The Book of Masks (Vol. 5)

The Friends We Make Along the Way

Previously: "Vengeance on an Ex-Friend" 

"Caleb's mom?" you exclaim. You feel yourself blanch. "Are you serious?"

"Sure," Sydney says. "Why not?" Her grin deepens. "It would really fuck with him, right? If his mom—" She doesn't have to finish.

You rake your hands through your hair.

"And you know, there's other advantages! I mean, you say she hasn't got any money, but she's got to have some, and we could use it. Also, it would give us a base. Almost like a secret headquarters." She taps her grinning teeth with a fingernail. "It's just her and her son, right? Then we'd have a house where we wouldn't have to hide or do anything in secret. Where we could have our meetings and our—"

Yeah, you see the advantages, even with only the partial picture she's giving you.

But—

"I dunno," you mutter. "I kind of feel like mothers should be off limits." You flinch hard at the thought of someone doing that to your own mother. "I mean, how would you feel," you ask, "if someone did that to your mother?"

Sydney suddenly turns very red, and leaps to her feet.

"That's not fair, Will," she snaps. "That's different. And you might as well say," she adds, wheeling to glare at you, "that we shouldn't do any of this, because what if someone did it to us?"

Well, she has a point there. And yeah, if you were being consistent, you'd just give up the whole plan now, and maybe even burn the book.

But of course you're not going to go that far.

Still, you're not willing to go along with her on replacing Caleb's mom with a pedi-whatsis.

"I just feel like it's a step too far," you insist. "With Caleb's mom. I'm not saying all, uh, parents, or even moms, should be off-limits. Just— Well, just in this case." You flinch under Sydney's hard stare. "It makes it feel too personal."

Sydney stares at you a moment, then relents.

"Alright, sweetie, we won't do anything you don't want to." She comes over and fumbles with your hands. "You're helping me out, you're doing what I want to do. But I'll let you pick the people." She smooches you lightly on the lips. "You'll be in charge of picking who we ... initiate."

She palms the sides of your hips, and your cock, already rising, stiffens to full attention.

"You're making me happy," she says in a breathless voice. "So it's my job— Mm!" She kisses you. "It's my pleasure," she corrects herself, "to make you happy!"

* * * * *

So it's not going to Caleb's mom, and tonight it's not going to be Caleb. In fact, it's all for the best that you got distracted, because you realize only now that you do not in fact have everything you need to pull the switches off. You still need to make a couple of those metal doohickies that copy brains, for yourself and for Sydney. So you spend the balance of a late evening working on one. She makes one too, and you end by gluing them (still blank) into two blank masks.

Then, that night, after you've gone to bed, you lay awake for a long time, staring at the ceiling. You keep thinking of something Sydney said while talking about Blake: We could turn his friends against him.

Why not do the same thing to Caleb? you muse. Yes, "recruit" him for the Brotherhood. But ruin his friendships first, make him feel persecuted and hated the way you feel. Then drop the axe on him!

You must really be mad at him, because you fall asleep smiling at the fantasy, and you wake Saturday morning determined to do it.

Your dad is inordinately pleased to see you up and about so early, and rewards you by giving you some chores. You've nothing else to do until you hear from Sydney, and it will be for the last time, so you don't even give him a dirty look. You do have to text Sydney, when she texts you, that you'll be busy until about noon, and so she says that she'll put off seeing Caleb until you are free. That's when you call her, to talk while spraying down the windows outside.

"Yeah, I think I wanna change plans a little," you tell her over the hissing spray of the hose. You're catching a lot of back-spray, too, and are mildly drenched. "I don't wanna start with Caleb, I wanna finish with him. I mean," you continue when she asks what you're thinking, "I wanna start by recruiting all my other friends first." My ex-friends, you remind yourself grimly. "And then make them all turn against Caleb. Like you were talking about maybe doing with Blake. Then the last thing is, they all get together and they grab him and bring him to us, and then we convert him, last of all."

"Oh my God," Sydney murmurs. "You really want to make it like a horror movie, don't you?"

"My fucking life's a horror movie," you retort. "I wanna make Caleb feel it too."

"We can do that," she says. "But I already texted him back to say I want to meet him."

"So cancel."

She's silent a moment.

"No," she says when she resumes, "I'll go see him anyway. I told him I wanted to talk him into forgiving you so we can all be friends."

"I don't wanna all be friends!" you growl.

"Sweetie, don't put up a roadblock every time you come to an intersection. Let's just see what happens."

So you tell her to do whatever she wants. You yourself press on with your own plans.

That means getting at least one of your own ex-friends to see you, alone, so you can make a switch. You start with Keith: Hey, you text him, can we meet up and talk?

An hour later, after you've finished the chores and cleaned up, you have not heard back from him, so you send a similar text to Carson Ioeger: Hey meet me and talk about stuff? And when that elicits no answer, you text James Lamont (the least likely of the three to get back to you): Meet someplace to talk about things?

But it's all still in a state of suspension when Sydney texts you at around three, asking you to come meet her at Potsdam Park, by the river. That's a little weird, and it fills you with some trepidation, but you agree.

"So, I spent, like, an hour talking to Caleb," she says as the two of you lean against the railing that separates the river walk from the river below. "He's mad at you."

"Yeah, I know. So we go ahead and do the thing, right?"

"Well, he's mad at you, but he also sounds open to reason."

You snort, maybe to cover up the surprising jolt of regret you suddenly feel at having broken things up so badly with him. "There's no fucking way," you bluster, "that I'm—"

"Well, just listen, Will. Yeah, he's mad at you," she says as you sullenly hold your tongue. "But I told him how it all wasn't your fault. That it was my fault, that I—"

Her smile turns tight and a little secret.

"I told him I just fell really hard for you. I told him you kept trying to get me to look at him, 'cos you knew he was interested in me, but I wouldn't listen. I told him that you and me made this connection, and that you were too embarrassed to tell him because you knew he'd be hurt."

Yeah yeah, you think. The obvious story. Aloud, you say, "Did he fall for it?"

"He didn't 'fall for' anything, Will," she says with a roll of her eyes. "You know it happens to be the truth. You did just happen to get between him and me, and you and me did just happen to make a connection."

"Yeah, but I was trying to get between you and him," you retort.

Her smile turns wry, and she reaches out to grab the side of your stomach. It's a tickle-spot, and you flinch hard, which makes her giggle.

"And that's how come we got connected, sweetie! I wouldn't have looked at you a second time, except you wanted me to look at you so bad, so I gave you a chance." She edges closer to you, which arouses you hard. "And you hooked me."

She puts her hand behind your head and draws your face down to hers for a slow, wet kiss.

Then she releases you. "And we don't tell him that. Just the part that makes it sound like my fault."

You sigh. "Yeah, okay, so is everything good between us? Me and Caleb, I mean?"

"No."

"Pah! So what was the fucking point—?"

"I think we could make it good."

"How?" you ask with no little skepticism.

"Well, hear me out. I don't think we can just tell him that you and me made a 'connection'. That'll just make him jealous, and he'll still be mad at you and not want to be your friend. I think we need to tell him how we made a connection. What the connection is." She lifts her eyebrows meaningfully.

Your feel your blood run cold. It's a long moment before you can speak.

"You mean," you say, "that you want us to tell him about all this stuff."

"I don't want to do anything, Will. I told you last night, all of this is up to you. As long as we make a Brotherhood. I'm just telling you, if you want to be friends with Caleb again, we should let him be a Brother. A real one, not a fake one.

"And if you don't just want to spring it on him," she adds with a sudden smile, "we don't even tell him who we are! We recruit him under some other aliases! And if we tell him it's us, we only tell him later."

That's all for now.

*
"Table of Contents (Vol. 5)" 
"The Book of Masks (Vol. 5)"