The Book of Masks (Vol. 1)

Personality on Parade

Previously: "Two in One" 

Teresa did a good job of getting one of those metal bands onto one of her classmates, so you're happy to outsource her job again; and Keith agrees to let Teresa do it for him as well. Caleb has one now, but he consents to give her the blank one he made in trade for it.

"I'll try to get 'em for you guys tomorrow," Teresa tells you. "If you remember to bring them to me at school." There's something very sniffy and smug about the way she says it.

She has to go home for dinner—her family eats relatively late—and since you brought her out, you also drive her home.

"I think I'm going to try to get one of the girls in my first-period class," she tells you on the drive home. "It's Intro to Acting, you know. I think that'd be a good choice, since you guys are going to be 'acting' with these things. Right?"

"Right," you agree.

"What are you going to do with them?"

"I dunno," you confess. "Do like we did yesterday, I guess, and go out in them?" You shoot her an inquisitive look.

"You could even crash a party this weekend. Wouldn't that be fun for you? Going to a party as a couple of girls?"

That does get a rise out of you, though at the same time you get a dreadful anticipation of having to fight off some horny guys. Though, could that be fun as well? It gives you a shiver of delight to imagine yourself cockteasing and then rejecting some asshole on the basketball team, and then disappearing by removing the mask.

* * * * *

Caleb is in a mask when you get back to the basement, and is admiring himself in the mirror. It's the mask he made for himself, mixing his face with Maria Vasquez's.

"What do you think?" he asks as he twirls before you, clad only in a t-shirt and his boxers. His breasts wobble and flop about. "Now I got a personality to go with it!" He smirks and fluffs out his dark mane of hair.

The sight gives you a hard-on. The girl's light-mocha skin is clear and beautiful, and even if her features are small and her expression smug, she is quite beautiful. Sexy, too, with those breasts and those short, powerful bare legs. But the illusion is even more shattering than before, because Caleb is fully indulging the female personality he donned with the metal band. So he twirls and prances and cocks his head and smirks coquettishly at you. His voice is rich and deep for girl, but with a sexy croak.

"So I'm going to call her Maria," he says as he twists on his bare feet. "I got to, you know 'cos I used Maria in the mask, and I've got this Mary Boucher girl to go with her." He twists to stare in the mirror again. "Totally doesn't look like her." He claps his hands onto his ass—a nice, plump, and pronounced ass it is, too—and bends at the waist to put his face close to the mirror. The front of his t-shirt falls open so he (and you; and Keith, who is sitting rigidly still on a nearby table, staring as though he'd die if he glanced away from Caleb) can stare down the cleavage of his dangling boobs in the reflection. "But this is better. Oh my God, Mary would kill to have a body like this."

"Who is she?" you ask. It's a dumb question, one you're not even interested in. But you've got to at least pretend you're engaged with something other than eye-fucking your gender-bent best friend.

"Who, Mary?" Caleb casts a smoky glance back at you over his shoulder. "Just a girl in the sophomore class. I told you about her."

"You told me her class schedule and where she lives. That's not— That's nothing!"

"She's just a girl." Caleb straightens up. "Tall and skinny, like a giraffe. She was always, like, the tallest the person in her classes, all the way back to elementary school. Mm." He pulls his hair behind his head to study the effect, then fluffs it back out. "That's one reason she'd love to have this body. She's short. Well, shorter.

"And Mary's totally white bread," he continues as you lapse back into a paralyzed silence. "No color. Get this, she plays the bassoon. Fuck me. You wouldn't catch Jazmin Colon playing bassoon. Oh my God! If I looked like this— If she looked like this, none of the guys would even glance at Jazmin!"

"Who's Jazmin?"

"Girl in the sophomore class that Mary's obsessed with, 'cos she's a hot chile pepper that gets the sophomore boys all riled up. Oh, fuck me, this is perfect!"

He dances about some more, pumping the air with his arms and letting his breasts fly and flop all over the place.

"You need some clothes," you say, and ignore the hurt and angry look of shock that Keith shoots you. "I mean, if we're going to go out in these things. Teresa bought me some on Sunday, when we met up," you add.

Caleb stops in mid-prance to stare at you. For a moment he looks very blank. Then a cunning expression comes over his face.

"Yeah," he drawls. "What's going on with you and Teresa?"

"What? What do you mean?"

"What do you think I mean?" He sniggers meaningfully. "All meeting up here early today, and you picking her up and taking her home. And she bought you some clothes?"

You feel yourself turning red. "It's nothing. She needs a ride, I gave her a ride. And she wanted to meet this weekend to try to, uh, break the ice between us."

"She wanted to break the ice with you," Caleb titters. "Me and Tilley didn't get no invite to go along and go shopping."

Now you face is hot. "There's nothing going on! I don't even like her!"

Caleb looks even more amused. "Don't go breaking her heart, Will. Question isn't whether you like her. It's whether she likes you!"

You open your mouth to reply, then freeze when you see the expression on Keith's face. He is openly gaping at you, and you can see the thought forming behind his eyes: Dude, you're totally going to make a play for her, aren't you?

"How about you take that thing off," you bark at Caleb. "And get that girl out of your head! It sounds like she's the one I'm talking to!"

Caleb laughs, but consents to turn himself back to normal.

* * * * *

It gives you the cold sweats to consider that maybe Teresa is "interested" in you. Never mind that she isn't very attractive—she's not ugly, but she's very plain and very severe, and seems to have no interest in making herself look better—there's her personality. She is cold, condescending and humorless. What could you say, how would you react, if she declared herself, or starting acting as though you and her were ... friends?

The only comfort you can take is that she is so awkward and stiff that she's unlikely to actually try anything.

Still, you feel anxious and tetchy all the next day as you anticipate hearing from her.

"So, she's going to take me shopping," Caleb tells you at lunch. (You had noticed him texting someone just before class.) That's a relief, until he adds, "Actually, she wants to take us all shopping, after we're all kitted out." He casts Tilley a disdainful look. "I wonder what the hell she's going to do with you." Keith winces.

"Did she say anything about the, uh—?" You wipe your forehead with your fingertips.

"No. I just asked her if she'd take me shopping like she took you"—thankfully there's no snigger in his voice when he says it—"and she said she wanted to take all of us. She wants to see our personalities too." He rips a bite out of his sandwich, and he adds, with his mouth full, "I wonder if she's going to get one for herself."

"She could stand to have a personality," you mutter.

"I was talking about a doohicky." He regards you thoughtfully. "Maybe you could get her one."

"Shut up."

"I'm serious. We could all chip in. One of us could get a metal doohickey onto a girl in our class. Another could make her a mask. Well—" Again he glances at Keith. "It would have to be you or me who did that. You know, make her up a new persona, like we're getting."

"She doesn't seem much interested. Except for us."

"Yeah, interesting, that. Maybe she's a lesbian."

"Dude!" You perk up. "You think so?"

He shrugs. "It's interesting she's helping us with this stuff. I wonder if she'd be helping us if we were, you know, copying guys." He shudders a little.

"I suppose we could ask her if she wants a mask and shit," you allow.

"It would be polite," Caleb agrees.

* * * * *

Teresa doesn't ask you to wait for her after school, but you do anyway, and you send her a text telling her that you'll be in the library.

She comes running in, breathless and a little pale, at around four-thirty.

"I got them," she gulps, and plucks nervously at your shoulder. "Come on."

"Something go wrong?" you ask in alarm after you've come to life again. You start packing your things as she shakes her head.

But she comes clean after you're on your way to the truck. "They saw me," she admits as you're trotting across the front quad toward the parking lot. "I got Mary yesterday without her seeing me. But today—" She gulps again.

"What happened?"

She shakes her head and repeats, "They saw me. They couldn't stop me but they saw me. Crap. I should've been, like, disguised," she mutters.

Too late now, you think.

"Here," she says when you're in the truck, and she thrusts a metal band at you.

"Is it the girl in your acting class?"

"No. But I this one 'ld go better with that, um, face you made. The other one, from miy class, I'll give it to Keith."

Next: "Mad About the Girl" 

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"Table of Contents (Vol. 1)" 
"The Book of Masks (Vol. 1)"