The Book of Masks (Vol. 3)

Prelude to a Party

Previously: "The Old In and Out" 

"So," Sydney continues as you study the patch of wall where she insists there's an extra-dimensional door through which a demon can come, "I'll give you the instructions on making it. Be sure you match the designs exactly," she warns.

"How do you draw them?" you ask.

"With the wand." She touches the wall with the knobbed end of the wand she's holding. "You trace the frame of the door, and then draw symbols around the frame."

"I don't see anything on your wall."

"It doesn't leave a mark, Will. And you don't have scratch the paint, either. Just trace it." She drags the wand lightly over the wall. "There's also a chant to perform as you make each design."

"And that makes a door for Baphomet to come through?"

"Yes. So I only made my door last night," she adds with a nervous squirm, "and nothing's happened yet. But—" She bites her lip, and shivers. "I can already feel it coming."

"Who? Baphomet?" For the first time you feel a small pang of alarm.

"Something. Maybe just belief in him. In it. I— I've definitely started something. I can feel it." She shivers again, and her smile is pale.

* * * * *

From another box she takes a sheaf of papers and thumbs through until she finds the one with the designs for the door. To Amanda's educated eye, the symbols resolve into Arabic letters and phonemes, though of course you can't read them.

"It also helps," Sydney explains as she shows you out, "if at night after going to bed you concentrate for a little while on the mediation wand. Just hold it like I showed you and concentrate on the door you made. Get yourself to really believe that you traced a door inside your closet."

"Does it have to be inside my closet?"

"No, it can be anywhere. But the, uh, documentation says it's best of if you put it someplace you don't usually see it. If you put it out in the open, then it's easiest just to think there's nothing really there. If it's out of sight, then it's easier to believe it's real.

Just like it's easier to believe in monsters in the dark, you reflect.

* * * * *

Amanda was running fifteen minutes late already when she stopped by to see Sydney; now you're an hour behind schedule as you leave. As you buckle yourself into the BMW, you take just enough time to check the increasingly irate texts from Kelsey. I got caught by a thing, you her back. Will be there when I get there. You can easily imagine the exasperated "Pah!" she'll let loose when she reads it.

The errands you have to run—to pick up snacks for Kelsey's party tonight—take you to three distant corners of town, which gives you lots of time to sink into and become comfortable with the circumstances of your new life. Not that you sit back and review your biography. You just let Amanda's reactions come, and follow each train of association. None of them bring a sense of surprise—for you are Amanda Ferguson now, and she's not the least bit surprised by anything that she knows and remembers.

"They didn't have any of the crab cakes at Le Metropolitain," you announce an hour later as you breeze with a couple of paper bags into Kelsey's kitchen, where she's waiting with a narrow glower. (You had let yourself in.) "So I got shrimp cakes instead."

"You could have called," she snaps.

"Yes, but I decided not to. You don't have to eat anything you didn't pay for."

Kelsey sniffs as from one bag you draw out one tinfoil tray of shrimp cakes (with horseradish dressing) and one stuffed with cold smoked salmon; from another you pull a box of margherita flatbread (with buratta cheese and basil chiffonade) from Ristorante Locarno; and from the third you take a deep dish packed with racks of ribs from Ray's BBQ. The latter leaves you feeling faintly nauseated—Amanda's reaction—but it's a favorite of the guys who'll be attending; and it's better than the BuenoPak of disgusting taquitos from Taco Famoso that Amanda hasd to fetch when Marc Garner attends.

"So what did Sydney want?" Kelsey asks as you slide the food into a restaurant-sized oven and set the temperature to Warm.

"Tch. God. She wanted to know about the Justice Issues club, the Global Awareness club. How to join."

Kelsey snorts again. "Little Miss Sydney-Come-Lately."

"I told her we weren't taking new members." You open the refrigerator—another piece of stainless steel kitchen equipment that could serve a small restaurant, though Amanda has never seen more in it than a little almond milk, some condiments, and a few cases of San Pellegrino sparkling water. There's one of those in it now, and you take one without asking. "Bet she talks to Chelsea next, asking how to join the cheerleader squad."

"Oh, to be a fly on the wall if she does. She was probably expecting to be invited."

You pant a little after knocking back the water. "Yeah, and she got pretty goddam pissy when I told her the clubs were closed to new members."

Kelsey snickers. "No! You did? You told her—?"

"What else was I going to say? And get this this, you know what she said back? She asked if—she fucking asked—if we thought we had enough members already to solve all the world's problems."

Kelsey rolls her eyes. "God, I'm so glad you were the one to talk to her. I'd probably have lost it if she said that to me."

You return Kelsey's scowl with a light smirk and put the water back in the fridge.

* * * * *

Brooke Galloway arrives about twenty minutes later, and the three of you empty her minivan of freshly cleaned throws and pillows and cushions, and lug them upstairs to the party den. That's the room where the Saturday-night parties are always held, in Kelsey's private wing of the ridiculously overlarge McMansion her daddy owns. They always leave the furniture reeking of weed, and every Monday Kelsey packs up the soft goods to be steam-cleaned, and every Saturday Brooke or another one of her friends brings them back. Once unpacked, you scatter the floor with the cushions and pillows, and quilts, blankets, comforters, and throws. With all the low-lying furniture—including some lacquered Japanese chabudai tables and the zabuton to go with them—the room soon resembles a Turkish harem.

You've just got the room arranged—involving a good thirty minutes of minutes of tweaking the cushion arrangements, and untweaking the tweaks that they other girls have tweaked—when Martin Gardinhire arrives with the party favors: a large baggie of freshly rolled joints and another baggie of loose weed for smoking out of a bowl. While Kelsey is freshening up in the bathroom, you and Brooke distribute the weed around the room in little ceramic bowls.

You've got one of the joints between your fingers when footsteps sound on the stairs and your boyfriend comes in. At least you manage to keep your expression neutral.

Ricky Golia is a doughy little AP student with black-frame glasses and splotchy skin that somehow always looks like it's on the point of breaking out into a crop of zits without ever actually doing so. It's no complement to his complexion that he wears his hair short, turning his forehead into a blank billboard waiting to be scrawled over with acne. He's not unhandsome—his features are regular at least—but his nose and his mouth are small, his cheekbones are layered with baby fat, and his dark eyes (which blink and blink and blink and blink) gleam with only a nebbishy kind of intelligence. Today he's dressed in a dark polo shirt and cherry-red shorts that leave him looking paler and pudgier than ever.

In your bare feet you're almost as tall as him. In your boots, you tower over him. "Hey," he croaks as he sidles up to you.

"Hey." You turn your head as he goes up for a kiss, so that he catches you on the cheek. "Got a light?" You slip the joint between your lips.

"Already?"

"Don't start with me, Ricky," you warn him. "Kelsey's been a bitch all afternoon. If we had any vodka I'd be drinking already."

He pats his pockets. "I'll have to go get a lighter."

"Do that." Behind him, you see Kelsey breezing past the open door. "I have to use the toilet."

In the bathroom you run a stream of water in the sink as you tinkle into the bowl. After flushing you soap and rinse your hands thoroughly and bathe your face. You are feeling very pale as you study your reflection. All the little flaws spring out at you.

Don't let her fuck with your head, you tell yourself as you make a face at yourself. You're not the fat little girl you were in middle school, Amanda, when your fat ass blew out all those skirts you wanted to wear. So what that you're never going to be as skinny or as toned as Kelsey or the girls on the basketball or cheerleader squads. You're not an athlete. But you've got the right curves and you're soft in places that guys like their girls to be soft. You plump out your breasts. If Blake O'Brien has crush on you—

You push away the thought of Blake, and how you're going to balance him and a boyfriend at the same time. You adjust your skirt, fluff out your hair, and with chin high exit the bathroom.

Voices drift up the nearby stairs. One of them chills you: the voice of Lisa Yarborough.

Besides a boyfriend, you'll have an ex-girlfriend to deal with at this party.

Next: "Party and Postlude" 

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