At our monthly Writing is Fun meetings we decide a prompt for writing for the next meeting.
The Mascara Incident – Carol Kagan
It was a weird and fantastical Friday in school. It
began when I turned my phone to Sandy to see a TikTok mascara tutorial by a
girl named Meena.
“O. M. G.,” Sandy blurts out as she rolled her eyes.
“Look at her!”
“Oh, if she thinks she’s a star, no way,” I laugh. “I
can do better than that. She didn’t curl before rolling up the mascara. Look at those clumps.”
We go to the trophy case in the alcove by the gym. It has mirrors on the back panel plus a few photos and a recent newspaper article about Agnes Moore, a long-ago cheerleader who recently died. I'll use the mirrors to put on the mascara while Sandy records me. I’m getting my mascara and eyelash curler out while Sandy tries to get her phone ready to record. She swings around to aim it and hits the case. Clunk. Clink. Clink. Ting. The tall county championship trophy fell onto the floor and smashed into pieces.
We look at each other, look around, and, just as the
class bell rings, we run to our next class. In different directions.
And that’s when Friday starts to unravel.
I’m running as Mr. Ryan, the janitor, comes around the
corner and shouts, “Stop running! What was that? What happened?”
And without any idea what to say I come up with something to keep me out of trouble. I tell him that something came running through the hall, bumped into the trophy case, and ran into the gym.
Of course, he asks, "What kind of something?"
"It was fast. I didn't get a good look. It was probably furry and it was fast and maybe had a tail," I tell him.
"Aha! There's been a racoon hanging out near the dumpsters at night, making a mess. I'm going to get that animal and relocate him far away."
As I quickly leave for my history class I call back over my shoulder, "It sure could've been a racoon. I didn't get a real good look."
Meanwhile, Sandy arrives at drama class. The discussion is about a séance scene in the play Blithe Spirit. During class she figures she needs a cover story in case someone saw her near the trophy case. Listening to all this “seeing ghosts” stuff she remembers the article about Agnes Moore and comes up with a doozy. She starts waving her hand for attention.
“Hey, I just saw a ghost near the trophy case right
after lunch. It was swirling around. I bet it was Agnes Moore, the famous
cheerleader from our school. She just died a few months ago.”
Now, everyone adores Miss King. She’s young, dramatic,
and ... enthusiastic. Good for a drama teacher, I guess.
She excitedly says to the class, “What an opportunity! We'll have a class activity tonight to learn how actors use their actions to convey what's happening in a scene. Tonight we'll have a séance to reach Agnes. A chance to get a feel for how characters act on stage. Six-thirty in the art room next to the gym.” Then she adds, “Oh, this is so exciting! It will be awesome if we do reach Agnes.”
It’s the end of the Friday school day and I just want
to get out of there as soon as possible. Sandy runs up and grabs me at my locker.
She is panicked and says, “You are not going to
believe this! Miss King is holding a séance tonight because I told her I saw
the ghost of Agnes Moore flying around at the trophy case.”
I don’t even get “why” out before she explains that
was her idea of a cover story about the trophy falling and breaking and tells
me I have to come to the rehearsal. I tell her about the raccoon story. We figure
that after tonight we’ll be okay.
Miss King sets up a table with candles, a few cheerleader pom-poms, red and white school colors tablecloth, and a copy of the newspaper clipping about Agnes. Several guests, and I am one of them, sit in chairs nearby and after she lights the candles she turns the lights out. Just a narrow light from the hallway comes in. The class gathers around and those with reading scripts in hand sit at the table. The candles don't cast much light so they tilt their pages toward the candles to read, and Miss King begins.
“Time is the reef upon which all our frail mystic ships are wrecked,” and she calls to Agnes.
"Agnes, if you can hear me, show us a sign. Are you listening? Oh, Agnes, we want to hear from you."
Suddenly the hall lights go out. There is a group gasp, and we are in complete
darkness except for the candles.
A small white light dances around the room, coming
through the door window from the darkened hallway. Up, down, up, down, from
under the door, reflecting off the glass in the picture frames around the room.
Miss King, breathing heavily, calls out to Agnes to show herself. She is
excited and as she stands up her script falls onto a candle, catching fire.
Well, now there’s some light in the room, but we still see the red light bobbing all around.
The heat from the fire triggers the sprinklers and the
fire alarm. A few moments later the hall light comes on, and Mr. Ryan opens the door and turns on
our lights.
So, in the end, Sandy’s story was the best and now
Agnes, in the spotlight again, is blamed for breaking the trophy and the school
has a ghost story to add to its history.
Mr. Ryan is determined to catch the raccoon. He is
sure he saw tracks near the double doors that open to the back alley. After his
dinner he comes back to the school to stake out the gym and the hallway near
the trophy case. He turns the lights off and uses a
flashlight to search.
He starts near the trophy case, slowly swinging the flashlight left, then right, then
up toward the ceiling. Back and forth, up, and down, out around the
hallway, around the trophy case. He goes down the hall shining the light around the classroom
doors.
Suddenly the fire alarm begins to blast, and emergency lights
flash on and off. Sprinklers go on. He turns the lights on, and begins checking the classrooms. He opens the art room
door and finds Miss King and a bunch of students, water dripping from their hair and wet clothes hanging off them. They are standing around the table set with the candles now covered in the black and brown of burned paper. It is obvious that this is the source of the
fire.
Above the screeching fire alarm, they explain to him
how Agnes appeared as a white apparition, a small white light flailing around the
room. She must have been angry about something and broke the trophy earlier. Mr. Ryan
quicky slips his flashlight into his back pocket. He adopts the
Agnes Moore story. He’s not afraid of no ghosts.
~ ~ ~ ~
HERB SAMPLER Second Edition
Buy one for yourself and consider getting a few more as the winter holidays approach – hostess gifts, housewarming and holiday presents.
