The Book of Masks (Vol. 3)

No One Wants a Creepy Girlfriend

Previously: "Who One Is and Who One Might Be" 

In a flash you realize that this is the moment you've been dreading, the moment when you have to decide.

Are you going to make this a real partnership with Sydney?

Do you trust her? Do you think that she trusts you? Are you just playing around together, trying to figure out magical shit, or is there a chance for something else between you?

Is she only using you, manipulating you, pretending to like you and to be interested in you while she worms your stuff away so she can have it for herself?

Now her suggestion—that maybe she could put on Caleb's mask so she can "get to know you fast"—has answered it for you.

Why would she want to "get to know you fast" except that she doesn't like being with you and so doesn't want to "get to know you slowly"?

Well, you're not going to accuse her of that, so you play it cool ...

* * * * *

"That would be kind of creepy, wouldn't it?" you say.

"How would it be creepy?" There's a titter wrapped inside her voice.

"Well, you turning into a guy," you reply. "You turning into a guy who looks like Caleb."

Sydney says nothing. Then she bursts out laughing. "Would it be creepy if you used a mask to turn into a girl?"

"Huh? Oh." You feel yourself blushing hard; thank God it's dark. "I hadn't thought about it."

"You haven't thought—?" She howls and snorts and giggles, which leaves you cringing.

"What's wrong with you?" she gasps. "If you showed those masks to any other guys, ninety-nine percent of them would instantly start picking out girls they'd want to copy and try on. Looking for boobs to play with. Are you one of the one percent?"

There's no good answer to that, so you say nothing. But her teasing only hardens your suspicions.

"I'm sorry, Will," she says after a moment of silence. "I didn't mean to put you on the spot that way. And if you think it would be creepy if I, well, did myself up to look like your friend, I won't do it and I won't ask again. I was only thinking it was a way we could hang out and get to know each other."

"We can't do it the regular way? Like we've been doing already?"

"Sure." She strokes your leg. "We don't need magic to do that."

* * * * *

You're up early the next morning—and on Saturdays "up early" means "before eleven"—and drive out to the elementary school to check on the thing you're making. You're delighted to see that the fire is out, then disappointed when the cigarette lighter refires it. You study the thing for a bit, wondering what it's making.

And it does look like it's making something. What started as a mound of loose dirt has pulled together and hardened into an irregular cylinder. It's cracked in places—a long fissure has nearly split the thing in two up the middle, and two smaller fissures have opened up on either side—which makes you wonder if the thing is deformed and will have to be redone, but there's nothing to do now but wait for the thing to finish.

You get a text from Keith while you're still at the school: he and some other guys are going out to see a horror movie late this afternoon and he wants to know if you want to go along. With nothing else to do, you drive out to Don's Donuts, where Keith works on Saturdays.

"So what's the plan for this movie?" you ask him after you've got a donut and some coffee. The place is empty, and Keith has nothing to do but move the fresh donuts into the "stale" case.

"Hit the cineplex by five," he says. "We need more of a plan than that?"

"Who are these guys we're seeing it with? Caleb?"

"Pff, no. Johansson's being an anti-social dick, which is fine with me, 'cos I'm still mad at him. No, I'm seein' it with my YouTube crew."

"Your who?"

He gives you look. "My crew who make the YouTube videos. I told you about them."

"Maybe you did. Well, tell me about them again." You stuff the donut in your mouth.

Keith rolls his eyes. "Mike and Carlos. Hollister and Montoya. They got a YouTube channel, they do movie reviews."

"Everyone's got a channel," you mumble around the donut. "Everyone does movie reviews."

"Yeah, and they do too. I been helping them out. Gonna do a couple reviews o' my own for 'em, maybe starting with this one, gonna get some extra credit in Hawks's class that way. Maybe we could do some together?"

"Well, maybe."

He snorts at your lack of enthusiasm. "Yeah, maybe not. Maybe I wanna be a YouTube star on my own."

You almost snort coffee out your nose. Keith isn't ugly, exactly, but he's pretty damn homely with his home-done buzz cut, his patchy unibrow, his chapped lips, and his acne. "How about I see how you do," you tell him as he gives you a reproachful look, "then maybe I'll do something with you."

"That's right. I'll show you how it's done."

You spend the next hour or so shooting the shit with Keith, and when he gets off work you follow him down Twentieth Street to meet Carlos. You wind up at the Top Shelf Storage complex, which Montoya's family owns, and Keith leads you into a cinderblock building whose central corridor is lined on either side by storage units. "Yeah, this's where we got our studio," he tells you.

You ignore the possessive "we" that he has lately introduced to describe the channel and its operations, and ask about this studio operation. "I 'unno," Keith shrugs. "His dad lets him have two empty units to use. He's got his studio in one and his—"

He breaks off as you come upon a unit with an open door. There's a weight bench and a footlocker inside. Sitting on the weight bench is a shirtless Hispanic guy in shorts and sneakers. He continues doing curls even after looking up to nod at you and Keith.

Carlos Montoya. You recognize him now—he's in your English class this semester. He's a chunky guy, though far from fat; and you have the impression that he's actually lost weight since the last time you really paid attention to him. He's also acquired a fauxhawk.

He grins at you and crushes your hand in his paw after he's dropped the weights and introductions have been made. "Cool, it's a popcorn flick," he tells you when Keith says you'll be hitting the theater with them. "We need a lot of people along, help us figure out if it's got crowd appeal. Know anyone else who wants to go?"

"Carson and James?" you suggest, looking at Keith. He makes a face.

Carlos's lips twitch. "How about some girls?"

You blush. "You know any?"

"I thought maybe you did. Keith doesn't."

"Fuck you! I know lots of girls I can ask out!"

You jump in with the obvious retort: "Sure you can ask them, but will they come?"

"I know more girls than you!"

Almost you blurt out Sydney's name as a suggestion, but you catch yourself in time. She would almost certainly accept. But you were worried about running Caleb last night at Catherine Muskov's party; and if you took Sydney on a movie run, it would certainly get back to Caleb and he would know that you had twitched her out from under his nose.

And now you realize you've got another reason to keep things merely professional between you and her, and to keep that professional relationship as secret as you can.

So when Sydney texts you a little after two, to say that she's going out to Sophie Van Der Burg's house and do you want to go along, you reply that you've already made plans for "extra credit school work" with some other guys and that you'll catch up to her at school on Monday.

* * * * *

But Sunday brings a plot twist. The dingus finishes baking.

You don't find it until mid-afternoon, which is the soonest you can get away to check. The fire is out again when you enter the basement, and you grimace as you set the lighter against it.

But it doesn't take. You press the flame closer to the dirt, and you press it against a couple of different places, but the thing refuses to catch fire again. With mounting excitement, you pull the book out from under it. It flops over to a new page.

It takes you an hour of careful translation to figure out what you've made. It's a pedisequos, the best translation of which seems to be "servant" or "slave." It's a magical robot.

Oh, the thing itself is just a crude lump of hardened clay in the rough shape of a person: blocky legs and arms split off from a misshapen torso and a turnip-like "head" at one end. It can't move to talk. But, the book informs you, if you put a mask on it, it will turn into a copy of that person, and will obey its maker.

You're scrambling for the mask of Caleb to test it out when you're struck by an alternate plan.

Make a mask of Sydney. Copy your partner. Test the pedisequos out with a copy of her.

Or just put on her mask yourself. Learn what she really thinks and wants.

You sit down, feeling cold all over.

It would be a treacherous thing to do. And why would you do it, except that you've decided to end your "partnership" with her?

Well, that's one good reason to do it, to figure out if you really do want to end your partnership. If you got in her head and liked what you found, you could continue things without her learning what you'd done. And if you don't like what you find, then you'd know for sure that you'd have to break things off.

That's all for now.

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