After carefully re-adjusting my hair, in particular repositioning my grown out fringe so that it covered the right side of my face again, I called out, “Mason!”
He came running, “What? What’s wrong?”
Gritting my teeth, I pointed into the bathroom, “The mirror.”
Mason frowned.
With a huff, I said, “It’s uncovered.”
All too late, it dawned on him and he nipped into the room, picking up the discarded towel before returning it to its rightful place – between me and my reflection.
“Thank you.” I grumbled, heading back to the living room.
Mason emitted a meek apology that was almost completely lost in my buzzing mind.
I suppose it’s just my luck that the one day of the year that it’s socially acceptable to wear a full face covering mask happens to be my absolute least favourite.
My Mum did a lot of business in Japan and South Korea and she even went to China once or twice. She’d always bring me back souvenirs and after one of those trips – somewhere in the three words we’d exchange with one another before she’d be off again – she brought me a collection of masks. She gave me a fox mask, a bright red mask with a long, beak-like nose and a mask that was a woman’s face. I’m sure Mum knew about as much about them as I did at the time – which is to say absolutely nothing. They were cheap, plastic reproductions made for tourists but they still captured part of the spirit of the real thing. The woman’s face was interesting as, despite being a mass produced replica, it still had some of the complexity of expression the genuine article would’ve had; if you tipped the mask up it’d show a frozen, coquettish smile but tip the mask down and the face would be transfigured into a jealous grimace. Somewhere between the two angles, I’m sure the mask was plotting the viewer’s demise.
I legitimately considered going into school wearing it on more than one occasion. I only actually did it once.
I had a dedicated teaching assistant after everything happened. I’ve long since scrubbed her name from memory but the school all but had her surgically attached to my hip. She followed me everywhere, keeping an eye on everything I did and, more often than not, commenting on it too. Unfortunately, she had a nasty habit of commenting on things that simply weren’t there or on things where her opinion was unwelcome.
If I coloured anything in red, she’d ask me why it was on fire, or why it was burnt or why it was bleeding. They never were, I mean, why on Earth would I have wanted to draw that?
I’d tell her, “But they aren’t…? Reds my favourite colour.”
And she’d always get this sad, knowing look on her face as if to say that she knew what was really going on inside of my head better than I did. Needless to say, red didn’t stay my favourite colour for long. I loathed her.
She loved to comment on things that she should have left well alone. Such as my face. She (and indeed everyone else) were fascinated by my ‘new’ face. Even if I didn’t see them, I’d always feel someone’s eyes on me. It’s one of the reasons why I began growing my hair out.
So, one day, the TA was staring at me thoughtfully and I was trying my best to ignore her as I got on with some silent reading. I was quite happily engrossed in a yellowed paperback copy of Robert Swindells’ Abomination when the TA decided to pipe up, “You know, you should start practising with make-up.”
I was ten years old.
I slowly turned my head to peer at her. The school had a pretty strict dress code with absolutely no make-up being a key tenet of that. Every once in a while the popular girls would come in with their nails painted and I remember this image of the year five and six teacher, Mrs. Schlender, looming over them, barking that it was against the dress code, and refusing to leave them alone until they had picked off the top layer of their nails. And, of course, that’s to say nothing of the little, oft ignored fact that, at that time, I was very much still healing from one of my first skin grafts.
Also, I was ten goddamn years old.
Eminently a girl of good graces, all I could whisper at the time was, “Sorry, pardon?”
I do wish now that I hadn’t been quite so timid and had shot her idea down before it even got off the ground. Unfortunately, any seed of assertiveness I’d possessed at that age had been completely salted by her.
“What I was thinking was…well, you might as well start practising now. Everyone at big schools going to be wearing it and you don’t want to be left out, do you?” She asked before leaning in conspiratorially and pantomime whispering, “Besides, don’t you want Mason to notice you?”
It was all I could do to keep the contents of my stomach down as I opened my mouth to say, “Actually, no. I don’t,” Remembering myself, I added, “So, no thank you.”
The TA leaned then nudged the air near my ribs, “Oh, there’s no need to get all shy. Everyone knows you two like each other.”
Becoming flustered, I sputtered, “Yeah but not like that-!”
I could not break her from her reverie, “You’ll be married with babies and, oh, that’ll be so cute.”
My skin felt itchy, tauter and even more uncomfortable than usual. My throat grew tight. She was plotting out an entire imaginary life for me and completely disregarding the fact that her daydream was definitely not my daydream. My face burned.
I couldn’t take it any longer and I squealed, “NO! I don’t want that. I don’t want any of that!”
For one, Mason was and is my best friend. Back then, we would play house like any other little kids: Mason would have the imaginary husband with the two and a half children and I’d be the bad arse honorary auntie making things just a bit more interesting. And, of course, any problems would always be solved in thirty minutes or less.
Thinking of Mason being with Barbie rather than Ken felt wrong. Thinking about Mason as anyone other than who he was, as anything other than my best friend, made me feel deeply uncomfortable.
Thinking of there ever being a Ken or Christie in my dream house, especially about how inevitable everyone kept saying that was, terrified me. I’ve always known that I didn’t need that and I’ve never wanted it.
For two, I’ve always known that babies were vomit fuelled factories of destruction and that children were often worse, not better.
The TA just laughed at me. I closed my book and set it down on the table.
I scowled at her and spoke forcefully, “It’s not funny. I don’t want to get married, I don’t want a family. I just wanna be me.”
She waved her hand at me, “Oh, you’re just being silly now. All little girls want to get married one day. Without a husband, without a family, wouldn’t you be lonely?”
But I wasn’t like ‘all little girls.’ Nor had I ever been. Nor were a lot of actual little girls.
I’ve got to give young me some credit here because, without skipping a beat, I said, “No, because I’ll have my friends.”
The TA shook her head and frowned back at me, “Friends? But you only have Mason. You’ll be lonely-“
I picked up my book again and snapped, “It is enough for me.”
The TA tutted loudly and tittered to herself something about friendships ending and boys abandoning girls when they hit puberty but at this point that’s neither here nor there – I think one could safely say that we showed her.
However, despite my expressly telling her that I did not want her to, she still brought some of her make up in the next week. I cannot say that I was surprised.
We’d been sent away while the rest of the class did something fun that I was deemed far too delicate for. It doesn’t really matter what. The TA had shepherded me away into the disabled toilet (and that alone made me extremely uncomfortable) and presented her stash.
She had a fair collection: an assortment of lipsticks that were all far too bright, foundation a selection of shades away from my actual skin tone and gloopy mascara. I noticed that there was nothing to take the make-up off afterwards. I could see the forgone conclusion and I desperate
ly wanted to close the book on this before we got there.
The TA blathered to herself, squirting foundation on the back of her hand and readying a well-used sponge that I wanted nowhere near my face.
Carefully, I severed her rambling stream of consciousness, “Excuse me. But I do not want to do this-”
She dabbed the back of her hand, “Oh, there’s no need to be nervous. You’ll look so pretty afterwards-”
I tried again, “Excuse me. This is very kind of you but I do not want to do this.”
She stopped then and finally looked at me.
Her expression looked as though she was about to piece together something else to steam roll me with, so I babbled, “Thank you but this is too much. My Mum has lots of make up at home. I’ll practice there.”
In truth, anything Mum left at home tended to be dried up, broken and discarded but the TA didn’t have to know that. There was that frown again but I’d finally gotten through to her. She sighed and tutted then sighed some more as she packed away the make up and finally let me out of the loo. I tried not to breathe my sigh of relief too loudly.
I thought that would be the end of it but oh no it certainly wasn’t. In moments of silence that were comfortable for me but apparently less so for her, she’d badger me about my make up practice. The questions were endless. I tried to keep my answers short and disinterested but she was not discouraged.
She’d goad me, “Oo, I would’ve thought you’d try a bit of lipstick today. Or maybe just a bit of blush…or at least some concealer? When are you going to come in wearing a little something then, hm?”
I’d always tell her straight, “When I want to.”
But she never stopped asking. I’m not quite sure how long this actually went on for but it felt like months.
One day, as we were leaving school, she put a hand on my shoulder and leaned in far too close to me. I could see her pitted pores filled with foundation, peach fuzz accentuated by powder all over her cheeks and where orange skin suddenly turned porcelain on her neck.
She commanded, “It’s picture day tomorrow, so don’t forget to put at least a little bit of something on.”
I was steaming for the entire evening after that. I was a soup of feeling not good enough, resentment, frustration and it was high time I boiled over. I had tried to be nice, as my dear old Mum always pleaded with me to be, but it just wasn’t working. I knew I couldn’t go in the complete opposite direction though either as that would only make things so much worse. I knew I’d have to hit it somewhere in-between; I’d have to be just a little bit cheeky.
After half an evening of grumbling and flinging my chair around the house, something mounted on my bedroom wall caught my eye: the three masks. With some assistance from a broom left untouched since the last time my Mother had visited, I unhooked a mask from the wall and carefully stowed it in my school bag.
From there, it was only a matter of keeping it hidden until the vital ten to fifteen seconds I’d be wearing it.
I still have that old school photo. Mum buried it in a drawer of other school memories best forgotten somewhere but I know we still have it. There are rows and rows of smiling, standing students…but then there’s me, sat off to the left at the end of the front row. My head is tilted to the side and just ever so slightly cast downwards, my dark hair obscuring half of the borrowed face. But it’s the half that you can see that really completes the look.
After everything was said and shot, and I’d stowed the mask away again, the TA kept tittering on about it being just such a shame that I hadn’t done anything special with my face for the photo. I couldn’t help myself; even ten year old me was a smug little shit.
“Oh,” I began, unable to stop a smile from pulling at the corners of my mouth, “But I have.”
The TA frowned at me then but she was less than pleased when the final prints came back…
I saw the photo doing the rounds online as part of an urban legend about a girl that died in a house fire surrounded by her dolls or something like that, complete with a black and white filter the original image never had. It rises from the grave every couple of years. I grin every time I see it. I never did figure out who originally put it up online.
Mason and I watched the beginning of the film’s finale in silence. I was about to dispense with something pithy but the silence spread out from between us to the point that not even the film wanted to be part of the awkwardness a moment more; first, the image dragged across the screen, becoming distorted and then simply cut out completely.
Mason groaned, “I knew that torrent looked dodgy.”
But no sooner had he risen to his feet when all of the lights followed suit and abandoned us as well.
After a beat, I quipped, “That’s one nasty virus.”
I’m sure if I could’ve seen Mason’s eyes, they would’ve been rolled so hard they’d be stuck to the back of the socket at that line.
I got up and began shuffling toward the fuse box in the utility room. I could tell intuitively that Mason desperately wanted to fuss but that he was thinking better of it. The trip from the living room to the fuses was hardly perilous and I spent most of it distracted by my phone, which was also refusing to talk to me.
I got on with groping around in the dark for the fuse box. It wasn’t difficult to find as the room really wasn’t that big, it was just annoying having to work by slivers of moonlight. Had this happened a few hours before, I knew the moon would have flooded that room from the window overlooking the drive way. My eye was drawn by the dim lunar glow radiating through the pane but in particular to an odd smear on the glass. Peering closely, I saw two almost impossibly small hand prints.
I suppose they were really desperate this year. Sorry, kiddos.
As it was, the moon was rising high and the trees did their best to snuff out most of its light. Alas, it was all for nowt. Finding the fuse box and flipping the switch brought no relief and the darkness remained.
I popped back to the living room to see Mason fretting over his laptop and phone.
He kept saying, “Nothing works.”
“Huh, that’s weird,” I poked at my own phone, attempting to persuade it back to life, “I thought I’d charged it but mine’s died as well.”
“Your phone’s dead too?” Mason was shrill.
“Yeah, its fine, I’ve got a power pack in my room. I’ll go see if that’s got any juice left in it.” I slowly turned and began hobbling away to my room, followed by echoes of ‘Nothing works.’
Closing the door behind me, I saw my room was in its familiar, comforting state of chaos, illuminated by small streams of moonlight. Clambering over the floor-drobe, I made my way to the dressing table. I picked my way through the detritus on top: hoarded fliers for film marathons and writing workshops in town that I never went to and trinkets from my Mother’s travels. I rootled through a fair few drawers of old diaries and script idea notepads with Mason’s pink post-it notes still poking out between the pages before I finally found my old, scratched up USB power pack in the technological odds and sods drawer. Pushing past my old black and white film camera (an antique from someone best forgotten), I retrieved the pack and snapped the cable into my phone, looking at the dark screen expectantly. Nothing happened. I wiggled the connector, unplugging and re-plugging. I found a spare micro USB cable and tried that as well, just to be sure, with just as much luck.
“Oh, bugger.”
I discarded my phone and the power pack on top of the dresser – after all, they were pretty much useless to me now.
Putting a hand over the door handle, a bolt of cold dread shot through me. I stood there, frozen, breath caught uncomfortably in my chest. But just as soon as the feeling had washed over me, it had passed. I told myself I was being silly and pressed down on the door handle. Pulling the door open, I was greeted by an eerie silhouette standing on the other side. I peered into the darkness, the shadow and I stood contemplating one another for what felt like hours. Then the familiar call ca
me again:
“Nothing works…”
Mason emerged from the shadows, still clutching his dead phone.
Making a grab for some composure, having just jumped out of my skin, I prattled, “Yeah, the power pack was a no go as well. It’s a real pain,” I sighed, then adding, “But the power should be back before too long.”
This appeared to do little to comfort Mason.
I continued, “I mean, worse comes to worst and the power doesn’t come back soon, you’re probably best off heading home-“
“No!” Mason’s eyes were wide and his skin was completely drained of all colour.
I wasn’t sure how to respond besides, “I promise I’ll be fine on my own. It wouldn’t be fair to keep you here in the dark.”
Emphatically, Mason repeated, “No,” Before appearing to calm himself, adding, “We planned a proper bad film night slash catch up. The films may have abandoned us but I won’t abandon you.”
And then he winked. I rolled my eyes. We both laughed.
Years ago, we had made a blood pact. You know the one: each of you would prick your finger and then shake hands or drip some blood into a little dish, mix it together and then declare yourselves blood brothers or whatever. ‘Blood Siblings’ didn’t really roll off the tongue quite as well so we chose ‘Blood Buds,’ mainly because neither of us could ever say it with a straight face.
Mason had been the one to suggest it and I, maybe being a little bit of an overly keen bean, had said yes.
After everything happened, a lot of the other kids at school gave me a wide berth. I can’t blame them - to a little kid I probably looked like The Fly on wheels. Mason really hated me using that phrase to refer to myself. It was always only ever meant to be light hearted – I mean, I totally didn’t actually see myself that way.
Once, I asked him, “Alright then, if you don’t like it, what do I look like to you?”
I Hate Halloween Page 2