Chapter #30The Girl Next Door by: Masktrix   You accompany the Shelly golem to its house, out on the southern extremes of Acheson, after school. Every moment with the golem is a painful, horrific reminder of the real Shelly’s plight, but you can’t lose focus. You have to get the masks back – then maybe you can fix what happened. Shelly (you don’t know what else to call it) starts gossiping, and takes up all of your willpower just to let it play its role once briefed on the plan.
The shop’s door is repaired and a new lock installed, and you kill 10 minutes with Mrs Nolan on her porch, who talks about getting security lights and maybe app-based CCTV at the weekend. For your part, you tell her that you moved the body sculpt in anticipation of using it this coming Friday, and thank her for letting you work in her garage.
It’s while you’re sitting outside that a car pulls up to the neatly painted house with barnstar next door, and a girl about your age gets out. She has blonde hair in a pixie crop and is wearing the green and gold of Xavier’s. This must be Niamh Stirland. She waves to someone as the car makes a three-point turn and drives off.
“Oh! I need to show Niamh something,” Shelly says, bouncing up off the porch railing. “I’ll be back in a sec!” It runs off, and Mrs Nolan laughs.
“Thank you, Will,” she says.
“For what?” Please don’t say something kind, Mrs Nolan. It’s my fault what happened to your daughter.
“For being her friend. I don’t think I’ve seen her this happy since we went to Universal Studios a few years back. Oh, and if you both want a ride to whatever party is going on come Friday, just let me know, it’s no trouble.”
“Thanks. Who’s Niamh?” you ask, already knowing the answer but keen to get another view.
“Our next door neighbor. You should ask Shelly to introduce you, I suspect you’d get on great.” Then, with a conspiratorial, match-making smile, she leans close. “Talk to her about video games.”
Mrs Nolan goes back inside, leaving you sitting with your thoughts as you watch your golem lead Niamh Stirland to her doom. Half a minute later, Shelly sticks its head out of the shop side door and waves at you. You get up, walk down the lane, and approach your new life.
***
“Mam, what’s for dinner?” you ask, pretty much as soon as you open the front door. The switch was seamless; you into Niamh, while she is now under a mask of Will Prescott. You gave the golem virtually the same instructions as Shelly, trusting you can leave it on autopilot for a few days. It certainly looked and acted like you.
“Pork stir fry,” your third mom in a week says. “I thought I heard Mariah’s car a full quarter of an hour ago.”
Mariah… the thoughts pop easily into your head from Niamh’s relaxed, cosy mind. Mariah Alloway, your best friend and ride for the 12 or so miles out to the St Francis Xavier School. You’re a history and sciences student, while Mariah is a self-proclaimed math nerd. Both of you thrive in a school environment where personal responsibility is emphasized and class sizes are kept small and focused.
“Shelly wanted to show me something she’s been working on,” you reply, “you know how excited she gets about pretty much everything.” A smile breaks out instinctively; Niamh thinks of Shelly like a second sister, which means you like Niamh Stirland immensely.
“Do I ever, that girl is a jackrabbit. Dinner in fifteen,” your mom – mam – says. You take off your school blazer and set it on a waiting hanger in the hall, then hook your satchel, complete with Libra, over your shoulder and head upstairs. Niamh doesn’t have any assignments due, mainly because she spent Sunday after church writing up a lengthy analysis of the impact of the House of Vasa on European history (Saturday afternoon was spent with sister Tina, who had to return to university). That gives you time to check out the next spell. You step into her room, an airy space kept neat and ordered, with a wall dedicated to… Wow! Of course, Niamh is one of Shelly’s main influences in life, so she must have some common interests. And while there’s no sign of the occult or boy wizards, as Mrs Nolan hinted there is an entire wall dedicated to gaming.
Niamh Stirland, her mind tells you, is a console freak. You walk over to a set of wooden shelves, looking at the neatly arranged collection of everything from the Super NES to the latest generation, all above an extensive library of games that stretches along the entire foot of the wall. There are classics to the latest smash hit, all waiting to be hooked up to a projector and a blank wall space amid posters of Niamh’s personal faves. You haven’t played half of them, and you wish Keith and Caleb were here to share your discovery. Then, with growing excitement, you realize there’s no reason they can’t be.
Niamh Stirland isn’t just your gateway into Xavier’s and a way of checking on Shelly; she, you, could be ‘Will Prescott’s’ ‘girlfriend’. She’s not dating anyone at the moment, and although she wears a purity ring – a little band of silver that was tricky to pull off her finger as you made the switch – as long as any boy is willing to wait until after marriage she’d be happy to have a relationship. If you can get over the extreme awkwardness of dating your double you could slip straight back into your old life. Tomorrow, after you get the masks back, you’re going to take ‘Will’ out for donuts and sell Keith on the idea.
All of that comes later. First, you need to survive a day at school. You start thinking about Niamh’s classes, trying to gauge whether the tuition fees really buy you a better time than at Westside. St Francis Xavier’s, Niamh believes, is what you make of it. Other than its weird fixation on sports – participation in at least one inter-school competition a semester is compulsory – she loves it. The facilities are better than any school in Saratoga Falls, the list of possible programs and after-school activities is extensive, and its teachers (the X-Men; yes, everyone knows the joke) want you to excel.
As one of the STEM crowd, Niamh gets to avoid the worst elements of the school entirely, and has never had a problem following the rules. The only real issue she’s ever had comes in the shape of Todd Baldwin, who pretends he’s as clean-cut as someone like head boy Marius Hall but is widely known, at least by the sixth form, to be a monumental ass. Somehow he was made a prefect at the end of the last school year (why can’t they see through him?) and he shares Niamh’s European History class. You wonder if it’s the Todd you heard Abi talk about. Niamh can’t think of who else it could be, but her thoughts flash up a warning.
Abigail Steiner and Davina Macklin. Avoid them. If you see them, go the other way. If they talk to you, refuse whatever they ask, no matter how good the cause seems to be. And whatever you do, don’t look into Steiner’s eyes or she’ll hypnotize you. The girl with them was Kristen Wright-Wallace. She’s OK, but completely under Abi’s spell.
You shove the thought to one side and decide to get to work before your mam calls you downstairs. You open up the Libra, flicking forward to the next page. With any luck, the next spell should have something to reverse what happened to Shelly.
But the eighth spell is only partly there. Someone has ripped the rest of it from the book.
You have no way to move any further. There is no spell that can rescue Shelly. You’re not going to quit – you’re certain with enough time you can figure out how the sigils relate to each other on their own. So far, the book has always built on the previous spell, so if you can figure out how it all comes together, you should be able to work out the eighth spell. But the setback bites hard. Any excitement you feel about being Niamh Stirland is snuffed like a candle.
You eat your dinner in morose silence. You have the following choice: 1. Continue |
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