Unmasked (14 page)

Noelle wanted to argue, but her roommate looked far too frail to put up a fight.

She softly strode to the mirror and anxiously peered into it to see what Bri had worried about.

She gazed at the mirror in horror as she found something that she would never expect in her reflection.

She was wearing a mask. 

The sun peeked harshly between the blinds by the curtain in the Supporting Character dorm. Noelle muttered something that she would imagine not to be in her dying breath, and she added that how she missed the Main Character dorm. At least in there, the curtains shaded them from the blinding daylight that forced her to her feet.

Although, by then, she thought that she would have been used to the living conditions. At least, she had a twin bed to call her own versus an air mattress in the Extras’ room.

Also, there were far fewer members in her room than there had been in the Extras dorm.

Though, none of these things mattered to Noelle. Jumping from the Main Character dorm to the Supporting was like drinking ice cold water, but then switching to lukewarm. She wanted a refreshing shudder of deep frost covering her lips as the silence of the Main Character dorm beckoned her to bathe in it’s presence.

She pressed her hands to her face, once again, expecting to find a mask there, but she never felt it.

Yet, whenever she glanced at herself in the mirror, the mask was always there.

What did it mean anyway? It didn’t seem to harm her, and people often times liked her better for it anyway? Would it just be better to hide the ugliness underneath?

One of the older Supporting Characters, ordered them out of bed and they exited the room one by one. When they reached the outside, the older Supporting Character punched a red lever with the pseudo-code “firm alarm” etched on the outside.

No alarm rang when he crunched his fist against it, but instead the room revolved into a classroom.

Really, it “revolved”, until a classroom slid into view. It all happened so fast, of course, that none of the students could really factor in the mathematical and architectural complexities that would be for the room to complete such a task. A way to describe it is if your weird aunt Magnolia spun around and when she faced you again she was your Uncle Alfred.

When Noelle first had watched this phenomenon, she gaped in awe, while the others gazed at it as if it were merely a minor change such as a cloud shifting in the sky.

Of course, Noelle didn’t know about revolving rooms, because they hardly used the Extras or Main Character rooms for any chapter work. But the Supporting Character dorm was used often as the biology class, and no other room in the building had enough as much space as this that could fit the area for laboratory work and such.

Unfortunately, by now, quite a few months after residing in the room, the revolving phenomenon had grown routine for Noelle as if she were to say in a dull tone, “Oh, look a tree…a bush…a revolving room…a canary.”

She and Hera spoke fewer and fewer times resulting in a mere nod in the hallway or a simple “hello” would be all the conversation passed in the day. While Hera did manage to keep her promise to designate Noelle as a Supporting Character, all the Mains and Supports often held a dignified air when they strutted by her never paying her any mind.

Hera motioned for Noelle to sit in a chair with a decent amount of space away from her. Hera threw a disdainful hand through her wig crafted by one of  the Extras. While it wasn’t a spitting image of her previous hair, it could have fooled most anyone.

Often times Hera invited Noelle to sit with her in the cafeteria to plot the demise of Bri. Hera only let Blade in on the secret, keeping him unpleasantly close in the cafeteria.

Blade, of course, desired this more than anything. He followed Hera around often like a sad puppy dog. Noelle found this both humorous and rather sickening, but she attributed this chemistry to what she called “the undeniable destiny”: Main Characters always end up falling in love; case and point.

By now, Blade had given up on any attempt to lure Noelle into affection for him, so he moved on. Noelle hardly found this to be a disappointment.

“Do you know if Bri’s afraid of anything?” Hera asked Noelle anxiously as Blade returned to the table with a miserly salad for Hera and a rather bulky hamburger for himself. Hera stared at the salad with as much dislike as if the food would come alive and bite her.

“Not that I’m aware of,” Noelle answered loyally to Bri. Often times in lunch she tried to avoid these conversations, fearing that Hera would spark a brilliantly devious plan and set forth upon shattering fragile Bri.

“Come on there must be something,” Hera persisted. “Spiders, heights, oh – I don’t know, fear of the dark? You spent how much time with her? Come on, you must have some sort of clue.”

“I think the only thing she’s afraid of is that I’m going to leave the Author forever.”

Hera let out the most shuddering laughter that sent chills down Noelle’s spine, but for good measure, she laughed silently along.

Suddenly, Hera clutched her chest, her breaths drew short like a woman about to give birth.

“Hera?” cried Noelle and Blade simultaneously. “You okay?”

Inhale. Exhale.

“F-fine,” Hera stuttered, “I just feel really light headed.”

Blade shoved her petite salad toward her.

“You need to eat,” he said seriously.

Hera threw a dismissive wave, “I’m f-fine, not hungry,” she spluttered.

Hera glanced up at Noelle guiltily, and Noelle knew immediately that Hera hadn’t eaten for days. While Noelle did visit the bathroom twice a week to dispose of the fat-inducing cafeteria food, she wasn’t nearly as
dedicated
as Hera.

Hera hardly ate any more, and looked as if she weighed about 80 pounds.

“Anyway,” Hera broke the awkward silence, “I sort of always knew that your friend was a nutcase. I mean, first of all, she cut my hair for no reason…I mean did she think that everyone would want to elect her as Main Character just because she had a fistful of hair?

“Then she was babbling about some platypus.”

“Lapsus,” corrected Noelle suddenly remembering the shadow that she had seen the other day, for some odd reason it never crossed her mind for the rest of the day.

“Whatever, in the hallway, and now she’s ranting about some Author. I mean we have the story board…hello? What does she think they do? Nothing?”

Noelle wasn’t quite sure how to disagree, if she should disagree at all, that is. After all the story board members did determine much of what happened in the plot. Not all were elected on, but most didn’t try to interfere with a character’s free will.

A scribe entered the cafeteria with a camera, and Noelle automatically scooted back five feet. While she did occasionally have a few lines she could input in a scene, she was mostly background material, hardly a step up from the Extras.

She felt a light tap on her shoulder as Bri smiled warmly at her. She peered anxiously at the camera to make sure that it wasn’t pointed at them, but the scribe was much more focused on Hera and Blade babbling on about something sappy and boring.

“We have an emergency P.E. session this period,” Bri informed her.

“P.E.?” asked Noelle incredulously. “Have you seen me try to exercise? It’s not a pretty sight.”

Bri shrugged her shoulders serenely, “Sorry, but that’s what they said. Something really important, or at least, that’s what they told me.”

Noelle threw a longing glance at Hera’s and Blade’s “enthralling” conversation, but she decided that she would rather throw up than have to listen to that. Instead, she gave in and followed Bri to the gymnasium.

#

The Extras and Supporting Characters clustered around each other while a tall man in green basketball shorts and a dangling silver whistle around his neck approached them somewhat ominously.

“The training for today,” he boomed after blowing a painfully sharp blast matching that of coach’s back during Noelle’s campus days, “is very important for later on. Times are changing, and you may not know that characters in stories are facing very dangerous foes.”

“I think you have the wrong genre,” piped up a male Extra. “We’re the Romance category…we don’t do violence. Maybe you’re thinking Adventure.”

The man shook his head vigorously.

“While some genres have more fights and wars in them than others,” he began glaring at a group of girls whispering amongst themselves, “you are facing foes every day, but the best part is that they only have one offense strategy. We have several.”

He snapped his fingers, and a few attendants wheeled in a large crate full of arrows, spears, and other nasty looking weapons. Noelle blinked several times to make sure that she wasn’t dreaming. Pinching herself didn’t even wake her up.

“These will prepare you for a war that may be on the rise,” he said darkly. “While you may not recognize these weapons, I know that you’ve employed them well. It’s simply my job to perfect your aim and – yes Miss…”

“Noelle,” Noelle added lowering her hand. “Um – yes I’m pretty sure that I’ve never used a weapon in my life. Are you sure you don’t have the wrong genre?”

“Again, you may not recognize these weapons,” the man repeated.

Noelle shot Bri a skeptical look, but Bri simply reflected an image of suppressed anxiety as if she wanted to be anywhere but inside that gymnasium.

“Some of you will discover that you’re quite handy with a particular weapon,” the man continued. “And you’re task is to know your enemy and strike him or her before their defenses are at the ready. While my assistants set up the targets, have a go at the weapons bin!”

The man must have expected a flurry of movement toward the enticing objects of death, but the children slowly paced up to the bin as if the weapons were about to bite them.

One dart weapon, upon which Noelle’s eyes fell immediately when she pushed through the line of tentative characters, seemed to scream out in familiarity. Noelle feebly took it out of the bin and ducked down away from the others.

Bri, on the other hand, looked rather pale and muttered something about needing to use the restroom before bolting out of the gymnasium.

Noelle probed the weapon with her hands, analyzing each end wondering how exactly to use it to strike an enemy correctly.

“It’s called a
telochet
,” the man explained, seemingly reading Noelle’s quizzical expression, but she replaced it with a more perplexed one at the unfamiliarity of the name.

“I think I’ve used it before,” she explained. “But maybe I was wrong if it goes by that name, because I’ve never heard of it before.”

“This particular weapon is very valuable for our ranks,” the man intoned as if a history teacher administering a lector. “The telochet is capable of catching soldiers with weak tool belts off guard. Without their tool belt, they will have no weapons, and that can cost them a life.”

The man motioned for her to test her aim at target on a belt sealed around the dummy’s waist. She aimed and released the trigger.

Much to her surprise, she landed very close to the bulls-eye.

The man nodded somewhat approvingly, “I see that you’ve really only begun testing yourself with this weapon. As you may know, with more practice comes greater ability, but I suppose if you work hard enough, you might be fit for the ranks.”

Noelle tested her aim a few more times.

“The thing I don’t understand,” Noelle said after she had run out of darts, “is that I heard that a few other people had this emergency training yesterday, but they couldn’t seem to recall any details.”

The man pat her gently on the shoulder before replying, “That’s the most intriguing part about my students, they often don’t remember ever using these weapons and likewise they never seems to recall these training sessions as well.”

Then he left her kneeling, perplexed, on the gymnasium floor.

#

And truly, Noelle almost had forgotten completely about her training session; ironically enough, she still managed to remember that she needed to inform the Main Characters that they had the same session at three o clock.

Bri snagged Noelle in the hallway and pulled her aside right before Noelle entered Hera’s classroom to deliver the news.

“What happened?” Bri began anxiously.

“What do you mean?”

“During the training session,” Bri said with a surprising amount of impatience for such a bright person.

“Oh you mean the gym thingy,” Noelle said recalling it somewhat. “Don’t really remember…it was kind of fun though, or at least, I think so.”

Bri gaped at Noelle looking slightly alarmed.

“Noelle,” she began slowly, yet calmly, “I’m not too sure about those training sessions. I can’t recall much, but I remember being wary of them.”

Noelle threw a wave of dismissal, “You’re never too sure about anything. Come on, Bri, live a little. We only live once, right?”

Bri stared at her in utter disbelief, “My goodness,” she muttered sadly, “what have they done to you?”

Noelle frowned, “Well, I think that it’s an improvement, but anyway, I need to go. I have to deliver a message to Hera.”

Then she left without another word.

#

When she arrived at Hera’s classroom, she peered in and motioned for the Main Character to exit. Not much to Noelle’s surprise, Blade took this as an invitation for him to come as well, and he followed suit behind Hera.