The Book of Masks (Abridged)

Chelsea's Special Touch

"I DON'T UNDERSTAND," you croak. "What are you talking about?"

"I'm talking about doing a body swap," Chelsea says. "You and Yumi. Or Cindy. Depending on what you want to do." She smiles.

It's a warm smile. A friendly smile. A gentle and encouraging smile.

But there's something behind it. There's a slight metallic gleam in her eye, and a tightness at the corner of her lips. The skin between your shoulder blades prickles.

"No, I get that," you stammer. "What I don't get is why you want me to—" Your voice fails when you can't find the words.

Chelsea's eyes twinkle, like polished steel. "To help you out, Will. To help you—"

She pulls her chair toward you; the metal legs squeal and shriek against the concrete.

"Lisa really hurt you, didn't she? And I can tell you're trying to be really fair to her, you know, being all noble about letting her go. But down in here, right?" She pushes her fingers into her chest, and your eyes boggle slightly at her breasts. "It hurts. Doesn't it?"

Your limbs are stiff all over. Chelsea is right. It does hurt, and you're surprised at the hurt that you feel, now that she is pressing and prodding at it the wound.

"Sure." Your voice cracks. "I mean, when you break up with someone, you—" The air thickens in your throat and lungs; it's like breathing peanut butter.

Chelsea's smile turns pitying. "You've been burying it, haven't you, Will? Ignoring it like it will go away. But it won't go away, don't you see? Not if you don't face it and work through it. You've got to do something about it."

"Like what? And I've been doing okay," you protest. "I haven't even really been thinking about Lisa." Well, not as much as you were right after the breakup.

"Then why did you run away from her and her friends in the library?" Chelsea asks. She purses her lips. "You said you felt embarrassed. You said you felt like—"

You know what it felt like when you saw Lisa and her friends in the library. You felt excluded. You felt like you'd been cast out.

Chelsea puts it more brutally, though, in words you hadn't used when talking to her. "You felt like they'd held a trial and found you guilty and you didn't even know what your crime was." She sits back, and her smile combines pity and contempt.

And she's right. That's exactly what it felt like. You push your fingers under your cap and run them through your stiff hair. How does Chelsea know what it felt like? How could she nail it so exactly?

The sound of the patio door slamming causes you to look up. Gordon, a fell light in his eyes, comes trudging down the path to the pool. "So here you are. What are you two—?"

"Gordon." Chelsea's voice has the sharp point and weighty heft of a thrown javelin. "Go back in the house. We're not ready for you. Talk to Jordan. That's my brother," she explains to you. (Must have been the slovenly college student with an unkempt beard and bed head you saw lounging on a sofa with his phone as Chelsea led you through her living room.) Gordon turns around with a snort.

"That's another reason I can tell you're not over Lisa," Chelsea says. Now her tone has turned prim. "I didn't want to talk to you about, uh, what you tried doing to Gordon. I mean, aside from it being pretty obvious what you were trying to." Her lips disappear even as she smiles, and the pixie-like expression she tries forcing onto her face isn't very convincing. "At least, I assume you tried doing that to him because you were trying to get, uh, close to me."

You turn very red and hang your head. Fucking Caleb, and all the trouble he's got you in. Trying to make a mask of Gordon so he could use a disguise to get fuckably close to Chelsea, and doing it with a copy of your face and body so that he wouldn't be recognized if he got caught. Which he was. Now Chelsea is convinced it was you who tried that stunt.

"That was a pretty desperate thing to do, Will," she continues more softly, "and I don't think you'd have done it if deep down inside you weren't really ... really angry with Lisa. I can tell you're a good guy. So it was the resentment that made you do it. Right? And I think now you kind of realize it. Don't you?"

* * * * *

Do you realize it? Is that something that's going on with you? It certainly stung you, and it stung you a lot harder that you'd ever have thought it would, when you saw Lisa and her friends in the library and you realized you couldn't join them ... That you couldn't even let yourself be seen by them.

But what does this have to do with what Chelsea said about the masks? About using one of them to ... to body swap with Yumi or Cindy?

"It would help you to come to terms with what happened," Chelsea says patiently when you ask her that. "You're still hurt by what Lisa did to you, and you still don't understand it." She shrugs again. "You can't get anyone to talk to you about it, right? Didn't you say something like that?"

You suppose you must have. "Eva and Jessica—"

"Yes, Eva and Jessica," Chelsea sighs. "I know all about them. Probably they think they're doing you a favor by not talking to you about Lisa. Or, I don't know, maybe they even—" She breaks off.

"Maybe what?" Your heart feels like it's sinking under a leaden weight.

Chelsea gives you a sidelong look. "Did you hang out with them a lot when you and Lisa were going out together? Mm-hmm," she says when you nod slowly. "But did they seem like they were happy to have you around?"

You don't reply. But no, you always felt kind of awkward in their presence. Sure, they acted friendly enough, but they also seemed kind of strained, like they were holding something back around you. Jessica especially seemed like she was trying hard not to say something nasty. Eva looked embarrassed.

At least they didn't treat you with open contempt, the way Kelsey Blankenship and Amanda Ferguson did.

But Chelsea is still talking: "There might have been something else going on. There probably was. I mean, I know about these things, and I know how girls can be about their friends' boyfriends." She smiles tightly.

And she leans forward, so that your knees are actually touching. Your cock stiffens.

"If you got yourself in with these girls," she says very quietly, "if you got yourself in with them so you could talk to them about it, get the inside story, really get to know what they were thinking—"

"Okay, I get it!" you exclaim.

"Yumi," Chelsea declares as she sits back in her chair. "She's the best place to get this kind of thing. I don't mean, you talk to her. I mean, if you go to people and they think you're Yumi, then they'll tell you—"

"Yeah yeah, I get it." You lean forward to rest your elbows on your knees, in order to hide the erection that's unfurling despite the shivers that wrack your frame.

"Or Cindy," says Chelsea. "She's friends with them too, and if you want to do something about it all, she's the perfect—"

"I don't want to do anything to Lisa," you protest. "I don't want to ... to ... ruin her or anything."

"Of course not," says Chelsea soothingly. "But if Eva or Jessica were talking about you behind your back to Lisa, if they or someone else were sabotaging you—"

Like Kelsey and Amanda probably were, you think.

"—well, she's the perfect person to get some of your own back."

Chelsea falls silent behind a cat-like smile.

You wipe at the cold sweat that has begun to pop out all over you.

* * * * *

How long you sit hunched in that chair, you're not sure. It feels like hours. At the same time, it feels like it's only a few seconds.

It can't have been that long, though, because Chelsea hardly stirs before you start speaking.

"Yumi's a friend," you say, and you clasp and unclasp your hands. "I don't want to hurt her."

"You won't," Chelsea says. She leans forward again. "The way you explained it, it doesn't sound like this new spell would hurt her."

"But what we're talking about, what you're talking about! I mean—" You lick your lips; they and your tongue are very dry. "A ... a body swap!"

"You're only borrowing her body for a little while. You play Yumi, and we hide her under your mask. Then when we take it off her—"

"But what if she remembers all that stuff after the mask is off her?"

"She won't. Will she?" Chelsea's tone sharpens.

"I don't know. I don't even know if it'll hurt her! Maybe it'll—" You swallow. "Maybe it'll turn her into a thing like Gordon turned himself into!"

Chelsea frowns. "The way you explained it to me, Will, I don't think—"

"But I don't know!"

"Then we'll have to try it out," Chelsea briskly declares. She gets up, and you scramble up after her. "With someone who isn't a friend."

"Like who?"

"Oh, there's lots of assholes in school who wouldn't be missed," she declares. "And if we screw them up, we can just bring them back the way we brought Gordon back." She backs to the house. You trot behind, hardly knowing what to say.

And you wind up only mumbling "Okay" when she tells you that she needs a mask from you. "Make it like Gordon's," she says. "You know, so it can get all the memories and stuff. And make some of that new stuff too, that you told me about. That's the whole point of doing this, you know."