Unmasked (7 page)

The girl in pigtails nodded, looked slightly bewildered as to why Lacey began staring at her intently as if she were about to transform into a butterfly.

“Now, Noelle, does she have anything unusual on her face?”

“I – uh – I mean, she’s wearing a mask.”

“I’m what?!” the girl squeaked suddenly clawing at her face to find it.

“Sorry, maybe I’m seeing things,” Noelle said, flustering a very deep red.

“You’re not seeing things,” Lacey said firmly as she motioned for the very frightened girl to return to her room. 

“You have a
mendum,
” Lacey explained.

Suddenly Noelle remembered what a boy named Terryn had said about mendums. He said that they were flaws, and one kid named Jim, couldn’t be able to talk because of his mendum.

“Do you mean that there’s a part of me that’s a mistake?” Noelle burst suddenly.

Lacey waved her hand up and down to calm her down, “People call them that, but really, mendums are just abilities that some campers have that others don’t. Sometimes they bring the camper disadvantages, but in your case, it causes you to see something that often others overlook.”

Noelle gave her a puzzled expression.

“You can see if a person is wearing a mask or not,” Lacey explained. “I have that ability too. That’s why I called someone who had one on to see if you recognized it.”

“But what does seeing masks have to do with anything?”

Lacey shrugged, “If I knew, I’d probably appreciate the mendum a little more.”

Noelle frowned as the information began to sink in, “Was she wearing it earlier?”

“Yes.”

“Then why didn’t I see it?”

“Sometimes people are born with mendums, and others get theirs overtime, but it’s really not important when you got it, but why you got it. The sooner you understand that, the sooner you’ll appreciate the gift.”

Lacey clapped her hands together as she meandered toward Bri’s direction.

“Now let’s bring some life back to these hallways.”

#

After the whole Lane Wing iced the hallways with streamers and various paper creations, they gathered in the Lane Lounge crowding around a screen, similar to what lectors call a television.

“What is this for?” a girl piped up curiously.

“We’re going to watch a story,” another replied. “A final copy mind you, took me a whole days pay in order to get it, but it was worth it.”

The screen flickered to life as the title:
Rise
, appeared in glowing letters.

Some girls squealed in delight when the title pulsated a few times and then disappeared.

“What’s this story about?”

“It’s not what it’s about,” Aleesha said. “It’s who it’s about.”

She motioned to the screen as a twenty year old man began sprinting through a jungle in a faraway land.

“Pop quiz!” Lacey said. “Whoever gets this question right doesn’t have to clean cafeteria tables for a week: Who is the Main Character of this movie?”

“Brice Gerald,” Bri answered without skipping a beat.

Noelle gawked at her, “How did you guess that?”

Bri shrugged bouncing up and down, causing the coach to emit tunes of agitation, “I told you that I really know a lot about lectors and stories.”

Lacey nodded approvingly, “Nice work, but can you tell me why Brice is so important?”

“Because he was the first Extra to ever win Redemption and star as a Main Character,” Bri answered in one breath.

“Correct,” Lacey smiled.

Noelle shifted her gaze back to the screen with a new awe and reverence for the character. Although, she did begin to pick up on some flaws that could have qualified him to be an Extra at Placement such as his short stature and crooked smile.

But another thing that caught her eye was that he was wearing a mask.

And Noelle had the strangest feeling that the mask shouldn’t have been there on him or anyone else at campus.

Noelle woke up to the rustling of sheets the next morning, as the sun began peeking through the window by her bedside with a sliver of gold against the cracked windowpane.

Out of the corner of her eye, she spotted a white mouse on the floor.

Wait – no, not a mouse, but a paper folded several times.

She sprawled across the mattress like a cat to reach the note without having leave the warm cocoon of her blankets, as the bed let out a groan. Aleesha made a similar noise of annoyance, while Bri gazed up at the ceiling, eyes wide with serenity as if she were daydreaming about a better world somewhere beyond.

Dearest Noelle,

Same time and same place this morning?

Once again, no signature, but Noelle never needed one.

“Noelle,” called Bri’s overjoyed voice from nearby, far too elated for that early in the morning.

Noelle’s bones tried their best to escape her skin as she jumped in surprise to find her roommate already shaping clothes from the magical fabric in their closet.

“Are you ready for Redemption tryouts?”

Noelle’s heart began to race at an alarming rate.

“What?!” she cried desperately as Aleesha shot an arrow at her through her glares. “That was today? Why didn’t anyone tell me about this?”

“Well,” Bri began slowly staring up at the ceiling for guidance, but once again the spiders has no answers to offer, “they sort of ran out of paper because the Test Placement Apparatus used so much of it when printing our test results. As a result, they only gave the Extras so many sheets on tryout information, and I was supposed to pass along the word to you that it was today –”

Her eyes widened as if this information finally hit her.

“Oh my goodness,” she clapped her hands to her mouth. “I’m so sorry, Noelle. This is all my fault. If you fail in tryouts, I will never forgive myself.”

Her almond-shaped eyes began to drown in a river of salt water as Noelle’s heart began to rip to shreds. Bri seemed hardly the person to grow upset over anything.

“It’s fine; it’s fine,” Noelle said quickly. “I’ll just have to cancel my meeting with someone, that’s all.”

Bri craned her head to a 45 degree angle to the right like a puppy dog.

“What do you mean? You still have time before tryouts to meet with them. Lacey says that they usually wait an extra ten minutes before starting tryouts.”

Noelle shrugged indifferently, “He probably won’t miss me. Plus, I’m not exactly happy with him right now, with the whole Extras business.”

“Oh,” Bri nodded as she collapsed onto Noelle’s bed dramatically, wiping away her tears with one swooping motion,

“I understand. A campus romance once again shunned away by class differences! They had love, and she is now ashamed because she is an Extra and can no longer meet with him, or they shall be humiliated. Oh, curse you, campus hierarchy!”

Noelle decided that she was in too much of a hurry to explain to Bri that she was simply canceling her meeting with the Author. Not turning away some boy because she was too ashamed to be an Extra.

She scribbled down on the magical paper that she wanted the cloth to mold into an exercise outfit of some kind.

Due to the vagueness of the description, the white fabric scrunched and morphed at awkward angles before it seemed to have made up its mind that it wanted to be a white t-shirt and shorts.

Noelle slipped them on quickly and sprinted out the door with Bri closely skipping behind with her raven hair flailing serenely.

#

Bri directed Noelle toward the challenge course area, where several ominous looking obstacles loomed in the direction of several campers bunching around a very tall, pale woman with pearly white teeth.

After a few moments of chattering with some new acquaintances Noelle had met that prior night, a horrible screeching sound pierced the air as the tall, young woman, whose height stretched at least six inches above Lacey, blew into her whistle harshly.

The girls and boys recovered from a slight moment of deafness, and they could finally hear what the woman was saying.

“My name is Coach Fiona Hammond,” she said crisply in a voice that instantly irritated Noelle for some odd reason. “But it is Coach Hammond to all of you.”

She leered at the group for a moment as if someone was about to contradict her, but no one spoke. A few of  the older campers, or at least, the ones who were not novices, like Noelle, rolled their eyes when Coach Hammond turned her back to them, and Noelle, seemingly, didn’t have a difficult time understanding why.

“Now I run my try outs as fairly as possible,” the coach continued emphasizing each word as she pronounced her “s”s perhaps too strongly. “And I expect you to make every practice. Absences are inexcusable, and no one on the team is to miss a practice unless approved by me. You all are very lucky,” she peered down at some of the older campers whom she accidentally caught mid-eye roll. She turned and then faced the novice players.

“Most coaches let their kids become lenient and irresponsible by missing out on practice days to do things like ‘work’ or ‘preparing for their story’, but I’m teaching you very practical life skills that will apply to not only Redemption, but your story life as well. You won’t come across a whole lot of teams like this…”

To Noelle’s surprise the other players began mouthing the coach’s word to a T as if they heard this speech several times before.

“Now please pay close attention if you want to do well at Redemption,” Coach Hammond said in a somewhat irritatingly quiet whisper.

The novices turned their ear in rapt attention, but the elder campers simply crossed their arms in a hint of rebellious defiance or muttered, almost silently, amongst themselves.

“In Redemption, there are five different groups that each team trains. Each group will compete in a different set of challenges. Some will be heavily influenced by certain genres over others…

“During the season, you will occasionally face other teams to train for the main tournament, but unfortunately, you novices came very late into the season…Now can my girls and boys in the Top Five please step forward?”

Noelle, for some odd reason, turned toward Lacey expecting for her to step forward, but the skyscraper simply sunk back with the other elder campers as a trace of shame crawled over her face.

Five elder campers confidentially stepped forward as the coach introduced them, but Noelle didn’t remember the names because Coach Hammond ran through them so fast.

“Unfortunately,” Coach Hammond intoned, “there are only five spots left for those who wish to compete in the actual tournament, but you can still practice in our games against other teams prior to Redemption. These games against them are strictly practice for the large tournaments that happen three times out of the year.

“
Now remember
, boys and girls do not compete against each other in physical events such as the mile run or tire obstacles, but competitions in the mind challenges are co-ed.”

Lacey glanced at both Coach Hammond and Noelle with a sliver of hope, but despair still weighing down on her expression.

“Here’s how tryouts work,” Coach began to pace back and forth between the Top Five occasionally stopping to wrench her long nails into one of their shoulders as if they were a prized possession.

“We’ll warm up on some of the different challenge courses, and whichever one you feel that you complete the best, you will try out in that area. Then we will choose the person, in each category, who competes the best whether it be fastest time, highest climb, et cetera, to be in the Top on the team.”

Noelle’s hope, like a faint candle, seemed to be diminished by a strong wind of despair as she noticed the numbers of girls and boys trying out.

Outnumbered eight to one for each category, she began to understand how difficult it would be to get a coveted Top Five spot.

The coach sent them to try a few physical courses. Most of the boys finished them before the girls reached halfway through. Noelle’s gave up on the rope climb, two rungs up, but another couple of girls passed her by at an alarming rate.

Noelle recognized them both immediately: Aleesha and Lacey.

While Aleesha sped ahead, Lacey’s pace slowly faltered and she finished minutes after Noelle’s out-spoken roommate.

“Don’t be discouraged,” Bri said cheerfully as she dangled upside-down like a monkey on the ropes. “Not all of the challenges are physical. In fact, one involves deductive skills and another requires quick thinking.”

Noelle didn’t know the speed at which her brain could race, but she knew for certain that those two options were her only hope in ever earning Redemption.

Noelle half-heartedly completed the next two physical challenges. She walked the mile run, which Lacey ran at record speed, passing out cold at the finish line. And Noelle didn’t even try the obstacle course when spotting the large wall that she had to climb before racing through a dozen hanging tires.

“I hear that they change it every so often,” Bri said. “The obstacle courses, sometimes involve climbing while other times something else. It really depends, but I guess that I don’t want to try it this time around.”

Noelle couldn’t help but agree. She and Bri scurried over to the mind challenges where the first involved an improvisational activity.

“You’ll each be given a sentence. However you will try to say it differently than your opponent. Each time you have to say the sentence with more emphasis than your opponent, whether that means more dramatic or funny or whatever,” a boy with a tangled mess of blond curly hair explained. “We’ll show you an example.”

He motioned for Aleesha to come aid him.

“Now someone, give me a sentence,” he commanded.

“Try this soup,” called someone out in the group clustered around Aleesha and the boy.

“All right, Collin, will you be the judge of this challenge?” the boy shouted out to his friend. Collin, who was in the Top Five, nodded. 

“Ok,” said the boy in curly hair as he approached Aleesha, “Try this soup,” he said dully and back tracked.

“Try this,” she mixed her hands around in a circle as if handling slime, “soup?”

She backtracked and the boy approached her again.

He began bursting out into fake tears, “Try – t-t-this – s-s-s-soup”

A smile crept across Aleesha’s face as she strutted forward and pretended to blow a whistle.

“Try this soup,” she said crispy, imitating Coach Hammond to perfection. The whole group began to burst into laughter.

The boy held up a hand, “So you get the point, but you can go ahead and try it amongst yourselves.”

“I’m surprised he’s not in the Top for this category,” Noelle said as Bri tried her best to imitate a witch saying, “Try this soup”.

“Well, I guess he’s good at this, but I hear that he’s trying out for the other mind challenge,” Bri said casually, shuffling from one leg to the other. “Are you going to go for that one?”

“What do you have to do?”

“I hear it’s a game of really complicated riddles.”

Noelle wrinkled her nose in disgust, “That’s OK, I think I’m going to stick with this one.”

She was too exhausted to try an obstacle course, let alone rack her brains on some pointless puzzle.

“I think I might try the riddle challenge,” Bri said with a hint of pride. “I do know a lot of trivia about lectors and stories. I might have a chance to…”

Another ear-piercing shriek of a whistle echoed as the coach motioned for all of the novices to congregate around her.

“Now that you’ve had a chance to practice,” she said, somewhat condescendingly as if she gracefully let them test out their skills. “It’s now time for the real tryouts to begin. So make your decision now about which challenge you want to compete in and stand by that station.”

Noelle didn’t need to be told twice. She raced over toward the Improvisation station as Lacey passed by looking quite pale.

“What’s wrong?” Noelle inquired.

“Coach is making me do the mile again,” she panted looking very faint. “But I’m racing against Aleesha! Aleesha
totally
spent the whole time in the bathroom during the training! And coach wanted us to all practice that and – why can’t she just keep my time from the first mile?”

“Sorry,” Noelle sympathized.

She had never seen Lacey so infuriated about anything before. “Good luck though. I hope that you do well.”

“You too,” Lacey answered sorrowfully before she sped off toward the track.

Noelle turned her heel to face the seven other people who wanted to get a top spot in her category. Despite Bri’s claims that the curly haired boy wanted to do the riddle challenge, he was at the improvisation station.

Collin, a guy in the Top of the team, had the group form a semicircle around him.

“We’re going to pair you up against an opponent,” he explained. “If you win, then you’ll face a winner of the first round. The first place winner goes to the Top and competes with me in Redemption, and the second place person is placed on the Middle team.”