This choice: Forget Caleb--he caused all the trouble! • Go Back...Chapter #10Buffed for Success by: Seuzz   "Mom! Do we have a car buffer?" you holler as you come in the door from school. From upstairs you think you hear someone faintly calling back. You hurl your book bag onto the sofa and thunder up the staircase. "What did you say?"
"I said," your mother replies as she comes out of the hallway bathroom, "that you can come up here and tell me whatever it is you've got to say." Her mouth is set in a grim line, and she holds the toilet scrubber like she's about to brain you with it.
You grin weakly. "Heh. Yeah. Uh, do we have a car buffer?"
"A what?"
"You know, those things that have, like, a pad on a motor, and you use them to polish cars with?" You gesture a kind of shape in the air with your hands. "A car buffer."
Her eyebrows go up. "What do you want a—?" She sighs. "Look in the garage. I don't know what kind of stuff your dad has."
You run back down the staircase with all the noise of an avalanche, and almost bounce off your brother as he's coming in through the garage. "Watch where the fuck you're going," Robert snarls. So you shove him, and he shoves you back, and you grab him and get him a headlock. "Mom!" he screams.
You release him. "Just go inside already."
"No! What are you doing?"
"I don't have to explain anything to you." Then, illogically, you add, "Do you know if we have a car buffer?"
"A what?"
"This kind of a thing," you reply as you pounce on the box your eye has lighted on. It has a picture on it of just what you want, and it contains one, too.
"Sure we got one, dur, if that's what you're looking for," Robert sneers behind your back. You flip him off, then quickly retract your finger when you sense him coming up behind you. "What's it for?"
"You use it to polish cars, dur," you retort. "That's why they call it a 'car buffer'." Actually, the box calls it a "variable speed polisher," but that's probably because the designers got paid by the word. There are certainly enough cautions printed on the side of the box.
"So you're gonna polish your truck with it?" Robert asks.
"None of your fucking business what I'm gonna polish with it."
"It's your cock, right?" He laughs nastily. "You're gonna polish your cock with it." He just grins when you glare back over your shoulder at him.
"I'll polish your cock with it, if you don't get out of here," you growl. "I'll use a sand blaster on it, if you're not out of here by—"
He just plants his feet and widens his grin. So you lunge at him. "Mom!" he howls.
Well, the long and the short of it is that he winds up perched on the trunk of the family sedan and watches as you squat down with the car buffer and the half-finished mask. "What's that thing?" he asks.
"Art project," you mutter before turning on the buffer. Hopefully it will drown him out.
But he's still there and still itching to bug you when you turn the buffer off to examine the results. "You make that thing?"
"No, a friend made it. I just told him I'd help finish it."
"How come?"
"Don't you help your friends?"
"Is it for Caleb? Are you doing this for him?"
"No, it's not for Caleb. It's for someone else." The whine of the buffer drowns Robert out again.
"Is it for Keith?" he asks when you pause the buffer again. "It's either Caleb or Keith, 'cos those are the only two friends you got."
You glare up at him. "No, it's not for Keith. And those aren't the only two friends I've got."
"They're the only guys I ever see you with." He grins impudently at you. "Seriously, you—"
You turn the buffer on again. It's working out great. After only a few minutes you've already turned a wide swatch of the forehead from a pasty white to a glowing blue. Despite Robert and the shit he's flinging, you feel quite cheerful.
* * * * *
You got the idea for using a car buffer on the way home. Just a few blocks from your house you'd passed a guy standing out in his driveway and using one of these things to polish his sports car. Your first reaction was jealousy about not having a sports car of your own. Then you thought: If you can use a buffer on a car, why can't you use it on a mask? Hence, the excitement with which you ran into the house.
Robert watches you work for a few more minutes, but when it's apparent that you're not going to take another break anytime soon, he wanders back inside. Without him to distract you, you buckle down harder to work. Twenty-five minutes later you shut off the buffer to admire the results.
The mask is now a burnished blue all over, inside and out. It catches the sunlight from all angles, and you get a touch of dizziness when, for just a moment, it suddenly seems as though the mask is reflecting the sky. Briefly, you have the impression that you're about to pitch forward into the mask, and through it, and fall into a bottomless blue pit ...
You rub your eyes and scramble to your feet, and throw the mask into the cab of your truck before someone can up out or up behind you and see what you've been working on. You put the car buffer away and go inside and up to your room
"I gotta go meet someone," you tell your mom as you pass the kitchen with your book bag over your shoulder. It contains the grimoire and a few more things you need to finish up the mask.
"Robert says you're working on an art project with someone."
"Well, helping them out, yeah." You make a mental note to kick Robert's ass.
"Will you be back for dinner?"
"Probably." You just feel the desire to get out of the house, to go off and think some more now that you're at the point of decision. "Uh, yeah, I will," you add when you reflect that, because you're not actually meeting someone, there's no reason for you to miss dinner. "Do I need to pick something up on the way back?"
Your mom shakes her head, and with a shrug you scamper out to your truck. After a moment's thought, you turn the motor over and point the nose toward The Flying Saucer coffee shop.
* * * * *
It's late afternoon—nearing on five—when you enter that very bohemian cafe. You peer about furtively, and your shoulders are hunched ... and it's not until you notice the slight ache in your upper back, and straighten up to relieve it, that you realize you've been skulking about like a guilty Igor carrying a stolen brain. You order a plain coffee, and glance into the main dining room.
Good. It appears to be empty. You were rather counting on that, as this is the time of day when the afternoon lurkers should be leaving for dinner and the post-dinner crowd has yet to arrive. You take your mug over to a station to season with sugar and a little cream, then dive into a booth. You unzip your bag and pull out your projects.
There's the grimoire, of course. The new mask. The metal band with the runes that is supposed to copy the mind and memories of the victim. A jar of glue for attaching the metal strip to the mask, a small plastic tub of sealant, and another plastic container with the control goop.
You spread it all out on the table, and wipe your palms on your knees. Some assembly required, you think.
There's only thing you can do, though, before tackling a test subject: glue the metal band into the mask. It's not strictly necessary to do so, not if you read the book right, but it would save a step, for then by putting the mask on someone you would be copying their body and their mind simultaneously.
But who to experiment on?
Caleb. That's the first obvious, and very grim, thought that comes to you. Asshole. He got you into this. You're ninety-nine percent certain of that, and you're ninety percent certain you know how he did it. It was when he got you to put that metal band onto your forehead, so that he could see if it would copy your brain. You're sure he had a mask with him, and he copied your body as well as your mind, and put them together, and then disguised as you he tried to get a copy of Gordon. That's how come people were talking a couple of weeks ago about Gordon grabbing hold of you when he did no such thing, and why Chelsea thought you were the one who knew about the book. Caleb must have whiffed his play, and lost the book and mask to Gordon.
While you're still bitterly nursing this resentment, you hear a slight cough behind you, and look round. You see no one, but you hear another cough. Cautiously, you slide all your things down into your seat, and get up. You see the top of someone's head. They're sitting with their back to you in a booth in the very back.
They're facing the restrooms, so you fake a quick trip to the head, and snatch a good look at them when you come back out. It's a girl you don't recognize, Chinese or something. Her hair is long and black and straight, and her skin is that dark shade that looks like a tan without actually being a tan. She is bent over some school books, but she's tapping at her cell phone.
Caleb would know it was you if you jumped him. So would anyone else from school. You don't know this girl, though, so she doesn't know you. That would make her a good "experimental subject," to find out just as well the masks copy people, and how easy it is to impersonate them.   indicates the next chapter needs to be written. |
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