The Book of Masks (Vol. 2)

The Paranoid Roommate

Previously: "Making Your Mark" 

"Well, have a good walk," you tell Jocelyn. "See you tomorrow." You snap off a curt little salute, and turn on your heel as her face falls.

"Dude," Jacob mutters. "You just threw away, like—" He breaks off.

"I threw away what?"

"JM was practically going down on you back there!"

"I'm not that desperate," you retort. Well, not yet, anyway.

* * * * *

You take that drink with Jacob, and the Scotch is truly excellent, like liquid amber, but you don't linger in his room, not after he rolls onto his back and starts explaining, in graphic detail, what he would do with Abigail Steiner—or Jocelyn "JM" Moss, for that matter—if he ever got naked with her. It gets real disgusting real fast, particularly as he makes copious references to his own penis. You soon flee with the excuse that you're obviously keeping him from a date with one of his socks.

But once back in your own room—the one that you now share with Chris Fiore—you decide that, pervy friends and close confinement with other seventeen-year-olds notwithstanding, the life of Mark Pederson is pretty sweet. With the room to yourself, you kick back on Mark's bed with Mark's handheld console—a top-of-the-line QAIYXM whose price tag would give your dad a heart attack—and zone out with a selection that includes every game you’ve ever drooled over, and a couple of dozen more, besides. Sure, you have to use Mark's saves, which disgusts you a little, and you have to rely on Mark's own muscle memory as you expertly flick and tap buttons, but you fly through the games, breaking off only now and then to answer chats on your cell phone and to open up the fresh bag of Doritos Mark had hidden in his foot locker.

It's nearing ten when the door opens and Fiore comes in, returning from whatever fuckoff-ery he was busy with.

Fuckoff-ery. That's Mark's own reaction, and you stare up sullenly at your roommate for a long few seconds before, like a slow awakening from a strange dream, you dredge your own identity from the clinging depths of Mark's.

Chris only gives you the barest of nods as he falls onto his own bed. He's got his headphones on—the guy is an audiophile with a hard-on for gear—and something synthy and repetitive is slipping out from the cans. Bluish bags hang under his eyes, and his sandy, shaggy hair looks like he's been combing it with a pencil.

"You alright?" you ask. "No offense, but you look like shit."

"Since when are you the fashion police?" He makes a face, then stifles a yawn. "Just a long day."

And a long night last night, the peevish thought comes to you. You woke me up at three in the morning when you came stumbling back in.

"Shouldn’t party on a school night," you say aloud, and toss the console aside. You fish out your cell and open up Messenger again. You're up to seven simultaneous chats. Mark’s social network is really something to behold, and it makes you realize just how lazy you were back at Westside. With a little attention, a little focus, and a little effort, you could have been in any group you wanted.

Chris shrugs. "Yeah, well. Mind if we go lights-out early? I just want to hit the sack."

"Sure. I might watch YouTube for a bit, but I’ll use my Beats." You tap furiously at the phone with your thumbs. You sense rather than see it when Chris sits up to give you a hard stare.

"Who you chatting with?" he asks. There's an edge in his voice. "I said, who are you chatting with?" he repeats.

"What’s it to you?"

"Just tell me."

"What?" You glance up. Chris has never bugged Mark before about his texts or chats. "I'm not sexting your girlfriend, if that's what you're worried about."

Chris's expression hardens. "Just show me, okay?"

"No!"

The moment hangs. Then with teeth bared Chris leaps across the space between your beds, clawing for the phone. You snarl and slap back at him, but he's quickly atop you, pinning you to the bed, grabbing for your hands. He catches you by the wrist and squeezes until your grip loosens, and he wrenches the cell from your fingers.

"The hell is your problem, Fiore?" you yell as he scrambles back to his feet. "It's none of your goddamn business who I talk to!"

He ignores you and bends his head over your phone, scrolling through the messages and windows. You make a sour face at his back as he studies the conversation between you and Mark Pederson's mother, about what to get his sister for Christmas.

Chris snorts when he's satisfied, and tosses the cell back to you. "Sorry," he mutters.

"The hell was that about?"

"I’m sorry, all right? It’s been a fucking weird couple of days. I’m gonna grab a shower." Head hanging, he turns to the door.

"Jerk," you mutter as he goes out. You flick over to another chat window. Fiore jst grbbed my phone away, wtf!!!! you text Tyler. Sm1 tell hm I was with Abi? Paranoid much?!?

Ur rm m8 is a ducking asshole, Tyler texts back. Duck Fiore.

Amen to that, you think. Duck Fiore indeed.

And to duck him good and hard, all you need is to find the your book of magical masks.

* * * * *

The sun is shooting straight into your face when you wake the next morning. You lift your head to grimace at it, then stretch, yawn, scratch your ass, rearrange your junk, and shift under the covers. It’s Sunday. You’ve got time before church to have a little fun, you think as you let your eyes fall shut again. You grope under the sheets for your jerk-off sock. Who to fantasize about this morning? Chelsea Cooper? Cindy Vredenburg? That new soccer player everyone was talking about at the start of the year, the one who moved over from—

You frown. Where's your sock? Your eyes pop open with panic. Your mom didn't find it, did she?

You jerk upright and blink numbly at a room that's like something out of a dream—familiar, yet unfamiliar. The walls are peach and tan, the window frame is in the wrong wall, there's a long desk with two laptops and a small, flat-screen TV ...

You groan and fall back onto your pillow. I'm not Will Prescott, you remind yourself. I'm Mark Pederson. This is the first time you’ve woken up as a guy, and it’s far more disorienting; at least when you were a girl you realized almost immediately that you weren't yourself.

Chris is still sleeping, a little drool trickling from the side of his mouth, as you get up. In the communal shower, the water bangs and thumps inside the ancient pipes, but it's scalding hot and shoots out like a firehouse, scorching your skin and unknotting your muscles. Afterward, with only a towel about you, you contemplate your stolen body in a mirror. Mark's face is remarkably similar to your own—dark, narrow eyes between bangs of dirty blonde hair and regular, even features—but his face is squarer and more filled out. He keeps himself close-shaved, too. His hair is much more neatly trimmed, and it lays flat, in feathery layers, with only a little light combing. He's more filled out in the torso, too, with pecs that actually have some slight mass and definition, and when you flex an arm, a bicep visibly pops up.

It depresses you. If Mark Pederson is "Will Prescott 2.0," he is a (modest) upgrade from the original. Again, it strikes you how lazy you are in comparison to him.

* * * * *

You and Fiore are up and dressed—in chinos and polo shirts, for it's Sunday—when there's a sharp rap on the door. "Room sweep," a hard voice barks on the other side. "Open up!"

You gape at Fiore, who calmly opens the door. Todd Baldwin—Chris's friend, the meaty football player who wanted to beat the crap out of you after your unmasking—barges in. "Foot lockers open!" he says. "You hear me, Pederson?" he snaps when you don't move.

"Fuck this, you're not my prefect!"

"We're coordinating with Adams, they're conducting a sweep too. I'm covering this side of the hall. Open it!"

With a grumble you open Mark's locker as Baldwin searches your bed, feeling under the pillows and mattresses and between the sheets. You stand aside with folded arms as he kneels to search your locker. He pokes under books and clothes and devices; and he freezes after pulling out a small paper box. "What are these for?" he asks as he waggles the box of condoms at you.

Your face falls. "Those aren't mine!" you blurt out.

"I'd shit myself if you said they were. You holding onto them for a friend?"

You shoot a hot glare over at Fiore, who turns to look out the window.

"If they're not yours, you won't miss 'em," Baldwin says, and stuffs them into his pack. He makes a note on his cell, then brushes you aside to search the computer desk.

He's much more cursory with Fiore's side of the room, and when he skips Chris's bed you call him out on it. He makes a face, but tackles it with same zest as he attacked your bed. And when he lifts Chris's pillow, he freezes just as he had when invading your locker. But this time he says nothing, but only replaces the pillow.

He does call Chris out into the hall with him, and you take advantage to hop over to see what Chris was hiding. You freeze too, when you see it.

It's a mask. You turn it over. Abi's name floats inside, over a surface coated with a grayish paint.

It's the mask of Abi that I was wearing, you realize. And it would make a golem if someone put it on.

The hairs go up on your back. You only have to get this mask onto Abi, and she would be your slave again.

Next: "A Mask, a Moon, and a Monobrow" 

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