The Book of Masks (Abridged)

Thefts, Identity and Otherwise

IT SOUNDS LIKE CALEB doesn't want to be your friend anymore. But that doesn't worry you.

Because it doesn't really matter. It's a pretty common thing, actually, his being pissed off unreasonably at you. Hell, you've been pissed off (much more reasonably) at him before. You always kiss and make up (minus the kissing) eventually.

But as long he's not treating you as a friend, you've no reason to treat him as a friend. Which gives you a wonderful reason to steal from him.

You've got a great opportunity, too. On your way to lunch—during a twenty-second interval when he forgot that he hated your guts—Caleb mentioned that he couldn't hang out with you after school because he had to go in to Salopek for some orientation and training. That means you can sneak into his house without risk of being caught.

You're not even tempted not to take advantage of it.

* * * * *

As you drive up to Caleb's house, you're a little worried that you might be mistaken for a burglar. It is, after all, not the nicest neighborhood in the city. The houses are tiny and dilapidated, and too many of them have Rottweilers in their front yards.

Then you remember, I'm Caleb Johansson!, and that gives you all the courage you need to saunter right up to the front door.

Because of course you're not going to risk being caught acting the part of burglar under your own face. You went home after school and got that mask you'd made.

The front door, naturally, is locked, but you make a show of fiddling at the knob expectantly, and of fishing in your pockets. Then you snap your fingers ostentatiously and stride around to the side yard. You vault a flimsy fence and swagger onto the back porch, where you fish around inside an old bird house to retrieve the house key.

It would be really cool if you knew about that key because, in addition to Caleb's body, you had his memories. But you don't. The mask gave you his outside form, but nothing on the inside.

Which is just as well. The guys a total pervert, even if he does pretend to be shocked at some of the fantasies that you've shared with him.

You fiddle open the back door and call out, "Mom?" But no one answers. Satisfied that you've the house to yourself, you jog back to his room.

Caleb has no brothers or sisters, but he likes to hide his cash stash anyway. That's never stopped him from bragging to you about where it is. So you pull out his top dresser drawer, turn it upside down on the bed, and rip away the envelope taped to the bottom. It contains seventeen dollars.

It must really suck being so poor. Out of pity and friendship, you leave the two ones behind.

As you replace the drawer, along with the underwear and socks, you entertain two thoughts: First, that you should use this disguise to get more money from more people, because fifteen dollars won't be enough. And second, that if you're going to do that, you should do it in some of Caleb's own clothes.

A grin distends your face as you open the drawer again to take out underwear and socks. And slacks. And a shitty old button-down shirt. And the ratty extra sneakers that he keeps under a laundry pile in his closet.

Ten minutes later, looking even more like Caleb Johansson than you had fifteen minutes before, you swagger back out to your truck and go in search of Keith Tilley.

* * * * *

"You'll take my friendship and you'll like it," you honk at Keith as you follow him back to his bedroom.

"No I won't," he snarls back.

"Who else you got to put up with your shit?" you demand. Bully Keith. That, you figure, is the key to convincing Tilley that you're Caleb.

"Lots of people!"

"So you admit that you've got lots of shit they have to put up with." You cackle. Keith shoots you a dirty look, but lets you into his room.

What follows is thirty minutes of desultory talk about girls and porn and the relative merits of flesh and pixels. During Keith's three breaks to answer calls from his mom, you sweep the room for any cash he has on hand. You're twenty-five dollars richer when you leave. And, as near as you can tell, Keith resents Caleb about as much when you leave as when you came in, but not appreciably more.

* * * * *

"So I hear from Keith that Will says that you and James are running some kind of investment club," you tell Carson Ioeger. He's leaning inside the doorway to his house and pointedly not letting you in.

Carson snorts. "Prescott needs to stop hanging out with Tilley. It's a race to bottom, intelligence-wise, with those two."

You grin while grinding your back molars. It seems to operate like a secret handshake, though, for Carson abruptly pulls you inside.

"It's not a money club or anything," he tells you in a low voice as he leads you back into his bedroom. "We're buying karma."

"What, like tithing?"

"No. You've heard that karma's a bitch? We're buying enough bitching karma to really fuck up Black and Patterson and them."

"Cool." You wonder if Caleb would understand what Carson is getting at, but you're sure he'd pretend to, at least. "And if I wanted to invest?"

"How much you got?" he asks, and looks only slightly impressed at the cash you show him. But he takes it anyway and shoves it into a fat manila envelope he has pinned to the wall above his desk. "It uses ammonia sulfide," he replies when you ask what he and James have planned, and launches into a technical exposition that leaves you baffled. You guffaw along with him, though, and exclaim "Nice!" and "Awesome!" at key spots.

When Carson leaves to meet James at the front door, you empty the contents of the manila folder into your pocket. Your haul is now closer to two hundred dollars than to one hundred.

* * * * *

You have plenty of money left over after buying enough supplies for the new spell, enough that you're tempted to buy yourself a new Xbox game. But you exercise some self control. After all, maybe you'll need the money for the spell that comes afterward!

That evening, after finishing your homework, you set to work.

Your mood sours as go. It took no time at all to make the mask using the first spell in the book, but it took days to finish polishing it up. This one is taking hours and hours just to get the item made. If you have to "polish" it up? Why, that might take until it's time to graduate!

The job itself is also fairly tedious. You start by laying a strip of metal and some small carving tools inside the sigil that's written at the bottom of the page and doing some kind of hoodoo around the edges with your finger. After that, you have to carve some runes on the metal. It's hard and exacting work, for the metal doesn't want to cut, and you have tap and scratch over and over again with the micro-chisel and the micro-hammer in order to deepen the faint scratches into grooves you can feel with your fingertips. You have to take frequent small breaks—to run to the bathroom, to get something from the fridge, to find a new video on YouTube to listen to—in order to stretch and pop the muscles and bones in your shoulders and back. Eleven o'clock comes, then midnight, and still the work goes on.

At around one-thirty, though, you scratch the last line of the last rune into place, and when you lay it on the sigil the ink on the page shimmers and runs. You run your finger around that sigil three more times, and when you lift your finger the page comes with it. You shove the metal band to the side and eagerly flip it over so as to find out what exactly it is that you've made.

There's only a single line of text. The online translator kicks back a simple English translation of the Latin: to know the mind of another.

* * * * *

You have the band in your bag the next morning as you drive to school. There's a thoughtful expression on your face.

The mask you made copied Caleb's body, but it didn't give you any of his memories, and it didn't give you any of his talents, so far as you could tell. In other words, by wearing it you could look like him, but you couldn't act like him, except in the way that any friend can parody another.

But this new device: to know the mind of another. That certainly sounds like mind-reading. It sounds like a bonus add-on to the mask.

There were no instructions on how to use it, but you bet it works like the mask. You put it onto someone, then when you put it on it gives you their memories and anything else inside their brain.

Anything else. Eww. You can imagine some of the stuff Caleb's got in his.

You sigh as you pull into the parking lot. That's the obvious thing to do with it, right? You have a copy of his body; with a copy of his brain you could be his perfect doppelganger. But there are other possibilities, you reflect as you watch the stream of students moving toward the school. You have enough supplies on hand to make another mask—you groan inwardly at the effort implied—and with that new mask and this new band, you could make a complete copy of some other person.

What to do? Indecision sits heavily on your chest.

Then you notice Carson pulling into the parking lot. He'd know what to do, you spitefully think. He's full of plans.

Then you think: That's right. He's full of plans. If you had his brain—and you can get a copy of his brain, without a copy of his funny-looking body if you don't want it—you could be full of plans too!