by K. Weikel
Chapter 9
The rebellion calls themselves the Maskless, which is fitting for what they’re trying to do. They’ve come up with five different missions, each having only a basic structure so they can be easily changed, should things not go as planned.
The first is to recruit.
“So how we’ll approach this,” Eduard says as the other five people stand around the circular patch of grass. “—is we have to be sneaky about it. All of the people behind us, believe it or not, are not enough to take down an entire system of government. Aspirational, I know, but we need to start somewhere.
“What we’ve come up with so far is to break our organization into groups, once we have enough people. We will have the Hiders, the Mask Makers, and the Masked.
“The Hiders will mask-jump, I made that word up myself thank you very much, and pretend they are somebody they really aren’t so that the mission can be fulfilled. We’ll go into more details later as this goes on. This is just the basics of what Nixon, Twitch, Mikey, and I have come up with.
“The Mask Makers will steal masks from the piles at the choosing ceremony when kids turn thirteen. The catch is they can only grab white masks.”
“Don’t we need some black ones though?” Victoria asks, interrupting Eduard’s speech. “And some clothes too?”
Eduard stops to think and nods his head. “Yeah, we’ll add that to the list then. That works… but they also have to make a butt-load of different designs for them so none look the same.
“Okay, and for the Masked, those are going to be the people that are controlling the mission behind the scenes. They do all of the research and work out all of the kinks and try to keep everything on track when the Hiders are in the city.”
“What do we fall under?” Mikey asks, a playful half smile pulling at the corner of his mouth. Becca thinks that his mask really did portray who he was, the one that was burned, although she’s only known him for a short amount of time.
“Mikey, I want you to be a Mask Maker. You can talk your way out of any situation. Plus, you can be really quiet and serious when you need to be, and that’s what we need for this.”
Mikey nods with a smile and responds with a “Cool.”
“Victoria, I want you to be a Hider. You’re just that kind of person, and I think you can handle it.”
“Awesome,” She smiles, looking around the circle. “They’re about to get a taste of their own medicine.”
“Just hope they don’t smell a rat,” Nixon chimes in, his arms crossed over his chest like a shield and his black hair shuffling in the wind like feathers.
Eduard nods, his face still hard as stone. “And Nixon, I want you to be one of the Masked with me. You know a lot about technology and we need a lot of it for this kind of thing.”
Nixon nods.
Eduard looks at Twitch, who is bouncing on the balls of his feet impatiently and picking at his fingers. Becca looks at him straight on for the first time. Half of his face is pink and burned. She suddenly understands why he wasn’t the same anymore after the fire. There’s a stranger in the mirror ever since that day, a face he doesn’t recognize when he gets out of the shower. Becca doesn’t think she would even want to look at herself, especially if…
“Twitch, I want you to help Nixon out. You work fast and it’s a good way to keep your hands moving.”
Twitch nods and smiles, the burned half barely able to move. Becca’s heart hurts for him.
“What about Becca?” Victoria asks.
“She’s the Face,” Eduard says simply. “She does it all. She leads us.”
“But I don’t really know anything about what we need to do or anything…” Becca says timidly, shuffling on her feet.
“That can be a good thing,” Eduard smiles, dimples appearing on his cheeks.
“Um, Eduard…” Mikey says unconfidently, looking at Becca with his eyes, but his body is turned towards Eduard. “That’s probably not a good thing. Shouldn’t she be super informed because she’s the leader?”
Eduard shrugs. “I don’t know. I think if we give her the basics on what we need her to get done, she’ll do the right thing, instead of trying to go by the book and stressing over it. It allows more creativity, I think.”
The group looks at Eduard strangely, hoping he’s not really insane.
“You realize we could lose our lives if we are led wrong?” Victoria asks. “No offense, Becca.”
“Completely,” Eduard smiles again. “That’s why Nixon, Twitch, and I are here to make sure things go how they’re supposed to.”
“But you don’t want her to ‘go by the book’?” Nixon asks skeptically.
“Well, in a sense. Whatever she’s got to do to finish the mission is what she’s got to do, and I’m not going to limit her to a strict format.”
“But—”
“Becca,” Eduard cuts Victoria’s protest short. “What do you think about it?”
Becca opens her mouth, tiny, flustered sounds escaping. What does she think?
“I don’t want to let you guys down,” She offers.
“Good.” Eduard says, smiling confidently again. “That means you’ll do just fine.”
. . .
Becca sits with Twitch as she waits for another mask to be retrieved for her from the city by her new friends. Her eyes wander over the green of the grass as it meets the blackness of her pants abruptly, the noises of the forest surrounding them.
Twitch is quiet the whole time. He has his mask off and he touches the burned part of his face, lost in thought. Becca finds herself wondering how much of his skin was burned, and if he hides burned flesh beneath his clothes as well. How much of him had been burned?
“How did it happen?” She asks before she can stop herself. “The fire?”
He freezes, his body going rigid for a moment, and his face contorts into something that looks painful.
“I don’t know,” he says, his voice deeper than Becca thought it would be. “I woke up and the room was on fire. I tried to get to the door but… the smoke…” He pauses and closes his eyes. “I passed out. Luckily, Eduard had been passing by. He saved me. Dragged me right out of there. He only had a few unserious burns but I… My body had been covered in flames… Apparently, three black masks had started the fire just because they wanted to cause destruction… It makes sense… It’s what the Dark Clan does, what we’re supposed to do… But if it wasn’t for Eduard acting outside of the boundaries he’d been given on what he was supposed to act like as a black mask, I would have died that day. And for that… I owe him my life.”
His voice cracks and Becca realizes he’s close to tears.
“I’m sorry,” Becca says politely, not knowing what else to say. She looks down at her clasped hands sitting in her lap. Then her eyes wander to the black mask he holds, his hands moving over it absently.
There are three white lines above the protruding eyebrow, angled towards the nose of the mask. He looks at it and watches his hands as they move over it, almost mesmerized. How many masks has he gone through? Is this the first stolen mask he’s worn?
“Do you like wearing the masks?” Becca asks, watching as he turns the mask over in his hands.
Twitch thinks about this for a moment, his hands shaking nervously.
“No,” He says finally. “No… I don’t. I want them to see what they’ve done to me, to all of us.”
The sounds of the forest take over the airways once again as Becca nods politely. Her mind drifts off to thinking about what’s actually happening and what it would be like in a world with no masks. Would there be a definitive line between good and bad, or will there be gray areas? Would it all be a gray area, where people are led down the wrong path?
“How does it feel?” Twitch asks suddenly, making Becca jump.
“What?” She asks.
“To be the leader of a rebellion after just being switched into the Dark Clan?”
Becca shrugs. “I don’t know…
Daunting? Overwhelming? I just wish I was more informed is all…”
“Truth is, not all of us really need to know everything, you know? We just need to know how to get the job done. I kind of think it’s somewhat smart to leave you in the dark for what you’re doing sometimes, but that’s just me. Ignorance is bliss, right?”
Becca nods and looks down at her hands again.
But what if not knowing gets me in trouble?
Eduard, Victoria, Mikey, and Nixon return with the crowd of Maskless following behind them. He hands Becca the black mask and tells her to decorate it while he catches everyone up on the plans.
Eventually, the forty-nine people are split up into the three groups, most of them placed in the Mask Making or the Masked parts. Only about ten are put into the Hiders, minus Victoria, because of their persuasion and acting skills.
It takes a week for them to reach one hundred people, and, although it still isn’t enough to fulfill their aspiring wish to take down an entire government, they start to plan their second mission. Eduard set aside another small group called Recruiters, and they go out into the city with different masks and pull people in to be one of the Maskless.
Victoria grabs Becca and puts her before the many faces. They wait to hear a plan, but Becca doesn’t really know what the mission is yet.
“So this is the mission,” Eduard is explaining to her from the in front of the crowd that had once again formed a ring around the dead grass. “We have to steal a higher rank’s mask. One on the white clan’s side, in particular. If we can get the black mask too, that would be great.”
“So… how will we do that?” Becca asks, the grass crunching and the dirt shifting stiffly under her feet.
“You tell me,” Eduard says, backing up into the crowd.
Becca sighs, taking in all of the information.
She’s in the spotlight.
“How can we take a mask off of someone if they never take it off?” She asks slowly, hoping for an answer. “They only do it when they shower.”
“So wait until they take a shower,” Someone says.
“But we don’t know where they live, and even if we do manage to steal one, how will we get away with it?”
“Switch out the mask with a black one. No one will believe them.”
Becca turns to Eduard, who nods.
“Looks like you’ve got your plan,” he says. “Pick your team.”
“I thought the group was going to go?” She asks.
Eduard shakes his head. “You choose who you take out of the eleven people in the Hiders. The rest of us will tag along and make sure things run smoothly.”
“Um…” Becca says, her brow furrowing. She looks at Victoria for help.
Victoria takes the hint and nods, turning around. “All Hiders, step out of the circle and over there.” She points and starts to walk as other people start to move as well.
After much thinking, Victoria ends up picking five people out of the group of Hiders. They dress up in all white clothing, some of them mismatched and baggy on them, but it doesn’t matter. As long as they’re dressed like someone in the Light Clan.
They head out to the city in their new masks. Becca feels a strange sensation of confidence as she realizes no one knows who she is. She can do whatever she wants and get away with it with just a change of the mask.
Now she understands the term mask-jumping.
They make their way to city hall, where Quill and the highest ranking white and black masks meet. There are three on each clan, and Becca doesn’t really know how or why they’re the highest ranking people, they just are.
The group has been split up the entire walk through the city, but they all agreed to go straight to city hall and trickle in casually. In each of their ears, which are either covered by a white cloth stuck onto the mask or by the girl’s hair, there is a tiny ear bud so they can communicate with each other.
Becca enters in last, the replacement mask tied to her stomach underneath her baggy shirt. Quill and the six rankings trail behind him like a flock of birds. She watches, careful not to let them see her watching, as they walk to the door and stop to say their goodbyes. She keeps her eyes on one of the Light Clan, the only girl in the trio of white masks.
She goes out behind the last person and Quill turns to walk back to the heart of the building. He passes right by Becca as she heads for the door and gives her a slight head nod. She nods back and passes him, a slight smile playing on her lips as she feels her confidence grow.
The rest of the posse follows the white mask, trying not to make it obvious. Some of them stay back at the building, while the others walk off to watch from a distance. The only ones left are Becca, Victoria, and a boy with red polka dots all over his white mask.
By this time, night has fallen and a cool breeze makes its way through the buildings, ruffling Becca’s brown hair as she enters into the building’s door. The woman lives on the first floor, they realize as she begins to unlock a door, so the three of them make it look like they’re going upstairs.
The white mask disappears behind a door and Becca silently shoots back down the steps, listening for the sound of running water and praying she’ll just jump right in like normal white masks do.
She finally hears it, as well as the sound of a bathroom door shutting. She lifts a finger to her lips to silence the group and steps back to let Victoria pick the lock.
The door swings open without a sound and Victoria motions for Becca to step into the room. It’s spotless and perfect, and the best thing about it is that it’s the exact same layout and furniture her parents used to have before they had her, before they had a house, so she knows where everything is, and she still would if her eyes were closed. They used to tell her stories about their rooms when the conversations were directed toward the house. And she remembers the conversation about the renovations to make the Light and Dark Clan’s rooms look different.
And because everything is the same in every room, breaking into the bathroom will be easy and not at all embarrassing, and Becca thanks God for that. The shower curtain is opaque, rather than clear like the Dark Clan’s.
Becca hears the shower curtain open and close as the woman steps into the tub, and she starts to sing. It’s beautiful, but Becca doesn’t have the time to listen to it.
She unties the mask from underneath her shirt and slowly turns the knob of the bathroom door. The door doesn’t make a sound as it opens, and the mask lies on the counter, not two feet away from her.
Becca reaches forward, her heart racing and her mind busy with the thoughts and punishments for taking—or even touching someone else’s mask.
Her fingers lock around it and she pulls it back to her as she replaces it quickly and turns around to go out the door.
She hears the shower curtain move slightly, and she freezes in her spot.
“Who are you?” The voice is demanding, but it shakes a bit.
Becca sighs, her breath wobbly. She unties the knot on the back of her head, careful not to drop the stolen white mask in her hand. The borrowed black one sticks to her skin a bit, but it comes off easily into her other hand.
She turns around with her eyes on the ground and takes another breath, the confidence she had felt moments ago has declined.
Becca looks up at the woman’s face poking around the light blue fabric curtain. No matter how much she wants to, no matter how much she tries, she can never go back to the Light Clan’s way of living. She’ll be stuck in the Dark clan for the rest of her life. And if they get caught, she won’t be breathing anymore.
So why not give it all you got when all you’ve got is all you’re going to get unless you do something about it?
Her heart pounds in her chest louder and louder, until she can barely hear herself answer the question. “I am the Face.”
