The Book of Masks (Vol. 1)

Payday!

Previously: "Intruders at the Old State Theater" 

by Seuzz

"No way we can show her this stuff," you mutter to yourself.

"Whazzat?" Caleb says.

"Huh? Did I say that out loud? Never mind." You sink deeper into the passenger-side seat.

It's just as well Caleb didn't hear. It was a really stupid thought. Show the book and the masks to Alex Day? Good luck convincing her to take it seriously! And if you did? Fuck, she'd just steal it from you. Even now, with her brain buzzing inside yours, you itch with the temptation to screw Caleb by seizing the book and running away with it.

And yet ... there would be advantages to having Alex Day as a partner. Neither you nor Caleb have a lot of money, and Alex is rolling in more of it than—

You lunge forward in your seat and punch the truck console."The fuck, Will?" Caleb gasps.

"The fuck you say!" you exclaim. "Oh, Jesus. I am so fucking stupid! My phone! Where the fuck's my phone?" You scramble about for it.

"Calm the fuck down, man!"

"I'll calm the fuck down when I'm dead!" you yell as you pull your phone out. "Oh, Jesus Christ, this so perfect! So abso-fucking-lutely perfect!" Feverishly you scroll and tap at your phone.

"What's your deal?"

"Shut up and keep driving. No, pull over. No! Find us, like— Is there a drive-through around here?" You swivel in your seat. "Find us a place we can camp out for a bit. I don't want to fuck this up. Where's the book? You got a list of the stuff we need for—?"

"Will, I'm gonna slap you in a minute if you don't start calming down!"

"Just find us a place where I can type without messing up," you tell him.

Then, leaning forward, you clamp your tongue between your teeth and very carefully enter Alex Day's email and password into Amazon's home page.

* * * * *

It takes you an hour to fill the virtual shopping cart with everything you need—and a few things that you just want—because Caleb has to take you back to his place in order to consult his notes for the next spell. You even find graveyard dirt for sale through the online seller, though at five bucks an ounce, even your conscience rebels at ordering four hundred pounds of the stuff. Instead, you just throw a box of sandbags into the cart along with several hundred dollars worth of chemicals, powders, metallic dusts, and other ingredients for making masks, brain-copying metal bands, and whatever the thing is you need the cemetery dirt for.

Not until the cart is full does Caleb point out that can't very well buy hundreds of dollars worth of shit on Alex Day's credit card—whose information is so conveniently stored in her Amazon account—and have it delivered to your own doors. But you've already thought past that point, and from Caleb's phone you shoot a text to a girl named Roxanne Hurley: Hi roxanne its me alex I'm havng to use ths guys phne to txt bec my parnts r bing stupid. Txt me back here k?

"Who's Roxanne Hurley?" Caleb asks.

"Old friend of Alex's," you tell him. Your brain feels like it's burning up with a fever as you think through what has to come next. "They went to Xavier's together for a couple of years, before Alex got kicked out and had to move over to Eastman. Roxanne still goes there, but her and Alex are both locals."

You're interrupted by a reply from Roxanne, and you spend the next few minutes texting her and using your knowledge of Alex to establish your identity with her, while keeping Caleb informed with a running commentary.

"I'm gonna have the stuff shipped out to Roxanne," you tell him, "if she'll take it. I'll tell her it's stuff that my—Alex's—folks can't know she's getting. Roxanne's used to covering for Alex, though I guess they—" You break off to tap in a long string of lols at a story Roxanne tells about Mary Occam back at St. Xavier's. "Though I guess she has to do less covering since Alex changed schools."

"That's great," Caleb says without enthusiasm. "But how are we gonna get the stuff from this Roxanne girl?"

"Don't be a dumbass. We'll set it up so that we go pick it up from her on Alex's behalf."

"And what if Roxanne tells Alex about all this?"

"Chill, dude. I'm covering it now." You tap furiously for a spell, then show Caleb the resulting text. "See? Alex and Roxanne don't text that much anymore anyway. Now Roxanne will just text you when she wants to pass a message on to Alex about this shit. Because I've told her that Alex's parents—"

"Yeah, I can read faster than you can talk, Will. It's still a risk."

"Trust the Guru," you tell him, and don't explain the reference.

* * * * *

But Caleb eventually capitulates, and everything else clicks into place. Roxanne accepts the pretense that you are her friend Alex, and she agrees to accept receipt of a large number of Amazon shipments on your behalf. Amazon itself accepts the order. You spend a solid minute whooping about the room and high-fiving Caleb. He's more muted than you, which you put down to jealousy at your having the brilliant idea instead of him.

You resume your regular life the next day, though life at Westside feels cramped and dull after the excitement past and the excitement to come. You're not even that moved when Jenny, at lunch, tells you that Yumi Saito and Lin Pol—two cheerleaders who are friends of hers—can tell you all that you need to know about Eastman and the kids out there. Yumi has a cousin who goes to Eastman, she says, and as for Lin—

"Lin's personal goal is to blow the entire the whole Eastman basketball squad by Thanksgiving," Carson Ioeger interrupts to tell. "Then she's going to suck off the football and soccer squads."

Jenny punches him. But she doesn't exactly deny the spin he put on it, either, when she admits that Lin is "real friendly" with most of the Eastman basketball players and has dated a couple of them very casually.

That's the highlight of the week at school. Outside of school, Caleb starts work at Salopek and isn't available to hang out until after supper most days. You and he visit the State Theater a few more times, to put a padlock on the door and to explore the interior with more powerful flashlights. It stinks worse the deeper you push into it, and the building proves mostly to be a shell. The auditorium has been stripped of all its seats, and the glass cases in the concession area are smashed and broken. Only the restrooms still contain original furnishings—toilets and urinals—and the stench is so ripe that you have to wonder if the homeless community hasn't been using them. In fact, it's so ripe that Caleb wonders aloud if there isn't a dead body wedged inside one of the stalls. But there's plenty of room to work, and when the LED lanterns that you ordered arrive, you'll be able to conduct your researches deep in the bowels of the building.

In the meantime, you and Caleb also carry out some careful experiments with the few items that you've made. You discover, by playing with the brain-band that Caleb made of you, that you can "update" it with more recent memories by putting it back on, and that in doing so you will come to "remember" the things that Caleb did when he was pretending to be you. This is very convenient, as it means that you now know everything that he did at school as you, and if he ever plays you at school again he will know everything that you did in the intervening period.

You also make a "complete disguise" of yourself by gluing that metal strip into your mask, and pack it away with a spare set of clothes. You're slightly reluctant to do this, and even more reluctant to leave it with Caleb, but he promises not to use it except in some kind of emergency, and insists on having the stuff all together in case there's a sudden need for him to impersonate you. He has no idea why he would ever need to do that, but he seems pretty set on it, so you let him make up that "Instant Will Prescott" kit.

Meanwhile, the stuff you ordered from Amazon starts to trickle in. It's torture to get the daily delivery reports from Roxanne Hurley, who through Caleb keeps you—"Alex"—informed of them. You're all for meeting her and collecting the stuff as it arrives—especially when the last of the mask-making materials comes in—but Caleb firmly insists that you wait until you can scoop it all up in one trip, in order to minimize the chances of fucking up the arrangement with Roxanne. You can hardly stand it, but agree to Caleb's demand.

But at last, late on Saturday night, nearly a week after you placed the order, Roxanne texts to alert you of a delivery that completes your Amazon order. You don Alex's brain-band long enough to reply, telling her that you'll be sending a couple of friends around to collect. When Roxanne replies that she'll have to work on Sunday, you hector her into agreeing to take it to work with her so that her "friends" can collect it from her there.

That night, you can hardly sleep.

* * * * *

Sunday afternoon. "Oh, shit, lookit that," Caleb says as you pull into the parking lot of the Monte Viso Miniature Golf and Go-Kart Track. He points. There's a black-and-white prowler in the livery of the Saratoga Falls Police Department.

"So?" you retort. "Even off-duty cops have to go someplace."

"I just don't like seeing cops where we're supposed to be receiving stolen goods."

"The goods aren't stolen. We paid for them fair and square."

"With stolen money."

"We didn't steal any money." You're in a mood to argue, for you're wearing Alex Day's brain-band again. "We just used the credit card that's— Oh, fuck!" You quickly pull into a parking space and stare back in horror at the green SUV that's parked in a corner. Your fears are realized when you read the license plate.

It belongs to Alex Day's parents.

Next: "Flirting with Success" 

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"Table of Contents (Vol. 1)" 
"The Book of Masks (Vol. 1)"