The Book of Masks (Vol. 2)

Freakin' Tuesday

Previously: "Explaining Yourself to Yourself" 

by Masktrix

“Shelly-bean, breakfast.” Your dad yells up the stairs, and you open one eye. On the ceiling above you is a pinned astrology chart surrounded by an excess of fairy lights. On the walls are posters for your various fandoms, the books of which cram every shelf alongside tomes on the occult, or chemistry, or both. The other eye opens, staring at a cute anime plushie that’s fallen on your head.

“Down in a sec!” you yell back. It’s your first dawn as Michelle Nolan. Now you just have to navigate being her until you can swap back. When you agreed to don the final prepared mask and become her, you did so on the strict understanding it would be for 24 hours. You sit up and look at the mirror on your dresser. A pasty, slight girl with a bad case of bed hair looks back. Will Prescott, in reality the actual Shelly, was gone by the time you arrived back home last night and had taken the book, leaving a fifth mask on the buffer. The Acuna and Ruth masks were on the wall, hidden in plain sight among your mom’s creations.

You freefall back onto the mattress once more and take a breath. This is going to be a long day.

***

“How’s the project coming?” mom asks as you wolf down your cereal.

“Good,” you say, managing to speak amid mouthfuls. “Gonna be ready for Halloween. Thought I’d go as something new this year.”

“Are you going to a party? Would you like a ride?”

Milk dribbles down your chin. “Maybe, if that’s OK. And no, all good.”

“Well, I’m sure we can extend curfew a bit later next Friday. I’m glad you’re making an effort to fit in.”

“Mom.” You stare at her, mortified. Shelly has a small group of friends, and she doesn’t see why she has to pretend to care about socializing with people who don’t accept her – even if she’s self-conscious about every aspect of her life.

“I’m just sayin’. Will seemed nice. The junior boy you had over?” You drop your spoon to the table.

“MOM. You promised you weren’t going to go in the shop.”

“Oh, honey. It’s my job to make sure you’re OK. I just wanted to check how it was going. Which reminds me, the floor is not a wardrobe, young lady…”

***

“You’re so lucky you’re not in my class. The book we have to write up is blugh.” Helen Kim is complaining as you pull out textbooks from your locker, trying to find everything you need for the next class. Nothing new there: if Helen doesn’t have something to complain about, she’ll start sabotaging her life until she does. She’s only really happy – or just content – playing in the orchestra, and is probably the best in your new year.

“Which one are you doing?”

“The Lord of the Flies. It’s about why boys are stupid.” Helen is not exactly a walking version of SparkNotes. “I’ve got to put together something from the perspective of the officer who arrives at the end by Friday.”

“C’mon, it’s a freakin’ classic,” you say. “If it makes you feel better, I’m doing Greek myths. You can totally sum up half of them as ‘Zeus was feeling frisky one day, turned himself into a swan and lol consequences’. At least we’re covering Medea, though, so that’s pretty cool.”

“You’re doing the media?”

You look at her with mock horror, a strand of red hair flying over your shoulder. It took you a full hour to get the damn mess straight earlier. “Wha? NO. HELEN. MEDEA. She’s a witch, and she’s only the freakin’ embodiment of murderous feminist agency in a world of…” you’re just getting up to Shelly Nolan speed when you catch a glimpse past Helen’s shoulder. Rich Austin is storming directly toward you, a threatening gleam in his eye.

Shelly’s heart begins to thud hard inside your chest. You can’t breathe. You feel your pale skin begin to blanche even further. And… Austin continues walking past, paying absolutely no attention to you whatsoever, unaware of who Shelly Nolan is or that his cousin gave her a magic book. Instead, like a raptor in flight, he descends on someone else a few lockers down.

“Oh my god, Shelly,” Helen laughs, looking at your flustered face. “Are you crushing on that guy?”

***

Lunch. No sign of ‘Will’ or his friends, which is to be expected. You make your way to join the line of students waiting for the serving of whatever suspect meat is on the menu.

“Excuse me. Hi. Are you Michelle Nolan?”

You turn around, clutching your tray, and look wide-eyed at Kim Walsh. Oh my god why is a senior speaking to me? “Uh… yup.”

“My name’s Kim. I understand you’re part of the mentoring program here at Westside, and that Will Prescott’s assigned to you?”

You just stare at her like a deer caught in headlights. Playing the part of Shelly is so easy, even if she’s a terrible actress herself. “Mmmhmm.”

“Well, I know how things can be here. I just wanted to let you know that if you want a mentor who you can talk to about things – the kind of stuff Will might not understand – it’d be great to chat sometime. My school email is on the notice board.”

Kim Walsh is actually trying to steal you from, well, you, in a fictional mentoring program. You wonder how long it took her to track you down. “Uh, cool. Thanks.” You babble the words so quickly they blend into each other. For Kim’s part, she manages her warmest smile.

“OK then. See you round, huh?”

***

“Shelly, come on. Focus. You can do this.” Chemistry comes easily to Shelly Nolan. It’s just a matter of remembering where everything goes, like suffixes in Latin or sigils in universe-altering magic. Physical Sciences isn’t much of a problem either. Physical Education, on the other hand…

You glance at Caitlyn Smart, who is trying – and failing – to be supportive. You are focusing. You are trying with every fibre of every muscle in your body. But for some reason the stupid, scrawny muscles aren’t paying attention. You’re standing amid 40 other freshmen, all yelling, whooping, and sometimes just gathering into a group and kicking the crud out of each other. The assistant coaches are lost in this world of uncontrollable chaos, where the strong survive and the weak perish. You’re reminded of Helen’s Lord of the Flies homework.

You throw the ball. It sails in a beautiful arc a good three foot to the right of the hoop. You hang your head down, hair forming a curtain to your embarrassment, and grunt.

“At least it was closer this time,” Caitlyn offers. You just wobble in place.

“Sports are so stupid,” you mutter.

***

“I fucking love being you.” Will Prescott bounces around your mom’s workshop, practically shaking with excitement. “It’s amazing. I went out of school for lunch! Then I got talking to Yumi, which was so much fun because she’s super nice, then hung out with Keith. The ear thing, like, whatever, you’re going to have to take a social hit there. But it doesn’t matter because your life is THE BEST. There’s some stuff I don’t like. I mean, when did you last change your bedsheet? Oh, that’s right, too long ago. But I want to be Will Prescott forever, once I remember to do my laundry.”

You fold your arms and give the Shelly-infused Will your best Will-infused Shelly stare. “Shelly, this is not permanent. One day, remember? I don’t want to be you all my life.”

“And you don’t have to be! That’s the best part!” Will walks over to you. He’s got a backpack on, so presumably the book is inside. “I’ve worked out what the next spell does. I still haven’t had time to complete the translation fully, all the details of what we’ve got to do, but I’m pretty sure it creates –and this is SO COOL – a golem. So, like, a golem is…”

Your persona’s mind screeches in excitement. Your folded arms grow tighter. “I’m currently you, Shelly, so I know what a golem is.”

“Oh, right, yeah, of course. Well, that’s what the spell is for! We can make a golem, and then if you stick a mask on it, I think it’ll become a clone of whoever. So, so, so… you can stop being me and let the golem handle it! Just let’s stay like this until we’ve done the next spell. Please. Pleeeasse?”

You narrow your eyes. “Shelly. I want to go back to being me.”

Will narrows his in turn. “Well, I’m the leader of the coven, and I say I should be Will Prescott.”

“And I AM freakin’ Will Prescott!”

“But you could be anyone. You enjoyed being Coach Acuna a little too much. I know you did. You loved just living her life. You wanted to do it permanently. With a Will Prescott and a Shelly Nolan in the world, you could go undetected as a whole new you. This is your chance at a clean slate. We could create a better Random Body Generator. You could be the hottest guy in the world, or a beautiful woman. You could be old or young, fit or lean. You decide! And if you get bored of looking that way, you could make another RBG and step into another life. You’d love it. I know how much you’d love it.”

It’s a tempting offer. If you can last a few days as Shelly Nolan, long enough to get this supposed golem to work, then you have a lifetime of possibilities open to you. On the other hand, it would be nice to get your own life back. Shelly said previously she wanted to cosplay as someone for a day. You didn’t expect it to be you, but by your reckoning her 24 hours is up.

Next: "Window Shopping" 

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