The Book of Masks (Vol. 5)

A Sex Change at School

Previously: "Making a Fourth Maskateer" 

It's just nerves, you tell yourself. But though you've decided to go ahead, your stomach is fluttering hard. It just makes sense to do it this way, you tell yourself. I'm not taking any choices away from Teresa. I'm just, you know, helping her get started and maybe saving her some trouble.

Still, your legs are trembling when, ten minutes after the seventh-period tardy bell has rung, you find yourself standing in front of the nearest girls' restroom. Because that is where you'll have to change.

Gingerly, standing well back from the threshold, you push the door open a foot. "Hello?" you call into it. "Anyone in here?" If there is, you tell yourself, you'll tell them that you're looking for a particular girl, and then run find another restroom. But there's no answer, so you edge closer and push the door open some more. "Anyone in a stall?"

Still no answer.

You glance up and down the hallways to make sure the coast is clear, then bolt inside and dive into the farthest stall. You lock yourself in, and balance yourself atop the toilet, wedging your backpack sitting on the bowl between your knees so no one will see so much as your feet.

Quickly you haul out the clothes and mask and metal band. (You decided to play it safe by going all the way.) Even more quickly you push off your shoes and pull off the rest of your clothes, stuffing them for the moment between the toilet and the wall. Jesus, please don't let anyone come in and find me like this, doing this, you pray as with trembling fingers you start to pull on girl panties that are too small for you, and a bra that drapes listlessly across your narrow chest. The look, you glumly suppose, is only slightly improved by pulling on the gray cotton shorts and the black-and-white striped short-sleeve shirt. Once that's done, you drop down and wedge yourself between the toilet and the wall and lift the mask to your face. Now, at least, if someone finds you, it will be a girl in girls' clothes they find, not a girl in boys' clothes or (so much worse!) a boy in girls' clothes.

The mask, as it touches your face, seems to drag your head forward and down, and you topple into darkness ...

* * * * *

You wake to a feeling of nausea, and with a really bad pain in your neck; your head reels when you lift it. For a long moment you huddle where you woke, nursing the various pains and trying to will them into going away. Eventually you feel well enough to move, and with a lot of grunting and creaking you push yourself to your feet.

That helps, though you sway and have to put your hand against the wall to keep from toppling over. You suck in a deep breath and look around.

You're in the toilet stall still, and there's no noises from without, which is good. Your clothes fit more loosely on you now, which is also good, but you have to hike up your shirt and rearrange your breasts inside the cups of your bra. (Breasts, you think, I've got breasts again!) You touch and push at your hair. Should I freshen up? you wonder, then decide that, no, you should finish up the disguise by putting on the memory strip. "Mickey" will know better than you how to get things arranged. So with a silent groan you drop back down to the floor and pull out the metal doohickey. You study the name again—MADISON MICHELLE CRAWFORD—as you try to make yourself as comfortable as you can.

It's funny, but everything of the girl has vanished from your head, save for a few obvious and memorable biographical points. She is a sophomore who wants to be a cheerleader, and she's the queen of a rather buzzy bunch of sophomore girls obsessed with who is up and who is down and who is going out with whom. (She's besotted with at least one particular guy, but you can't remember who, and even yesterday you didn't pay much attention to the crush.) She's also kind of judgey. But the rest of it? She's left hardly so much as a bruise on your memory and consciousness.

But you do remember what it was like yesterday when you woke with her inside your head. That wasn't very fun until you got used to it, and you're not looking forward to repeating the experience. But with a sigh you reflect that the sooner you get it over with, the sooner you'll be able to get out of this really shitty and compromising position inside a toilet stall. So you close your eyes, grit your teeth, and touch the metal band to your forehead.

* * * * *

Gawd, you grumble as you touch and pull at your hair with the comb. I have got to figure out something to do with this! You make a face at the comb as well. And this bullshit isn't helping either!

It's not like you even ever use the comb that you carry from habit around in the hip pocket of your pants, but thank goodness it was there so you could at least straighten out your hair a little. You told yourself while wincing at your reflection that it didn't matter how you looked, that you were just wearing this face long enough to ambush Jenny Ashton. But it quickly became a matter of morale, at least to "Mickey." I can't go hang out in the library looking like this! you groaned to yourself. And after that, there was no fighting it, not with the quick-and-dirty makeup kit on hand, which you packed this morning on the principle "better safe than sorry." But even as you applied eyeliner and lip gloss and a little powder you were silently snarling at yourself for taking so much pointless trouble. Probably it would have been safest to leave the makeup at home, because you can't help resenting the way you're giving in to "Mickey's" instincts.

And they came quick. Unlike yesterday, when Madison Crawford's memory swept you away, like an avalanche of boulders, today they came to you with a freshness and clarity, as though you were simply remembering things that you had almost forgotten that you had forgot. So too came this rather pushy personality. But it doesn't feel any more alien or overpowering for that fact. It simply feels easier to think like "Mickey" when you're looking like this.

When you are at last only half-unsatisfied with your looks, you stand back from the mirror and give yourself a critical once-over. Your nose and mouth are still too big and too freckled, but as long as you smile the effect is warm and girlish, such that you can see the influence of Chelsea Cooper's face inside of it. In fact, as you touch your face here and there, you flatter yourself that if you could just get your hair the right length—short enough or long enough; this middle-of-the-road crap ain't cutting it—you could be one of the lookers of the sophomore class. Particularly—you break into your most girlishly gleeful grin—if you let Madison's most adorably giggly and girlish traits out. It gives you a good, hard, pleasurable shiver all over to imagine yourself as one of the pretty girls, one of the popular girls, one of the girls all the guys want to hang out with and that all the other girls envy!

Too bad the wardrobe is all wrong. The top and the shorts fight each other. The top needs to go with some good jeans—something faded and distressed—while the shorts belong with a sleeveless workout shirt: something thin with a plunging neckline.

Well, it's what you've got and what you've brought. And you remind yourself again that you're only in disguise until shortly after school, when you'll hit Jenny with that metal band. You've already given Caleb the keys to your truck, and he'll be waiting in it, to give you your getaway when you come scampering out of the school.

You scoop up and stow all your stuff in your pack, then take a deep breath before marching over to the restroom door.

Then, as you step into the hallway— Ulp!

* * * * *

Because he is trudging past as you yank the restroom door open. Trudging past with head down, and you almost barrel into him as you come out. And even though you catch yourself, you nearly trip over your own feet.

He looks up from his own feet to glower briefly at you, then stops to do a double take at you. His expression freezes.

Then it takes you way too long to realize you are gaping at him.

You blush all over, and duck your head and run for the library, where you dash for a table in the farthest corner, hurling your pack onto it, and throwing yourself into a chair to bury your face in your pack.

Oh Jesus, Madison! I mean, Mickey! The freaking freak did you let yourself get caught that way for?

Of all the freaking-freak bad luck, you had to come out of the restroom just as—

Just as—!

Just as Micah Freaking Larson was walking by!

Okay, Micah Larson is not Madison's big, obvious, open crush. That would be Ethan Clayborne, and it would have been even worse if you'd opened the door all unawares and hurtled into him.

But maybe it is worse that you almost ran into Micah, who is Madison's super-secret, super-shameful crush, the crush she would kill herself and her whole family before confessing to. So maybe it's worse that you got caught staring slack-jawed at him.

Well, it's all over now, you tell yourself. Bad luck, and he just took you by surprise, that's all. After your heart has quieted down, you lift your head, and start to open your backpack.

That's when you hear the squeak of rubber soles behind you, and turn to find Micah Larson himself looking quizzically down into your face.

He followed you into the library!

Next: "Crushed by Another's Crush" 

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