Ivy stands at the photocopier in the basement, leafing, pressing, double page after double page. Better than counting sheep to fall asleep. Only the racket of students preparing for the lunchtime costume parade keeps her awake, shriekingly pleased with their finery. Jason is king down here, nice to see. Echoey halls, blue walls, exposed pipes that bang and slosh: this is the underground palace from his watery plague dream.
L trots past, giving Ivy a gleam of grin, quick-flashed and gone. The urgency of every act at school. How restful that this is only for one month. Four thousand, four thousand.
Principal Pink wanders down the hall, gives Ivy the eyeball. “Always read, read, read, eh?” He takes the book and flips through, losing her place. Grunts at Shakespeare and puts it back in her hand, brushing needlessly against her skin. Ivy reminds herself that he is just a natural-born dick, not evil. “Cold hands, warm heart,” he says.
“No, I have a thyroid condition,” she says.
Pink paces past the door of the Home Ec room, and hearing the din, he pauses. Puts that eye to the crack. Over the next few minutes he moves only to change his angle of view.
Ivy keeps the photocopier going, but principally she watches the principal spying on his charges. Are they getting dressed/undressed in there?
A shout, a slam—the door pulled to. Then it opens again and Nevaeh storms out, half-stripped in high-heeled shoes, cloth clutched to her chest. Slit-eyed, she stares, she glares at Pink. Who stares right back, asshole authority giving him gall. He puts out a hand to arrest her movement; she whirls to go back to the classroom, but stalls—she just rushed out of there.
She turns again to throw a stiff fist at Pink’s plaid sportscaster blazer. He moves before the fist connects. Spinning again, Nevaeh runs off down the hall on those dagger-heels, sure-footed and raging. A mad maiden, a young Fury.
Pink smirks at Ivy, woo-woos with his hands, and passes on. The satyr Pan infesting girls with frights and plights.
Hallowe’en is no treat if you are already in the pretending professions.
Over the PA system comes a wild cackling, then the grim tolling of a giant bell—the costume parade, beginning. The scripts are finished. Burton won’t notice if she slips out to the Argylle Gallery for a breather, away from this overheated, multi-costumed sweatshop.