The Book of Masks (Vol. 4)

Swapping Out Players

Previously: "Caleb and Complications" 

"Well okay, if that's what you want to do," you grumble at Caleb. "But if you're not gonna use Michael's mask anymore, can I have it?"

He rears back. "What? Why?"

So you explain to him: How you need to get out of Dane's mask and you'd rather not switch back into Lindsay's, and if he's not going to be using Michael's anymore—

He cuts you off. "Alright, alright," he says. "Jesus. Like I said, it's always so complicated with you."

"It's not complicated," you retort, "it's the easiest—"

"Shut up."

* * * * *

He didn't put any of that special paste into Michael's mask, so he is able to turn it over to you. First, though, you have drive over to his old house, because that's where he's lodged the real Michael Duncan.

Caleb's mom let's you in. She's a tired-looking woman, with bags under her eyes and tangled curls of hair that are showing more gray than chestnut these days. But she's gracious and calls back to her son. He comes wandering out from the back of their dumpy little house with a dopey look on his face. It turns even dopier—boggle-eyed, even—when he sees who has called on him, but he tries to cover it by shoving his enormous hands into the front of his jeans and rocking on his feet. "So, 'sup?" he asks, and grins greenly at you.

"That school project we're working on?" Michael wheezes nasally at him. "Didn't you get our text we were coming over?"

"No," he says, looking panicked.

"Well, let's go back and talk about it now," Michael says.

Caleb rolls his eyes so you can see the whites of them, and leads you back into the bedroom. The fake Caleb, you notice, doesn't do any better job of keeping his room picked up than the original did. The desk is piled up with books and papers, and the coverlet has slipped halfway off the bed.

"Jesus, what's the matter with you?" Michael demands after you've shut yourselves in.

"Nothing's the matter," fake-Caleb retorts, "except I got Dane Fucking Matthias in my house." He snorts up a lungful of air through his enormous schnozz. "At least he doesn't smell like he's been toking up.

"Fuck you," you mutter. Michael says, "This is Will."

Fake-Caleb only gives you a fish-eyed glare. "Jesus. Then can we take him out someplace, the old quarry maybe, and leave him for the gypsies to find?"

You wheel on Michael. "Is this what you really think of me?"

"Lately, yes." He snaps his fingers at his replacement. "I want my old face back. Get on the bed and take off your clothes."

"Oh, God," the thing replies as it starts to take off its pants. "If Mom comes in and finds us like this—"

* * * * *

If it were only as simple as taking Caleb's mask off of Michael. Your best friend (both versions) has plenty of occasion to complain about "complications" after you stop him and point out that certain masks need to come off of certain people before certain other people can put them on. It's a wearisome argument that follows, but it finally ends—or starts, rather—with you stretched out on the bed next to the fake Caleb while the real one (still looking like Michael) bends over to pull the masks off the both of you.

And when you wake again—stiff and groggy, and with a feeling like having been ripped in half—you have to clamber off the bed and strip off Dane Matthias's clothes, which you pass to a new Dane Matthias who is sitting at Caleb's desk with a freaked-out expression on his face. Then you have to lean (nakedly) over Michael Duncan to tear an invisible mask off of his face, revealing Caleb. You shake and slap him awake, and he cusses at you after wrenching his eyes open. Then he fumbles himself out of Michael's clothes and you lay back down on the bed and let him drop a mask onto you. You've the feeling of being turned inside out and tied up in knots by the time you've pulled yourself into Michael's jeans and hoodie.

"No, I'm not going to take you home," the restored-to-himself Caleb honks when you ask him.

"You drove me out here," you point out. "Me and Dane." You point to the new fake, who is cowering still at Caleb's desk.

Caleb rolls his eyes. "Michael drove you out," he retorts. "In Michael's car. You're Michael now. Look in a mirror if you don't believe me."

"Oh yeah." The memory of steering Michael Duncan's dusty sedan out to Caleb's now returns to you. You grind a knuckle into your forehead, then flap out Michael's trucker cap and jam it down over your thick, wiry hair. "See you tomorrow?"

"For what, the classes me and Michael have together?"

"To help the guys! To start making replacements."

"You help the guys. How hell'm I supposed to get you up and close to Chelsea Cooper or Marc Garner?"

"But—"

Caleb seizes you by your bony shoulders and propels you toward the door.

"I'll see you when you're all set up," he says as he thrusts you into the hallway. "Right now, I just want to go to bed and sleep for eighteen hours."

Then he pushes Dane out, and shuts and locks the door on you.

* * * * *

At least you've got your new brain—Michael Duncan's brain—screwed in right by the time you've dropped Dane off at his trailer and are on your way back home. Michael lives in a shabby part of town in a tired, shabby little house, but his mom and dad keep the yard tidy, and the only really nasty thing about the neighborhood is the Rottweiler that likes to hurl itself, in a slavering, barking frenzy, against the fence of the house next door when it hears you pulling into the driveway.

"Michael? Did you have dinner while you were out?" your new mom calls from the living room when she hears you in the kitchen.

"Yeah!" you shout back as you dig a fistful of Chex Mix out of a bag. Except you didn't, and you're starving. "Just ge'ing a snack!" you mumble with a full mouth.

"There's leftover mac-and-weenies in the fridge!"

"Awesome! T'anks!" You jam the Chex bag back in the pantry and rip open the refrigerator. Atop the mac-and-weenies you pile some pickles, a tube of string cheese, a wadded-up hunk of shredded deli meat, and a cold dinner roll. You carry it, balanced in the crook of your arm, with a bottle of cola, back toward your bedroom.

"I thought you said you ate dinner," your mom says as you pass her in the living room,. She's short and roly-poly, with a kittenish face.

"'Z'jus' s'm sa'wiches," you mumble, for your mouth is full again. "We go' takeout fr'm th'deli."

"Okay." She looks amused. Maybe a little envious, too. She's shaped like a loaf of unbaked bread dough. Her son is shaped like a rake handle.

You kick the bedroom door closed behind you, lay the food out on the desk, and kick back with Michael's cell phone. There's messages from a bunch of his friends, and you pop food down your gullet and suck on your teeth as you scroll through, prioritizing them. The texts from Lucas Mack and Madeline Miller will just be questions about the English class you share with them. There's a text from Grant Lowery, but that would be the fake Grant Lowery, and when you read it, it's a question about Geometry. There's a business question from Bhodi, though, asking if you know if Marc Garner has any old girlfriends. Dontknow, you tell him.

But priority of place has to go to the text from Evie, asking if you can call and talk.

Your cock stirs, and you have to dig at a sudden itch behind your left eyeball.

Michael hasn't got a crush on Evie or anything, but he gets short of breath whenever a girl he doesn't know (or doesn't know well) tries to talk to him. If you yourself didn't know Evie already, you might even have to put your head between your knees until the risk of hyperventilation passes.

Because, really, how mortifying would it be for your mom to look into your room and find you passed out on the floor from sexual excitement with an unfurled penis pointing at the ceiling like a flagpole?

Dang, but you forgot what it was like to be a sexually obsessed and sexually starved sixteen-year-old. And Michael seems to have it even worse than you ever did. You shiver a couple of times as you tap in a reply to Evie.

"Hi, thanks for calling," she says in a hushed, shy voice when you connect by phone. She makes a noise, like swallowing. "Um, Paulina says she talked to you and your friend. So, um, you know what's going on?"

"Yeah," you croak.

"I don't want to use text or email," she says, and she talks so softly that her words are almost inaudible. "You know, I don't want anyone being able to find out about—"

"Yeah, I get it. It's best just to talk," you agree. "No traces."

"Yeah." Her voice fades away almost to nothing. "So. What—?" There comes that same wet-sounding rattle, the sound of her swallowing. "What are you and—? Um. Thinking?"

"You mean as a, uh, person for you?"

"Uh huh." She might be a ghost, so softly does she answer.

"Well—"

"I'll let you pick," she says, and now she sounds desperate. "Maybe you should pick? You know the people, who— Who it could be. A lot better than ... me?"

You wonder if she's on the verge of crying.

It must be tough for her, you reflect, tougher even than Caleb thought. Maybe she's creeped out by the fakes that her friends left behind. Maybe she doesn't even want to become someone else, maybe she's just terrified of being left behind by her friends.

Maybe it would be easier for her if you picked her out a new identity. But at the same time you do feel like it really should be her choice.

Next: "Michael Duncan's Day" 

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"Table of Contents (Vol. 4)" 
"The Book of Masks (Vol. 4)"