The Book of Masks (Vol. 3)

A Girl Who Remembers Nothing

Previously: "Flipping a Cheerleader" 

"What do you mean you're getting nothing?" you ask.

"I'm not getting any memories or anything," replies the girl who looks like Chelsea Cooper.

At least, physically she looks like Chelsea. She has Chelsea's long, softly curled, honey-blonde hair, and her large blue eyes, and the kewpie mouth set between cherubic cheeks. She has Chelsea's small frame and large breasts and strong thighs.

But the expression is wrong. Though she looks grim and more than a little aggravated, it's a much emptier and less angry glare than you're used to seeing on the head cheerleader's face. Her gaze is more distant, too.

In a passing flash, you can almost see Michelle's own face behind Chelsea's, as though the latter were a tinted mask of glass set over Michelle's own.

"So, like, what do you remember? That Chelsea would know?" you ask.

"That's what I'm telling you, Will, I'm not getting anything."

"Her phone number? Her address? Her parents' names?" Michelle shakes her head. "Her brother's name?"

"She's got a brother?"

Your knees weaken. "When we went up into the loft, and Chelsea was waiting for us, do you remember what happened? I mean, from her point of view?"

"I remember what it looked like to me," Michelle says. "But not what it looked like to Chelsea." She bites her lip. "I have no idea what Chelsea was doing before she came up here."

You squint at the door that Gordon exited through. Maybe I should put on Gordon's mask, you think to yourself. Help Michelle out while pretending to be her boyfriend, if this turns out to be a serious problem. Instead, you question her about the mask, and what she did with it while you were downstairs with Gordon.

"I did exactly like you said," she tells you. "When it came off Chelsea, I put that mask of you onto her. He's upstairs waiting for us now. And then," she continues as you pull at your lip, "I put all that stuff inside Chelsea's mask, and put it on. When I woke up I was a little confused about where I was, but got it all figured out. It was only when I looked at her texts that I realized I didn't have any idea what they meant."

You chew this over, then gesture her to follow you back up to the loft, where you lock yourselves in. A naked guy who looks like you is there, and he watches with a hooded curiosity as you gesture Michelle onto the gym mat and remove the mask from her. (She unbuttons her clothes first, so that she doesn't burst out of Chelsea's smaller things.) "What's going on?" your doppelganger asks.

"I'm checking out the mask," you murmur back. It looks like it's supposed to. The inner surface is gray with that special goop you made up for this mask and for Michelle's, and Chelsea's name floats in blue letters over the surface. "Did Michelle say anything to you about having trouble with Chelsea's memories?"

"She didn't tell me anything, 'cept to wait up here."

"Well, let me try something." You point to the floor. "I'm going to switch masks out on you." The fake looks dubious until you add, "It's okay. I'm just troubleshooting stuff."

So with a sigh your double drops to the floor. He mutters something under her breath that sounds like, "This day just gets weirder and weirder."

* * * * *

"So the memories are all in there?" Michelle asks with a frown. You nod. "Then how come I can't—?"

"I don't know, Michelle," you confess, and glance over at the Chelsea Cooper who stands in a far corner. "Unless the problem's on your side, somehow."

That's all you can figure. There's no way for you to put on the mask, for it's constructed to put its wearer under Michelle's control. But you set it onto Chelsea herself and questioned the apparition that resulted while squatting over her to hold the struggling girl down. She acted just like Chelsea would have, and cussed you out hard while churlishly answering enough questions to indicate that the fake, at least, knows all about who Chelsea is and what she herself knows. Then she turned docile—resentful but docile—when Michelle woke up and started questioning her herself.

"So what do we do?" Michelle asks. She looks over at the fake Chelsea. "I guess as long as she does whatever I tell her to, I don't have to, uh, be her."

But it would be safest if you were, you think. "I think you should change back into the mask," you say aloud. "These things, I'm not sure I trust them when they're out by themselves. Chelsea over there seems pretty pissed off about all this. If we sent her home, and she decided to say something to her boyfriend—"

"I don't think I can pass myself off as her with her family," Michelle objects. "Not without having, like, her memories and stuff."

"Then how about we go hang out someplace," you suggest. "Until it's late enough that you can go straight to bed after you get home."

"And tomorrow? At school?" Michelle lifts an eyebrow.

"We can see then. Maybe something will happen tonight, when you're asleep," you suggest without much hope. "Maybe something will click."

Michelle continues to look skeptical, but with a crook of her finger summons the sulky head cheerleader over.

* * * * *

It takes awhile to get organized. First, you have to use a second mask to make a second copy of Michelle, and seal it up with a layer of paste that puts it under her control, and put that onto Chelsea in place of your mask. Then she has to change back to Chelsea's mask and clothes. When that's all done, she suggests that you decamp for a nearby Starbucks, but you remember Chelsea's remarks about how odd it would be for her to be seen in public with people like you. So after a bit of back-and-forthing, you wind up at The Hamboree, an all-night diner. It looks like you've judged right, for when you get there you find that the four customers and the waitress are all over sixty. You and Michelle huddle in a corner booth.

"So, I don't think we really know each other," you tell her after you've got a couple of coffees.

With her eyes downcast Michelle doesn't look or act much like Chelsea Cooper. "Well, I'm new in town," she says. "No reason you should."

"But you made friends with Alexis and her friends. Pretty fast, it seems like."

"Well, I kind of got off on the wrong foot with people in the senior class."

"Like how?"

She nurses from her cup between her hands and looks out the window. "I don't know," she says. "Did you go to the cheerleader tryouts? Just before school started? It seemed like everyone was there."

"Sure. Um, I know you were there, 'cos you made it onto the squad." Michelle nods. "So, you were new in town, and the first thing you did was try out for the cheerleader squad?"

"I was on the squad back at my old school. I'm good. I know I'm good, even though no one here will say so." Her expression tightens. It's another odd look to see on Chelsea's face: anger being suppressed instead of erupting furiously outward. "I thought it would be a good way to meet people."

"And it wasn't?"

She lifts her cup, and pauses. "I made it onto the squad, and it seems like I pissed off half the school when I did."

"How come?"

"I don't know," she sighs. "I never did figure out, and no one would tell me. Chelsea picked me, and everyone thought I was going to be one of her friends. Part of her circle. Then I found out what she was like, and the way she treated her friends. Found out there were—"

She breaks off, and now a very un-Chelsea-like fear shows in her eyes. "Found out there were side benefits to being in her group. Side benefits for me, but side benefits for other people, too. I didn't want them, though. So Chelsea dropped me. But no one else wanted to be my friend by then, it seems like. I was spoiled fruit." Her eyes burn briefly.

The fire fades, though, as she takes a sip from her cup. "But I met Alexis and her friends. They didn't care about that stuff, it didn't have anything to do with them. And Roman and Justin and Scott don't care for Gordon and his friends anyway."

"Those guys are on the JV squad, right?"

She gives you a hard, direct look. "You know that, Will. You got to know them, didn't you?"

"For one night," you reply, reddening. "But I don't really remember the stuff I knew when I was, uh, doing the Alexis thing."

"The Alexis thing," Michelle echoes. "Is that what we're calling it? You were doing 'the Alexis thing,' now I'm doing 'the Chelsea thing'? And Alexis will be doing the—" She doesn't finish the sentence.

"So who is Alexis going to be, uh, doing the thing as?" you ask. "I mean, is it a secret? You keep not telling me." A thought occurs to you. "It's not one of her friends, is it?"

"Not a friend friend," Michelle says. "And it's not a secret, I guess. But I like to keep my friends' confidences, and I don't know if she wants me telling you."

I like to keep my friends' confidences. You start a little at the near repetition of the words the fake Michelle gave you yesterday, when telling you about some mutual friends.

"But I'm going to help you out with that, right?" you say. "When it's time to do the switch? I'll find out then anyway."

"That's true," Michelle admits. You tense with anticipation, for it sounds like she is about to break down and share it with you. Unbidden, fantasies come welling up, of nuzzling up with Alexis in her disguise.

"It's a guy named Joshua Swan," Michelle says. "He's on the football team with some of Alix's friends."

Next: "Who a Girl Wants" 

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