This choice: Use the spell to hide from Chelsea • Go Back...Chapter #9The Case for Running Away by: Seuzz   Monday afternoon. Start of sixth period. A meaty arm hooks you around the neck and hauls you into the surging crowd. You're dragged backward, which is a good angle for taking in the wide-eyed stares of all the students your captor is shoving out of the way as he pulls you ...
Into a bathroom. What a cliche, you think. You're forced into a stall as everyone else in the bathroom scrambles for safety in the hall outside.
Gordon bends over you with a scowl. "I got a bunch of sand bags in the back of my VW," he says. "I'm told they're for you."
"Today?" you squeak. "I thought you weren't supposed to—"
Gordon grabs you by the front of your shirt and pins you against the wall behind the toilet. "So it was your idea," he snarls. "That fucking dirt—"
"It was Chelsea's idea," you insist. "She just needed you to give it to me because I'm the one who's ... who's ..." You trail off. Gordon's expression tells you you're not doing yourself any favors with these pathetic explanations.
"If it's for you, it's your fault. Come with me now so we can get that shit moved."
"Now? I've got class!"
"So do I, and do I look like I give a fuck?"
You wince, but Gordon lets you drop. You scurry out the bathroom after him, and through the long hallways out to the student parking lot.
You're not parked anywhere close to him, and he refuses to move his VW Bug, and there's no empty parking space near his car, so you have to move the sandbags halfway across the parking lot. The fucker refuses to help, too. "I dug that shit up like I was told," he snarls. "No one said anything about me having to move it a second time." It takes you almost twenty minutes to move the bags, and you're ready to drop by the time you're done.
"Oh, message from Chelsea," Gordon says when you return, panting, to where he's waiting. "She wants to see that book or whatever it is, look at what comes next. She says you guys can start on that while waiting for— Pff! Whatever it is you and her are working on." He glares at you.
* * * * *
That brings things to a crisis point, as far as you're concerned, and since you're half inclined to run anyway, you go ahead and skip the rest of the day. (It's not like you'll be missing anything: a seventh-period study hall and an eight-period bullshit Astronomy class.) You hop in your truck and drive out to the old elementary school near your house. You don't bother moving the sandbags to the basement—you're not planning to do anything with the dirt anyway—and just camp out in the basement with the grimoire, the supplies, and your own dark and frightened thoughts.
You need to get away from Chelsea. You need to get somewhere safe where she can't get to you.
Well, the safest spot, you have to admit, would be inside Chelsea herself. If you were Chelsea and she were your slave, then she couldn't get to you, and you'd be Gordon's boss.
And the idea has definite attractions.
But you don't want to have to deal with her friends. Besides, Gordon's accident has made a mess of things, and you don't want to be nearby if that golem-thing he turned himself into goes berserk.
No, it's best if you run off someplace where she won't think to look for you, while taking the grimoire and all the magic supplies so she won't be able to follow you or do anything with them.
But you're a high school senior. You don't have the resources to just skip town. Besides, it would really piss your parents off if you tried to do that.
You grit your teeth.
That magic book has made a mess of your life. It looks like the only way out is to use the same magic book to swap your life for someone else's.
But whose?
Okay, stupid question. There are dozens, hundreds of possibilities. Billions, even, if you had time and money enough to jet off to any and every corner of the world.
But you don't want to go that far. You don't even want to leave town. Aside from the fact that you're too intimidated by the idea of leaving the familiar precincts of Saratoga Falls, you would like to stay close enough that you can keep an eye on Chelsea. You want to see how she reacts to your disappearance, and to see if anything happens to her.
So the way you see it, you've got to find yourself an alias where you can spy on Chelsea without being really obvious about it.
Your first thought is that you should assume the identity of one of her friends. But then you have to ask yourself: What if you're not able to pull off the impersonation?
And that raises another question: Just how good are these masks as disguises? You've never tried one yourself.
You pull out the mask you made. It's a dull, whitish color, and needs to be polished.
It's a well-crafted thing, having the appearance of a classic "tragedian's mask," but without the eye- or mouth-holes. It has lips and a chin and a nose; a brow ridge and subtle cheek bones. But it's also a very modest thing, and an artist of only moderate skill—which you are not!—could have cast something like it from plaster. So it seems inconceivable that such a thing could contain within it an exact copy of someone's body as well as their mind.
But the fake Gordon that you and Chelsea put together looks and acts just like the real Gordon, so that proves it's possible.
Wait. Does it?
You made that fake Gordon by putting a mask of Gordon onto a golem that was itself formed using Gordon's body. Maybe it's such a perfect duplicate because it's a copy of Gordon sitting on top of the real guy? Maybe it wouldn't be such a perfect copy if it was sitting on you? After all—
Your phone dings, and you jump. Text from Chelsea: meet me at my place at four-thirty. She doesn't give the address.
Instead of asking for her address, though, you tell her you got caught at home and won't be able to meet with her. She texts back a frowny face, but that's all.
But the question remains after you've put your phone down again: What would it be like to have two sets of memories and personalities inside one head. Wouldn't you get confused and make mistakes? Would you have to concentrate really hard, like when you have to concentrate to remember stuff you've memorized for a test? Would it make you look like a fake if you had to keep concentrating to remember stuff like your new middle name or where you lived or what clothes you liked to wear?
You swallow the lump of grim fear in your throat. One thing is for sure: Before you run away to impersonate someone, you'll need to test one out first, to find out how good of a disguise they are.
* * * * *
You don't have any finished masks on hand to experiment with. You've only got the one that you made over the weekend, and a second, half-polished one that Gordon had started before he had his accident. Its surface is a swirl of white and blue, like cream half-stirred into blueberry pudding. Since that one is farther along toward being done, that's the one you start working on Monday night after finishing—in a half-assed way—your homework. You get a hand towel from the bathroom, prop yourself up on your bed with your laptop and a movie, and start polishing the mask.
After two hours of work, you think that maybe you've wiped out a whitish streak near the chin of the thing, but you're not certain. So you start a new movie and tackle an untouched spot at the corner of the forehead. You pause after ten minutes to study the results of your labor. It doesn't seem to be paying off. You set your jaw and rub harder. A minute of that doesn't seem to have affected the mask either. With a sigh you settle back try to lose yourself in the movie while working.
Your hand and thumb are aching badly by the time the movie has ended. But you have managed to wear a blue spot in the mask. It's only a little bigger than a quarter, but it is progress.
But your spirits sink when you see just how much work remains to be done.
* * * * *
Wednesday morning, just before class. Caleb leans in next to you at your locker. "I heard Gordon Black had a bathroom conference with you the other day," he says. It says something about how peripheral you and Caleb are to school social life that it has taken that long for gossip about it to filter down to him. "I notice you didn't mention it to me."
"Why should I?" you retort. "It wasn't fun, and you'd just laugh at me."
"No, I wouldn't. I care about you, Will."
You shoot him a narrow glance. His expression is serious, but there's an intensity about the eyes. "What happened between you guys?" he asks.
"Nothing."
Caleb snorts. "Gordon and them don't pay any attention to you. Or me either, thank God." He glances over his shoulder, as though fearful the universe is about to argue with him. "So what was it about?"
"He caught me looking at Chelsea is all." You slam your locker shut.
You turn your back and walk away, but you and Caleb share the same first-period class, so he just follows. He gazes at you with an odd intensity after you're seated in Mr. Walberg's.
You're pretty sure Caleb is the cause of all your troubles with Chelsea, and you bet you know how he started it. Naturally, you resent it. But maybe you should forgive him, and take him into your confidence.   indicates the next chapter needs to be written. |
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