The Book of Masks (Vol. 3)

The Burning Issues of the Day

Previously: "Your Friend, Who Is More Responsible Than You" 

You've got enough money left over that you can swing by a couple of stores to pick up the few things you're short of for making more masks, and that's what you do. Then you return to the school basement.

You prep the cord for the bit that's to follow, using enough that you can light it from outside. You keep inside Caleb's mask as you do, for you don't want anyone to see "Will Prescott" running from any kind of subsequent explosion. (Being inside Caleb's mask, and directly knowing what he knows, also gives you a much sharper appreciation of the risks you are running.) After checking to see that there won't be any places where the flame might get snuffed, you light it up and book it like a son of a bitch to the edge of the school grounds where you've parked your truck. You crawl under it, and warily watch the windows of the basement.

Caleb's brain tells you not to be too impatient while you wait, and you decide to give yourself four minutes of nerve-racking anticipation before going in to check if there winds up being no explosion. But you don't have to wait nearly that long. A purple flash lights up the windows, and you don't realize you've been holding your breath until you expel it when there's no follow-up blast—as there really ought to be—and not even any sound. You have to wonder if there's been a misfire. You dash back to the basement door, but are very cautious about entering.

Your eyes briefly smart at the sight inside. The room is lit by a swirling, purple-tinged fire that has engulfed the berm of earth. You stare at it a moment with slackened jaw—Caleb's instincts tell you that something like this is not supposed to happen given the ingredients you used—and you tentatively approach it and peer into it before sticking your hand out.

Then you stick your hand directly into one of the flames, and let out a whistle. No heat!

You check back over the book. It says to leave the pile burning until it cannot be relit—so the thing might go out from time to time, it looks like—and then must be polished. You make a face as you think of the work that that might entail. That earth pile is a hell of a lot bigger than a mask.

But speaking of masks, you have the makings for some, and that will give you something to do while watching the fire. You remove Caleb's mask, and after waking up again you run home fast enough to gather up the stuff that you need.

* * * * *

By nine o'clock (after a break at home for supper—pizza!) you have finished polishing two more masks—giving you a total of five—and have cast and are working on another. As for what you're going to do with them ...

Well, maybe you're just nursing old grudges, but you fantasize about getting them onto some of those guys at the ammo place just for the sake of mayhem. If not Call or Spencer or the Molester, at least onto guys who are like them. There are more than enough such assholes at school who deserve worse grief than you arranged for Caleb. Joe Thomason, George Mendoza, Brophy Maddox, Tanner Evans. And those are just scum. Gary Chen deals drugs inside the school, and David Kirkham just wanders around looking for people to torment. You've been somewhat lucky in your high school career that the really top-notch thugs—the Gordon Blacks and Steve Pattersons, the Dominic Kleasons and the Roy Nelsons, the Dalton Douglases and the Kevin Halls—have mostly left you alone.

No, wait, there's one of those guys who doesn't leave you alone. Seth Javits. He's a basketball player, which makes him one of the guys up near the top of the heap. Mostly he sticks to tormenting your friend Keith—who is going to need psychological counseling one of these days, probably, to deal with the aftershocks of Javtis's bullying—but when Keith isn't around Seth has settled for knocking you or Caleb around, apparently on the principle that anything he does to you will rebound onto Tilley.

You jot yourself a special mental note to think especially hard about making Seth a project.

But of course, no matter who you tackle, you have to figure out a way of getting a mask onto them. No way any of them are going to oblige you, the way Caleb did. No, you'll have to ambush one of the cocksuckers.

Physically, you're not built for ambushing. Neither is Caleb.

But some of the guys have pilot fish swimming about them. Not the Gordons or the Seths, of course; they're so mighty that only other, lower-ranked bullies can act as pilot fish for them. But there are a couple of guys more your size that you've seen hanging about Joshua Call and his thugs. You could ambush one of them, then impersonate them to get close to the bigger bullies.

And use the bigger bullies to get to the biggest ones?

You'll just have to wait and see about that.

The fire shows no signs of abating, so when you feel your energy starting to flag, you pack up your stuff and return home.

* * * * *

Your heart leaps the next morning when you stop by the basement on your way to school and find the fire has gone out. But it relights, and with a grimace you leave it for the day to continue doing its thing.

Your run in with the Molester and the others on Sunday has left you feeling much less enthusiastic about tormenting Caleb. He seems like a small and unworthy target, and he is your friend besides, and you are feeling a little more shame about what you did to him. So you don't ask him about the weekend when you see him before first period. He looks like he was expecting you to bring it all up again, though, for he is noticeably tense all throughout first period.

You broach the topic with Tilley in Mr. Hawks's film class, though. "Heard he made an ass of himself Friday night," Keith says. "What burns the fuck outta me, though, is— Hey!" He slaps you on the arm. "Were you with him?"

"No."

"He didn't call you up and ask you to ride shotgun on his drive down Jerkwad Highway?"

You roll your eyes at the typically Tilley-esque metaphor. "No."

"Well, why the fuck not? He didn't call me either!"

"Why would you want to—?" You roll your eyes again. "Ride shotgun with him on his drive down Jerkwad Highway?"

"Wouldn't. But if the asshole's feeling sassy and wants to hit a couple of parties, how come not ask us along?"

"I dunno, Keith," you sigh. "I thought you were mad at him 'cos he stole some money off you."

"Oh yeah!" Keith snaps his fingers. "Fuck 'im, then."

You feel a little more trepidation at the end of third period, when Carson Ioeger texts to ask you to ditch Caleb and eat lunch with him and James instead. When you see Caleb in fourth period English, then, you diplomatically tell him that you want to eat lunch with Carson and James. He only shrugs. "Thing is," you say, "I thought you and them were pissed at each other, on account of that thing last week."

"Fine," he says with a stony expression. "I'll eat with Tilley."

"Nothing personal," you mumble, and keep your trap shut about the way Keith might not want to eat with Caleb.

Carson summons you over with a quick wave when he sees you approaching after fourth. As usual, he and James and Jenny Ashton and Paul Davis are lounging on the quad in front of the school. Carson and James don't shift their long shanks to make room for you, and you plop onto the edge of their little group. "The fuck is wrong with Johansson these days?" Carson honks at you.

"You mean that x2z stuff?"

"x2z, lifting people's shit, being a fucking liar about it."

"I don't think he's being a fucking liar." Your own words surprise you, as does the heat you feel behind them. "If Caleb says he didn't do any of those things—"

"Oh, he did the x2z shit," Carson says. "Got 'im on camera an' everything. That's the only reason he's going around apologizing to everyone. Son of a bitch got caught."

"And he took our money," James says.

"No doubt about that either," Carson says.

"Look, I believe him," you say with a persistence that actually kind of bothers you. "If he says he didn't do it—"

"He got caught," Carson says firmly. He has yet to take a bite of his sandwich, though he's got it completely unwrapped. "I like that you're being loyal to him, Prescott. Loyalty's underrated these days. But he needs to get himself fixed before he makes himself really unpopular."

"Well, I believe you guys too," you say.

"You can't believe both of us," James snaps. "Him and us. We say he did, he says he didn't. One of us is lying."

"And it ain't us," Carson says. "And it ain't Tilley, and it ain't any of the guys who saw him slinging his shit around town last Friday night. He's gone off his meds and he's too fucked up to admit it. That's why we're asking what the deal is. 'Cos until last week, you're the one I'd'a pegged as likely to flip out."

"Me?"

"Skip it. But we're his friends too, that's why we want to help, and it's how come we're asking you. What is his fucking deal lately?"

Still you defend Caleb, though it feels against your interests. Carson and James only sigh when you suggest, as you had to Caleb, that there's a doppelganger on the loose.

And that's when you get the idea that maybe these fuckers need to meet a doppelganger of themselves.

Next: "The Good Little Foot Soldier" 

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