The Book of Masks (Abridged)

Another Personality Takes the Stage

Do you want to be more popular? Raise your social profile? Sure, we all do!

And you could do that with half the student body just by getting girls to notice you more.

So, you quickly figure, the best way to get what you want is by copying the brain of someone who knows how to flirt real good.

* * * * *

"Shayna, am I going to have to buy you a motor scooter?" Charles's voice sounds shrilly from the back of the auditorium. "You're going to have to come in quicker than that, it's a comedy, not a funeral!"

A dark-haired girl—one of five students on stage—bolts for the wings.

A hard silence falls over the hall. Then Charles calls out, "Is she making her entrance again, or do I have go back there and charm the tears away?"

"How about we take a break?" Sean Mitchell hollers from the apron of the stage. "People are getting a little excited."

Not excited enough, retorts the copy of Charles Hartlein that's wedged inside your brain as you lurk just inside the theater doorway. A comedy needs fireworks, and you guys are throwing around wet toilet paper.

It's Saturday afternoon, and Charles has exactly two weeks to whip the school's production of The Man Who Came to Dinner into shape, and it looks like the stress has put him in fine form. It's his fourth year in the Westside drama program, and Mr. Wilkes has entrusted him with their first big production of the year. The experience of actually handling a production (instead of being a snarky participant) has given him an uncharacteristic case of the shakes. You would sympathize except that (a) you don't much like Charles, and (b) Charles is hyper-competitive, and the copy inside your head is itching to grab the reins and show the original how it's done.

But you're not here to replace Charles Hartlein as the play director. You're here because his instincts have told you that your next impersonation is waiting backstage.

It took you awhile, even with Charles's encyclopedic knowledge of the student body, to come up with someone who would answer to your needs. It had to be someone who was personally popular with everyone and not just girls; but who was also especially good with girls but was good with them on account of his personality and not only on account of his looks and physique. He also had to be someone you could get at in order to copy; and he also had to be straight. (The last ruled out a lot of Charles's friends, who are otherwise very good with the girls.) It wasn't until yesterday afternoon, as you were finishing off a new metal band, that you had the eureka moment.

The house lights are on, so you can't sneak backstage without the risk of being seen. But the four students still on stage are in a small knot muttering to each other, and up in the back of the auditorium Charles is huddling over a script with Eric Harlen and Dean Stratton. So you scurry down the side aisle and duck through a curtain that takes you backstage.

The student crew are all scowling onto the stage with their arms folded. Charles could tell you all their names and just how good they are at their jobs, if you cared. You yourself know only one guy—Darrell Parson—as someone you've casually conversed with in the library; a few other faces would be familiar even without Charles's help, but you'd be hard pressed to call them by name.

But your target isn't one of them.

One of the girls—a tiny thing with Asian features; probably a sophomore—turns to glare at you as you scoot toward the crossover, but she doesn't stop you. Rapidly you patter your way to the opposite wing, where the poor victim of Charles's tongue-lashing ran. It's dark back there, and you bump into someone with a soft Oof.

He does a double-take at you when he turns around. "Hey Will," he says in a soft voice. "What are you doing here?"

Who dat? you ask yourself of the Hispanic guy with the fauxhawk. (You've seen his face in English class.) Carlos Montoya, Charles snaps back. What would you do without me?

"Hey Carlos," you reply. "Just scoping things out. I came in for kind of an audition Thursday."

"Audition? Kinda late for that, isn't it? We're two weeks from opening night."

"Charles let me read anyway." You peer around his broad shoulder at the milling crew beyond, but you don't see your quarry. "It was for the Bert Jefferson part."

"Whew! That's Sean's part. You and your teeth better hope Charles doesn't take it from him and give it to you."

"Sean wouldn't do that to me, we're friends. And I wouldn't take it if Charles tried." Faces are turning in your direction, so you touch Carlos on the elbow, hoping you'll look like you belong. "How's the YouTube thing going?" You're almost floored with surprise at suddenly knowing about the movie review channel that Carlos and his friend Michael Hollister have been running for the past year.

"Going great. You been watching?"

"Off and on."

"Keith isn't badgering you into watching?"

The reference to your friend surprises you into looking Carlos in the face. "Why would he?"

Even in the dim light you see Carlos's eyes narrow. "He's been in a couple of them."

Shit! "Well, don't tell Keith," you improvise, "but with him and me it's usually in one ear and out the other."

Carlos returns you a mirthless smile, and you excuse yourself by saying that you want to take a further look around before things start up again. Your time with Carlos was well-spent, though, for no one hassles you as you circle the wing looking for—

And there he is.

* * * * *

Chris Love. What a name. What a fucking perfect name for a guy who's effortlessly smooth with the ladies. He's a soccer player too, and he's got blonde hair and a wide, easy smile and soft brown eyes that crinkle up with warm sympathy when a girl pouts at him. He's doing the sympathetic act now, wrapping his arms around Shayna Offerman—the girl who ran offstage—and holding her face in the crook of his neck.

Charles's personality gnaws on the back of your brain. On the one hand, you/he are happy to see Chris do the "charming" that will get her back onstage; on the other hand, it irritates you/he to see him spoil her that way.

It also irritates Charles that Chris, who affects a limp and laidback style with no jock pretensions, is a hundred-percent straight when he could be delightful as a companion. Charles works out these frustrations by calling him "luv" or "Chris, luv," whenever he wants him.

You watch for a few minutes, until Shayna steps back and wipes her nose on the sleeve of her blouse. Chris holds her by the elbows and smiles into her face. He murmurs something, and she nods her head and giggles. The crowd parts as he leads her back to the stage.

Okay, so Chris is here. But how are you going to get him alone where you can slap that metal band onto him? Especially since he seems stuck just off-stage watching Shayna as she and the other actors take their places to resume the scene.

God, do I have to do all your thinking for you? Charles sighs. Before you quite grasp what you're doing, you take out your phone, tap in Chris's number, then compose a text: hey man when u get a minute meet me out in praking lot -marc Then you add: phone died using friends

Chris pulls his phone out of his hip pocket and studies the screen. He taps at it. You get the reply: what up?

tell u out here dont make me come in and see charles.

Chris grins to himself. Prick, a snide voice mutters inside your brain.

Chris edges away from the stage, and you hustle back the way you came and out the door. You hide just around the corner of the breezeway that Chris will have to exit through to reach the student parking lot.

It's a minute before he appears, and his footfalls are so soft that he's past before you even hear him coming. He stops with his back to you a few feet in front of you and looks around. He doesn't see you, though, before you've caught him from behind with your hand—cupping the band—to his forehead.

He sinks into your arms. You drag him back and prop him up inside the breezeway.

It's a terribly tense ten minutes that pass, with you trotting around every few seconds to check on the door to the theater. You nearly come unglued when it opens and Charles himself steps out with Eric Harlen. "—that couldn't be fixed with a full-person transplant," Charles is saying.

"You mean replace her?" Eric asks. "We're two weeks from—"

"Don't remind me!" Charles sighs and falls back against the door. "I'd be happy just replacing her brain. Or wherever it is that she's not getting the performance from. Though I guess it's really a talent transfusion that's what she needs. She's anemic."

Eric snickers. "To bad you can't lend her your brain for the two hours she needs it."

Yeah, like I've got Charles's brain, you snark to yourself as you hop back around the corner before they can look over and see you. Like I'll soon have Chris's.

You're bending next to Chris, to pick up the band from the sidewalk where it has fallen, when the full import of Charles's words hits you.

You could totally use these things, which copy memories and personalities and even talents, to give other people—

Like Shayna. Like anybody.

—the stuff they need to pull off jobs that are too hard for them.

And even if it doesn't do them any good, it might be hilarious to see the confusion that would result from jamming an extra personality into some of the assholes at school.