The Book of Masks (Vol. 3)

Mugging a Preppie

Previously: "Friendship Is What You Make of It" 

You've only got one of those metal doohickeys with you, but you've got others back at your headquarters and can make even more. So unless Caleb really fucks up this movie date with Ann, you'll probably have other chances to copy her brain, or that of another Eastman student.

But when will you ever have a chance like this to get close to a prep-school snot?

* * * * *

The Eastman gang comes dribbling in over the next ten minutes in little packs of twos and threes. "Dribbling" literally, almost, for most of them, like Conor and Timothy, turn out to be basketball players, and most of them have brought dates of their own along. Ann turns out to be even shorter than she appeared to be in her picture, and she's more ... interesting looking ... in person than beautiful. But she is pert and friendly, and she acts very happy to connect up with Caleb again.

You don't pay much attention, though, and keep watching the parking lot for signs of that guy from St. Xavier. You finally nail the guy when one of his friends comes out of the theater to wave and gesture him in.

He's a regular looking fucker, in a long-sleeve shirt and jeans, with a white ball cap pulled down low over his brow—not at all the preppy, uniform-sporting "Mutant" that you sometimes spot around town. Actually, he looks like he could go to Westside. Even the hardness of his expression—he wears a don't-fuck-with-me scowl as he bounds up the steps toward the theater, and his jaw muscles work—is the sort you see on the faces of some of the nastier athletes at your school.

Caleb nudges you a couple of times while you're waiting, but you move away; and when he follows, you tell him in a very low voice to concentrate on Ann. He grimaces, but sidles back over to where she's talking a mile-a-minute with Conor and some of his buddies.

Inside the theater, you just have time to spot your target and his two friends as they turn away from the concession stand, and watch as they disappear through the doors of the first auditorium. You then edge away from the others, and pretend to have gotten a text. When you rejoin them at the concession stand, it's to tell Caleb that your dad's told you to come home. Caleb looks alarmed, but you insist it can't be helped, and make a run for the exit.

* * * * *

You're back up at the theater less than an hour later, though. It hurts a little to have to buy another ticket to get back in, but you've got the money. You've also got another item with you, wrapped in the windbreaker that you've slung casually over your arm: a blank mask.

It seems like a good thing to have in your back pocket (so to speak) if you do manage to catch the Mutant alone. The chances of that are pretty slim, probably, and so are the chances of catching up to him a second time, if it turns out you want to do that. So it seems best to copy as much of him as you can if you're going to have only one throw.

He and his friends are watching Shock and A.W., a buddy-action movie, while Caleb and everyone else are in watching Cravenmoor, so there's little chance of having your story blown by running into someone you know. Your only worry is that the two films will let out at the same time, but that works out too: Caleb's movie is still playing as you trail your targets outside. They stand chatting for a few minutes while you loiter close by, pretending to be interested in the miniature golf course, before two of them break off in one direction, and your target saunters off in another. You follow him at a discreet distance, glancing back occasionally to insure that you're not being watched.

You're led over to a black Mustang, and your target gives you a brief glance as he opens the door and slides in. You slip the memory-strip from your pocket as you hurry over, and knock at his window as he starts his car.

He gives you a very dark and hooded look, then rolls down his window. "The fuck you want?" is all he manages to say before you shoot your hand in at his face. He tries to twist away, but you catch the side of his temple (with a hard jar to your forearm as your palm connects with his skull), and he goes limp and boneless. You reach inside to touch the button that unlocks all the doors, then hurry around to jump into the passenger side. It looks like no one has spotted you.

You get only two frights while waiting for the memory strip and then the mask to copy your victim. The first comes when his cell phone goes off—"Motherfucker!" it yells, followed by a couple of hard beats—and when it goes off again you scramble to grab and turn it off. You can't (it's locked) so you have to sit there and take it while a rapper calls you a filthy word half a dozen times. It's disconcerting to think of some rich fuck at a preppy school walking around with that kind of ringtone. Shouldn't he be playing some kind of pompous, trumpety fanfare instead?

The second fright comes when you see the Eastman gang come streaming from the theater. They mill about for awhile, then separate, and two of them come striding in your direction. You push the car's owner into an upright position, and slouch low in your seat while pretending to be absorbed in your phone. Worse comes when they veer off toward your truck, and for a moment it looks like they're going to try getting into it. But maybe they were just interested in it, for after looking it over, they move on.

Finally, though, the copying process finishes. The memory strip finishes first, and you get a full name to go with your victim: CHARLES PATRICK WHITNEY. It sounds preppie enough. Then the mask comes out. After collecting it, you slide out of the car and hustle back to your truck. You waste no time racing back to your secret hideout.

* * * * *

Donning the memory strip of course solves some little mysteries that had been niggling at you. Like:

Charles Whitney is really not that much different than you. He's probably more like you than most of the kids at St. Xavier's—certainly he's more like you than he'd care to admit.

He's a native of Saratoga Falls, for a start, though his parents are a hell of a lot richer than yours, and live in a big, fancy house on the north side of town, in the horsey country north of the mall. From the toys they've given him, and the money they've spent on his education, you get the impression that he's pretty spoiled. Not that he seems very grateful. He felt pretty churlish toward his mom when she asked him to run a couple of errands for her before coming out to the show, and he spent several minutes bitching to his friends Zachary and Ethan about it. His taste for rap music may be another form of moody rebellion—his dad is a classically trained violinist, and Charles likes to play his favorite rappers loud.

He also resents the school, and though he boasts a lot about attending St. Xavier, he resents the other students, who are all richer and better connected than him, and he feels that, as a "townie" who doesn't even board at the school, he is looked down on as little better than white trash. He tries making up for it by cruising the university on weekends, looking for hook ups. Just last weekend, in fact, he talked his way into a fraternity by pretending to be a college student, and got laid. But at St. Xavier he's mostly a loner. But he's not such a loner that he doesn't know the sixth form (the senior class, that is) inside and out.

Your best hope for "catching" a new set of friends at St. Xavier would be to snag some of the other townies. Probably it's Charles's own moody instincts that make this idea feel like slumming—though Charles, you can tell, feels a grubby fascination for Roxanne Hurley, a pixie-ish, trailer-trash tomboy who's probably a lesbian. The best thing to be said about the townies is that you wouldn't look out of place in their company, and they'd still carry the "mutant" cachet.

The rest of the Mutants come in to town—if they come in at all—only on weekends, and only to kill time and money. You'd have to work at making a friendship with most of them look believable, and they would only be available on weekends and maybe Friday nights, if you wanted to show them off. But there are a handful that you might be able to work with. Loki Swain, for instance. Nobody seems to know how Loki—who is a forgetful, fluff-brained loner—got into St. X. But he's got a mystique that makes him popular, and no one at the school would question it if he became friends with a townie like Will Prescott. But the really rich and connected kids—

Like Marius Hall, Mary Occam, Dalton Reeves, Mathilde Ambard, Abi Steiner, Travis Rallart.

—spend as little time in Saratoga Falls as they can get away with.

You climb off the table where you've been lying and pad over to stare at yourself in the dusty, full-length mirror in the corner. Charles Whitney glares back out at you from behind your borrowed eyes. Fucking loser, he is thinking. Why don't you use this stuff to hijack the face and body and life of one of the rich and powerful? That's what I'd do.

Yes he would. Charles is not the type to let people fuck around with him.

Maybe you should take him—his brain at least—to school with you on Monday.

Next: "Leaving Your All Behind" 

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