The Book of Masks (Vol. 5)

Taking the Field as Ella Jaynes

Previously: "Doubling Your Fun" 

Waking is like breaching the surface of a deep pool of forgetfulness: a gasp for air, and relief at breaking from the toils of sleep. Even after your eyes are open and your limbs have feeling, you lay on the bed, staring at the ceiling and relaxing back into wakefulness.

I'm wearing the mask? you ask yourself tentatively. I put it on. Am I wearing it? A little thrill runs over you as you lightly touch your cheek and face with the fingertips of one hand. There is flesh: smooth and soft. But whose face? The shocking answer—Not mine!—comes when you realize that the long patchy whiskers at your chin and across your upper lip are gone.

Your heart rises within as the exciting thought grips you:

My name is Eleanor Samantha Jaynes, but everyone has called me "Ella" since I was little.

A hand goes to your breast—moved, it almost feels, by an alien spirit—and grips it lightly.

I live in Saratoga Falls, just a few blocks from the old hospital and Potsdam Park, with my mom and my uncle, and every morning like this morning I take a fast jog along the river bank.

You rub the side of your face, and lift one strong and tawny leg to point your toes at the ceiling.

And I got to Westside High where I'm friends with Maggie Crenshaw and Mandy Tiller and Christine Coolidge and Haley Cordero and a bunch of others, including my best friend and long-lost "sister," Jenna Burr.

A deep sigh of satisfaction rolls through you.

But my name is really Will Prescott, and I stole this body, and no one except my girlfriend will ever know that I'm not Ella Jaynes!

* * * * *

It's a comfortable feeling, having Ella's personality locked inside yours, and you feel its oddity only when you try thinking about it. It's like her mind and your mind are jigsaw puzzles that have gotten mixed up with each other, but lock together perfectly, each one a complete picture visible through and within and behind the other. Or like one of those magic eye puzzles, or optical illusions, where if you squint at it one way it it looks like a duck, but it looks like a rabbit when squinted the other. I am Will Prescott is a perfect natural thought to have when you are thinking it. But I am Ella Jaynes is just as natural when you shift your concentration to it.

Except the thoughts aren't equally strong, you find when you weigh them. The truth of the first is so heavy you can no more deny it than you could deny the truth of "two and two make four." The other thought is feather-light by contrast, but it wears easily, like a lucid dream from which you haven't woken.

"Ella Jaynes" has to get home, though, so there's no time to dawdle. You swing upright onto the bed and search through that pile of neatly folded clothes until you find the white panties. Is it the touch of your fingertips to those, or the touch of thick hair tumbling around your shoulders, that give you that sudden, hot, electrical spark of joy?

You pull the panties up your legs, then stand and snap them smartly around your hips and crotch. The bra goes on next—back to front—and you feel Ella's quiet disappointment at the size of her breasts as you tuck them into the cups. Then the jeans go on. These are tight about your buttocks and hips, because you like them that way, and their legs are stiff because they are new. Then the lavender t-shirt, and the socks and the canvas tennis shoes. You would don the windbreaker, but instead you search out the bathroom attached to Sydney's bedroom—it was one of the first things that Ella noticed when she arrived, her having to share a bathroom at home with her own mother—and find a brush. Your smile deepens as you stare at your reflection as you untangle and fluff out your thick, tawny brunette hair, settling it comfortably about your shoulders.

You wish you could say something to the girl in the mirror—some cute little line about how sexy you are now that you are her, or congratulations on joining a new and very exclusive team. But you feel tongue-tied. Because even as your grin turns a little gloating, the depressing thought settles on you: Ella Jaynes never would have looked twice in my direction.

Yeah, well, fuck you, Ella, you gaily think as you stride back into the bedroom to pull on the crackling polyester windbreaker. I get to do your thinking for you now, and if I want to give Will Prescott a blow job—which you don't—I'll give him a blow job!

Will who? a mordant thought replies as you snatch up your phone, quickly check for messages, then slide it into a jacket pocket.

* * * * *

That staircase led directly to Sydney's room, and connects to no others, so you descend into the living room in search of friends. Noises from the other side of a dining room draw you into a kitchen, where a blonde woman is busy at a mixer.

It's Sydney's mother, whom you recognize from when you were introduced to her on arriving with Autumn. (Ella's memories possess you as vividly as your own do.) You can see where Sydney gets her good looks and good genes, for her mother is as blonde as she is, with a similarly open and friendly face, and a good figure. But there are lines at the corners of her mouth and nose, and a kind of haggardness is settling about her neck. Either she has had an emotionally hard life since the death of her first husband, or she is older than you would have initially taken her to be.

"Oh, I'm just looking for everyone else," you say when she looks over at you with a smile. "I was using the bathroom, and— It's a big house."

She says that the girls are probably up in her "sitting room," and briefly directs you on how to reach it. It involves going through some kind of den on the other side of the living room, and up a staircase. From the end of a twisting set of hallways you hear voices. Another set of double doors opens into an airy room whose wide windows overlook the back yard. Tucked onto a couple of settees around a glass-topped coffee table are Sydney and Autumn.

Sydney smiles brightly at you, but Autumn leaps up with a squeal and hurries over to give you a quick, tight hug. Her arm hangs around your waist as she turns back to the other girl.

"Doesn't he look good?" she exclaims.

"He looked good before," Sydney slyly answers.

"Yeah, but now—"

She is taller relative to you now, so she just as to stretch rather than go up on tiptoes to peck at your cheek. You blush under all this attention.

"It feels a little weird," you mutter, less because it's true than because you feel like it's something you want them to think.

"It's not so different," Autumn says. "Okay, you've got a set of these," she adds as she brushes a palm lightly across your chest. "And you're missing a—"

"Yeah!" you gasp as you jump back from her hand. "But that's kind of a big deal to a guy!"

"Mmm," says Autumn, hungrily. "But wait till you try— Uh. Have you?"

"Have I what?"

You feel the blood draining from your face as Autumn's smile plumps and her eyebrows go up.

"Has Ella ever—?" Her lips tickle as she whispers in your ear. "Fucked a guy?"

You flinch, and your heart hammers.

What a question! And what is she asking? About Ella's experience, or about her sexuality? Both? Ella's own reticence—which is surprising when you feel it—is magnified by your own embarrassment at knowing the answer, and at being provoked into a sharing it.

You put a hand to Autumn's ear and whisper your reply: "Truth or dare?"

She puts a hand to your ear and whispers, "Truth!"

Back and forth you take this, with Autumn suppressing titters.

"Almost!" "With who?" "Ninth grade." "Oh my God! With who?" "One of my best friends." "No! Who?" "He's on the baseball team." A gasp, then, "It was a guy?"

"Yes!" you exclaim, breaking off the whispers.

"You said it was one of your best friends—!"

"One of my best friends is a guy! You know him!" You shove Autumn lightly.

"Oooh! What's the story?"

"Don't you wanna know who?"

"What's the story?"

You glance at Sydney, who is curled cat-like on her settee with a very cat-like smile. "You're enjoying this, aren't you?" you say. To Autumn: "Both of you!"

Sydney doesn't reply—only her smile widens—while Autumn giggles.

"Okay, it was in the ninth grade, and he was living just a couple of blocks away," you continue after Autumn has dragged you back over to where she was sitting. "He's moved since then. Anyway, we were at the park throwing a football around."

"Were you always a tomboy?" Autumn titters.

"Okay, mostly. Well, we were throwing it around, and we got tired so we went back to my place. My mom and uncle were out, and we weren't really thinking about it, so we went back to my bedroom and were talking on the bed. And I started teasing him about being on a bed with a girl, and he got super embarrassed and— I don't know. I just started talking to him about his— His peter. That's what started it, I guess. I'd never used words like that, and I just started using them to talk about it. And, like, teasing him about how badly he was dying to use it. And his face was just black from embarrassment, but he didn't leave. And I—"

Suddenly you just want to get the story out and done.

"And we just wound up making out on his bed. And he was getting hard and I thought something might happen, but he suddenly jumped up and ran away."

"Okay, now you have to tell me who!"

Next: Coming soon! Check back!

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"Table of Contents (Vol. 5)" 
"The Book of Masks (Vol. 5)"