The Book of Masks (Vol. 2)

Making Your Mark

Previously: "Becoming Will Prescott 2.0" 

by Masktrix

(With Seuzz)

"You can ask Kristen yourself, if you want." You gesture to your golem, who shrugs and walks over to the table, ready to be tied up again.

"In a bit," Abi says. "First, let’s get Mark here under the Shelly mask. Is it coated in paste? No matter, I’ve got some here, I’ll take care of it. You just need to get out of here."

"What? Why?"

"Because," Abi explains with the slightest of sighs, "I don’t want Kristen seeing Mark Pederson. That way, if something goes wrong she can’t tell the others who you’re disguised as."

It's a good point. So you leave her to work, and kill time in the alley behind the cathedral by fishing Mark’s cell from your jacket pocket. You cuss softly when you see the number of contacts and volume of texts you'll have to keep up with in your new identity. Yeah, there's another difference between us, you reflect as Mark's own familiarity with his social network floods up around you, like a severe case of deja vu. He's got a much bigger circle of friends and acquaintances—practically the whole sixth form at the school. You tug your new-to-you bomber jacket about you as you settle more comfortably within your new memories.

got abi steinre riding my ass, you text Mark's best friend, Jacob Drewlin-Frye, but not n teh sexy way.

A quarter of an hour later, your thumbs are still flying expertly across the screen when Abi steps out with Will and Shelly. "C’mon, Mark," she says. "We need to get back."

"We done here?" You look up in surprise. In that moment, you are Mark Pederson, and you are stunned to hear that Abi has finished up her errand.

"Yes," she says. "Trust me, the book is gone. I know how to talk to Kristen, and it is not where she put it. So I guess that’s your priority – find who took it and where they put it. I’ll help, but I'll have to keep an eye on Vee and the others too."

"So how the flip am I supposed to find it?" you protest, having recovered yourself from Mark's preoccupations. "Anyone could have taken it!"

"Will." Abi comes up close, and tiptoes her fingers up your chest. "I’m coming to you with solutions, and you're coming back at me with problems. Use what Mark knows, and get the fucking book back. Hmm?" She tugs at your collar, and kisses you softly. "You’ll figure it out."

Your spirits rise, and other parts of you rise with them. And if you're not exactly full of confidence as you drive back to the school, you are keen to show Abi that you can do the job she's set you.

***

It's dark when you get back, and you agree to split up until Sunday afternoon, as there's no way Mark and Abi would casually hang out. Dinner's already being served when you enter Founder's Hall, the converted mansion where the sixth-formers live and work, but Abi goes upstairs while you head into the dining hall. The cavernous room hums with conversation as you pick up some chicken cordon bleu. You glance around, licking off some of the sauce that's spilled onto your thumb, looking for a table to land at. Jacob signals you from one, and with a nod you saunter over with your tray.

"Should take that off," sniffs the pretty blonde girl you settle in beside. "Manners maketh the man."

"Sorry, Emily," you mutter as you peel off the bomber jacket. You wad it up into a cushion and sit on it. "Just got back from the Falls."

"Right, what's the Bitch Queen scheming now? I saw her dragging you off."

You exchange a pained, private smile with Jacob. Like Mark, he nurses an intense hard-on for Abigail Steiner.

"No scheme," you tell Emily Dustal as you salt your chicken. "Charity stuff. The cathedral's got this table tennis league they’re setting up for disadvantaged kids." Well, it was the story Abi gave Mark.

"Disadvantaged!" Her voice bubbles with mirth. "Is that what they're calling the townies these days?" she cackles. "Disadvantaged?"

"When did Steiner go into town?" That's from Tyler van Buren, a strapping soccer player seated next to Jacob. His brow furrows. "I was watching her go in and out of the library all afternoon."

"Was her boyfriend with her?" Emily asks. "I bet they do it in the stacks. No one uses the library on Saturdays."

"Fuck," Tyler mutters as, under the table, Jacob presses his foot against yours. "I'd push a bookshelf over on 'em if I caught 'em at it." He pushes whitish-blonde bangs from his eyes and rolls his shoulders inside his jacket. "Fucking Fiore."

You grimace and bite your tongue as Jacob continues to silently tap his foot against yours. The anguish in his face is easy to interpret. Chris Fiore banging Abigail Steiner? Mark has told Jacob about catching them doing it — twice! — and it's pretty plain Emily's peevish gibe is giving him a painful chubby.

"What were you doing in the library?" you ask Tyler. "I didn't know you could read."

"Fuck you. My Spider-sense tells me we're overdue for a biology quiz, and I got a half-hour oral presentation on Monday."

"Doesn't sound like you got much done, if you spent all your time watching Abi."

Tyler lays his fork down and plants his elbows on the table.

"Listen, Pederson," he says. "You were with her all afternoon, weren't you? In town? And what were you doing with her? Was Fiore there to get between you and her?"

You almost swallow your tongue as you remember some of the fantasies Mark entertained on the drive out to Saratoga Falls. That perfume of spices and cream that drifts off Abi was driving him wild.

"Oh, shut up," Emily mutters. "I'm sorry I mentioned the whole thing. Last thing I want is to listen to you pervs perv all over Abigail Steiner."

"Sure, what the hell, it wasn't just Abi keeping me distracted." Tyler grins at her. "I could tell you about Mary and Corinne, and Margot Corrigan, and ... um ..."

Emily makes some waspish reply, and then Jacob says something, and then the topic shifts to Mathilde Ambard and the oral presentation that Tyler has to make with her on Monday. But you're not paying attention, concentrating instead on your dinner and on the implications of some of the things that Tyler has said.

Like: Kristen hid the book inside the school library, but now it isn't where she claims to have put it, which means that someone had to have moved it. But who? And why?

Okay, never mind why, you won't figure that out until you know who, and Tyler has given you a couple of suspects.

Mary would be Mary Occam, a snooty little bitch from East Coast who makes up in ego what she lacks in stature. Corinne would be Corinne Kennedy, who trails after Mary the way a lap dog trails after her mistress. Margot Corrigan, who is a fifth-former, would be "Margot the Teenage Witch," whose presence, even in her school uniform, manages to make every chapel meeting feel like the prelude to a Black Mass. Just the sort, you think, to grab a book with a pentagram stamped on the spine.

Except that Kristen said she hid the book inside the dust-jacket of another book. So there wouldn't be a pentagram to attract anyone's attention.

"Hey, where you hanging out now?" Jacob mutters as Tyler and Emily take their trays over to the busing station. "My room? I think Rob went into town to see a movie, and I got our stash back from Addison."

You feel your eyebrows go up. Jacob keeps some really nice Scotch on hand. Real stuff, old stuff, expensive stuff; stuff he is frantic to keep out of sight of his prefects, who like to launch surprise room sweeps, and who made a big one just today. You salivate at the thought of a glass of something jeweled and smoky and warm.

"Yeah, sure, if you're pouring," you tell him. A few minutes later you're mounting the broad, carpeted stairs to the second floor, where the sixth-formers have their rooms.

***

But you've just stepped into the main corridor when you turn at a shout from below. Jocelyn Moss comes sprinting up the stairs after you, clutching your bomber jacket, and with a panting grin she thrusts it at you. "Forget something, Mark?" she gasps.

Holy shit, you realize. That jacket's worth more than everything I own back home, but Mark would think nothing of leaving it behind somewhere! "Thanks, JM," you tell her as you take it, using her preferred name.

"Anytime." There's a desperate glint behind her rigid grin. "So what are you up to now?"

You glance back at Jacob. "Just hanging out," you reply. "Killing a Saturday night."

"Well—" JM gulps down a deep draught of air. Can she really be that out of breath? "I was gonna go out for a walk. I love these cold autumn nights, you know? And you got your jacket with you." Her eyebrows lift.

Yeah, so? you want to ask.

Then it hits you. Or rather, you realize that she is hitting on you.

The signs are unmistakable because — God damn it, that's another difference between you — Mark knows how to read a girl. She's running her tongue over her lower lip, and fiddling with a long strand of her red hair while twisting from foot to foot.

Yeah, she's pretty goddamn obvious about it. But you had to swap places with Mark Pederson before you could reliably pick up on her cues.

The trouble is that Mark doesn't even like Jocelyn. She's boring and shallow and not even very pretty. Even now, you feel yourself trying to edge away.

But she's got a crush on the guy you're pretending to be, and when would a chance like this come along again?

Also, she's tight with Mary Occam, one of your suspects.

Next: "The Paranoid Roommate" 

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