The Book of Masks (Vol. 4)

A Switch in Time

Previously: "Everyone Wants You to Be Jessica" 

Holy shit! Marc Garner is asking you to impersonate one of his sisters!

You can hardly believe it. Laurent wanted you to impersonate Jessica in order to prank Marc—now here's Marc asking you to impersonate her in order to help him!

It leaves you feeling a little nauseous. Your every instinct is to turn him down.

But he looks and sounds sincere. His eyes are wide and pleading, and his smile anxious. And though the memories you had while impersonating him have faded, you do recollect, beneath his brotherly bluster, the sense that the opinion of his sisters is very important to him.

"Yeah, okay," you mutter, and you feel like you've stepped over a cliff as you say the words. "I'll do it. If you really want me to."

"Oh, fuck me," Marc gasps, and his expression relaxes with relief. "Thanks. I owe you, man!"

"You owe me a couple of nights is what you owe me," you retort, "and a couple of hundred dollars! What the other guys are supposed to have paid me."

"Sure thing, absolutely." He raises his hand in pledge.

Then he scoots forward. "So, how are you going to do this?" he asks.

* * * * *

You intercept Laurent in the parking lot after school, to remind him to bring you the book and mask supplies tomorrow. But later that night, as you're surveying your garage as a possible work space, you change your mind. You're already in deep shit with your dad, and he nearly came unglued when he caught you making that first mask up in your room. So you text Laurent: Keep the book fr now. Need u to make me a mask and metal band thingie, give thm to Marc Garner assap.

Laurent replies: ???

Specal side deal w marc, you explain.

Ok, he texts back. Then: U bringign in marc and jessca thingd u made? *things

Part of deal w marc, you reply, givng thm straigt to him.

* * * * *

And that's what you do the next morning, presenting Marc with a plastic sack containing not only the stuff for a "Marc Garner" disguise but for a "Jessica Garner" disguise as well, and you urge him to check out Jessica's memories directly to find out why she and Eva are pissed off at him. But he recoils in horror. "I told you, I don't want to get in my sister's head! Besides," he adds, "I'm paying you to fix things for me." But you continue to press Jessica's things on him, telling him to try getting them onto her again to see if they will refresh and update with new memories. He reluctantly agrees.

So it's Wednesday before things are ready to go. Marc is loitering with Laurent outside Walberg's classroom when you arrive, and you can feel Delacroix's eyes on your back as Marc leads you outside. His backpack is bulging to bursting when he squats to unzip it. "You want to do the thing today?" he asks as he extracts a fat plastic bag like the one you gave him yesterday.

"Sure, if you can set it up."

"I'll get Yumi or one of them to take Jessica off after school, go shopping or something," he says. "Then if you can get changed while you're up here at the school, you can ride home with Eva, talk to her. Go get coffee with her, do some girl shit like that."

"And you'll cover for me at home?"

"Like we said. I already told them I'd be going off after school with Brownie. Just get your gear to me. And I'll put my gear in my bottom dresser drawer at home, for when you're done with Eva, and are ready to be done being Jessica." He shrugs. "Then you can be me, cover for me at my house."

He squints off toward the athletic fields, then gives you a sharp look.

"You know," he says, "Laurent really wanted to know what I wanted that stuff for, the stuff you asked him to make and give to me. You know how you told him you were giving Jessica's gear back to me? Well, I think he thinks I wanted the new stuff so's I could copy Eva, too." He shudders.

It must suck, you think, to have two such sexy sisters, and to be turned off by them. But aloud, you only ask, "So when do you want to meet to make the switch?"

* * * * *

Marc can't afford to miss any of his classes, so you don't use the blank mask and memory strip to copy yourself until your seventh period study hall (when you slip into a boys' restroom to do it in a locked toilet stall), and it's not until the start of eighth period that you slip them to Marc along with an extra set of clothes that you came prepared with. "Things set up at your end?" you ask him.

He nods. "Whole squad of 'em are taking Jessica into town. I told them to leave Eva out of it because I wanted to talk to her."

"What happens when Eva and Jessica compare notes afterward?" you ask. "You know, when Eva thinks that Jessica was with her but Jessica comes home with a bunch of new clothes?"

Marc grins. "Why do you give a shit? I don't. That'll be their problem if they wind up arguing about it."

So that takes care of that, apparently. You skip your own eighth period class and trudge out into the student parking lot. Inside your truck you strip down to your boxer shorts before unpacking the things you got from Marc: a mask, a metal strip, and a pile of clothes. The metal strip has a name in blue letters floating over its surface: JESSICA AMELIE GARNER. Amelie? you briefly wonder.

You give the parking lot another nervous glance around, then lock the truck doors and wedge yourself in the passenger-side foot well. Your keys and wallet you place in the driver's seat, for Marc to find when he comes out to your truck after class to change into you. Then you close your eyes, and press the metal band to your forehead.

* * * * *

Eva gives a start when she comes around the back of the SUV to find you leaning with folded arms against driver's-side door. "I thought you were getting a ride from Jenny," she bluntly informs you.

"Change of plans," you reply. "I decided I wanted to spend the afternoon with you."

Eva looks slightly disconcerted but says nothing, and the SUV squawks as she unlocks it with her key fob. Please don't ask me why I changed my clothes, you pray as you go around to the passenger side. Please don't ask me why I changed my clothes!

"Why'd you change your clothes?" she asks after you're inside the cabin.

Stupid Marc, you cuss to yourself. You cringed after you woke up with Jessica inside your head, and saw what he had packed for you. Bra, panties, and sneakers, yes. Also some tiny short-shorts and an XXXL Keyserling University football jersey that drapes halfway down your bare thighs. You look like you're wearing a burgundy-colored sack, some sneakers, and nothing else. "I wanted to be more comfortable," you tell Eva.

"Huh. So how come—?"

"Look, can we not talk about how I'm dressed? I didn't ditch Jenny and them so I could hang out and let my own sister could slut-shame me!"

Eva gives you a look.

"Okay," she says as she turns the motor over. "So why did you ditch Jenny and them?"

"Where's Marc?" you reply.

She makes a face. "Weren't you paying attention this morning? He's off with Brownie and his friends."

"Well, that's how come I ditched Jenny and them. I mean, how freaking often do you and me get some alone time without our dear brother along?"

The fact is, Jessica and Eva do manage to get a lot of sister-time with each other. After all, they share a bedroom.

So Eva looks skeptical. "Alright," she says, and visibly tenses. "So what's this about?"

You don't reply right away, but only watch as Marc—who, with the strange double-vision that those memory strips give you, appears both as a classmate you barely know and as a brother you grew up with—trots over toward your truck. He catches sight of you as Eva pulls out of the parking space. You raise a hand, and waggle a single-finger wave at him. He grins, and chucks his chin back at you.

Eva needs to figure out her own shit. That's what Jessica's instincts were telling her last night when Marc got the memory strip back onto her and successfully refreshed it with more recent memories. {So maybe it's a bad idea to keep poking at Eva over a topic that's got her back up. She's had it up past her eyebrows with her siblings saying or implying that Jeremy Richards is all wrong for her.

But while Jessica's instincts tell you to back off, you see a chance to further pry Eva away from a guy you still resent and dislike.

Next: "Jessica Explains It All" 

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"Table of Contents (Vol. 4)" 
"The Book of Masks (Vol. 4)"