The Book of Masks (Vol. 4)

When Teamwork Needs Teamwork

Previously: "New Partners, New Digs" 

You'd just be a third wheel in whatever weird thing Mike and Carlos have going with each other, and Philip is bound to be the most boring company ever. But you missed Kim yesterday, and you want another chance to firm up the bond that seems to be reappearing between you.

And when none of the guys makes any move toward inviting you along with them, it's very easy to sidle up to Kim and Josie and ask if you can make it a trio. Josie doesn't really react, but Kim smiles brightly and says she'd love to have you along.

* * * * *

"It's all just so stupid," Josie concludes with a haggard sigh. "We're all supposed to be on the same team, you know?"

"And there's no 'I' in 'teamwork'," Kim primly declares.

And you're thinking, I should have gone with Mike and Carlos.

You took Kim's car, as she said she had some additional errands she needed to run for her dad, and because it seemed ungentlemanly to ride shotgun, you took the backseat without even volunteering. But now you're stuck in the backseat in more than one way. Neither Kim nor Josie, up front, are paying you the slightest attention.

Not that you could have contributed anything to the conversation anyway. It's about the girls' soccer team.

Josie has been rattling on about it at detailed length, so much that you feel like you could write a term paper on it if asked. There are a lot of subtleties to the story—lots of agendas and alliances and overlapping resentments and ambitions—but the gist is that the WHS girls' soccer team is being pulled apart by a contest between its two star members. On one side is Anita Nuevo, the team captain, who has been grooming herself for the position (says Josie) ever since she was a freshman. On the other side is Hannah Westrick, a girl who just moved over this year from Eastman High, and whose addition to the squad was so late that she had to do a special try-out in order to join. But once she did, she proved what everyone already knew from playing against her when she was at Eastman: She's the best player on the squad.

If it was simply a fight over who should be team captain, it would all have been over before it even started: Anita already had the position. But Hannah is a very bold and forward girl who can't keep her opinions to herself, so she's always arguing with Anita about positions and strategy and how best to use the team's skills, and she manages to do it in a haughty way like there's no possible way that she (Hannah) could be wrong. This would piss off the other girls, except that a lot of them already don't like Anita (who herself, it sounds, is bossy and unpleasant) and a lot of them think that Hannah's ideas are better than Anita's just on their merits. And it doesn't help, grouses Josie (who professes to be completely neutral in the fight), that Anita has dragged in some of her friends from outside the squad and set them to bullying (Josie's word) Hannah. "To me," she says, "it just seems like it's turned into a lotta mean-girls bullshit."

Kim listens intently and interrupts with a lot of questions—one reason Josie keeps going over and over the same material—but she hasn't got any suggestions. Not that Josie is asking for any help or advice. After this has been going on for twenty minutes or so, without either one offering or asking for any solutions, you begin to wonder what the point of it all is. Just to vent? Just to gossip?

And it's like they've forgotten you're even with them, because Kim gives you a slight double-take when you climb out of the car on arriving at Walmart.

The expedition takes you to the Gardening section of the store, and you wind up playing pack mule as the girls gather up bags of fertilizer and potting soil. You also get top carry two shovels and a couple of boxes of sand bags.

At least it gets their minds off the soccer team and back onto the project. Just not in a productive way.

"I can't believe we're doing this," Kim grumbles as you're carrying the stuff out of the store. "Will, can't you talk Philip and them out of— I mean, it's your book!"

"I thought you were okay with it."

"I was interested in it at first. But now—" She grimaces at the shovels that you're juggling with the other stuff. "The stuff we're supposed to dig up."

The "stuff" is earth taken from a graveyard.

Josie, to your surprise, is of the opposite opinion. "It's just dirt," she tells Kim.

"If it's just dirt, how come we can't just get some from wherever?" Kim retorts. "Why does it have to be—?"

"It doesn't have to come from a grave," Josie says.

"They're gonna get it from a grave. Aren't you?" she asks you.

You haven't thought that far ahead. "We'll decide when we get there," you mumble.

"Anyway, don't we have enough to worry about, without—? I mean, this is getting a little creepy, don't you think?"

"It's not creepy," Josie says. "I told you, it's just dirt."

"No, I mean the masks."

"Like how?"

"I mean—" Kim glances around, but you've got the parking to yourselves. Still, she drops her voice to near nothing. "That wasn't Mike and Carlos back at the place with us. I mean, it was them, but they were, um—"

"You mean they were pretending to be each other? Obviously," says Josie with a roll of her eyes. She glances back at you. "You spotted that, right?"

"That's what I thought," you agree, though you're not actually sure you did.

"Exactly," says Josie. "Like Philip said, they went home as each other and pretended to be each other, then when they woke up the masks were working. Well, the one was working that they couldn't get to work last night."

"Right," says Kim. "And that didn't creep you out? Them pretending to be each other?"

Josie shrugs. You're too busy piling the things into Kim's trunk to comment.

"Well, it just seems like that's enough," Kim says. "That's already pretty powerful, you know, magic or whatever you want to call it. Whatever this other stuff is for—" She breaks off, looking distressed.

"That's what we want to find out," Josie says, stubbornly. "Right?" She looks at you.

"I'm ... curious," you admit.

"Maybe we should start putting this stuff to a vote," Kim says. "We're all in it together, but if we're all just going to go along when someone says, 'Hey, let's try this next thing out', then—"

"And you'll go along with it if the vote goes against you?" Josie asks.

The question seems to catch Kim off guard. "Well, yes," she stammers after a pause that's just a fraction too long to be reassuring. "I mean, that's democracy, right?"

Josie says nothing, but gives you a sidelong glance.

* * * * *

Philip is waiting outside the storage place when you arrive, and the four of you compare notes on your respective trips, and double-check that you got everything that you need. Carlos and Mike are the last to get back, because they had the farthest to go.

They had to hike out into the nearby Suffolk Wilderness to find a spot where it would be safe to do the experiment.

That's because it calls for setting something on fire. More than setting it on fire, maybe. The recipe basically calls for rocket fuel, which is what Fairfax was in charge of procuring.

The boys report that they succeeded in finding a spot that looks safe: a stony outcrop of rock on the lower slopes of one of the hills, sheltered from sight by a screen of trees. Carlos even pulls out his phone and uses Google Maps's satellite feature to show Philip where the place is and what it looks like.

"We'll bring the stuff out here tonight," Fairfax says after agreeing that the site looks promising. "Uh, if that's okay with you," he tells Carlos, who nods. "Then tomorrow we'll transport it all—"

"Who's going to get the dirt?" Josie interrupts.

Everyone looks at everyone else. Then Mike—

If it is Mike. It's impossible to know, because there's masks involved.

—says, "All of us?"

"I don't think Kim or Josie have to go," Philip says. "It doesn't need six of us. Three would probably be enough."

It might be your imagination, but you get the impression he's shot you a side-eye, like he's thinking that you should stay behind with the girls too.

"Well, you need me, don't you?" you ask before you can stop yourself. "At least, you're gonna want my truck to haul it out."

"Yes," says Philip after a fractional hesitation. "That makes sense. Meet us out at the Masonic cemetery at eight o'clock?"

So it's settled.

* * * * *

Or is it?

Because you make a stop at Josie Holden's house at seven-thirty, on your way out. It's the mask that got made of her—the "persona," as Philip is trying to get you all to call it—which along with yours got forgotten in the basement while everything was being moved from there out to the storage complex. You remembered it late this afternoon, and texted Josie to see if she wanted you to drop it off with her. She said yes.

But she's got a different idea, you discover.

"Listen," she says after dragging you back out to your truck, and hopping up inside the cab of it with you. "Do you think we could do a little switch?"

"What kind of a switch?"

"You and me. Like Mike and Carlos did today."

The request takes you aback. "Uh, when?"

"Tonight. Now. I'll take your truck out to the cemetery and help do the digging."

"What? Why?"

She doesn't answer right away. When she does, she doesn't make much sense. "To get back at Mike and Carlos."

"For what?"

"That stupid prank today. Also—" She gives you a sidelong look. "I'm supposed to go out with Kim tonight. You could go out with her instead."

Next: "The Switch Back" 

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