The Book of Masks (Vol. 4)

Bridges to a Brotherhood

Previously: "An Occult Tutorial" 

You’re awakened the next morning by a shake to the shoulder. “Will,” someone hisses. “Will!”

You clench your eyes shut and burrow deeper under the covers. Again you’re shaken. “Kelly!”

“What?” you groan. Now you remember that Bridget was spending the night with you.

“I think I hear your brother.”

You listen. Yes, there’s the tramp of heavy footfalls in the hallway, followed by the snick of a door shutting. “Yeah, so?” you ask.

“So he’s brought the car back. We can go out and get donuts.”

God. Bridget and her fixation on getting donuts first thing in the morning after a sleepover. It’s like she thinks sneaking out early is the same as staying out past curfew.

Then it hits you.

You flip over. Bridget is grinning gleefully down into your face.

“Did I tell you about the donut thing last night?” you ask.

“Nope.” Her grin widens.

“You mean you remembered it on your own?”

“Yep!” She tickles you under the covers, which is another of those really annoying things that she likes to do. “I think I’m Bridget now!” Sydney exclaims.

* * * * *

“Mrs. Heine! God!” Bridget rolls her eyes and pops the last of her powdered donut into her mouth. “Ask me a hard one! No way I don’t remember our second-grade teacher. Not when she had a name like that and a butt like that.”

Sunlight pours through the front windows of Salvation Donuts; highlights gleam off the plastic-and-Formica tabletops, and early morning traffic rumbles on the boulevard outside. You and Bridget have each gobbled down two donuts. With ten “life trivia” questions, Sydney has proven to your satisfaction that she knows most everything that she ought to know about Bridget Atwater.

And as for her personality: as she squirms and plays with the plastic cutlery, she is doing a bang-up job of living up to her alias’s nickname: Fidgety Bridgety.

“So I didn’t screw anything up for you yesterday, did I?” you ask. “When I didn’t go out to Catherine’s with you?”

“Screw it up for who?” Bridget’s smile is mischievous.

You give her a look. “You know who I mean, Bridget.”

She laughs, but just as suddenly turns thoughtful. She studies you, then leans across the table.

“How weird would it be for you,” she asks in a low voice, “if James and I, um, got together?”

You can’t help biting your lip.

James Randolph is one of “cute” guys in the sophomore class—a slim, clean-limbed blonde with a quick, white smile and a way of looking into your face that excites the butterflies. It doesn’t hurt that he plays JV basketball, and looks great in shorts. He’s also friends with some of hot junior guys.

You avoid her eye. “Do what you have to do,” you tell your girlfriend.

She doesn’t reply. Probably she’s trying to figure out what you’re thinking. You wish she’d hurry up and guess at what you’re thinking, because you don’t know either.

“You know.” She puts her elbows on the table to lean in really close. Her lips hardly move as she murmurs, “He’d be a really good addition to the Brotherhood.”

“You think?”

She makes a face. “Come on, you know he would. He could definitely help us get some others. Why do you have a problem with him?”

Put like that, of course, you don’t. But Kelly’s own residual feelings are very strong. Aside from the obvious—the jealousy of James at pulling her best friend away, and the (even worse) jealousy of Bridget for landing such an attractive admirer—there are Kelly’s doubts about James. He is, after all, supposedly going out with Tiffany Kinyon, and had been promising Bridget since the start of the year that he’s going to break up with Tiffany to go out with her. But he hasn’t yet. And Kelly can’t help suspecting that James is just trying to score with Bridget. Either he’s trying to score by leading her on with a promise he doesn’t mean to keep, or he’s trying to pressure her into letting him score as the price for finally dumping Tiffany.

Is that someone you want in the Brotherhood?

Yes, probably, he’s exactly the type for the Brotherhood. But you only shrug and murmur noncommittally when Bridget says, “It would all be alright, wouldn’t it, if, um, he was you?”

And after you shrug, you shiver.

* * * * *

Sydney has some other ideas for recruits—it’s as if conquering one girl, body and mind and soul, has given her a hankering for others—but you don’t pay really close attention as she shares them, and only one suggestion sticks in your head, maybe because it’s the only sophomore she doesn’t recommend as a recruit: Maggie Crenshaw, the captain of the varsity softball team, who would be a link between your sophomore and senior aliases. On the way home, Sydney accuses you of being a “grump,” and threatens the spend the afternoon with some of her “other” friends.

Back home, you strip your clothes off and take a shower. This gives you another chance to get acquainted with Kelly’s body. It’s not even as stimulating now, even under the hot water with soap, as when you woke inside it, probably because you’re more used to it and have Kelly’s own feelings to complicate your own. She is slim and boyish in build, with small boobs, and with legs and muscles sculpted by four or five years of tomboyish athleticism. Only when you palm the bush between your legs do you get a thrill.

Which is odd, when you think about it. Normally, you’d freak out at the absence of a package inside that curly, wiry clump.

Afterward, while toweling off, you study yourself in the mirror. You can’t help wincing again at the smallness of your boobs. But you study your face more thoughtfully. There’s a hardness about your eyes, there’s no missing that, which is unfortunate, as they’re big and brown, and when paired with your small nose and mouth they should make you very “cute.” Or they would if they didn’t have such a wary, defensive flintiness about them.

You sigh.

It’s all Madison Crawford’s fault, you think. Bad enough that she’s already stacked and has cheerleader legs (which she likes to show off in short-shorts and ankle socks), and holds herself above everybody else. With looks and a body like hers, she’s got it made already. So why does she have to go out of her way to make other girls—like you—feel small and contemptible? Was hers one of the names that Sydney mentioned? Probably not. Surely you would have noticed it if Madison’s name got mentioned.

But now that it has been mentioned, even if it’s by yourself to yourself, you can’t help dwelling on it as you get dressed in fresh clothes. (Flannel shorts, a t-shirt, and ratty sneakers without socks; definitely not the kind of clothes that Madison would wear, unless she was going for the “sexy waif” look.) You turned yourself into Kelly as a means of getting revenge on someone who was making your life miserable. Maybe you could use the masks to get back at someone who has spent even longer—years—making Kelly feel small? If not Madison herself, one of her friends, the way you are using Kelly against her brother? That would be a way of making it up to Kelly—what you’re doing to her—wouldn’t it?

* * * * *

Blake is still asleep (he will sleep into the early afternoon) when you emerge from your bedroom. You’re tempted to text Bridget, to see if Sydney is up for getting together again. But you just parted, and you don’t see what you’d have to do with her anyway.

So instead you scrounge together what little money Kelly has managed to save up, and go shopping for a few more magical supplies, which you take out to the school basement. Once there, you settle in to make another mask.

You’ve just polished it up and are well into the memory strip, when Bridget texts you. Come hang out @ Warehouse? Before you can reply, she calls you direct. “Well?”

“What’s going on?” you ask.

“Getting an early start on Saturday night. Well, not really.” She laughs. “Just meeting some guys out there. To help clean up from last night and get ready for tonight. Come on, Kelly,” she sighs when you don’t answer. “It won’t be like, a regular Saturday night party. Just having fun. At the Warehouse.” She giggles again, but nervously.

“I don’t know,” you reply. But she starts talking to someone else, someone with a gruff voice. You make a face. A guy. Probably James.

“Listen,” she says when she comes back on, “just come on out, for a little while. Someone really wants you out here. And it’s not me.”

“Who?”

“Darrell Jackson,” she says, sounding like she’s whispering into the receiver.

Oh right. That was one of the names she mentioned at the donut shop. Another basketball player. She mentioned him and some of his friends. Another batch of cute, popular guys, like James.

You look at the mask. This afternoon could be your chance to snag a new Brother.

* * * * *

A percussive beat is thumping the air as you approach the Warehouse. “Have they already started tonight’s party?” you ask Bridget.

“Just a band practicing.” She grips you by the elbow. “The Scorchicos guys.”

A wave of sympathetic giddiness washes over you. Los Scorchicos is the most popular school band in the sophomore class.

“You know,” Bridget says in your ear, and she grips you harder. “I was thinking, maybe we could turn them, or one of the other bands, into the core of our Brotherhood.”

Next: "Two Virgins Walk Into the Warehouse" 

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