The Book of Masks (Vol. 3)

Things That Look Like People

Previously: "Sufferin' Suffolk!" 

Cam drops you and Kerri off next to the gym, then drives off to find a parking space. A small crowd huddles just inside the breezeway that connects the parking lot to the main building, and out of it a hand snatches at you as you pass. You hear your name: "Kristy!"

It's Eva Garner. She gives Kerri a brittle smile, then asks you how your night was.

Is this ... Mike? Yeah, it's Mike who's pretending to be Eva. Except maybe this is Beta-Eva, being friendly in an Eva Garner kind of way. Her small talk about the weather and how she's so sick of the rain doesn't sound like a coded message. But when Cam joins you, and tugs Kerri to follow him inside, Eva touches your wrist. There's a warning light inside her glance, and after Kerri and Cam have moved on she pulls you around a corner. "So how are you settling in?" she asks in a low voice.

"Fine. Uh. Mike?"

She nods curtly, and her eyes dart about. "Sorry I couldn't be with you last night," she murmurs. "I was out at Chelsea Cooper's. She and, uh, Maria were getting another beta for me." Her eyes glint. "Kendra Saunders."

"Nice."

"Yeah. Gonna hold off though on, you know, giving her a test drive." She hops lightly on the balls of her feet. "All the other guys say I don't have any self control. I'm trying to show them. But anyway, I'm glad I'm still here." She touches a fingertip to her bosom. "Easier to talk to you here than through Kendra. Do you know Kendra? I mean, does Kristy—?"

"I know her," you allow. "I don't hang out with her." Kristy's natural reticence—and your own disinclination to slag Mike's chosen beta—keeps you from uttering a full statement of your feelings: I don't like snotty bitches who slut their way to the top.

Eva nods. "That's what I thought. I guess I could've sent the beta— Beta-Eva, I mean," she murmurs through unmoving lips, "to talk to you. But all things, you know, better to—"

Better to get to the point, you think with no little irritation, but you keep your face neutral.

"Anyway, I got a warning I think I should pass on to your friends. Kristy's friends. Dominique, but also Almida and Anita and ... Stephanie? Maybe?"

"You can't talk to those guys yourself?" Eva used to play soccer with Anita, and she is good friends with Stephanie.

"I wanna stay out of it. I picked Eva," she says in a voice that's almost inaudible, "for her body, not for the drama."

"What drama?" You are rapidly running out of patience.

"Marc's on the warpath," she says, and her voices strengthens, and soon she is chattering loudly, the way Eva does. "He is soooo pissed at them. Are you mixed up in it? Is Kristy, I mean?" Before you can yell at her to explain herself, she does. "That prank they pulled on Hannah Saturday night?"

Shit.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Sunday morning. Texts from Stephanie come in while you're getting ready for church: partyr ockd lst nt shldve gone

Was scott there?

only alittle left erly ud b ok but mist fun w hanna.

so went off ok?

effn dinamit!

She called you later that afternoon, both to gossip about the party at Meghan Farris's house, and to tip you off that Will Prescott was probably going to try talking to you on Monday. "Be nice to him, okay?" she said. "He's a little dazed. Was he fun at the Warehouse Friday?"

"I told you, we barely danced."

"Well, be nice to him. But I wanted to tell you about what went down at Meghan's."

It was a confused tale—Stephanie has never been good at retailing a plot, even the plot to movies she's seen dozens of times before—but the gist is that Dominique showed up in regular dress, then snuck into a bathroom to change into her "Voodoo Queen" costume. With the makeup and the milky white contacts she was almost unrecognizable when she came back out, and Hannah actually shrank from her when Dominique cornered her in the kitchen. No one said anything—"They were all totally freaked!"—as Dominique tossed the graveyard dirt at Hannah while chanting that Creole curse they got out of that book on voodoo, and some of the girls actually screamed when Dominique took out and stabbed the little Hannah voodoo doll with the silver pin.

"She got away without breaking character, either," Stephanie marveled, "and no one tried to stop her. She just went out the back door and out across the neighbors' yard. It was, like, ten minutes before we caught up to her."

Almost as an aside Stephanie revealed that there had been one small mishap: Dominique apparently stabbed herself in the palm when she stabbed the doll, because she found it soaked in blood when she got home.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

It's the funny thing about memories. You have all your memories, and you've got all of Kristy's, and you've got them in the same way. What that means, you suppose, is that her memories work for you the way yours do, meaning that they don't pop up until someone does or says something that reminds you of them.

Like, the only time you ever remember that disastrous year you tried learning to play the piano is when you hear someone playing or singing the Christmas carol "What Child Is This?" because that was the last song you learned to pick out (one-handed) on the keyboard before old Mrs. Llywelyn declared your case hopeless and refused to take any more money from your mother.

Oh, wait. Case in point: That was one of Kristy's memories, not yours.

It's the same way here. You've had no reason to be thinking about the prank that Stephanie and Kristy and their friends have been planning for Hannah, so this is the first time you've even thought about it. (It's the prank that they had to consult with Braydon about and which led to that embarrassing "coffee date" you had with Stephanie.)

But it all floods back with Eva's words, and you only have to take a short breath before asking, "So what's Marc's deal?"

"What do you think his deal is?" she retorts. "They freaked out his girlfriend! She woke him up in the middle of the night last night—"

"They spent the night together?"

"No! Eww! She called him. She had some bed-quaking nightmare or something. Marc told Jessica and me about it this morning, said that she was crying, she was so freaked out by it, and that he was going to kill Dominique and them—"

"What's some stupid nightmare got to do with them?"

"Well, Marc didn't give us specifics, but he said that Hannah dreamed that Dominique was coming to get her, but it wasn't Dominique, it was a monster that looked like Dominique, and—"

She breaks off, and her eyes get very wide. A little grin pops onto her face.

"Hey," she says, returning to a murmur. "Wouldn't that be an awesome hoax to pull off? Staging, like, an alien possession invasion thing of the school? Like Invasion of the Body Snatchers, or The Faculty? Make it seem like kids are being possessed and turning into monsters who look like them but don't act like them? We could totally do it with these masks—"

"That's something for you guys and Philip to talk about." It sounds like a really half-assed idea, and you're sure Fairfax would kill it quick. "But this nightmare thing," you resume in a louder voice, "that just sounds like Hannah trying to get her boyfriend to pay attention to her."

Eva shrugs. "Maybe. Personally, I don't know anyone—me or Jessica or two guys I could name but won't—who give a shit what happens to Hannah. Bossy bitch," she mutters in an aside. "The point though is that Marc is looking for someone's ass to kick, and maybe your friends should be watching out for it." She cocks her head. "You're— I mean, Kristy," she mouths, "wasn't in on it, was she?"

No, Kristy wasn't at Meghan's to help pull off the prank, but only because she heard a rumor that Scott Bickelmeir was going to be there, so she decided to skip. But thinking of Scott reminds you to mention it to Eva: "No she wasn't. But by the way, I decided on a second beta. Scott Bickelmeir."

Eva looks thoughtful for a moment, then tells you that that shouldn't be a problem, and that they probably won't even need your direct help. "Unless you want to switch places with him right after we grab him," she adds. You tell her you're not.

* * * * *

The day passes uneventfully. Kristy doesn't take any challenging classes. The most challenging is the basketball class—two solid periods of running and shooting—but it's the one she enjoys the most, and you have a lot of fun in it too. (That includes the time in the locker room, when you get to surreptitiously ogle the other girls as they change clothes.) In English, Beta-Mike taps your shoulder and tells you that Scott is now scheduled to visit the studio after class, but that you don't have to come.

* * * * *

So why is it that you find yourself striding into Carlos's studio at a little before five o'clock? And what do you find there?

You're there because Maria Vasquez called and asked you to come out. And inside the studio you find Scott, sitting in a chair and trussed up with bungee cords, the way Seth was. He is unconscious.

"We thought you should see this," says Maria, who is on hand with the pale-faced Garner girls. She puts her hand to Scott's brow.

You jump back. Scott has vanished, and sitting there is ... It takes you a moment to recognize Sean Mitchell, another of the football players. You look at Maria.

"We don't know what it means either," she says.

* To continue: "The Boy Who Victimized Himself" 

*
"Table of Contents (Vol. 3)" 
"The Book of Masks (Vol. 3)"