Unmasked (8 page)

“The what?” piped up Noelle, involuntarily.

“They’re like a,” Collin snapped his fingers several times before an idea popped into his head. “Junior Top, some lectors would call it Junior Varsity, or something like that. While they don’t compete in Redemption, they compete in games during the season, and if a Top gets injured, they have a chance to compete in Redemption.”

“What happens to the rest of the teammates?” another girl inquired.

“Well,” Collin dug his toe into the dirt struggling for an answer, “they’re the extras on the team. They get to practice, but usually, they don’t compete in games.”

The crowd hushed to a silence.

“Now,” Collin clapped his hands together to break up the foreboding mood, “I’ll count you off by four: one, (his finger pointed at Noelle), two, three, four,” he pointed to each person as he said a number. She frantically began peering around at the group to find the other one who she would compete against, but a cluster of tall boys blocked her view from seeing her opponent, but the answer to her question was delivered soon enough.

“One’s raise your hands,” Collin prompted after he finished counting off.

Noelle and the curly haired boy did so.

“You two are first up…”

“What?!” shrieked Noelle suddenly. “I thought that,”
there’s no way that I’m going against him. ‘Him’…wait a –
“He’s a boy. I thought coach said that girls and boys don’t compete against each other.”

Collin scratched his head uneasily, as if a bearer of bad news.

“Well, yes, in physical challenges, but in this one, boys and girls do face each other.”

Noelle shot the curly haired boy a pleading look, and he returned a sympathetic one, but he shrugged his shoulders as if to say,
Sorry kid, that’s the way it goes…

“Someone give me a sentence,” Collin commanded.

“Go jump into a lake!” offered a younger camper.

Collin nodded for Noelle to step forward.

Noelle shot him a dirty look.

“Ladies first,” Collin explained as if Noelle’s evil glare just meant that she was bewildered on what to do.

Noelle inhaled deeply and strode forward.

“Go jump into a lake,” she said in the most boring voice that she could replicate as she back paced.

Collin marched confidentially forward as Noelle expected the worse.

“Go jump into a lake,” he said with just a hint of a voice inflection.

The crowd seemed to look disappointed as well. The boy winked at Noelle as she gaped at him.

Why was he purposefully doing bad?

“Go jump into a lake!” Noelle shouted at the top of her lungs and went back.

She drew in a breath as the boy approached. Maybe he was trying to help her win…maybe that’s why he wasn’t trying so –

“Go jump into a lay –ake,” he sang cheerfully while skipping around her and pretending to throw flowers and kisses toward the crowd.

The campers roared with laughter.

Nope, he’s just trying to kill me faster,
Noelle thought as she approached him trembling. The boy simply wanted to bring up her confidence a tiny bit so that he could shatter it. Noelle felt so frustrated that she wanted to cry.

And cry she did for her next imitation of the phrase.

She pulled off the emotional trauma like a pro, and the boy looked livid afterwards for her stealing his best performance.

He then step forward, stuck his hip out, and began talking like a girl.

“So like do you like want to go jump into a like lake and stuff?”

He then giggled in a scarily high voice and pretended to do makeup as he walked on his tiptoes strutting like a peacock.

Noelle had sunk into very deep water, and could not resurface. There was no way that she was beating a performance like that.

Then she remembered the performance that Aleesha had done about coach earlier.

Perhaps that was her only hope.

She began to walk on her tiptoes toward the boy, who looked infuriated because he thought that she would do a similar impression to the one that he just did, as she pretended to blow a whistle.

“Now, you are very lucky to go jump into a lake, kids,” she elongated the ‘s’, but surprisingly the crowd looked horrified instead of approving, but Noelle didn’t seem to notice. “S-s-s-so why don’t you jump into a lake?”

“You’re out,” called a scarily familiar voice.

Noelle spun around as Coach Hammond stared her square on in the face.

“What?” Noelle shrunk down meekly as if her worst fears had been confirmed.

“You’re out,” the coach repeated. “You’re opponent moves on the next round, but you don’t.”

The coach then whirled around as she marched toward the track to congratulate Aleesha for winning the mile.

Lacey hobbled toward Noelle as tears streamed down their face.

“I don’t know what to do now,” Lacey vented five minutes after a babble of incoherent speech and short breath. “Romance is going to have a story soon, and they usually take the experienced Extras into the story. That was my last chance to redeem myself, but now I have no idea what to do.”

But Noelle knew exactly what she wanted to do in that moment.

She wanted to go jump into a lake.

And never resurface again.

Fortunately for Noelle, although she did not think it fortunate until several hours later, Lacey herded her back to the cabin before she could drown herself in the campus lake.

After an unfortunately painful silence, they returned to Sage Peak and found Bri beaming at them on the front steps.

“Did you do well?” Lacey asked, reading Bri’s delighted expression.

“No,” Bri said pleasantly as if talking about the weather, “as it turns out, the riddles had no lector trivia in them whatsoever…by chance, do you happen to know the answer to the following:

“An edible, red house

With white walls,

And a star in the middle.”

Noelle and Lacey gave up after a few pathetic answers such as a gingerbread house. Neither were really in the mood to solve the puzzle.

“It’s an apple!” Bri shouted, with more enthusiasm than one would expect possible to burst out a human being. “I missed that riddle during the first round, but everyone else seemed to know it.”

Lacey screwed up her face into an expression of confusion and a hint of irritation toward Bri’s joyful attitude about tryouts.

“Then why are you so happy that you got onto the extras squad for the team?” she asked finally, with a false smile and laugh to hide the frustration buried underneath.

Bri shrugged, “I’m a novice Extra, they probably won’t need me in a story for a while, and so I don’t need to worry…”

Noelle cringed as she said this only imagining what thoughts crossed her counselor’s mind as Lacey’s face dissolved into a harsh shade of purple.

“Did you do well on your tryouts?” Bri asked innocently, obliviously, adding more gasoline to Lacey’s fire of rage.

“No,” Lacey answered coldly, “I got onto the Middle Team.”

“Oh,” Bri began delicately as she flushed pink realizing her mistake. “I thought that you would win the mile against Aleesha…and you too, Noelle?” she answered in an odd expression that seemed to be her throwing up a prayer of hope.

Noelle didn’t answer. All she could do was inhale deeply and avoid the tears spilling down her cheeks.

Bri paled horrifically as if she had just seen a ghost.

“Oh,” she moaned softly, or at least a lot quieter than one would expect for a girl who couldn’t whisper, “this is all my fault. I should have told you about tryouts. Then you would have been better prepared. I should go to coach,” Bri said in somewhat of a whisper to herself. “Yes that’s what I’ll do. I’ll tell her that it’s all my fault and that she should take me off the team…”

A splinter of guilt jabbed at Noelle in the chest.

“It wasn’t your – I just was stupid and didn’t think, Bri.”

“It’s not your fault, Noelle,” Lacey added, helpfully, although this actually made the splinter of shame jab deeper. “Even though coach says her tryouts are fair, they’re set up stupidly. I mean, we were all just having bad days, and Aleesha decided not to warm up like coach asked her too…”

Suddenly a little viper of anger poisoned Noelle’s thoughts as it’s hissing seeped into her bloodstream turning her cheeks hot like burning coals.

Noelle began fully convincing herself that she failed at tryouts because of Aleesha and Coach herself.

Why didn’t coach manage to spot Aleesha when she imitated her during the practice round
?
I bet that Aleesha wanted for me to lose that round. She’s always hated me for some odd reason.

“Are you sure that you’re all right?” Bri’s voice seeped into Noelle’s thoughts.

“F-fine,” Noelle stuttered.

Bri’s face contorted into an odd shape as if she were a biologist scanning a bug under a magnifying glass.

“What exactly happened during tryouts, Noelle?” Bri asked, perhaps not shielding her enthusiastic curiosity very well.

Suddenly, Noelle began studying her shoelaces as she avoided Bri’s penetrating gaze.

“I don’t know what you mean,” Noelle snapped defensively. “I just failed like everyone else here…”

Bri nodded, still with a bright smile planted on her face, “True, but when Lacey blamed coach for her failure, you flushed a very deep shade of red as you took an interest in your feet. They’re cute feet,” she added with a giggle, “but usually people tend not to study their shoes for very long.”

So now Bri finally decided to stop being oblivious! Or perhaps she just acted that way on a normal basis but never let up that she observed little details like this. Either way, Noelle thought that it was poor timing for Bri to come to this realization.

Noelle still avoided Bri’s gaze, although she had the most terrible hunch that both Bri and Lacey could see right through her.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Noelle answered coldly as she began to storm off into Sage Peak, but Bri slid to the right standing toe-to-toe, blocking Noelle’s entrance to the cabin.

“Noelle, please tell us,” Lacey pleaded. “We might be able to help.”

“I said ‘I don’t want to talk about it!’” Noelle answered harshly.

An iron grip encircled her arm as Lacey pulled her back with a surprising force of strength coming from a girl who was all skin and bone.

“You can’t keep pushing away everyone who cares about you, Noelle,” Lacey said sternly. “First the Author and now us…”

Noelle froze as she suddenly pictured the Author’s note in her room that she found that morning. She began trying to resurface from the ocean of guilt that surrounded her.

“I didn’t have time because Bri forgot to wake me up,” Noelle answered defensively, unleashing her rage on her roommate.

Bri’s smile faded as her eyelids scrunched up to form a barrier against the oncoming tears.

“I-I said that I w-was sorry,” she stuttered, “and you did have time to meet with him. You had at least ten m-minutes. R-r-rememb-ber? W-we, we got to t-try, t-tryouts early.”

Noelle’s lungs began gasping for air as she descended into the depths of the guilt ocean.

“Sorry,” she replied automatically.

Lacey smiled sadly, “You don’t have to tell us what happened earlier, but remember that we’re always here for you.”

“It’s fine,” Noelle replied, breathlessly, “but I’d prefer to tell the story inside.”

Just in case coach is watching.

#

After Noelle ranted for a good half hour, and she ended up repeating some parts to curious cabin members who entered at different points of the story, a brief silence rested on the room.

When she concluded, some cabin mates offered their condolences as they shared their frustrations with coach, while other members rebuked her for her actions, but they all pitied her.

“I suppose that now you’re going to quit,” a girl with wavy copper tinted hair assumed. “Don’t worry, though. You can just sign up for another team once Redemption is over. You have plenty of time before your story will begin.”

All of a sudden, the room burst forth with bits of chatter about the new Romance story. The whole Romance genre had been abuzz, waiting for new announcements about the soon-to-be latest addition to the Romance library.

Several of the novices took a special interest in the whole story process, while the older members sat dejectedly in silence, for they knew that their chances at Redemption were slim to none.

“Can we please not talk about this,” cried a voice from a girl, with seemingly untamable golden hair and unnaturally dark brown eyes. Noelle read her name badge with the word “Sub-counselor” etched in bold black.

An eerie silence haunted the room once more.

“Come on, Joni,” Lacey said with a false cheerfulness. “Sometimes they call in novices for the story, it all depends.”

Joni simply buried her face into her hands and shook her head violently.

“Joni?” asked Lacey with a strong uncertainty. “What’s wrong?”

Joni brandished a crumpled piece of paper in Lacey’s direction, and she unwrapped the wad..

Lacey paled as she read it and handed it back to Joni in silence.

The girls began bombarding Lacey with a plethora of questions as to what the paper said and Joni pathetically motioned for Lacey to explain.

“Well,” Lacey answered with much difficulty, “it appears that they’re already handing out story assignments, Joni just has been called, and the story is to begin the morning after Redemption.”

Everyone sat stunned except for a few sobs emitting from Joni.

Then the room folded into chaos as Noelle could only pick out bits of protests such as “That’s not fair” and “Of course they would dangle a hope out in front of us so that we could fall flat on our faces!”

It wasn’t until a loud whistle pierced the room that the chatter died down. For a fraction of a second, Noelle believed that coach had entered the room due to the severity of the sound of the whistle, but Lacey stood on a table revealing that she had made the awful noise with a pair of index fingers and thumbs in her mouth.

“This isn’t the end,” she said exasperatingly. “I know it seems like it, but this is really a new beginning.”

Lacey shut her eyes as she inhaled deeply forcing out any past doubt away from her.

She opened her eyes and continued.

“They are going to slap labels on you. They do it to everyone. We just had to learn it before everyone else. The campers are going to try to tell you what to believe and what you should be...

“You can hide behind a mask…”

Her eyes landed on the ones in the room who were wearing masks for a fraction of a second longer than the rest. Noelle had almost forgotten that she and Lacey could see the masks that the other campers hid behind. She had gotten so used to seeing them, that she almost forgot that the masks were there in the first place.

“…Or you can defy gravity with me. Because when you fall, you’ll rise in hope and trust. When you’re broken, the Author will make you new.”

Some cabin mates shifted uncomfortable at the mention of his name, while others gazed up at Lacey in awe somehow craving to know more.

Lacey ended her speech abruptly with an ‘activity’ for all the cabin members. She rushed to her room and returned with several sheets of construction paper and markers.

She handed each page to the girls, some had preferences over colors while others didn’t really care they just wanted to know what she had planned.

“Write you name on the top of the paper,” she instructed.

They did so.

“Now, I want you to pass your paper around in a circle so that everyone will get it. I want everyone to write down one encouraging word about the girl. Now don’t go for something lame like “Good” or “Nice”, but really put something meaningful down. Even if you don’t know the girl very well, put down what you’ve observed. We have had some time together to get to know each other.”

As Noelle received each paper, she tried her best to search her vocabulary to define each girl. Words such as “creative” and “intelligent” spilled onto the papers through purple blotches of marker, but often Noelle’s mind strayed wondering what others wrote on her paper.

Eventually she got it back as several admonished their admiration for the words written on theirs. Several sentiments such as “Kindhearted” “Smile lights up a room” and “Inspiring”, but one word stuck out to her in particular.

“Unshaken”

Etched in a red ink at the center of her page, the word stuck out like a scarlet snowflake during a light flurry.

“I wrote that. It means that you hold firm to your faith,” rang Bri’s jubilant voice from right beside her. “No matter how much the campers have tried to pull you down, you still believe in the Author even though you’ve lost friends and even a high position for it.”

“Do you believe in the Author, Bri?” Noelle asked suddenly.

Bri shrugged impassively, “I know that there has to be something there to make all of this,” she motioned out the very dusty window in the lounge to the forest resting near the lake, “but sometimes I feel like he doesn’t care or doesn’t really get involved.”

Lacey shook her head violently as Noelle suddenly realized by the
whoosh
of her hair that she was closer than Noelle expected.

“I know that sometimes it seems like he’s abandoning you, Bri, but he promised to never leave us, and he doesn’t lie,” Lacey answered confidentially.

Bri’s eyes quickly diverted to her list as she appeared to look busy.

“What is he like?” Bri asked suddenly.

“The Author?” Lacey asked. “Well, he’s honest, fair, and –”

“We hang out like best buds in the café,” Noelle added quickly, but Lacey shook her head. “What’s wrong with being the Author’s friend?”

“Nothing,” Lacey answered, “it’s just, now don’t get me wrong hearing his words in the coffee shop gives people strength throughout the day, but if feel like people approach him way to casually. It’s almost as if they forget.”

“Forget what?” demanded Noelle.

“Well, that he has the ability to destroy us with the flick of an eraser. People often don’t realize how good a gift is until they realize what price the other member had to pay in order to offer it freely…”