the mask shop (🇺🇸)

Big Bird Agnes

                        Being a teenager in the town of Alcott meant spending a good part of the day in one of the two schools in the city, E. Martin Middle or Alcott High. It was either that or start  working at an early age, commuting to another city just to go to school every day was out of the table. Students had better have good grades, be good, have a good relationship with other students and teachers alike, or else, they would be another Agnes De Molde. Nobody wanted that. 

Agnes was a 14 year old girl in the 8th Grade. Most 14 years olds are going through high school already, but not Agnes. She had flunked 8th grade last year, so she was doing it once more. School had always been difficult for her and flunking had only been a matter of time. While all her classmates went on to study at Alcott High at the other side of the city, she stayed behind and joined a new class with students younger than her.

Since Agnes was older than the great majority of students in her class, she was taller than all of them. She had always been a little taller than most students, but now, she really stood out among them.

Agnes had always been a back-sitter all her life, but now that she had flunked, her parents had made a special request to the teachers to always put her in front of the class so she would pay more attention. But all it really did was drive every other student's attention to her. Suddenly there was this huge thing blocking everyone's sight. That's when the nickname was born, "Big Bird Agnes" was what the other kids called her when she wasn't around. Throughout the whole six classes she had in a day, she couldn't focus. She felt dozens of pair of eyes pointed at her as if  they were lightbulbs in the room.

Both boys and girls had their reasons for not giving her the time of day. If a boy got near her, he soon would be accused of trying to use a cheap trick to lose his virginity. Girls were even more cruel, some would say. Agnes was a "confidence booster". It was a joke among girls that if one of them woke up feeling ugly or undesired, the only way to solve that was by standing beside someone worse than them.  The girl would stand by Agnes while she was on her locker picking her books or  sitting at a table alone having lunch and laugh it out. The other girls would be standing far away giggling and changing looks with the one girl besides Agnes. 

Agnes didn't know about everything they said and invented about her, but this, she had already figured out. Every time it happened, it made her rush the bathroom to cry. Not in sadness though, but in anger. As she faced the mirror that almost didn't fit her, looking at her thin lips, big nose and scruggy hair, she longed for the day when she would give all that back to them.

This humiliation consumed her day by day, the fact that she was being mocked by girls younger than her only made it even worse. One girl in particular, Greta, was the one that angered her the most. It had come to Agnes knowledge by mere eavesdropping that it was Greta who invented the whole "confidence booster" trick and Agnes had an idea why. 

In the beggining of the school year, before students started making up their minds about Agnes, a boy  caught Agnes' eye. He was a bit taller than her and had a dark curly hair that she thought beautiful and deep dark blue eyes that distracted her even more than she was fine with admitting. His name was  Arlen and little did Agnes know but he was the most desired boy in the class. Every girl had their eyes on him and would accept going on a date with him at anytime, including, of course,  Greta. Agnes would see that he responded to her subtle looks from time to time  and she decided to approach him for some conversation. It went surprinsigly well, he was really nice to her, asked a lot of questions which made her feel confortable. It made her think that maybe that year good actually be a good one, maybe her flunking was for the best, maybe she was meant to meet that guy . 

The school bell rang and Arlen went ahead to class. In the moment he left her sight, she got a glimpse of Greta, on the other side of the patio, closely watching her. When Greta realized she was spotted she completely vanished. Agnes had Greta's face almost burned in her retinas, and the more she pictured it, more and more angry Greta seemed to be . At that moment in time, Agnes couldn't  imagine why.

As weeks passed, she found out. Greta became closer and closer to Arlen until they eventually became a couple. Greta would not try to hide how she was over the moon with her new lover, specially in front of Agnes. All Agnes had done was exchange some words with Arlen, but that was enough for Greta, she had decided back then that Agnes' life would be a living hell and Greta was one of  fullfilling her promises. 

Starting to inventing lies about her, to the boys and to the girls, giving her names and totally isolating her from any social groups at school was only the beginning. Greta was starting to to feel bored and wanted to do more cruel things to Agnes  until she would completely lose it. A complete meltdown, a mental breakdown, that was Greta's new objective.  Even Greta couldn't quite convince one of why she did these things to Agnes. mostly it was because she just could, she felt powerful, mischievous, in control, and those are poisoning sensations.

As much as Greta planned and thought about what to do with Agnes, she never saw the arrival of the masked salesman coming. For a moment greta thought she could use him for her advantage, however, she would never imagine how things would go south.

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