison's smile is slightly guarded and more than a little condescending, Hailey's is exuberant. During your "interview," she huddles shyly in her desk, wagging her knees back and forth as she desperately guesses at the answers. She is eminently huggable as well, for the boniness of her form is softened by the dark flannel jersey she wears. She tells you she is on the track team, though she confesses it as though afraid that you will hold it against her.

* * * * *

Why does she make me so nervous? you have to ask yourself as Helen Kim stares back at you. Her eyes are heavy with an unfriendly judgement. Why do I feel like I'm the one being interviewed?

Helen and her friend Mee-Kyong so daunt you that almost you decided not to interview them, even though they are the best candidates in your sixth-period class. But it's their "fear factor" that makes them candidates. Kelly Morris, the next most attractive candidate, is another Addison Ricci type, but Helen and Mee-Kyong are in a class by themselves: they are smart, and look like they won't take shit from anyone. Not even from their teacher.

At least part of Helen's deal, you discover after you've moved into the interview portion, is that her English is a worse than you expected. Maybe she acts sullen because she is mute, and maybe she is mute because she doesn't trust herself in her second language. To put her at her ease, you switch to Korean. But then she just acts insulted.

She and Mee-Kyong, you learn from your interviews, are both a kind of Army brat. Their families came over from South Korea a few years ago when their fathers went to work at Fort Suffolk, the nearby military base. Though they had some practice with English when they were little, neither one excelled, and both of them (it seems to you) have walled themselves off. Their expressions only come alive (and then only barely) when you ask them about the orchestra.

As you escort Mee-Kyong back into the classroom at the end of the interview, you see her and Helen exchange a look. Is there something between them? you wonder. Two Korean girls, the same age, both thrust into a strange country and a language neither of them is comfortable with? After mulling it over, you come real close to crossing their names off your list—if you replaced one you would probably have to replace the other as well. But you stay your hand with the thought, Would it be so bad if Sydney and I took their places? In at least one class, Sydney wants you both to be girls. It could be the freshman class, with you and her as Helen and Mee-Kyong.

* * * * *

Like yesterday, you are pretty exhausted when you get to the last period of the day, so that you can't concentrate fully on your self-appointed task. After the bell has rung to start eighth period, you look out into the class and decide to do the usual—class reading, a little discussion, the Friday vocabulary quiz, and some free writing. If there's any girl in the class you'd pick for Sydney, it would be Caitlyn Smart, an athletic ginger who is into gymnastics. You already suspect she comes with a boyfriend—or at least a sweetie—in the form and body of Aedan Finnegan, so she stands out over all the other candidates.

As the class works on its quizzes and journals, you go through the names on your own list. Each of the girls you "interviewed" you asked to return to see you after school was out, in order to collect a short extra-credit assignment. All but one of them you will dismiss after handing out the bullshit writing assignment. The one who remains, though, will get a much more ... life-changing ... experience at your hands.

One by one you cross out names—Willa McBride, Courtney Ireton, Maya Stroud, Emily Yates, Kelly Morris—until there are only six left. You are still in an agony of indecision when the final bell rings, and the students lunge for your desk to turn in their quizzes.

But even as you accept their papers, you feel your instincts crystalize, and you pick:

Next: "Little Miss Magic" 

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