The Book of Masks (Vol. 3)

It Could Be Magic

Previously: "Semi-Enchanted Evening" 

It's coming up hard on your curfew, but after dropping Katy off you swing by the elementary school to check on the fire. To your delight, the basement is dark, and you have to fumble your way around until you find the flashlight. Is the spell done?

But when you set a lighter to the pile of dirt, purple flames bloom off it again. You grimace with disappointment, and after staring at it for a few minutes, lock up for the night.

* * * * *

"So are you and Katy going out now?" Caleb asks you the next morning in Walberg's class.

"Fuck you. No. I dunno. Are you and Meghan going out now?"

Caleb makes a face but his ears turn red, which tells you that you've scored a hit. "Are you going to have lunch with Katy?" he asks you.

"I dunno. Should I?"

"Ah! So you are going out with her."

"No! I told you, I don't know!" You rub your forehead: this is something you've been worrying about. "I don't know how to handle this!"

"But you are interested in her."

"Sure. I guess." You notice that your leg is jogging up and down like a jack hammer, and you still it. "How should I handle it with her?"

He snorts. "How about you just try doing the opposite of everything you did with Lisa."

Now you make a face at him, then glance over your shoulder at your ex- while discreetly flipping your best friend off.

You could go looking for Katy at the break, but instead you look for Yumi to ask her advice. "Where are you having lunch?" you ask her. "Are you eating with Katy and them? Should I show up?"

Yumi stares at you, then breaks out in a grin. "So you had a good time last night?"

"Yeah!" you pant. "But I dunno what to do next!"

"Okay, look, never mind lunch. Go look for her at her locker, see if she wants to see a movie or something on Friday. If you're really interested in getting to know her better, I mean. Are you?"

You gulp. "Sure. But what about lunch? We really hit off, her and me! Shouldn't—"

"Forget lunch. I'll bring her around to eat with you guys tomorrow, that'll be soon enough. Oh, and Will—" She gives you a pitying look. "Try to cut down on the caffeine between now and then."

* * * * *

But you do wind up eating lunch with Katy. You and Caleb, on your way out to eat next to the Agricultural Annex, bump into her and Stephanie as they come in from there. Stephanie continues on—though with a cheerful smile at you and Caleb; yet another first in your experience—but Katy lights up at the suggestion that she eat with the you. Caleb, after hanging back, announces he's got stuff to talk about with Carson and James, and trudges off; you don't know what's happened to Keith, who is your usual third at lunch.

So it's just you and Katy, taking lunch together on the grass behind the school. There's a little talk at the start, a shy, gushing recapitulation of last night's conversations. Talk about how much fun it was, and how you should all do it more often. About parents and their expectations. About the classes you've had so far and the classes to come. You're feeling desperately short of topics when you remember Yumi's suggestion about asking her out to see a movie. You check show times on your phone and find that a new horror picture will be opening on Friday: Cravenmoor. "That sounds great," Katy says. "I'd love to see it!"

"Do you really like horror movies?"

"Sure!"

"'Cos Stephanie said that you don't, that you—"

"Stephanie can go, uh, suck on an egg," Katy says. She blushes deeply. "I do like them!"

You snap your fingers. "Oh, right, because you and her and all your friends are into voodoo."

"We're not into it!" She blushes harder. "We're just looking for, like, Halloween ideas!"

"To scare this Hannah girl."

"Oh. Right, I told you about that. But that doesn't mean we're into voodoo! It's like putting peanut butter in her hairbrush, something like that. Only creepier." She giggles.

"So what are you going to do to her?"

"We don't know yet, not for sure. Or maybe we are. Stephanie and Anita are in charge of it, they don't tell me much." Her brow crinkles. "Why are you so interested?"

"I'm just interested in what you're doing. Would you hit her with a hex for real? If voodoo was real?" After your experiences with that grimoire, you're no longer sure that it isn't.

"Jeez, I don't know. I don't think we'd want to hurt her."

You don't? How well do you know Stephanie? you want to ask her. Because if this Hannah girl has pissed off Stephanie, then I think hurting is definitely on the table.

And Katy more or less confirms your cynical take when she adds, "If we wanted to hurt her, we wouldn't be using voodoo. You know, Stephanie wanted to get her drunk—Hannah, I mean—and put her with one of the football players." She leans in close. "Hannah is a total slut," she whispers, "if you put as much as a wine cooler in her." She leans back and nods primly and knowingly. "Stephanie wanted to set it up so she'd wind up making out with some jerk, really screw things up between her and Marc. But Anita told her we couldn't go that far."

You fall onto your side and prop your head in your hand. Katy—with her chipmunk cheeks, her dimples, her peaches-and-cream complexion; her shy, twinkling gaze—does not seem like the kind of girl to act on a grudge, and you rather suspect that she's being swept along in a mob-like frenzy by her friends. "Mostly," she says, continuing, "I think everyone would just be happy if Hannah quit the soccer team. Or got forced off it."

"Because she's so bossy?" That's the word Katy had used last night. "But you're on the basketball team, what do you care?"

Katy seems to catch her breath, and her eyes widen.

"Well, it doesn't bother me," she says. "But it bothers Anita and some of the other girls. Because Anita is team captain, and Hannah thinks that she—"

"Oh, it's because you're friends with Anita, that's how come you don't like Hanna?"

"Well, sure." The air seems to be leaking out Katy. "And I mean, it's not that I don't like her. I hardly know her. But Stephanie and Anita—"

You don't want to push her too hard, so you nod and change the subject to talk about Caleb, and just how well he got along with Meghan last night. She's brightens again at that topic, and tells you that Meghan thought Caleb was really funny.

* * * * *

You haven't forgotten about the fire; nor have you forgotten that offhand comment that Stephanie made, about using some kind of mechanical polisher on the masks. When you get home after school, you search the garage and are rewarded with a car buffer, still in its box. After telling your mom that you're going to meet up with Caleb but that you'll be back for supper, you sneak it out to your truck and drive over to the elementary school. You find that the fire has gone out again, but with a flick of the lighter you relight it.

A cursory search discloses a power outlet on the wall near the stairs, and you plug in the buffer. With the base locked between your knees, you crouch on a table and run the mask over the floppy cloth head. It takes longer to polish than you'd like, but much less time than the first mask took: forty-five minutes. You're in a cheerful mood when you return home, so cheerful that you don't even get in a fight with your brother at the dinner table.

You've got thoughts about masks in the back of your mind all evening, even as you try to concentrate on your homework. You now have another mask and brain band combination, and the prospect of being able to make at least four more. You have no idea what plans Stephanie and her friends have for Hannah, but you bet you could use the masks to make trouble for Hannah.

But why would you do that? It isn't your fight. You don't even know who this Hannah girl is. In the second place, even if you did make trouble for her, how would Stephanie and Katy and them know that you're responsible for it? They don't believe in magic, so they wouldn't believe you if you told them you'd put some kind of a hex on Hannah. And in the third place, you're not sure what kind of a thing you could do to Hannah with the masks.

Well, you do have some vague ideas, based on the kind of misadventures you've already had. You used Coach Schell's mask to borrow money off one of her friends: If you disguised yourself as Hannah, you could probably make trouble for Hannah in a similar way. Maybe like Katy said Stephanie wanted to do, by going out and getting drunk as her and making out with a guy.

Or could you use Coach Schell's mask in some way? Maybe barge into one of her classes while disguised at the coach, and yell at her or humiliate her in some way?

Katy said they want Hannah off the squad. What if you got a copy of the soccer coach—not that you know who that is—and used that disguise to somehow scare Hannah off the team?

After noodling around with these ideas, though, you have to return to the fact that this isn't your affair, and there's no reason for it to be. Not unless you made yourself part of their group.

Or you made them part of your ... magic circle?

Next: "How to Scare a Girl for Fun and Profit" 

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