The idea of becoming Lucy is very enticing. Your mind runs with the possibilities. You can use the mask to defeat Professor Blackwell and give Lucy her life back by going undercover and acting as a double agent. She'd be grateful to you for that, wouldn't she? And if you have any doubts, you only have to put the mask on and then you'd have her memories, her attitudes, her feelings. You'd know everything about her, including how she would really feel toward you.
You won’t like the answer.
You are raising the mask to your face when that echo of a thought from a couple of days ago—when you first wondered if you and Lucy might ever make a connection—stops you. Don't ask a question when you won't like the answer.
And given the massive invasion of privacy, and the way she'd berated you each time you've talked about using magic, you know what the answer would have to be.
So you set the mask down and call Taylor at Scott's number.
"Will?" he says when he picks up. "What's going on?"
"Hey, are you close to Keyserling?" you ask, pretending that you hadn't seen Scott's truck outside. "I need you to come up to the college library. Preferably with a rope or something."
You hear Scott’s voice deepen into a growl. "Will, what the fuck are you—?"
"I caught the fake Lucy. I know how that bastard did it."
--
It takes Taylor—still dressed out as Scott—less than ten minutes to find you. (Luckily, during that time, none of the students that pass by pay any attention to you or to the bundle of clothes draped over a desk in imitation of a napping girl.) Scott frowns with curiosity as he stalks up to you, and you brandish Lucy's mask with a grin. He ignores you though, and approaches the thing in the chair. He jumps a little when he sees what it is, and touches it gingerly as though afraid it will turn and bite.
"Shit," he mutters in a wondering tone. "What's this?"
"That," you reply, "is the thing the professor used to duplicate Lucy. This," you continue, showing him the mask again, "is how he does it. Apparently, if you put a mask on that thing, it becomes a clone of whoever’s on the mask."
Scott gulps. "Fuck. Really? That’s creepy as hell."
You grunt in agreement. "Anyways," you continue, "we need to get it out of here. I don't think we can carry it out, though."
"So what do we—?"
For the third time you gesture at the mask.
"By putting the mask back on it. Then, well—"
You take a deep breath, for here comes the hard part, the part where you have to admit why you need his help getting it out of the library.
"The real Lucy likes you," you tell Taylor, "so I figure maybe you can talk the fake one into going downstairs with you, out to your truck?" He doesn't react. "Then once we've got her in your truck, take the mask off again. Then we can haul it into the school basement and keep it there."
Scott stares at you. "You mean you wanna kidnap her," he says.
You stare at his retort. "Well, what do you suggest? We need to take the statue someplace. We can’t leave it here!"
Scott looks between you and the thing, and gnaws a long time at his lower lip. Then his brow furrows, and he shoots you a sharp look. "You think it turns into whoever is in the mask?" he says. You nod. His lips tug into a small smile. "Then why do we have to put Lucy's mask back onto it?"
--
Scott runs back down to his truck to get his gym bag, leaving you to struggle with pulling Lucy's clothes off a rock-like mannequin that's folded up around a desk. It's impossible to get them all off, but you loosen them enough that you think nothing will rip when the transformation occurs. You give Taylor a double take when he returns, for he's not just fetched another change of clothes, he has restored himself to his real face. He sets the gym bag on the desk, glances around to make sure the coast is clear, then leans over to set the mask of Scott Bickelmeir onto the statue.
The white, stony skin of the thing softens and deepens into a golden tan, and a mop of thick, blonde hair sprouts on the potato-like head. For a moment the thing doesn't move.
Then it raises its head and looks around with a dumbfounded expression. It stares at you, then twists around to stare up at Taylor. Taylor, for his part, swallows and pales.
No one says anything for a long moment. Then Scott says, softly, "Jesus. So I guess I'm the clone now."
Taylor moistens his lips. "Scott?" he says.
"Yeah?"
Taylor stares at him hard, then blinks a suspicious wetness away.
"Nothing," he says. "Come on, you need to change." He pushes the gym bag toward the clone. Scott glances down at the clothes he's wearing—Lucy's clothes—and says a bad word.
"What's wrong?" you ask Taylor after the Scott-thing has gone off to a restroom to change.
"Nothing's wrong," he retorts, his voice gruff.
"Is it weird seeing Scott from the outside again, after being him for so long?"
Taylor shoots you a hard, ugly look, then grimaces. "Yeah, sure, that's what it is," he says. "Come on, finish folding up Lucy's things."
He refuses to say anything else, and a prickly silence envelops the trio of you, Scott Bickelmeir, and Taylor Mitchell on the drive back to the elementary school basement.
--
Lucy Vredenburg squirms in the chair, trying to twist out of the ropes that bind her to it. She grunts and chews at the gag in her mouth. With white-hot hate she glares up at you.
It's kind of a turn-on, you'd have to confess. Especially as she's naked.
But when the door to the basement opens, you are quick to throw the old sleeping bag across her lap and torso before springing to attention.
"—I never see this place again, I'll die happy," the girl is saying as she trudges down the creaking, squeaking wooden steps. She shudders, and gives you a dirty look when she spots you.
Then she freezes and does a double take at the figure in the chair next to you. Taylor steps up beside her, and puts a friendly arm around her shoulder. "The fuck?" Lucy gasps as her eyes boggle.
"Lucy, this is Lucy," you smirk at her. "She'd come over to say hi, but she's kind of tied up."
Okay, it's a cheesy line, but the whole situation—girl confronting her tied-up twin, clone, duplicate, whatever—is already cheesy in a bad, B-movie kind of way.
Lucy gapes, and takes a small step forward. The thing in the chair—that statue, now back inside the mask of Lucy Vredenburg—makes a muffled scream through the gag.
"What's going on?" Lucy demands in a voice that's gone soft with horror.
"It's your evil twin," Taylor says. "The one Professor Blackwell sent out to replace you. We caught it up at the university. Actually," he corrects himself as he catches your eye, "Will caught her. I just helped carry her out here."
"You wanna talk to her?" you ask Lucy. "I'd kind of like to know what she has to say to you." You shiver a little with expectation as you step behind the duplicate and untie the gag.
The doppelganger screeches, then— "Fucking God!" it yells. "What the hell are you—? What the fuck's going on here? If this is a kidnapping," she snarls, "you should know that I'm really good friends with most of the college football players, and all I have to do is tell them what you tried doing to me for them to gghkkmppph!" You quickly bind the gag back onto her.
Was it bluffing? you wonder. Does it know it's a fake? Or does it think that it's the real Lucy?
Taylor comes over and pulls the gag down again. But before the clone can start yelling again, he grabs it by the face and pulls the mask off.
Lucy, white as a sheet, clutches the side of the old conference table to keep from collapsing. "No. Way," she murmurs as she stares at the lumpy thing that's now tied to the chair.
"Yes way," you reply. "And it works with any mask. Like, with Scott's mask? That's how we got it out here, we put Scott's mask on it and, uh, he walked out to the truck with us. It looked just like him, talked like him, acted like him."
Taylor's expression is grim. "Apparently, all you have to do," he says, "is get a mask of someone, and you can use that thing to make a copy and send it out to replace them."
Lucy turns green and sinks into a chair. Taylor steps over to support her.
"She was so real," Lucy mutters. Her eyes are wide with horror when she looks up again. "I knew what he did, the professor. I saw her, back at his house. But to see her here, like that, talking like—" She swallows.
Then she comes to life again. "Destroy her. Destroy it! All of it!" she shrieks, baring her teeth and breathing hard. "It's evil!"
"It doesn't have to be," you blurt out. "Scott wasn't evil, when we put the mask on it. In fact, it was like he wasn't dead, like him and Taylor were both back to being alive."
"There you go again!" Lucy snarls. "Your goddamned fascination with this shit." She shivers. "Destroy it," she tells you again. "Destroy that shit. Destroy everything!"
"I can’t."
Lucy rounds on you. "What did you just say to me?" she says, sounding just as pissed as the doppelganger. "Why can't you?"
Because I think my dad's also an evil clone, you almost blurt out. But you catch yourself.
Would she even believe you? She'd probably just accuse you of being melodramatic. Maybe you should just tell her you need to "study" the stuff. She'll think that's the real reason anyway.
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