The Book of Masks (Vol. 4)

A Dana's-Eye View

Previously: "Who Comes Here?" 

You brandish the timer at Sarah as she charges from the bathroom. "Thirty seconds!" you chide her. "You owe me a minute tomorrow!" You snort as she slams her bedroom door on you, and take your turn in the bathroom.

Damn, you think as you scope yourself out in the mirror as the running shower water heats up. I think I hate you, Dana. You grab a breast and thoughtfully flick the hardening tip. You have a body like this and don't do anything with it? You should be arrested. With another soft snort you get under the water and wet yourself down all over.

You can't help resenting the tight, clear skin and the bulging boobs and the taut muscles as you soap yourself down, even though they belong to you now. Your own body was—

Is, you correct yourself. My own body is still out there. I don't know who's in it or running it, but it is still out there.

Anyway, your own body is flabby and white with a tendency toward acne, no matter how much you scrub. Dana also has to work to keep her complexion clear. But when her complexion clears up, it leaves her face smooth and glowing. It leaves yours looking like bleached soil awaiting a new crop of zits.

Jesus, if I had a body like this, you mutter to yourself, I'd do more with it than fight off David Johnson and moon over Shawn Gregory.

Yeah, Shawn Gregory. A light smirk settles on your lips. How satisfying to have confirmed your intuition about Dana's crush. Alyssa shot it down when you mentioned it during a study group, but you could tell that she thought you were right. She just didn't want to have to deal with the drama that would ensue if it ever came out.

But there's a deeper smile behind your smirk. If I had a body like this, you said. Because, of course, you do. Now. And it's not just "like" Dana's body. It is Dana's body.

You're going to be Dana Pak at school today.

* * * * *

"Can I look at your homework?" David says as you sit down in front of you. He twirls a pencil between his fingers, and there's a wet, worried look behind his eyes.

"I did it okay," you retort. "You don't have to check it."

He flinches. "I wanna check to see that I did it okay."

Liar, you think, but dig your homework out and shove it at him.

But did I do it right? you wonder. In addition to her other strengths, Dana is better at calculus than you are. At first you felt giddy as you worked at it—the problems seemed to sort themselves out as you looked at them. But now you feel panic: Dana isn't actually that good at math—she's a B student, whereas you're a C student—and maybe you felt overconfident because for the first time almost in your life you felt minimally confident at math.

And yes, David grunts and sits up to point an error out to you.

You pretend to concentrate on the correction as Lisa Rickover brushes past you.

A sweat breaks out under your clothes, all over.

That's you!

It's as creepy as if your reflection busted out of a mirror and got loose in the world. The thing that should mimic you, that should follow you, that should be you, is now walking around, muttering under its breath and throwing itself into a desk—into your desk—and taking out a cell phone—your cell phone—and pawing through your book bag. What an ugly expression it has on its face, too! Pinched and angry and flushed. Its hair is even brushed the wrong way, left to right instead of right to left.

You have to retrieve your attention when David pokes you and plucks your homework away again.

You watch "Lisa Rickover" out of the corner of your eye. She doesn't look like she's paying any attention to you, but she also doesn't look like she's deliberately ignoring you, either. You were dreading this moment since arriving at school. What if "Lisa" wasn't at school? What if she came over and demanded to talk to you? What if you caught her eyeing and spying on you?

But after five minutes of nothing happening, you just start to feel ... bored. Should you go over and confront her, and to talk to her? Maybe she's waiting for you to make the first move, same as you're waiting for her to. But then, wouldn't you at least notice her waiting, giving you surreptitious looks? If that's what she's doing now, she's doing a really good job of hiding it.

So your instinct for caution soon wins out. If there's been a real body swap, if that's Will Prescott over there, pretending to be you, maybe it's best if you pretend like you don't know what's going on, the way the real Dana (hidden under a mask of Will Prescott) doesn't know what has happened to her.

With all the body-hopping going on, it just seems best to keep still and quiet, at least for a little bit.

Especially when you're the one in possession of that grimoire and all the tools that it can make.

* * * * *

"Missed you at lunch," Matt Isaacs says next period as he squeezes himself into the desk across from yours. He's just getting fatter and fatter; maybe (you think unkindly) he should miss some more lunches himself. "You finish that homework you had for this afternoon?"

What homework? you start to reply, then remember the excuse you gave David and his friends for skipping lunch with them. (You were actually reading and digesting the email from Fake-Will about the situation at Westside with Chelsea Cooper and his friends.) "Did I miss anything?"

He shrugs. Then, with a quizzical frown, he says, "Maddy Caron and then Tina Branson came over to our table to talk to Melissa. She looked freaked out afterward." He turns to give you a direct look. "Is something going on with her?"

"I dunno. What did they talk to her about?" Your pulse quickens even as your blood chills.

He shrugs again. "Just, like, weekend plans and stuff, I think."

"So what makes you think something's going on with Melissa?"

He deflates. "Beats me," he mutters. "It's all over my pay grade anyway."

Everything's over your pay grade, you think. Except chemistry, math, and Spider-Man.

But he's given you food for thought. If Maddy and Tina are interested in Melissa, it can only be because someone told them about her and Adam Karter, and the only person who would have done that is "Lisa Rickover." But you weren't actually that interested in Dana's bit of gossip when she shared it; so what have they heard since then to get them interested?

All such preoccupations flee, though, when Frank Durras, one of the hot new basketball players, slides with a panther's grace into the desk behind Matt. Tall, dark, and ripped sure contrasts favorably with fat, sweaty, and easily winded. You wish you had the nerve to talk to him.

So does Dana.

* * * * *

Instead, you settle for having a talk with Alyssa.

Alysssa Randal is the captain of the Eastman cheerleader squad: a strong, buxom, African-American girl with a forceful personality but a cheerful, friendly manner. Talking to her is like being flattened by a battering ram made of rose petals.

At least, that's how it seems to be with other people. You long ago lost patience, and now just find her bull-headed when she doesn't listen to you, and patronizing when she does.

But in addition to running the cheerleader squad, Alyssa runs the "Rumorati," the unofficial, seven-girl clearinghouse for news and gossip at Eastman High. Up until yesterday, you were one of them.

As Eastman's own walking, talking Reddit board of rumor and commentary, Alyssa (no surprise) is busy talking to people outside the door to her Yearbook class when you catch up to her. Summer Nguyen, the most junior member of the Rumorati, is standing deferentially at her elbow as Alyssa talks a mile-a-minute at Mandy Simpson, a more senior member. Your lips twitch a little to see Ian Carpenter, captain of the basketball squad, looming nearby with an interested expression on his face. Rhianna Miller—who is only a cheerleader but one of Alyssa's close friends—is also there.

"—how come she's gonna ruin everything for them if she's not careful," Alyssa is saying. There's a hot gleam in her eye, but a smile at her lips. Whatever she's mad about, she's enjoying it too. "Never mind that she's ripping her own team apart, but it's none of her business how her boyfriend runs things on the—"

It irks you that she ignores you, even as you barge right up to stare her directly in the face. It irks you more to see Summer give you a direct, blank look. If I were still me, she wouldn't dare look at me that way, you think.

"Why were Maddy and Tina talking to Melissa at lunch?" you blurt out when you are finally sick of being ignored.

Alyssa freezes in mid-sentence, and turns slowly toward you. The others look equally startled. You just put out your lower lip and raise your chin.

"Beg pardon?" Alyssa says. You repeat your question. "Beg pardon," she repeats, putting a harder edge on it.

"I'm not begging anything from you Alyssa," you exclaim. "I just want to know—"

You flinch and twist as Ian tries taking you by the elbow. "Don't touch me!" you yell.

Alyssa snorts—audible over the noise of the hallway—and gestures the other girls to follow her into the classroom. Ian blocks you from following.

You seethe. Who the fuck is Alyssa Randal to ignore you?

Except you know there's a colder question underneath: Who is Dana Pak that Alyssa would pay attention to her?

But you've got the tools to give yourself a new identity. Maybe you should use them.

Next: "A Carpenter Tries Mending Things" 

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