The Book of Masks (Vol. 3)

Will Versus the Competition

Previously: "The Stepford Stepfather" 

Sydney treats you to Panera after school. She gossips about her day while you quietly drink her in.

God, she's so beautiful. Her hair is long and straight and golden. Her eyes are bright and clear. Her nose is small and so is her mouth, and when she smiles her teeth—white as fresh-laid snow—flash and dazzle. Her skin glows softly, her neck is long and graceful, and her breasts are like plump, ripe melons.

And she's my girlfriend!

But it's going to be very hard to treat her as your girlfriend at school, unless want to draw attention to yourself.

Attention, unless you're a basketball player, a football player, or a wrestler, is a bad thing to attract at Westside.

* * * * *

Thursday. Fourth period. You're composing a dopey, sentimental text to Sydney when Caleb leans over. You put your phone to your chest and glare at him.

"What's Tilley got to say?" he asks.

"Huh?"

"Isn't that who you're texting?"

"Oh. Yeah." The question, How am I going to tell Caleb I'm going out with Sydney? suddenly blazes across your brain. In all the excitement of the last few days, you'd almost forgot to worry about it.

"He still after you to do those videos?"

You grunt.

"You could probably use the extra credit."

But your retort dies on your lips when an unwelcome figure strides into the room.

Until a day or two ago you never paid any attention to Blake O'Brien. He sits on the other side of the room, and you've never spoken to him that you can recall. Now you find yourself jumping when you see him.

And you flinch harder when you realize that he's started noticing you.

He stares at you now from under lowered brows as he comes into the room, and he keeps his eyes locked on you as he crosses the front of the room. Not until he turns into his own row does he break eye contact. You sink further into your chair and watch him out of the corner of your eye. He falls into his desk, turns sideways, and glares balefully in your direction. His friend James Bridges (another football player) leans forward to mutter something at him.

* * * * *

Sixth period. You've just left Sydney at her AP Environmental Sciences class—but have been careful not to look in after her—and are turning toward your own Calculus class when strong hands seize you from behind and you are hurled into the door leading outside. The blow knocks the wind from you, but you're grabbed and carried outside before you can fall. Rude laughs sound as you're hustled along, feet barely touching the ground, toward the portables. The flock of sophomores huddled out front scatters, and your chest is used as a battering ram to slam open the doors to one of the portables. A stink of mildew and rotten wood sweeps over you as you're thrown onto the teacher's desk. Before you can turn over and stand, you're snatched up and shoved against a wall. Half a dozen boys, smelling of sweat and gym socks, crowd around you.

The one in your face is Dylan Lloyd, a basketball player. He smirks at you along an uplifted nose. Behind him crowd Ryan Shuler and Luke Bennett, two more basketball players, and Roy Nelson of the football squad. Blake's friend James Bridges is there too, glowering at you with a soft smile. The sixth guy, a hard-faced Hispanic, you don't know.

"So we're all dying to know, Prescott," Dylan hisses softly, lisping your name. "That's your name, isn't it? Prethhhhcott?" You say nothing. "So we're all dying to know, what does Sydney McGlynn's pussy taste like?"

Chortles and guffaws from the others. Roy puts his hand by your ear and leans in with an inquisitive leer.

"You have tasted it, haven't you, Prethhhcott? You've eaten her out, haven't you?"

Your jaw works, but you say nothing.

"Don't hold out on us, Prethhhcott. We're all dying to know." Dylan grabs his crotch and snarls softly in your face. "We're starving."

You hate the way your breath is whistling loudly through your nose.

"How about her tits?" Luke says, and Ryan jeers, "Bet you think her asshole's sweet," and Roy says, "Did you need GPS to find your way in?"

* * * * *

That's only the start. For a solid ten minutes they jeer and invent vile fantasies, most of them involving your inability to satisfy a girl of Sydney's physical talents. The floor burns through the soles of your shoes, and your vision goes blurry as you try staring through them instead of at them, and your chest contracts, squeezing and squeezing your heart you think it will implode.

Only James, Blake's friend, refrains from taunting you. His stare is steady and cold, but tight-lipped. A few times you think you see him flush as something particularly nasty gets said about Sydney.

Finally he appears to have had enough. He pulls Dylan away and takes his place in front of you. The others fall quiet as he stares at you from under lowered brows.

"Why don't you give someone else a chance?" he mutters at you. "Huh? Someone else a chance with Sydney?"

Hoots and cheers from the others. A couple of high-fives are exchanged, but James silences them with a raised hand. "Just tell her that it was fun, but that you're ready to move on."

To your own amazement, you feel your head swiveling on your neck.

James flushes.

"It takes two to tango, Prescott. If you tell her you want to sit out the rest of the dance until you graduate—" He shrugs. "What can she do?"

Roy says, "She can—" But James, without glancing away from your face, backhands him in the chest with his fist.

"Give other guys a chance," Bridges says. His voice lowers to a growl. "If you want a chance to—"

The door creaks open, and a rough voice calls out: "So what kind of faggot circle-jerk's going on in here?"

The others start, and half turn to the door. The Hispanic guy says, "None of your fucking business!" but Shuler grabs him by the neck and hushes him.

"I can make it my fucking business, if any of you faggots care to argue. No?" There's a shuffling of feet from your tormentors, followed by a slithering hiss from the interloper: "Get out!"

Roy shoots you a venomous glance, then with the others shuffles toward the door. Only with a supreme effort do you keep yourself from sliding to the floor in a wet, self-soiled heap. Instead, you look over at the door.

Your rescuer is the last person you'd have thought would have ever expected: Steve Patterson, the tallest guy on the basketball squad, and by reputation the meanest. He towers over you at six-and-a-half feet, his glacier-colored eyes boring down on you. A moment ago you were hot with humiliation; now you are cold with terror.

But Patterson says nothing, and you can't bring yourself to say anything to him, not even a muttered, "Thanks." (You're sure he didn't rescue you intentionally. Probably he was more interested in daunting and humiliating the others.) You shuffle toward the door with your head down.

Patterson doesn't move, and blocks you in at the doorway. With your head still down you try to squeeze past him.

He grabs you by the chin, forces you back, and pushes your head up to look you in the face. For the length of an Ice Age he holds you there, his contemptuous curiosity piercing you like a Plutonian stalactite.

Then he grunts, "Huh!" and by your neck flings you outside, where you fall face-first to the grass. When you look up, you see the back of his calves as he stalks away.

* * * * *

You skip the rest of school, and drive around town under a thundercloud of rage and terror until it's safe to point your truck home. "Traffic was good," you explain to your mom when you pass her on your way up your room. You snag the grimoire and haul ass back to the elementary school. Your brain is swelling with fantasies of burning all of those assholes into golems, the way you burned Sydney's stepdad.

Instead, you perform the next spell—which results in an oatmeal-colored paste—and use it to turn the page to find out what it does.

* * * * *

"You're awful quiet," Sydney says when you pick her up after gymnastics.

"Sorry. I'm just thinking." Fortieth Street is coming up. "Do you want to stop someplace, get something to eat?"

"Is that what you were thinking so hard about?"

"No." You force a smile as you stroke her thigh. God, I can't believe I'm allowed to touch her this way. Except maybe you won't be allowed, not for long. "I skipped school after I left you. Went over to the other school and unlocked the next spell in the book."

"Yeah?" She sits up.

You hesitate.

It didn't take long to perform the spell or to translate the instructions. It made a paste that gets put on the inside of a mask. It took longer—but not much longer—to see the uses of such a thing. Two stand out.

First, you could use it to enslave those assholes who grabbed you this afternoon—and without killing them, either. It's a much easier and tidier way than using the spell you used on Sydney's stepdad.

Alternately, you could use to pull off a kind of body swap—taking over someone else's life while forcing them to take over yours. If Blake's friends want Sydney for him (and if he really is Sydney's type) maybe you could keep her while dodging them by turning yourself into Blake O'Brien.

But either way, you'd have to tell Sydney what happened this afternoon—and that you don't see any way of surviving the school year in a relationship with her without using the new spell in one of these two ways.

* To tell Sydney about the day's crisis: "The End of One Road" 
* To keep quiet about it: "Body Swapping as a Solution" 

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