Free Unmasked by Hope Bolinger

though Lacey’s the main counselor for the girls, she can’t handle everyone because there are so many.”
    “Noelle,” piped a voice from behind her. “Are you rooming in here too?”
    Noelle spun around as Bri waved her hand up and down as she was washing the window of a car at rapid speed.
    “I’m Bri,” she said cheerfully to the sub-counselor.
    “Oh so there’s two of you?” the girl said, slightly irritated as if she had wanted her own room.
    “What’s your name?” Bri began inquisitively.
    “Aleesha,” the girl answered shortly, as Noelle noted the harshness in her voice.
    “She wants us to leave her alone,” Bri whispered suddenly. Well, Noelle wouldn’t put it as soft as a whisper. Bri’s exuberance sort of cancelled out any chance of hiding a secret. “She wants to paint the stool in peace. Sometimes my friend, Anna, will get upset when I interrupt her playing piano. I guess that we’ll have to explore the room on our own.”
    Aleesha didn’t mutter an argument, so Bri and Noelle ventured to the closet in the room.
    Noelle glanced back curiously at Aleesha’s mask, but Bri’s voice drew her mind away from the matter.
    “Oh, I’ve heard about these,” Bri made an odd noise that sounded familiar to a squeal, but far more amplified.
    She held out a sheet of white cloth, a sheet of paper, and a pencil.
    Bri wrote on the paper, “Long skirt, size small.”
    Suddenly the cloth began to move violently as, what it seemed, dozens of mice began crawling under it forcing the cloth to move in all sorts of directions. Finally the movement died down as Bri spun around, what was no longer a sheet of cloth, but an ankle-length skirt. She tried it on and made another odd sound, familiar to a squeak.
    “Oh this is so much fun,” she said, while twirling around the dress several times. “You should try it, Noelle.”
    She thrust the skirt into Noelle’s hand as Noelle erased the writing on the paper. Suddenly the skirt began unraveling as it returned to its sheet form.
    “The more specific the better,” Bri urged as Noelle transformed the cloth into a t-shirt, somewhat like the one she wore previously.
    After the girls transformed it into every shape imaginable, they returned the cloth to the closet, and then they found several others in various colors.
    Noelle modeled a few different colors, but Bri argued that she could only picture Noelle in white.
    “It just seems like a very nice color on you,” Bri argued, while rolling back and forth on a bed. “I’m sorry, but black just doesn’t look right, and I feel as if red does not suit you, at least, not yet.”
    “What are you talking about?” Noelle laughed.
    Bri threw her hands up in a rapid motion and shrugged.
    “I don’t really know, actually,” she admitted. “I do say quite a lot of weird things, don’t I? Do you think that I’m going crazy?”
    Noelle erased the writing on the paper as the black dressed folded back into a sheet of cloth.
    “Not to worry, Bri, sometimes crazy people are just what this world needs.”
    “But I’m not a lunatic, am I?” Bri asked alarmed, and forcing her eyes to stretch wider.
    “Of course not,” Noelle assured her, “besides, the best people in stories are the ones who take leaps of faith and are not afraid to try something different. You of all people should know that.”
    Someone rapped at the door, and Aleesha muttered, “Come in,” without looking up from her work.
    Lacey stepped in and offered an exhausted smile.
    “Hey, if you guys are settled in, we’re going to add a little life to the hallways. The art department let us use some decorations.”
    She brandished a few rolls of streamers and various paper flowers.
    “When I’m finished with this,” Aleesha grunted as Bri and Noelle went out into the hallway.
    “Bri,” Noelle began when she was sure that Aleesha was farther than an earshot away. “Is it common for someone to wear a mask at campus?”
    “Well I don’t think