The Book of Masks (Vol. 2)

People and Possibilities, Part 1

Previously: "The Fate of Dwayne Macaulay" 

It doesn't matter what you do with Macaulay later; right now there's stuff that you—as him—need to do.

You tell Caleb you'll meet him and all the other members of your expanding "club"
at Dane Matthias's trailer after school.

* * * * *

You start by checking Evie out of the motel (and collecting a partial refund) and dropping her off at Dane's trailer. On the way out you warn her that Dane's mother has been pretending to be her. Her expression tells you that she's fairly weirded out by the news, but she takes it calmly.

Then you drive downtown to the law offices of Brampton and Wolf to get a refund of the ten thousand you gave him to take care of "Marianne Matthias."

Lionel Brampton doesn't want to see you, though, so drive a few blocks north to Ben's BBQ. At least Karol Mathis graciously pretends to be pleased at your return, though he makes a point of stressing that he expects you to collect two weekends' of rent from the Warehouse before closing time. You tell him you'll do that, and you also tell him you want your money back from Brampton. "I found Marianne when I got back to town. She called me while I was on the way back. She's got her head back on, so I don't need that job done anymore. Not that anything got done while I was out," you add with a growl.

Mathis returns your glare with a soft smile. "You're not getting anything, Macaulay. This is a no-refund business."

"Bullshit. I don't give ten thousand—"

"You gave Lionel Brampton ten thousand dollars for peace of mind. You got your peace of mind." Mathis shrugs. "He fulfilled his end of the bargain."

"I paid him—no, I paid you—to find her and put her away, which you didn't!"

The smile fades from Mathis's face. "Then sue us."

You almost leap over the desk at him. He sees it in your eyes, you're sure, the murderous anger. But he doesn't flinch, only his gaze further cools.

You stalk to the door. "Macaulay," he calls after you, and you stop. "You're not irreplaceable. You just proved that by taking that vacation."

You're replaceable too, motherfucker, you think as you barrel your way through the narrow hallways to the alley behind the restaurant. It's just that I don't want to be you any more than I want to be Dwayne Macaulay.

* * * * *

The meeting at the trailer instantly gets off to an awkward start. You figure that Marianne is going to be wearing the Evie mask when she gets there, so to avoid having two Evies staring at each other, you leave Evie in Dane's mask for the moment. But Marianne is divested of her disguise when she enters the house, and when she sees her son—or the person she thinks is her son—she cries out and rushes at him.

"Oh, sweetie," she moans as she clasps Evie's whiskered face in her hands. "They cut off all your hair!"

Paulina and Melanie, who followed Marianne in, give you a ghastly look of surprise; Lindsay gives you the stink eye.

"We can fix that Aunt, uh, Marianne," you stammer. "This isn't Dane. It's that girl you've been pretending to be." You glance back at Evie's friens. "At least I heard that's what you've been doing."

"Oh. Yes." Marianne looks abashed, and she darts her eyes about. She also looks a little haggard. Enforced sobriety seems to have aged her.

"Well, this is her. It's a long story, but—" You step over to "Dane" and gently push him onto the sofa, then pull at his face. A mask comes away, and suddenly it's Evie Cummings sleeping on the sofa in Dane's clothes.

Marianne gasps. "Where's my Dane?" she shrieks.

The girls rush to hush her, and her cries of outrage are further muffled as with loud voices a half-dozen boys barge in the front door: Caleb Johansson, Bhodi Weaver, Andy Jensen, Joe Dickerson, Grant Lowery and Justin Orr. Voices overtop each other until with a piercing whistle you get them all to shut up.

"Now that we're all here," you tell the hushed crowd, "maybe we can start putting things back to normal."

* * * * *

But matters go cockeyed almost at once.

You tell Marianne can move back into her place now. But instantly, she starts arguing. She liked being back in high school. Why can't she continue? She'd be happy to share Evie's life, or some other girl's life. (She looks around the room with a hopeful expression.) And whichever girl it was could hide out at the trailer and have fun skipping school while she was taking their place. As for "Marianne Matthias" and what would become of her, the woman herself only shrugs. She wants to start over. There are some seriously hot guys at Westside.

But at the same time she wants her son back, and she loudly demands that you tell her where he is.

Okay, he's also wearing a mask, you tell her, so you'll just take it off him. For what it's worth, you'll also get the mask off Gordon Black and return him to normal too. No problem.

But Caleb raises his hand. "Problem," he says. "Gordon's been acting goofy ever since we put Dane in as his substitute. He quit the basketball squad and I hear his dad kicked him out. So there's no going 'back to normal' for him. Also, Chelsea broke up with him."

"Not my problem," you snap. Then a horrible thought strikes you. "Has Gordon been fucking up my life?"

"Depends on what you mean by 'fucking up'." Caleb twines his hands behind his head. "He doesn't talk to me or Tilley anymore, and I think he's taken to hanging out with Justin Roth. Oh, and that job at Salopek your dad wanted you to take? He took it."

Your jaw drops. "When the fuck did this happen?"

"Sometime last week, best I can say. I told you, he doesn't talk to me anymore."

Lindsay jumps in. "Look, this isn't our problem, it's your problem," she declares. "You got Evie back, and that's all we wanted from you." She looks around the room, but no one else nods along with her. "So you guys figure this out. Meantime, I'll take back that goddamned book that started the whole mess and get rid of it."

"I didn't bring it," Bhodi stammers when he realizes she's addressing him. "Uh, I'll have to go home and get it."

"What about me? And my Dane?" Marianne cries.

"Not my job either." Lindsay joins Paulina in helping to lift the now-revived Evie to her feet. "Just don't take too long. I want this stuff over with by tonight."

The crowd parts as Evie and the rest of her friends shuffle out. Except for a slight snuffling from Marianne, all are silent after they have gone.

"Okay, now that it's just us, I assume some of you guys are wearing masks," you announce in your loudest voice after you've heard a motor start and a car drive off. "Maybe you should take those off."

Grant and Justin and Andy blush and squirm the sofa, but they don't stir any further. Joe gets a furtive expression on his face. Caleb snorts.

And Bhodi says, "Look, Lindsay's the only one who wants to get rid of the book. I say screw her. What could she do?"

"She could go to the police," says Joe.

"What would she tell them?" Bhodi snorts. "That there's guys running around with magical disguises?"

"We could just give her the book," says Justin. "We've got masks of everyone, we don't need the book to keep switching things around."

"There's more than that," says Grant. "Me and Caleb were looking at the next spell."

"Yeah, before we get into that," Caleb starts to say, but he stops to give Marianne Matthias a hard look.

"Oh, just say whatever you want in front of her," you tell him. "She knows enough about this fucking stuff, she might as well hear about all of it." In the back of your mind you're thinking of the ten thousand dollar retainer, and how if she causes problems you could probably still get Brampton to have her picked up.

Caleb shrugs. "Okay, Joe and I looked at a new spell last night, and tried it out. Didn't we, man?"

But it's Grant he looks at, and it's Grant who breaks out in shy grin and shrinks down into his seat.

"So here's what it does," Caleb continues. "It makes a kind of paint. We put it into that mask of me, and Joe put it on. It turned him into a copy of me, same as you guys are copies of each other. But it's also like it turned him into a golem."

Justin and Andy shift away from their friend.

"Temporarily," Caleb says. "But he was my twin and he had to do what I said, the same as the other golems did. Also, he acted just like me, and when I asked him he didn't remember anything about being Joe. Like I say, he acted just like the other golems. But when I took the mask off, he turned back to normal. He was normal when you guys switched masks around this morning, right?"

Andy and Justin nod, but they don't shift back toward Grant.

"Also, he didn't remember anything from when he had the mask on. He said—"

"It's like I went to sleep when I put it on, and didn't wake up until I took it off," Grant blurts out.

"So here's the thing," Caleb says. "You can use this stuff to copy other people. Not just each other but anyone. Then you can put your own mask on them, if it's got this paint on it, and they'll turn into copies of you.

"It's almost like a body swap," he concludes. "Except, after you turn yourself into them, you're leaving an obedient, mind-blocked copy of yourself behind."

* To continue: "People and Possibilities, Part 2" 

*
"Table of Contents (Vol. 2)" 
"The Book of Masks (Vol. 2)"