Later that afternoon, I joined Natalie and a group of other girls on a trip to the nearest town, Arlesten. There was a bus stop near the gate of our school, and the ride only took us about fifteen minutes.

Arlesten turned out to be a medium-sized town frequented mainly by tourists. We sat down in a small street-side cafe where we had tea and deliciously smelling scones. For some reason, Natalie ordered only tea. I figured that she might be on a some kind of a diet. But when I offered her some of my scones, she eagerly accepted and ate them.

Afterwards, we leisurely strolled through the town, exploring the many small shops along the promenade. We spent a lot of time at a place called 'Beauty Palace' where the girls tried out various brands of rouge, lipstick and eyeliner. Natalie did not buy anything there, though she tried out as many different samples of cosmetics as the other girls.

There was a small but well-stocked bookstore which caught her particular interest, but what really fascinated her was the town's record store, The Music Store. I watched her pulling records out of the shelves and studying their covers. Her eyes were shining.

"Look, here's Dylan's new single." She was staring at the record sleeve as if it contained some kind of  treasure. "I listened to that song on the radio. It's bloody marvelous."

I smiled at her enthusiasm. "So, are you going to buy that?"

Her face fell. "Not now."

"Why not?"

She shrugged. "Maybe I will come back some other time and get it."

She did not elaborate on that, so I did not pursue it any further. But I was beginning to wonder if Natalie might not be poor, at least in comparison with her classmates. As a citizen of the Alliance, I didn't have any personal experience with poverty. For me, it remained an abstract concept, though I knew of its prevalence throughout human history.

We went on to visit the local supermarket, where most of the girls – not Natalie, though – purchased sweets, soda pops and cigarettes. Intoxicated with the freedom of being unsupervised by teachers or prefects, and faced with the prospect of having to return to St. Albert's all too soon, the girls were acting more than a bit wild. Helen climbed into a shopping cart and the rest of us pushed it at high speed, laughing, whooping and shouting, ignoring the angry protests uttered by the supermarket's salespeople.

We arrived at the bus station like that, exhilarated and out of breath. The next bus was scheduled to arrive in less than ten minutes.

"I think I will go back and buy that record, after all," Natalie announced.

"There won't be enough time for that, even if you run. Remember that long line of customers waiting at the checkout? You are going to miss the bus for sure," Nancy warned her.

"I'll hurry."

Natty came back just a few minutes later, triumphantly clutching her purchase.

Nancy frowned. "How did you do that?"

I was wondering about that, too. But just then the bus arrived. We all got in, and on our ride back to St. Albert's, we talked about different things.

In the course of the next few days I got the chance to closely observe Natalie Fogg, and the way she behaved with me, her friends, her classmates, her teachers. In almost every respect she differed considerably from what psychologists at the Institute had led me to expect – assuming that Natalie and the author of the Red Notebook were indeed one and the same person, of course. Perhaps it was that assumption which was wrong.

The most obvious way that Natalie differed from her classmates was how she did not mind being different. There was not an ounce of conformism in her. Take, for instance, the matter of her bag. Whereas other students carried around their textbooks and notebooks and stuff tied together with some belt or piece of rope, Natalie hauled around her belongings in some weird kind of bag slung over her shoulders – a mailman's bag, upon closer inspection. People would stare at that bag and roll their eyes and make disparaging remarks about it, but Natalie didn't care. She liked her bag, and other people's opinions simply did not matter.

My roommate also appeared to like controversy. Natalie just loved to pick an argument with a classmate or, even better, with a teacher. I soon noticed that she was engaged in a long-standing feud with our Geometry teacher, Miss Gablins. That woman openly detested Natalie. Natalie, on the other hand, refused to take into consideration that Miss Gablins, by virtue of a being a teacher, would always have the upper hand, at least in the long run.

Finally and most importantly, Natalie Fogg was brilliant. A phenomenally gifted mathematician. For a girl her age, she exhibited amazing mathematical insight and intuition. I was the only student in our class who could even halfway keep up with her, and that was for the most part due to what I thought of as an unfair advantage: the simple fact that, when it came to math and the sciences, I had already studied most of the topics that were part of St. Albert's curriculum. Of course, Natalie noticed that I was the only one in our class who could keep up with her. She liked to talk about the math that interested her, and I was the only one she could talk shop with. This brought us closer together. Her initial aversion to me and her refusal to accept me as a roommate had disappeared completely.

It did not take long for me to find out that Natalie was in the habit of jotting down ideas and doing math problems and stuff in a notebook that she used to carry with her wherever she went, stored in her weird bag. Of course, this observation fit in beautifully with what we knew about the famous Natty Fogg. However – and I nearly panicked, when I realized that – the cover of the notebook that Natalie wrote in was blue rather than red. For a second or two, I feared that I might have accidentally crossed over to some alternate universe after all – a universe where things were similar to our own except for small things, such as the fact that Natty Fogg turned out to be the author of the Blue Notebook rather than the Red Notebook. But I had successfully connected with Mira via the ansible, hadn't I? Surely that would not have been possible if I had ended up in another universe. Still, the wrong color of Natalie's notebook worried me.

Another thing that bothered me was the pervasive lack of privacy at St. Albert's. As a student, you were never really alone. Not in the classrooms or in the hall, obviously. Not in the dorm room you shared with your roommate, and not even in the bathrooms you shared with the other students of your dormitory. I had always had my own single dorm room before, so this new situation constituted a major change for me.

It was a Sunday morning. Natalie and I were still in bed. I was stretched out on my back, idly watching my roommate as she alternated between reading a math textbook and writing in her notebook. Natalie was propped up against a couple of pillows, half leaning against the wall, totally absorbed in what she was doing.

Eventually, she looked up from her textbook and yawned. As her head turned in my direction, her eyes widened and her lips curved into a smile.

Belatedly I remembered how, a couple of minutes before, I had allowed my left hand to slip into my panties.

"Oops" was all I managed to say. Admittedly not a very original reaction, but a genuine one.

In response, Natalie grinned and turned back to the textbook she had been reading. Offering me a bit of privacy, if I wanted it.

I did not make use of that privacy, in case you are wondering. But I did appreciate the offer.

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A / N :  As always, a heart-felt thank you for taking the time to read this chapter.

Any thoughts, impressions, comments? Don't hesitate to let me know.