The Book of Masks (Vol. 2)

The Reluctant Master

Previously: "Nobody Expects the Tennis Confession" 

by Masktrix

You can’t just abandon Shelly. You stoop down and tap her on the cheeks, but she’s out cold, just as she’d said. You look down and see just who you’re dealing with: a girl with pasty skin, freckles, and long brilliant ginger hair. You know from her previous rambling there’s no point trying to wake her so, instead, you open up the book and snap some photos of the spell pages with your phone. The text comes out, just about, but given how Shelly got stuck from not reading the instructions, you decide it’s best to copy the intricate sigils by hand. Fortunately, in a room of office supplies, a pencil and paper is easy enough to find.

But you've just got started when Shelly comes round.

You expect her to panic. Instead, she lifts up her hands, checks her face is her own, and just grins broadly. “Freakin’ AWESOME!”

“Shush,” you say, already on edge. “Do you want the secretary pool next door to hear us?”

“Oh, they won’t,” Shelly says, sitting up. “They don’t pay attention to anything any more. It’s a school, crazy stuff happens all the time.” She looks at her clothes, now loose as she’s returned to normal. “Though not as crazy as this. Magic. Is. Freakin’. Real. You’ve got to teach me! Teach me everything! Please!”

You look up as you tuck the tracing away. “Shelly, how old are you?”

She crosses her arms. “Old enough. And there’s no way you can keep this a secret from me anymore. I mean, I used your spellbook, right? In a week I learned two spells. Is that fast? I think it’s fast. So I'm on the third one now. It makes a little metal band, right?”

You decide to bluff. If Shelly Nolan thinks you’re a master wizard who knows these spells, perhaps that’s what you need to be. “Something like that,” you say.

“I knew it! I can get the materials to work on the bands this afternoon. I’m already ‘sick’, and I can message Ian and tell him to break off trailing Acuna. We’re going to make you so proud!”

You hold your hand up. “Shelly, calm down. We really need to talk about this.”

“Yes, of course.” She takes a deep breath. “So, do I call you master? Or maester? Or professor? Or…”

“Will. You can call me Will. And the first thing I need you to do is calm down.”

The redheaded girl practically wobbles with excitement, nodding. “So, I can be your apprentice?”

As much as you’ve tried to dodge fate, the book seems determined to end up in your possession. And as much as you loathe the idea of hanging around a freshman with ADHD and the cousin of that thug Rich Austin, you don’t really have a choice.

“Fine,” you say. Shelly fist-pumps the air. “First, though, we need to get out of here. And second, you don’t tell your friends, you don’t tell your family about this book. Hell, you don’t tell Ian anything more than you’ve told him. As far as anyone knows, nothing has changed. Understood?”

“Right. I mean, whatever you say! Oh, man, this is so cool. So, so cool. It’s like getting a letter to Hogworts.”

You feel like this is going to be a long apprenticeship… especially given you know even less about magic than she does.

***

You escape the side office with the help of Ian, who Shelly summons to distract the secretarial pool while you exit the room, you trying to keep between the eyeline of the reception desk and the now distinctly redheaded, shorter person wearing Coach Acuna’s clothes. Once in the hall, Shelly virtually sprints to the nearest bathroom, emerging wearing her own clothes a short time later – apparently everything was stuffed in that Harry Potter backpack. Said backpack is then handed to you, with a rapid-fire babble about how she’s supposed to be sick, and you need to put Coach Acuna’s clothes back in her office. At that, she remembers to grab her insulin pen kit from the backpack and runs off again, yelling that she’ll meet you at the Dairy Queen after school to discuss “learning how to be a witch”.

And that’s how you end up holding a freshman Harry Potter backpack stuffed with a P.E. teacher’s clothes, a magical mask to turn you into a Latina and an unlocked spellbook as the seventh period bell sounds. The only good news is that you have a study period, so at least you have time to look at the book in more depth.

“Nice backpack, Hermione,” someone says, walking into you deliberately in the hall and causing you to stumble. You think it might have been Gary Chen. It’s a moment that brings you, high on discovering magic, crashing back down to reality. Nor does your plan to study the book get anywhere: for the next five minutes, it feels like everyone you meet comes up and demands to know what the principal wanted with you, with varying degrees of forcefulness.

First, you see Caleb, who already finds the whole thing hilarious and cracks a few jokes as he tries to get the story from you. Second, and more demanding, is Kim Walsh. The political head of the students, you’re not sure if Kim views herself as your union rep and keen to make sure your rights haven’t been trampled on, or just someone who believes she’s entitled to know every facet of life in Westside. Either way, she tracks you down between periods and questions you, nimbly side-stepping any evasiveness you have with an almost forensic examination masked by kind words and promises about your best interest. She leaves highly frustrated, and you doubt she’s going to let the matter drop. In fact, it wouldn’t surprise you if she started questioning the faculty – which is the last thing you need. You’re going to have to come up with a reason that satisfies her.

But Kim’s quizzing pales in comparison with the next, which begins with a sharp blow to your kidneys. “What’d Sagansky want, Prescott?” Joe Thomason demands. “This about me?”

“No,” you wince, just as another blow lands.

“Sure about that?”

“Yes,” you say, folding down. “It wasn’t a goddamn thing to do with you.”

“We’ll see,” Thomason concludes. “Faculty’s breathing down my neck and that means I’m breathing down everyone else’s. If you said a word about me, about anything, then guarantee there’s a hell of a lot more of that on its way.”

Of course there is, you sigh. For most of the free period, you get to work trying to decipher the Latin from the first page. It’s a killer trying to read the words on your phone, and you stumble constantly.

Either Shelly is extraordinarily bright, or things are easier if you have the book. You barely get past the word calcifer being quicklime – Shelly’s insistence the chemistry was easy being a clue you weren’t looking for something unusual – before you’re in astronomy for the rest of the day. Then, as you’re leaving Westside, you get the final question about why you were summoned to the principal’s office – from someone you forgot about entirely.

U OK? R we still on 4 tonite? Why you get summoned to office?

Lin Pol, who only this morning – which feels so damn long ago – tried to make plans with you, messages your phone.

Nothing important. Still on.

You think about whether you are doing something tonight. You have to meet your two freshmen conspirators, and a reality-bending book of magic probably takes priority over a cute Chinese-American cheerleader.

::thumbs up emoji:: Going to DQ with friends until abt 6 then home. Want to meet abt 8? She drops in few party emojis for good measure.

Normally, the idea of being asked to meet with a cheerleader on a Friday night would be cause for celebration. But the first half of the message is just about the worst outcome possible, because you're already supposed to meet up with Shelly there. Even if you do want to spend the evening with Lin, there’s no way you can meet the freshmen in the Dairy Queen without being spotted by her friends. And, unless you can come up with an incredible excuse – perhaps using the announcement – hanging out with freshmen is basically a death knell to any credibility you have in Westside. You have no idea how to contact Shelly to rearrange things, either.

But perhaps there’s another way. In the confusion around why you were summoned to the office, you didn’t have a chance to return Coach Acuna’s clothes. You have the mask, too. A mask that turns anyone into her spitting image. Perhaps you can go to your Dairy Queen meet-up, just not as Will Prescott.

Next: "Acuna Matata" 

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"Table of Contents (Vol. 2)" 
"The Book of Masks (Vol. 2)"