The Book of Masks (Vol. 1)

The Leftovers

Previously: "My Friend the Guinea Pig" 

There's no point in finding a victim—er, a test subject—until the school has cleared out a little, so you camp out in the library with some homework. There's lots of students in there, too, and you watch from under your brows as they wander in and out of the stacks. A lot of them look familiar, and you know a few of them, like Howie Baylor, by name. But there's plenty of others who you don't know, and who by their looks will be sophomores or freshmen.

Yeah, one of those would make a good victim. Someone small who can't fight back.

Except that the library is a place you like to camp out, which makes it exactly the kind of place you're likely to run into your victim— er, test subject again. Particularly if they're in the library when you pick them out.

So you pack up your stuff and head out into the school proper.

* * * * *

There's still lots of foot traffic, and as you lope through the halls you peer inside the classrooms. Almost all of them have a teacher inside—like a queen bee in a private chamber inside the gigantic hive that is Westside High School—and a few still have students. But in most of them it looks like group work going on—afterschool club meetings and such like that—so you continue on.

You go out the back of the school and circle past the athletic fields. The tennis players are practicing inside their cage next to the gym; the track people are out jogging; and the girls' softball team is on the baseball diamond. The two big athletic fields are crawling with football and lacrosse players, looking like giant, colorful, hunchbacked beetles. No solitary victims to be had there.

You circle the gym and come back in through the breezeway that divides the gym from the theater. On a hunch you look inside the latter. Laughter breaks out as soon as you put your head through the doorway.

For a moment you're offended. Then you realize the laughter isn't directed at you. It's coming from the risers along the left-hand wall, far down toward the end. There's a cluster of a dozen kids down there—a mix of guys and girls. As you watch, one of them stands up and calls down to the stage, which is dimly lit.

"Chris, love," he drawls, and now recognize him as the very gay (and very out) Charles Hartlein. "Think you could do something about the sofa so James doesn't trip over it when he makes his entrance?" He sits down again.

A moment later a blonde guy come out on stage. His handsome face is a stony, expressionless mask as he pushes a sofa around. "Back!" Charles calls. "Back! More! To the right!"

"How about James comes down and tries it," the blonde guy yells back. Someone calls from backstage, and he glances over his shoulder. But what that person says and what Charles says is lost in the crosstalk, and you don't stick around to see what comes of it all.

Instead, you return to the main school building, where you glance inside the cafeteria long to see that there's no one in there but cleaning staff. You're about to return to the library but make a U-turn instead and duck into the Tutorial offices. Half of them are closed; two of the open offices have a tutor inside; but inside the last is a girl sitting at a desk and writing in a notebook. There is no sign of—

You glance at the name plate on the door as you knock, and the girl looks up. She's quite cute. "Is, uh, Ms. Johnson here?" you ask.

The girl looks at you like you're an idiot. "No. Do you see her in here?"

"I mean, is she around?" The girl just shrugs and bends back over her work.

For a moment you're tempted to grab her, out of spite and because she's available. But your position seems too exposed.

You pass the library again, and turn into A wing when you hear voices. They're coming from Ms. Heaney's classroom, and you spot a trio of girls—but no teacher—when you look inside. They have their cell phones out, and are giggling and gossiping. You catch a few references to Nirdlingers (the department store) and Starbucks, and it occurs to you that you might find some vic— Some test subjects in town: alone in a coffee shop booth or in a changing room at a clothing store.

So you're clomping through the halls to your locker, head down, wondering how the hell you're going to get someone alone, when you stop dead with an epiphany. Slowly you take half a dozen steps back until you're looking inside the open door of a classroom.

It's Mrs. Hoagland's room. She's working at her desk.

Alone.

There's, like, a hundred classrooms in the school, most of them with a single teacher at work inside. You'd like to try the mask out on someone who doesn't know you, and who certainly couldn't get you in trouble. That ought to rule out using a teacher as a ... test subject. But the teachers seem like your best chance of getting someone alone.

* To look backstage in the theater: "The Stage, Your World?" 
* To grab that girl in the tutorial offices: "And Then There Were Two" 
* To try the mask on a teacher: "Tackling a Teacher" 
* To continue searching the school: "Cheerleaders and Charity" 

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