Masquerade Draft 6
Masquerade
Elsie changed in the bathroom stalls behind the showers no one used. Unlike the rest of the class, she did not like to change in front of her locker. The powder blue stall was thick with the over-sweet smell of disinfectant, but it was necessary for Elsie to change there. She could hear a couple girls laughing and she believed, firmly, that they were laughing at her. They sounded like the tropical birds that chattered in rainforest documentaries.
“Moo-Cow! Are you in there?” Anna hammered on the stall’s door. The lock shook. “Elsie? Are you hiding, Moo-Cow?”
Elsie squeezed her eyes shut. She was not a cow and Anna, she once believed, was not a bully. They had known each other since third grade. Middle school had turned Elsie large, quiet, and soft and Anna thin, loud, and sharp.
“It’s disgusting when people change near toilets. You’re not a disgusting pervert, are you?” Anna began to drum on the door with both hands: pat-a-pat-pat, pat-a-pat-pat. “We’re doing badminton in class, today. I saw the little baby rackets. If you sit next to me, we’ll get paired together. I’m sick of being paired with Sherry. She hates running.”
As Elsie pulled on her gym shirt, she remembered going to Anna’s tenth birthday party. She had given her a watercolor set. Anna had announced it was her favorite gift to all the girls there. Elsie had been flushed with pride until Anna unwrapped the next present and said the same thing. Aloud, Elsie said, “Go away.”
“Why?” said Anna
“Go away,” she repeated. Elsie decided she was not built for friends like Anna or perhaps any friends at all.
Anna clucked her tongue in disapproval and drummed on the door again. “You take things too personally, Moo-Cow. See you in a few minutes.”
Elsie bent down beneath the stall door to watch Anna’s white sneakers walk away. She unbolted the lock when they were gone.
As she went past the rows of orange lockers to line up by the door, Elsie saw the two girls who were laughing. Much to her surprise, they hadn’t been laughing at Elsie, after all. Instead, they were holding a mask between them. It had thin, brown fur, pointed pig ears, and tusks. There was an elastic string at the back.
A third girl watched them, shifting her weight from one foot to the other. She had braces and spoke in a lisping, high voice. “Give it back. Please. It’s mine.”
Elsie was glad she didn’t see what happened next. She hated the masks. The gym teacher came in and blew her red whistle. Every student who didn’t get into line would lose five points off their final grade.
The boys were already in the gym. They sat on the floor along the bleachers. Elsie sat as far away from Anna as she could.
Rob sat down next to Elsie. He was still wearing his goat mask.
Outside of school, Elsie and Rob had been neighbors for three years. They sat together on the school bus because they were the first to be picked up in the morning and the last two students to be dropped off in the afternoon. Elsie was confident that if they were really friend, they were friends by default. She liked that Rob was quiet, however, watched the same shows as she did, and had not yet grown as tall as the other boys. Sometimes, he was even funny. He seemed very proud of himself whenever she laughed at one of his jokes.
Elsie had not seen Rob’s face for a while. The mask covered his entire head. There was a small buckle in back. Girls wore masks with elastic bands, but boys had to wear ones that covered everything, even their hair. You had to wear masks a certain way or everyone said you couldn’t wear them at all. The owners of the mask kiosks in the mall were willing to sell anything to anyone, though, but Elsie was used to overhearing them carefully explain the rules.
“You’re still wearing it?” Elsie looked at him through the slanted eyeholes.
“It’s my face.” Rob shrugged.
“They’re going to make you take it off.”
Rob took out a note from the pocket of his gym shorts. In neat cursive, it said, “Robert Kelly should, under no circumstances, be told to remove his face-wear as it would cause unfortunate damage to his ‘psychological health.’” The bottom was signed with Dr. Hayworth and Mrs. Kelly’s names.
Elsie read it twice before she gave it back to him. “Is this real?”
“Of course not.” He folded it again and put it in his pocket.
Further down the row, the gym teacher was standing in front of Anna and her Best Friend Forever, Sherry. Sherry was wearing a purple, plastic cat mask. She didn’t have a note. The gym teacher stood, yelling, with her brown, cardboard box held out to Sherry. Elsie could see the masks that had been collected piled neatly inside it with their feathers, horns, and teeth.
Sherry shook her head, about to cry. “It’s not fair! It’s private property!”
Anna agreed indignantly. “It’s stealing.”
Elsie stared at the box with its masks. The eyeholes gaped at her and she quickly looked at her tennis shoes.
***
At lunch on Wednesday, Elsie contemplated the sharp horns on Rob’s mask as she ate her third Oreo cookie. She asked him if he had heard about Cody getting suspended because of his antlers.
“Yeah. One of them knocked the casing off a fluorescent light in the ceiling. Mrs. Blackwell was so pissed.” Rob laughed. Elsie watched as he pried the goat jaws of his mask open with both hands. She could see the wooden teeth that lined it. He tore off a corner of pizza, rolled it up, and reached inside the mask to put it in his real mouth.
“I thought we liked Mrs. Blackwell,” said Elsie. Most people in the school did.
“I don’t know. She tried to get rid of masks before winter break. Mom says she told the PTA that we’re the only school in the city that hasn’t banned them, yet.”
“Maybe I should transfer, then.” Her voice was so small, she wasn’t sure if Rob could hear her. She hated being herded down the halls by large tusks and sharp teeth.
The masks had finally come to Urbandale Middle School in late November. They first appeared in the mall kiosks and then in the window shops downtown, eyes empty and teeth sharp. The ones on the shelves of Wal-Mart and Target were made of bright plastic. Channel 3 ran a story about it with the news anchor holding up the mask of a panda bear, saying, “Your children share, wear, love, and fight over them. Are they the new bell bottoms and pet rocks or a fad virus?” Elsie thought it would have run its course by now, just like it had at Comus Middle School and Our Lady of Providence Junior High.
Rob did not care if masks were still being worn other places or not. “No, Mrs. Blackwell was completely unfair! She started screaming for security when he finally took it off. He was wearing face paint underneath because he knew what would happen and it got on everything. Blackwell chased him into the bathroom. He tried to put the paint down the sink, but it started to overflow. The water poured into the hallway and - this is great - Sherry slipped on it! Everyone thought that was pretty funny but she ran off.” Rob laughed until he froze. He then pushed his seat back and crawled under the table. He folded himself into a ball behind his backpack. He whispered, “Don’t look. They’re about to walk by.”
Elsie did look. Three tall boys passed her wearing matching gorilla masks and orange hoodies. The tallest gorilla pointed at the table next to hers. They sat.
“I’m not here,” said Rob from under the table. His glance flickered from Elsie to the gorillas. “Tell me when they’re gone.”
“They’ll be here all lunch. Let’s just move.”
“The tall one wants my face. It’s because I laughed at Sherry, today, and she told him he had to get me.” He was panicked. “I’ll be psychologically damaged.”
“Hey Moo-Cow!” Anna, who had snuck up behind Elsie, flung her arms around her. She did not appear to see Rob. “I skipped gym, this morning. Did you change in the toilet, again? You can get autoimmune diseases from it. Fact.”
Elsie smacked Anna’s arms away, but Anna didn’t seem to mind. Elsie turned around to yell at her, but paused. Something white was attached to her back. She craned her neck to see it.
Anna smiled wider and spun around. “They’re wings. I’m a bird. Do you like them?”
The feathers were gray at the tips. They were attached to a pair of straps that Anna wore over her shoulders.
Elsie put her backpack in front of Rob so that Anna wouldn’t see him. She wrinkled her nose. “If you’re a bird, where’s your mask?”
“Who cares? I have wings. Also, I use too much moisturizer to cover it up with a dumb beak, right?” She struck a pose for Elsie.
Sherry, still wearing her purple cat mask, sat down with the gorillas at the next table. She made sure to squeeze next to one in particular. They all said “hi” to each other and began talking in voices that Elsie felt were far too loud. She hated loud noises almost as much as she hated the animal masks.
Anna immediately left Elsie alone when Sherry appeared. She ran to her table.
Sherry sat up when she saw Anna and asked, “What are you wearing?”
“My wings.” Anna was triumphant, happily unaware of the sharpness in Sherry’s voice.
“That’s not how you do it,” said Sherry, Anna’s Best Friend Forever. “It has to be a mask.” She nodded at the gorillas and they nodded back.
Elsie felt her stomach grow tight as she watched them. Rob shuffled next to her feet and said, “What are they doing?”
Anna looked perplexed. “I don’t want to be a cat or a gorilla. I’m a bird.”
As they spoke, Elsie stood up with Rob’s tray and their bags. She walked to another table. She looked back and saw Rob crawl out from his hiding place. He remained bent toward the floor as he followed her and sat down.
“They didn’t see me, right?” Rob had to open the goat’s mouth, again. “They saw me and didn’t say anything, probably.”
“Why are they getting mad at Anna’s wings?” Elsie looked back at Sherry standing opposite Anna. “It’s not important.”
“Yes it is.” Rob tore off another bit of pizza and put it in the goat’s mouth. “Masks show who people are.”
Elsie sniffed. “That’s stupid. People show who people are.”
Rob touched the buckle at the back of his goat mask. “You’re stupid,” he said. “Don’t ask to sit with me on the bus home, okay?” He stood up with his pizza and left to sit in the hall for the rest of the period.
***
During afternoon classes, Elsie told herself that Rob was the sort of friend that was meant to fall to the wayside, like Anna. As she had suspected all along, Elsie was not built to keep friends.
This did not explain, however, why she began to writer an apology note to Rob during American Government in the back of her notebook. It hadn’t sounded right when she read it back to herself, so she threw it out. She thought of him again during Algebra, however, and then during Language Arts. When he had called her “stupid,” the word had lacked any venom. He had just sounded sad. Also, she didn’t like the idea of sitting on her own in gym class or far away from him on the bus.
Elsie resolved to talk to him after the final bell. She sidestepped the boar from gym talking to an elephant. Elsie tapped the shoulder of a person who turned out to be an antelope.
She found Rob at his locker. He was trying to scratch off a sticker from the orange metal surface. “Damn it,” he said to himself as he scratched. Again, the phrase sounded low and sad.
The sticker on his locker said something that had to do with farm animals. “That’s really rude,” Elsie said hesitantly.
Rob grunted.
“I’m sorry I made you feel bad at lunch,” she said. Rob was, she realized, the only person she really liked in the school despite his stupid mask. As far as she could tell, he didn’t have anyone else, either.
“Okay,” he said after a long time. He took a deep breath. “It’s fine. The gorillas are just sort of freaking me out. I don’t know what to do.” He stopped scratching the sticker. He had managed to peel off the corner, but white adhesive clung to the locker in streaks. Rob looked up as the students crowding the hall migrated outside. He grabbed his backpack and said, “I have to leave soon.”
“The gorillas?” She followed him down the hall.
“Jason found me after Biology. He’s the tall one. They did see me at lunch. He said he was going to come for me. He wants my face.”
“Give it to him. Buy another one.” She didn’t like it, anyway.
“I’ll be psychologically damaged. Let’s just go through the gulley.”
Elsie and Rob went through the doors at the back of the gym and cut through the soccer field. The gulley was at the edge of the school’s property where the grass dipped down into a hill. Elsie’s older brother, when he was a student, had once gotten in trouble for smoking at the bottom. She and Rob did not find her brother in the gulley, though, just crushed beer cans, broken green glass, a soccer ball, and Anna.
Anna was sitting on a large rock with her back to them. Her knees were folded beneath her chin. The curved frame of one of her wings was broken. She did not hear them until Rob stepped on a beer can.
Anna twisted her neck around. “Moo-Cow!” Her mascara had dried on her cheeks. She wiped her eyes. “Are you here with your boyfriend? Are you two going to make-out?” She laughed too quickly, her smile brittle. “Sherry and Jason make-out all the time. When Sherry broke my wings, Jason laughed. Then she said it was an accident and laughed, too. Is school over, yet, Moo-Cow?”
Elsie hesitated. It was hard to look at Anna. “The bell just rang.”
“We’re not making-out,” Rob said. “We’re escaping. Why are you always calling her Moo-Cow?”
Elsie groaned. “She’s been doing it all semester. Don’t worry about it. I don’t.”
Anna slid off the rock. She smoothed her skirt and what was left of her wings. “Elsie’s the name of the cow on that one milk carton. The one with the big, pretty eyelashes?”
Elsie wrinkled her nose. “What cow?”
“On the milk carton! You’re not a cow; it’s just your name. It’s what I call you because we used to be all close and stuff.” Anna saw Elsie glare at her and she glared right back. “I’m not making this up!”
Rob looked at Elsie. She had been under the impression, until that moment, that Anna had thought they were nerds. If she knew all that, wasn’t she one, too? Elsie began to laugh and Rob, who seemed to realize the joke, laughed, too.
“Stop it!” Anna reached back and tore out a clump of feathers that still remained on her wing. She threw it at them. The feathers eddied in the air. One came back and landed on Anna’s head.
Rob and Elsie laughed harder.
Anna flushed as she picked the feather out of her hair. “Are you sure school’s over? Sherry and I walk home together. She knows where I am right now. She’s supposed to get me.”
Elsie frowned. “Is Jason going to be with her?” A small rock rolled down the slope and hit her shoe. Someone was coming down the hill after them.
“Here you are!” The tall boy in the gorilla mask grabbed Rob from behind. He lifted him in the air as he kicked. “Haven’t seen you in a while, huh? Were you laughing at Sherry, Goatsucker? You were laughing like a girl!”
“I’m not a girl!” Rob tried to hit him. His arms punched the air. His mask made it impossible to turn his head.
“Jason! God!” Anna shouted. She removed her wings. “Put him down!”
Elsie kicked the gorilla boy’s leg. He swung Rob at her and she ran backward.
Sherry was at the top of the gulley. She turned her head as she surveyed the gulley, the gorilla swinging Rob back and forth. “Hey Moo-Cow! Goatsucker! Are you Anna’s new best friends? Did you hear she’s a bird?” Sherry pushed her purple cat mask up as she navigated the slope to the bottom. “She has the beak for it.”
Anna covered her nose with her hands. “Shut up. Tell Jason to stop it. He’s not being fair.”
“You take things too seriously! We’re just having fun! Right?” The gorilla boy swung Rob around as he swore. He grabbed one of the horns on Rob’s mask and wrenched it off.
Elsie backed up and ran toward the gorilla. She wasn’t heavy enough that she could knock him down, but she was heavy enough to latch on his back without fear of him picking her off easily.
“Get off!” The gorilla hit the side of her face with his open hand. His grip loosened and Rob began to slide down.
Elsie grabbed and twisted his gorilla mask so that the eyeholes were at the side of his face. When he yelled again, struggling because the inside of the mask was black, Elsie punched the side of his head. She made sure to aim with her knuckles. It hurt when she made contact, but he finally dropped Rob. He threw Elsie off and she fell backward. Her ankle hurt when she hit the ground.
Sherry screamed and ran to the gorilla boy as he spun around. She righted the gorilla’s mask and asked if he was okay, patting the side of his face as he tried to pry her away from him. “Does your head hurt? Did that girl hurt you, baby?”
The gorilla boy made a point not to look at Elsie. “Stop it. Can we just leave?”
Elsie rubbed her knuckles. They were beginning to develop a bruise. She limped toward Rob as Anna helped him stand. Elsie asked if he was all right.
“Sort of,” he said. Rob touched the top of his mask where his horn had been. He looked from Anna to Elsie. He reached behind his head to unfasten the buckle. “This thing feels sort of hot, you know? I have to take it off, now. Hold on.”
Sherry ran forward and pushed Elsie’s shoulder. “Aren’t you going to apologize, Moo-Cow?”
Anna watched Elsie stumble and pushed Sherry in return. “Jason attacked her and her boyfriend, moron. Also, you only call her ‘Moo-Cow’ because I said it, first. You don’t even know what it means.”
“You know what? You all you hate me, anyway!” Sherry was crying, again. She slid her cat mask down over her face and grabbed Jason’s hand. She pulled him toward the slope. “Call me when you’re done being fantastically jealous.” They climbed the hill.
“Jealous of what?” Rob pulled his mask over his head and dropped it on the ground. He ran a hand through his real hair.
“Jealous of being insane, which she’s been, like, since we met.” Anna rolled her eyes.
“Aren’t you her Best Friend Forever?” said Elsie.
“I don’t know. Not for a while. I tried to make her like me again, but. Well.” Anna became quiet. Then she glanced at Elsie. “Jesus. Are you okay?”
Elsie lifted her foot. She rotated it in a circle and it throbbed. She put it back down and shifted her weight to it. “It’s just twisted.”
“It’s okay. Come on.” Rob took one of Elsie’s arms and looped it over his neck. He pulled her closer and grinned as he helped pull her up the hill. “Thanks for taking Jason down,” said Rob. “That was pretty funny.”
Anna hesitated. Then she did the same at Elsie’s other side, lifting her arm gingerly.
Elsie leaned forward and thanked them in a small voice. Her face was red. They began to walk toward the slope.
Elsie saw Rob’s mask on the ground. “Aren’t you going to pick it up?”
Rob scratched his real face, the left side of which was cratered with acne scars stretching from the bottom of his eye to his chin. “It’s fine.”
“Masks are pretty lame, anyway,” Anna informed them as if it were her idea.
Elsie frowned at Rob. “What if you get psychologically damaged?”
Anna said in high, proud voice that they were both crazy. She continued helping them up the gulley, however, asking them if they thought Jason would sue.
Elsie looked back at the mask at the bottom of the gulley, lying beside Anna’s wings. Its horn was gone and its eyes were empty. She felt it watch them as they left. It disappeared from her view, however, forgotten as they made their way over the crest of the hill.
Considering re-writing the above short story using the same characters and premise. Suggestions?
Elsie changed in the bathroom stalls behind the showers no one used. Unlike the rest of the class, she did not like to change in front of her locker. The powder blue stall was thick with the over-sweet smell of disinfectant, but it was necessary for Elsie to change there. She could hear a couple girls laughing and she believed, firmly, that they were laughing at her. They sounded like the tropical birds that chattered in rainforest documentaries.
“Moo-Cow! Are you in there?” Anna hammered on the stall’s door. The lock shook. “Elsie? Are you hiding, Moo-Cow?”
Elsie squeezed her eyes shut. She was not a cow and Anna, she once believed, was not a bully. They had known each other since third grade. Middle school had turned Elsie large, quiet, and soft and Anna thin, loud, and sharp.
“It’s disgusting when people change near toilets. You’re not a disgusting pervert, are you?” Anna began to drum on the door with both hands: pat-a-pat-pat, pat-a-pat-pat. “We’re doing badminton in class, today. I saw the little baby rackets. If you sit next to me, we’ll get paired together. I’m sick of being paired with Sherry. She hates running.”
As Elsie pulled on her gym shirt, she remembered going to Anna’s tenth birthday party. She had given her a watercolor set. Anna had announced it was her favorite gift to all the girls there. Elsie had been flushed with pride until Anna unwrapped the next present and said the same thing. Aloud, Elsie said, “Go away.”
“Why?” said Anna
“Go away,” she repeated. Elsie decided she was not built for friends like Anna or perhaps any friends at all.
Anna clucked her tongue in disapproval and drummed on the door again. “You take things too personally, Moo-Cow. See you in a few minutes.”
Elsie bent down beneath the stall door to watch Anna’s white sneakers walk away. She unbolted the lock when they were gone.
As she went past the rows of orange lockers to line up by the door, Elsie saw the two girls who were laughing. Much to her surprise, they hadn’t been laughing at Elsie, after all. Instead, they were holding a mask between them. It had thin, brown fur, pointed pig ears, and tusks. There was an elastic string at the back.
A third girl watched them, shifting her weight from one foot to the other. She had braces and spoke in a lisping, high voice. “Give it back. Please. It’s mine.”
Elsie was glad she didn’t see what happened next. She hated the masks. The gym teacher came in and blew her red whistle. Every student who didn’t get into line would lose five points off their final grade.
The boys were already in the gym. They sat on the floor along the bleachers. Elsie sat as far away from Anna as she could.
Rob sat down next to Elsie. He was still wearing his goat mask.
Outside of school, Elsie and Rob had been neighbors for three years. They sat together on the school bus because they were the first to be picked up in the morning and the last two students to be dropped off in the afternoon. Elsie was confident that if they were really friend, they were friends by default. She liked that Rob was quiet, however, watched the same shows as she did, and had not yet grown as tall as the other boys. Sometimes, he was even funny. He seemed very proud of himself whenever she laughed at one of his jokes.
Elsie had not seen Rob’s face for a while. The mask covered his entire head. There was a small buckle in back. Girls wore masks with elastic bands, but boys had to wear ones that covered everything, even their hair. You had to wear masks a certain way or everyone said you couldn’t wear them at all. The owners of the mask kiosks in the mall were willing to sell anything to anyone, though, but Elsie was used to overhearing them carefully explain the rules.
“You’re still wearing it?” Elsie looked at him through the slanted eyeholes.
“It’s my face.” Rob shrugged.
“They’re going to make you take it off.”
Rob took out a note from the pocket of his gym shorts. In neat cursive, it said, “Robert Kelly should, under no circumstances, be told to remove his face-wear as it would cause unfortunate damage to his ‘psychological health.’” The bottom was signed with Dr. Hayworth and Mrs. Kelly’s names.
Elsie read it twice before she gave it back to him. “Is this real?”
“Of course not.” He folded it again and put it in his pocket.
Further down the row, the gym teacher was standing in front of Anna and her Best Friend Forever, Sherry. Sherry was wearing a purple, plastic cat mask. She didn’t have a note. The gym teacher stood, yelling, with her brown, cardboard box held out to Sherry. Elsie could see the masks that had been collected piled neatly inside it with their feathers, horns, and teeth.
Sherry shook her head, about to cry. “It’s not fair! It’s private property!”
Anna agreed indignantly. “It’s stealing.”
Elsie stared at the box with its masks. The eyeholes gaped at her and she quickly looked at her tennis shoes.
***
At lunch on Wednesday, Elsie contemplated the sharp horns on Rob’s mask as she ate her third Oreo cookie. She asked him if he had heard about Cody getting suspended because of his antlers.
“Yeah. One of them knocked the casing off a fluorescent light in the ceiling. Mrs. Blackwell was so pissed.” Rob laughed. Elsie watched as he pried the goat jaws of his mask open with both hands. She could see the wooden teeth that lined it. He tore off a corner of pizza, rolled it up, and reached inside the mask to put it in his real mouth.
“I thought we liked Mrs. Blackwell,” said Elsie. Most people in the school did.
“I don’t know. She tried to get rid of masks before winter break. Mom says she told the PTA that we’re the only school in the city that hasn’t banned them, yet.”
“Maybe I should transfer, then.” Her voice was so small, she wasn’t sure if Rob could hear her. She hated being herded down the halls by large tusks and sharp teeth.
The masks had finally come to Urbandale Middle School in late November. They first appeared in the mall kiosks and then in the window shops downtown, eyes empty and teeth sharp. The ones on the shelves of Wal-Mart and Target were made of bright plastic. Channel 3 ran a story about it with the news anchor holding up the mask of a panda bear, saying, “Your children share, wear, love, and fight over them. Are they the new bell bottoms and pet rocks or a fad virus?” Elsie thought it would have run its course by now, just like it had at Comus Middle School and Our Lady of Providence Junior High.
Rob did not care if masks were still being worn other places or not. “No, Mrs. Blackwell was completely unfair! She started screaming for security when he finally took it off. He was wearing face paint underneath because he knew what would happen and it got on everything. Blackwell chased him into the bathroom. He tried to put the paint down the sink, but it started to overflow. The water poured into the hallway and - this is great - Sherry slipped on it! Everyone thought that was pretty funny but she ran off.” Rob laughed until he froze. He then pushed his seat back and crawled under the table. He folded himself into a ball behind his backpack. He whispered, “Don’t look. They’re about to walk by.”
Elsie did look. Three tall boys passed her wearing matching gorilla masks and orange hoodies. The tallest gorilla pointed at the table next to hers. They sat.
“I’m not here,” said Rob from under the table. His glance flickered from Elsie to the gorillas. “Tell me when they’re gone.”
“They’ll be here all lunch. Let’s just move.”
“The tall one wants my face. It’s because I laughed at Sherry, today, and she told him he had to get me.” He was panicked. “I’ll be psychologically damaged.”
“Hey Moo-Cow!” Anna, who had snuck up behind Elsie, flung her arms around her. She did not appear to see Rob. “I skipped gym, this morning. Did you change in the toilet, again? You can get autoimmune diseases from it. Fact.”
Elsie smacked Anna’s arms away, but Anna didn’t seem to mind. Elsie turned around to yell at her, but paused. Something white was attached to her back. She craned her neck to see it.
Anna smiled wider and spun around. “They’re wings. I’m a bird. Do you like them?”
The feathers were gray at the tips. They were attached to a pair of straps that Anna wore over her shoulders.
Elsie put her backpack in front of Rob so that Anna wouldn’t see him. She wrinkled her nose. “If you’re a bird, where’s your mask?”
“Who cares? I have wings. Also, I use too much moisturizer to cover it up with a dumb beak, right?” She struck a pose for Elsie.
Sherry, still wearing her purple cat mask, sat down with the gorillas at the next table. She made sure to squeeze next to one in particular. They all said “hi” to each other and began talking in voices that Elsie felt were far too loud. She hated loud noises almost as much as she hated the animal masks.
Anna immediately left Elsie alone when Sherry appeared. She ran to her table.
Sherry sat up when she saw Anna and asked, “What are you wearing?”
“My wings.” Anna was triumphant, happily unaware of the sharpness in Sherry’s voice.
“That’s not how you do it,” said Sherry, Anna’s Best Friend Forever. “It has to be a mask.” She nodded at the gorillas and they nodded back.
Elsie felt her stomach grow tight as she watched them. Rob shuffled next to her feet and said, “What are they doing?”
Anna looked perplexed. “I don’t want to be a cat or a gorilla. I’m a bird.”
As they spoke, Elsie stood up with Rob’s tray and their bags. She walked to another table. She looked back and saw Rob crawl out from his hiding place. He remained bent toward the floor as he followed her and sat down.
“They didn’t see me, right?” Rob had to open the goat’s mouth, again. “They saw me and didn’t say anything, probably.”
“Why are they getting mad at Anna’s wings?” Elsie looked back at Sherry standing opposite Anna. “It’s not important.”
“Yes it is.” Rob tore off another bit of pizza and put it in the goat’s mouth. “Masks show who people are.”
Elsie sniffed. “That’s stupid. People show who people are.”
Rob touched the buckle at the back of his goat mask. “You’re stupid,” he said. “Don’t ask to sit with me on the bus home, okay?” He stood up with his pizza and left to sit in the hall for the rest of the period.
***
During afternoon classes, Elsie told herself that Rob was the sort of friend that was meant to fall to the wayside, like Anna. As she had suspected all along, Elsie was not built to keep friends.
This did not explain, however, why she began to writer an apology note to Rob during American Government in the back of her notebook. It hadn’t sounded right when she read it back to herself, so she threw it out. She thought of him again during Algebra, however, and then during Language Arts. When he had called her “stupid,” the word had lacked any venom. He had just sounded sad. Also, she didn’t like the idea of sitting on her own in gym class or far away from him on the bus.
Elsie resolved to talk to him after the final bell. She sidestepped the boar from gym talking to an elephant. Elsie tapped the shoulder of a person who turned out to be an antelope.
She found Rob at his locker. He was trying to scratch off a sticker from the orange metal surface. “Damn it,” he said to himself as he scratched. Again, the phrase sounded low and sad.
The sticker on his locker said something that had to do with farm animals. “That’s really rude,” Elsie said hesitantly.
Rob grunted.
“I’m sorry I made you feel bad at lunch,” she said. Rob was, she realized, the only person she really liked in the school despite his stupid mask. As far as she could tell, he didn’t have anyone else, either.
“Okay,” he said after a long time. He took a deep breath. “It’s fine. The gorillas are just sort of freaking me out. I don’t know what to do.” He stopped scratching the sticker. He had managed to peel off the corner, but white adhesive clung to the locker in streaks. Rob looked up as the students crowding the hall migrated outside. He grabbed his backpack and said, “I have to leave soon.”
“The gorillas?” She followed him down the hall.
“Jason found me after Biology. He’s the tall one. They did see me at lunch. He said he was going to come for me. He wants my face.”
“Give it to him. Buy another one.” She didn’t like it, anyway.
“I’ll be psychologically damaged. Let’s just go through the gulley.”
Elsie and Rob went through the doors at the back of the gym and cut through the soccer field. The gulley was at the edge of the school’s property where the grass dipped down into a hill. Elsie’s older brother, when he was a student, had once gotten in trouble for smoking at the bottom. She and Rob did not find her brother in the gulley, though, just crushed beer cans, broken green glass, a soccer ball, and Anna.
Anna was sitting on a large rock with her back to them. Her knees were folded beneath her chin. The curved frame of one of her wings was broken. She did not hear them until Rob stepped on a beer can.
Anna twisted her neck around. “Moo-Cow!” Her mascara had dried on her cheeks. She wiped her eyes. “Are you here with your boyfriend? Are you two going to make-out?” She laughed too quickly, her smile brittle. “Sherry and Jason make-out all the time. When Sherry broke my wings, Jason laughed. Then she said it was an accident and laughed, too. Is school over, yet, Moo-Cow?”
Elsie hesitated. It was hard to look at Anna. “The bell just rang.”
“We’re not making-out,” Rob said. “We’re escaping. Why are you always calling her Moo-Cow?”
Elsie groaned. “She’s been doing it all semester. Don’t worry about it. I don’t.”
Anna slid off the rock. She smoothed her skirt and what was left of her wings. “Elsie’s the name of the cow on that one milk carton. The one with the big, pretty eyelashes?”
Elsie wrinkled her nose. “What cow?”
“On the milk carton! You’re not a cow; it’s just your name. It’s what I call you because we used to be all close and stuff.” Anna saw Elsie glare at her and she glared right back. “I’m not making this up!”
Rob looked at Elsie. She had been under the impression, until that moment, that Anna had thought they were nerds. If she knew all that, wasn’t she one, too? Elsie began to laugh and Rob, who seemed to realize the joke, laughed, too.
“Stop it!” Anna reached back and tore out a clump of feathers that still remained on her wing. She threw it at them. The feathers eddied in the air. One came back and landed on Anna’s head.
Rob and Elsie laughed harder.
Anna flushed as she picked the feather out of her hair. “Are you sure school’s over? Sherry and I walk home together. She knows where I am right now. She’s supposed to get me.”
Elsie frowned. “Is Jason going to be with her?” A small rock rolled down the slope and hit her shoe. Someone was coming down the hill after them.
“Here you are!” The tall boy in the gorilla mask grabbed Rob from behind. He lifted him in the air as he kicked. “Haven’t seen you in a while, huh? Were you laughing at Sherry, Goatsucker? You were laughing like a girl!”
“I’m not a girl!” Rob tried to hit him. His arms punched the air. His mask made it impossible to turn his head.
“Jason! God!” Anna shouted. She removed her wings. “Put him down!”
Elsie kicked the gorilla boy’s leg. He swung Rob at her and she ran backward.
Sherry was at the top of the gulley. She turned her head as she surveyed the gulley, the gorilla swinging Rob back and forth. “Hey Moo-Cow! Goatsucker! Are you Anna’s new best friends? Did you hear she’s a bird?” Sherry pushed her purple cat mask up as she navigated the slope to the bottom. “She has the beak for it.”
Anna covered her nose with her hands. “Shut up. Tell Jason to stop it. He’s not being fair.”
“You take things too seriously! We’re just having fun! Right?” The gorilla boy swung Rob around as he swore. He grabbed one of the horns on Rob’s mask and wrenched it off.
Elsie backed up and ran toward the gorilla. She wasn’t heavy enough that she could knock him down, but she was heavy enough to latch on his back without fear of him picking her off easily.
“Get off!” The gorilla hit the side of her face with his open hand. His grip loosened and Rob began to slide down.
Elsie grabbed and twisted his gorilla mask so that the eyeholes were at the side of his face. When he yelled again, struggling because the inside of the mask was black, Elsie punched the side of his head. She made sure to aim with her knuckles. It hurt when she made contact, but he finally dropped Rob. He threw Elsie off and she fell backward. Her ankle hurt when she hit the ground.
Sherry screamed and ran to the gorilla boy as he spun around. She righted the gorilla’s mask and asked if he was okay, patting the side of his face as he tried to pry her away from him. “Does your head hurt? Did that girl hurt you, baby?”
The gorilla boy made a point not to look at Elsie. “Stop it. Can we just leave?”
Elsie rubbed her knuckles. They were beginning to develop a bruise. She limped toward Rob as Anna helped him stand. Elsie asked if he was all right.
“Sort of,” he said. Rob touched the top of his mask where his horn had been. He looked from Anna to Elsie. He reached behind his head to unfasten the buckle. “This thing feels sort of hot, you know? I have to take it off, now. Hold on.”
Sherry ran forward and pushed Elsie’s shoulder. “Aren’t you going to apologize, Moo-Cow?”
Anna watched Elsie stumble and pushed Sherry in return. “Jason attacked her and her boyfriend, moron. Also, you only call her ‘Moo-Cow’ because I said it, first. You don’t even know what it means.”
“You know what? You all you hate me, anyway!” Sherry was crying, again. She slid her cat mask down over her face and grabbed Jason’s hand. She pulled him toward the slope. “Call me when you’re done being fantastically jealous.” They climbed the hill.
“Jealous of what?” Rob pulled his mask over his head and dropped it on the ground. He ran a hand through his real hair.
“Jealous of being insane, which she’s been, like, since we met.” Anna rolled her eyes.
“Aren’t you her Best Friend Forever?” said Elsie.
“I don’t know. Not for a while. I tried to make her like me again, but. Well.” Anna became quiet. Then she glanced at Elsie. “Jesus. Are you okay?”
Elsie lifted her foot. She rotated it in a circle and it throbbed. She put it back down and shifted her weight to it. “It’s just twisted.”
“It’s okay. Come on.” Rob took one of Elsie’s arms and looped it over his neck. He pulled her closer and grinned as he helped pull her up the hill. “Thanks for taking Jason down,” said Rob. “That was pretty funny.”
Anna hesitated. Then she did the same at Elsie’s other side, lifting her arm gingerly.
Elsie leaned forward and thanked them in a small voice. Her face was red. They began to walk toward the slope.
Elsie saw Rob’s mask on the ground. “Aren’t you going to pick it up?”
Rob scratched his real face, the left side of which was cratered with acne scars stretching from the bottom of his eye to his chin. “It’s fine.”
“Masks are pretty lame, anyway,” Anna informed them as if it were her idea.
Elsie frowned at Rob. “What if you get psychologically damaged?”
Anna said in high, proud voice that they were both crazy. She continued helping them up the gulley, however, asking them if they thought Jason would sue.
Elsie looked back at the mask at the bottom of the gulley, lying beside Anna’s wings. Its horn was gone and its eyes were empty. She felt it watch them as they left. It disappeared from her view, however, forgotten as they made their way over the crest of the hill.
Considering re-writing the above short story using the same characters and premise. Suggestions?