The Book of Masks (Vol. 4)

To Strike at the King

Previously: "The World Smashers" 

There's no way you can talk the others into going along with swapping Geoff Mansfield with someone. You're not interested in their private vendettas, so why would they be interested in yours?

And tempers seem short. Chelsea is flushed, Maria's mouth is a grim line, and Jessica has her hands clenched at her temples.

Someone needs an ally. You decide to side with Josiah.

"Let's go with, uh, Chelsea's idea," you blurt out. "Swap Gordon with someone."

"Maybe we should sleep on it, Will," Maria says.

But Jessica lurches to her feet. "No, let's just do something," she snaps, and before anyone can react, she strides from the studio. Eva gives the room a quick glance-round, and runs after her.

"I second Will's motion," Cindy says. "That's three votes. Practically a landslide." She smirks faintly at Maria, who looks very pinched and mutters, "I'll have to talk to the others."

"You do that. The rest of us should go home. See you at practice tomorrow?" she purrs at Chelsea, and slides in close to kiss her on the temple. "Make it a fun one," she says, "like this morning's." Chelsea looks startled, then grins at her.

A few minutes later, when you and Cindy are outside by your cars: "Jesus, what was that all about?" you ask.

"What was what all about?"

"You and Chelsea. Josiah." You blow her a quick kiss.

"Oh. That." Cindy sniggers. "Just keeping things friendly. Shank's off in his own little world. Haven't you noticed?"

"I just noticed he kept giving me the stink eye, and thought I should try making nice with him."

"Good instinct," Cindy says. "You do not want Josiah pissed off at you. He's really torqued at Philip's whole 'second betas' thing anyway, doesn't want to move out of Chelsea's body. Nngh!" She stretches and arches her back. "I can sympathize."

"Well, he's still going to have to," you point out, "if Fairfax wants us testing out second betas."

"No, we just need one of us to test out a second beta. The rest of us can watch. We can watch what happens with Gordon. And you know, where Josiah is now, inside Chelsea—" Cindy snickers. "That's the perfect place to watch what happens with Gordon."

"You mean, to watch whoever gets swapped with Gordon. Who's that going to be?"

Cindy shrugs in a very lazy way. "Beats me. Philip'll ask us for ideas, I'm sure. So have some. Just make sure it's someone who won't want to fuck Chelsea. And someone who'll fuck up Marcos Rivera somehow."

She leaves you with that directive, and with the memory of a quick smooch on the ear and the tweak of a nipple.

* * * * *

Yesterday morning you felt weird as you showered and dressed. This is Jenny's body, but I'm not Jenny, I'm just wearing her form, is what you kept thinking, and you kept flinching as you touched yourself. Not until you got to school and got into character and "forgot" yourself did you stop feeling self-conscious about your borrowed body.

This morning, though, you feel ripe and relaxed, and spend a couple of minutes stretching deliciously in bed before getting up and padding into the bathroom. You rub your tight skin under the hot water, and squeeze out your long hair before wrapping it in a towel when you get out. You wipe the steam off the mirror and give your breasts—though they are on the small side—a long and appreciative smirk. This is my body now, you tell yourself as you dress in distressed jeans and a XXL sports jersey snagged at a vintage clothing shop, and I'll be fucked if I'm not going to enjoy wearing and showing it off.

"You going out for football this year?" Nicholas Gray snarks when you stride into the choir room for first-period concert practice. You only wrinkle your nose at him, for Nicholas is cute and well-built and polite, and you—well, Jenny—would give him a lot more and much harder attention if he didn't seem more interested in Lynette Kolaya.

Besides, you've got Alexander Peloquin to deal with. He's loitering behind Nicholas, and leans over to murmur something in a very audible voice to his friend Parker. "What'd you say?" you snap at him as Parker smirks.

"Who, me?" Alexander says with faux-innocence.

"Say it a little louder," you challenge.

"I was just saying it looks like you've got Erik Carstairs' number." Alexander traces a number on his chest with a fingertip. "Sixty-nine, right?"

"That's your number!" you retort, and retreat with a reddening face to the other side of the room, where you join Julia Paez on one of the risers.
Julia is a basketball player, another tomboy like Jenny, with rusty-brown hair, and a wide-open, ingenuous face that is always easy to read. Jenny signed up for Concert Choir—a more exclusive offshoot of the general school choir—because she thought it would be an ace class to take, but except for Julia, Nicholas, and Lynette, it's full of neurotic underclassmen like Alexis Lachance, petty gossips like Deanna Showalter, smarmy gays like Alexander Peloquin, handsy dorks like Daniel Parrish, and—

Yych. You have to look away as Leah Simmons comes swaggering in.

There shouldn't be any issue between you and Leah. Actually, like Julia, she ought to be one of Jenny's friends. She's confident and extroverted, and like Jenny and Julia she's more than a little tomboyish. More tomboyish, in fact. She never wears skirts and hardly ever wears shorts, preferring to dress in rugged jeans, flannel shirts draped or buttoned over heavy t-shirts, and suspenders. She trudges around in brown hiking boots, and her hair is cut boyishly short.

In fact, she is so tomboyish that it is impossible to escape the conclusion that she is—

Well—

It's not something that Jenny likes to admit to herself, and she'd hotly deny it if you accused her of it, because it's a gross thing to be and Jenny tries really hard to be just and fair and not in any way be a 'phobe. But the simple fact is that homosexuals of any kind make her skin crawl.

And because you're now Jenny, Leah with her almost stereotypically butch-dyke look makes your skin crawl.

And—Oh God!—she's making a beeline toward you now. Her friend Jack Li—a gay Chinese-American you often see her with—is trailing in her wake.

"Hey Jenny!" she calls when she's still halfway across the room, as if you and her are friends. "Where's your friend Will hang out this hour?"

"What?" you ask, so badly does the question startle you. "Who?"

"Your friend Will. Prescott, I think."

"Oh. Um, I think he's got—"

"What's his number?" Leah takes her cell phone out.

"What do you want, his number or his schedule?"

"Both, if you got 'em." Leah grins.

Grumpily, for you feel both rattled and exasperated, you give her your old number and your beta's current location. You can't help noticing that Jack seems to be entering the number into his cell phone too. "Why do you wanna know?" you demand, and make no attempt to keep the suspicion out of your voice.

"Just wanna see about hanging out with him sometime."

"We bumped into him up at Besandwiched last night," Jack says. His grin is bright, white, and cocky. "Hung out talking but forgot to put him in our call list."

You're not sure you approve of Will "hanging out" with this crowd in public, even if it's exactly the kind of get-yourself-into-circulation advice you've been meaning to give your beta. "He's not gay," you blurt out.

The smile on Jack's face cools without completely fading. "I'll make a note of that," he says, dryly, before turning away. Leah hustles after him, and shoots you a quick, hard look over her shoulder. You don't want to apologize, but you do want to kick yourself.

* * * * *

"So I guess we're set to do that 'Freaky Friday' thing," Eva says after you're settled with her in second-period study hall. She glances past you at the door, and keeps her voice low. "Gordon and, well, someone."

"Who?"

"Josiah says he doesn't care, so long as it's—"

"Someone who's gay or is a girl," you finish for her. Maybe Julia, you think. One basketball player for another.

"So probably Charles. Although I think it'd be fun if it was Yumi." She giggles. "Wouldn't that be funny? Turning Gordon into Yumi and Yumi into—"

"Yeah yeah." Or someone gay, you're thinking. Jack Li is gay. That'd fuck Leah and her friends up, if Gordon got turned into—

"Or how about James?"

"Lamont?" That suggestion brings you quickly back down to earth. "You fucking serious?"

"Switch a dork and a jock. And James and Carson love to give Gordon and his friends the business. So if we switched them—"

You zone out again as you try to imagine a cynical, science-minded geek like James Lamont switching places with one of the dull-witted jock-thugs that he likes to torment.

"What do you think?" Eva asks.

You don't know why your opinion should carry any special weight. But even when you don't care about something, you have a hard time keeping your opinion to yourself.

No, wait, that's Jenny who can't keep an opinion to herself.

But you're Jenny now, so you do share. And your vote goes to—

Next: "Beware of Booby Traps" 

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