The Book of Masks (Vol. 3)

A Matter of the Mind

Previously: "A Magician and His Money Woes" 

If you're going to impersonate Coach Schell, you're going to need something to wear. So after dinner, while helping your mother clean up the kitchen, you broach the subject: "Mom, do you have any old gym clothes?"

She looks back at you in surprise. "Somewhere," she says after a moment's thought. "Maybe. You mean like gym shorts or sweat pants?"

"Anything for P. E."

"I think so. I haven't worn them in forever. Why?"

"For a girl at school."

Her eyebrows go up.

"Yeah," you continue, warming to the improvisation. "She needs some gym clothes, and I thought maybe I could help her out."

There's no mistaking the light of pitying amusement that shows in her eyes. "Can't she buy her own? Or if you want to help her out, you should just lend her some money."

"I haven't got any to lend. And she just needs them temporarily. Or maybe not. I'm not sure." Mention of money has given you another idea. "She just needs some, and I want to help her out."

"Well, I don't think giving her my old gym clothes is the way to do it," your mom says, and she seems to be picking her words very carefully. "She can't buy her own?"

"Money's really tight."

"She could go to Goodwill."

"Doesn't that cost money?"

Your mother cocks her head and regards you gravely. "I can lend you the money," she says gravely, "and you can lend it to her. Lend it," she emphasizes. "Not give. Even if you don't want to ask her to pay it back, call it a loan."

"But you'd lend me the money?"

She sighs. "Yes. Let me just finish up in here."

"You're not going to tell Dad, are you?"

She returns you a tight smile. "I don't think he'd care, but I won't."

And later that night she gives you three twenties.

* * * * *

After your mother's loan of money, you rethink your tactics. She doesn't expect you to ask that mythical girl for her money back; so you're pretty sure she's not going to ask you for it back. Or, if she does, she'll wait until after your birthday or Christmas, when you'll get some cash. You don't often ask her for money, and now you wonder why don't try it more often.

After school you hunt very carefully around town for supplies for the next spell, and by bargain hunting and buying a smaller (but still sufficient) quantities than you thought you'd have to shell out for, you are able to get them.

To your relief, the new spell doesn't ask for anything to be set on fire. You just have to make a kind of metal-sheet sandwich with some pocket mirrors and sheets of copper and zinc, then carve some runes. The result is a flexible, silvery strip of metal onto which you must carve a second set of runes. You make three more while you're at it.

It takes longer than you would like, for you have to cut and scratch deeply into the resistant material. After an hour, you lay the strip aside to do homework before returning to the task. It's nearing on one o'clock in the morning before you sit up and stretch, pop the crick from your neck, and examine the results.

Not that there's much to see. The metal strip gleams brightly and the runes, which look like hen scratches, have a bluish tinge to them. On consulting the directions you find that there's nothing else to do, so you lay the completed strip onto the grimoire, count to three, then pull at the corner of the page.

It turns easily.

On the other side is a single line of Latin. To know the mind of another, it translates as. You blink at it.

Then you go into the bathroom, where you brush your teeth and prepare for bed. Once between the sheets, you stare up at the dark ceiling.

It makes sense. That would be the next step in making a disguise. Copy the body; copy the mind.

That was the big worry in the back of your mind about using the mask of Coach Schell. You know nothing about her. Sure, you could use a mask to look like her, and with some money you could even dress up convincingly as her. But you didn't know anything about her, so you wouldn't be able to act like her, and that would make it very tricky to use the disguise to any advantage.

But if this metal strip copies her brain the way the mask copies her body—and that seems like the only way to understand that very simple sentence—then you would be able to rectify that omission.

There are no instructions on how to use the band, but the answer seems obvious enough: Get it onto her the way you got the mask onto her. Through the face—probably the forehead—again.

That could be tricky.

And would you be able to use that metal band and the mask at the same time, to make a perfect disguise? Or could you use only one at a time? Maybe the spell that comes next—which you haven't looked at—will answer the question.

You put on the light and get out the grimoire. As you'd expected, the next spell gives no hint of what it will do, but it only uses ingredients you already have on hand, so you'll be able to execute it tomorrow.

You go back to bed, and fall asleep to wondering fantasies about what it would be like to be someone else on the inside and the outside.

* * * * *

"Do any of you know Coach Schell?" you ask at lunch the next day.

"Who's Coach Schell?" asks James Lamont, for you talked Caleb and Keith into eating out front with him and his friends, just so you could ask this question. "What does he teach?"

"She," says Yumi Saito, who has decided to join the group today. "And she's a coach, so she teaches P. E. Dur."

"P. E.," says Carson Ioeger with a snort. "I was done with P. E. in middle school."

"How'd you manage that?" you ask in surprise. "It's a freshman requirement."

"Oh, I took the requirement, Prescott," he honks back at you. "But I was done with it long before then."

"Why are you asking about Coach Schell?" Jenny Ashton asks.

"Just curious. I don't remember seeing her around when we were freshmen. Is she new?"

"I think she got hired a year or two back," Yumi says. "But yeah, she's pretty new." She makes a face as she sucks down some more yogurt. "Still got ideals."

"What do you mean?" asks Paul, at the same time that you ask, "She teaches volleyball, right?"

"Coaches it," says Yumi. "Yeah. I wish she had charge of the cheerleading squad. She'd put a stop to Chelsea's shit, I'm sure." Yumi is a cheerleader, and the many crimes of Chelsea Cooper, squad captain, are a constant topic of conversation with her.

"What's the fascination?" Carson asks you. He grins. "Is she cute?"

"Yeah," you blurt out before you can stop yourself. Snickers run around the circle, and you turn red. "So I noticed one of the gym teachers is hot!" you exclaim. "So what? I hear you get a chubby in Gelding's class!"

If you were hoping to get a rise from Carson, you're disappointed. He smiles very serenely and replies, "Sure I do. Chemistry's a sexy subject." Well, science nerd that he is, he would think that. Seriously.

Keith jumps in at that point to start talking about the teachers that he thinks are hot, and the conversation wanders further off-point from there. But as you're cleaning up and getting ready to go inside, you ask Yumi, in a low voice, what all she knows about Coach Schell.

"Nothing really," she says. "I've heard good things about her. Kristina Townes has her next period. This period," she corrects herself as the bell for sixth period sounds.

* * * * *

You brought that metal band with you to school, but you hold off on doing anything with it and instead race straight home after school. You assemble the ingredients for the next spell and, holding your breath against a possible stink, which fortuitously doesn't come, set it afire in a bowl over the sigil. The result is another thin fluid that—so says the reverse of the page after you've turned it—can be used to glue a metal band into the inner surface of a mask. It says nothing about whether either of them have to blank, or whether they have to be from the same person.

You sit back and ponder it a bit. So, you would be able to put a brain and a body together. It sounds like they wouldn't even have to be the brain and body of the same person, though what advantage there would be in mixing and matching you're not sure.

You study the blank band you've completed, and the mask of Coach Schell. Yes, now you could make a complete disguise of her. If you could get close to her.

That's still the trick, isn't it? Maybe it would better to lay her mask aside and make up a complete disguise of someone else.

Do you need a complete disguise in order to get further into the book? You turn to the newly unlocked spell.

Your heart sinks as you study the ingredients with a browser open to study the prices. The last spell cost you sixty dollars and change. This one will probably cost hundreds.

And there's a further wrinkle: It calls for four hundred pounds of dirt.

Taken from a graveyard.

This is beginning to sound a little like necromancy.

Beyond the icky fact about where it's supposed to come from, you worry about how hard it's going to be digging it up and lugging it around. You're built like a scarecrow, and though you suppose that with time enough and willpower you could move that much dirt, it would be easier if you had a stronger physique.

A physique you could get with a mask?

Next: "Ambushed Again" 

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"Table of Contents (Vol. 3)" 
"The Book of Masks (Vol. 3)"