The Book of Masks (Vol. 3)

A Battle Plan Begins

Previously: "Corporate Strategies" 

You try to picture explaining this magic stuff to a potential partner, and come up blank. It's all so incredible. There's only one way you could convince someone—by showing it.

What you need (you decide) is a bold demonstration of the magic's reality. Something like a gang of doppelgangers under your control. And not just two of them, but a half-dozen incompatible personalities all obeying you, because they are all fakes that you made and that you control.

So you next bend your thoughts toward who else to duplicate and replace.

* * * * *

So preoccupied are you that you wake the next morning while it is still dark—not even four o'clock yet, when you check your phone. You lay in bed for a few minutes, trying to will yourself to sleep, but soon give up. You are wide awake and alert, as though waiting for some order to come.

It does come (you know not from where) a few minutes later, and you quietly rise in answer to its prompt, to dress and pack up books for school. Then you steal out of the house after leaving a note for Kim's dad, telling him that you are making an early start on the day.

When you shifted into Kim's mask you took the key to the community center basement with you, and that's where you go now. The old school looms in the darkness like an ancient and moldering monolith, and there is a soft mist about it. It feels even more like breaking and entering than usual as you let yourself in, but you feel no guilt or fear. You hardly feel anything, only a kind of urgency.

All your supplies are laid out where you left them, and with a kind of mechanical implacability you use the light on Kim's phone to find the book and the carving implements, then sit down to scratch out the runes necessary to finish a metallic strip. All of your concentration goes into this task, so that you have no attention for anything else, not even a sense of how tiresome the work is. Every once in a while you surface from your rigid fascination to reflect with vague puzzlement on the fact that you are so intent on it. The closest analogue you can comprehend is the one time last year you got really stoned with Keith Tilley, and wound up staring for what seemed like hours into an atlas, burning the contours of the fjords of Norway into your brain with no regard for anything else. So it is with the runes that emerge with much work from your small, repetitive chiseling at the metal.

You are stiff when lift your head from the work, and you stretch to force the kinks out. But you feel only a vague sense of satisfaction as you glue the new strip to the inner surface of a blank but polished mask. A glance at the phone shows that it is now nearly seven-thirty. I should get something to eat, you tell yourself, but it's less because you're hungry than because you know it's something you should do—it's as if gear in your head was turned by a counterweight, to lift and present the thought, Get breakfast. The sun isn't up yet but the sky is rapidly lightening as you pack the newly made mask and some of that enslaving goop into your bag, and lock up the basement.

Then, as you are parking in front of Salvation Donuts:

Oh, Jesus! you exclaim to yourself with a jolt, as something like short, sharp earthquake passes through you. Why, hello there, Kim, you tell yourself, for a vivid sense of the girl's presence and personality floods back. And Will. Nice to see you back too! You are a little shaky (and definitely puzzled) as you get out and go into the shop, but you smile brightly at Ms. Murray, and chat with her about the health of her parents, and express satisfaction that they are still hale and full of vinegar and the spirit of the Lord. But in the back of the mind you are still wondering how you managed to mislay your sense of self—and every thought and quiver of emotion that goes with yourself and with Kim—during the night and morning.

* * * * *

It's a little after eight when you get to school, and the parking lot is already filling up. You are also late answering Chelsea's request to meet and discuss the latest crisis.

She's in the gym, and more specifically in the loft. You consider asking her to come down, but decide to go up. Maybe it's important enough that she wants to keep out of sight.

You have to run past the basketball team to get up to her, though. You keep your face averted, and the boys all seem preoccupied with running drills while Gordon and Steve shout at them, but you know that some must be watching as you turn the corner to the stairs leading to the infamous "fuck room" in the rafters above.

Chelsea looks up from her phone with a startled expression as you walk in, then she gasps with relief. "Oh, thank God!" she exclaims. "Boss! Have you figured out what to do about Gordon?"

"No, I— Not yet." This is a doppelganger, but still you are shy about admitting that you haven't even thought about it. "What's wrong, what happened?"

"We had a fight, a real humdinger! Gordon thinks I've been sneaking Will up here."

"He what?" You have to take a moment to process this. "Well, I know he seems to be obsessed with ... Will ... lately."

"Jealous, even, it seems like! I tried telling him, you know, pff! As if! Why would I be into a runty little guy like Will Prescott?" She catches herself, then groans. "Except I am. It was all so much easier when I could just order the big lummox to mind his own business! Then I wouldn't have to sneak around, and Will and I could—"

"Wait. You've been sneaking around with ... Will?"

She gets a shifty look, then sighs. "Okay, yes. That's how come we had that fight. Gordon must'a seen Will driving off last night as he was driving up. My little scruff-monster barely got away in time!"

"Oh, Jesus. Chelsea." You pinch the bridge of your nose.

"Well, can you do something about him? I thought you were—!"

She shuts up at the sound of creaking stairs, and you both turn as the door opens and a flushed and steaming Steve Patterson comes sweeping in. He runs a cold glance over you, and says, "Christ, Chels, are you using this place as your office now?" He snatches a pair of jeans from inside a box just inside the door. "Not that you aren't welcome up here any time, Kim," he says with a fast wink. "But why waste time with a dyke like Chelsea?"

Chelsea glares murder at the door after he's gone. "And can we please do something about him, too?"

* * * * *

That incident reminds you that had plans to secure the loft as a kind of on-site base, but it also reminds you that it is rather public. You can't think of a more secure base on school property, though, which leads you in a roundabout way to consider getting yourself a secure off-campus base instead. And not the elementary school, which is inconveniently far and might get you in trouble if you get caught there.

Home, you think with a start. Or the motel. The thought should horrify you—duplicating and replacing Kim's father—but you entertain it almost as a mathematical proposition. It does seem like a remarkably elegant solution.

You're still concentrating on Chelsea's request when you go into the school office for your third-period study hall. It's one of the perks of being student council president that you can use the office conference room to study, and you're working on some Spanish when your name is softly called. Mr. Staufford, one of the assistant principals, beckons you from the doorway.

"I've got a problem I want to talk to you about, Kim," he says as you and he settle into his cramped office. (It's small enough that he can lean over to brush the door closed with his fingertips.) "This is going to be awkward for both of us." He steeples his fingers under his nose, and fixes you with a piercing look. "How much do you know about all the drug dealing that goes on in this school?"

Normally, Kim would answer by telling him Hardly anything, which is true. It's a seamy and hard-cornered side of the school she flinches from looking at. And it's not like the administration seems to care. But this is Mr. Staufford asking, and he's the one administrator who is probably hard-assed enough to try tackling it. So you ask why he wants to know. He answers by asking if you know anyone who would be able to give him a detailed report on how much stuff gets sold, and by who. You temporize, asking if you can get back to him after thinking about it. He glowers, but lets it go with that, and sends you back to your books.

But he's also given you another thing to think about: a potential source of income.

Also (and why didn't you see this before?): Control of a teacher or administrator would make it a lot easier to seed the school with doppelgangers.

But all these thoughts go out the window when Marc Garner grabs you in the hallway as you're going to sixth period. "I'm staying after school to talk to Chelsea," he tells you in a very sober tone. "Can you come along for moral support?"

You've got a mask with you, and you are being given the perfect chance to replace Marc Garner—the hyper-popular captain of the soccer team—with a doppelganger.

Next: "Thanks Aloft" 

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