Note: All text in brackets denotes stage directions.

[All lines are delivered by Anna-Georgina Plume]

Part 1

[The audio has a hollow quality, Anna-Georgina’s voice is in formal mode, recording notes]

Ellis East Elementary School Walk through, May 18th:  

The Vestibule 

We enter into the vestibule from the front door. I find myself in a hallway with high ceilings and  a polished wooden floor where the single kindergarten and three first grade classrooms are  located. Before we arrive at the classrooms, to my left is a smaller room used for storage. It is as  deep as the classrooms but much narrower. To my right is the building’s only elevator, and the  front stairs, which are wooden and were rarely used when I was a student in the building. The  stairs have bannisters with Victorian ornamentation. Passing the stairs, I am now in between the  first set of classrooms. The classroom doors mirror each other on either side of the hallway. Each  classroom has a solid wooden door with a darker finish and the moulding around the door frame  is lined with a nested block pattern at the corners. The glass in the windows of the doors is  textured and translucent. The walls of the hallway are painted a crisp white. There are brass  hooks lining the hallway for students to hang their coats, and cork strips for student artwork  roughly two feet above the hooks.  

Audio diary of Dr. Anna-Georgina Plume, Assistant Professor of Architectural History,  Hollingsworth University. May 18th, 11:30 pm 

[Frenetic energy. Nervous, but also excited] 

I…. I don’t know what I’ve done. Either I’ve made the biggest mistake of my life, or I am on the  precipice of a breakthrough with my research. 

What was I thinking? 

How could I? 

What could have possessed-- 

[Cuts off] 

[Calmer] 

Audio diary of Dr. Anna-Georgina Plume, May 19th, 6:30am 

Upon an evening’s sleep, it is not too bad. I 

I bought the school. Outright.  

[beat] 

I’m not going to bore anyone, least of all my future self, with financial details, but here are the  highlights of what led to this decision: 

1. The school is incredibly well-preserved.  

2. It is largely livable as is. There is a functional kitchen and a shower in the teacher’s  lounge, and laundry in both the janitor’s office and the basement. 

3. Given they assumed that the only people interested in the building would be remodeling  and therefore need to put a lot of money into it, and the fact that there were no interested  buyers when they floated the idea of selling the school, the school was priced down to the  point of being within my budget, even with a major remodel to convert one of the  downstairs restrooms into a full bath. 

4. Because I am able to pay the full asking price up front and there are no other offers, I  should be able to move in in exactly 21 days, pending official inspection. 

I know this probably sounds absurd, but I felt drawn to stay in the building and it feels like a  good connection with my research interests and what I am looking for in my home and- 

[sound of clanging pots and pans in the background] 

Oh dear. I need to go. 

[Segment recorded with AG Walking outside] 

Audio diary of Dr. Anna-Georgina Plume, May 19th, 9:30 AM 

I’m out walking the dogs. Well, two of the dogs. Dad let Glengettie on the sofa and he seemed  uninterested in joining us. Actually, I’m walking one dog and carrying another, as Oolong has  wee little legs and got tired about halfway through. But at least his lordship is enjoying himself, at any rate. 

Now, the interruption. Maryann called my mother. My mother, who now thinks that I’m losing  my connection with reality and that the school will be “too much house,” whatever that means.  Suffice to say, she does not think this is a good idea. 

And I mean, I get it… On its face it sounds like a terrible idea, and I… haven’t always had the  greatest handle on… things. But I have done a lot of work since then… I finished my PhD; I got  the job at Hollingsworth. I’m finishing up a monograph and I’m on track for tenure after my  sabbatical. I know she worries. But it also sometimes feels like she’d rather just not have to  explain my decisions to people in town.  

But it’s a beautiful Victorian-era building with incredible features. It will make a wonderful  home without many changes, and it seems fitting that the subject I love enough to devote my life  to studying becomes my house as well. I can really build something here.

[beat] 

We’re coming up on the park, so I am going to stop recording. I’ll report back after I talk with  my mother again. 

Audio Diary of Dr. Anna Georgina Plume, May 19th, 1:11 pm 

Obviously, I have my walk-through notes from the visit yesterday, but I have some additional  thoughts I want to get out before I forget.  

One condition of the sale is that I will take responsibility for all items left in the school. Some of  that involves working appliances in the kitchen, the teacher’s lounge, the janitors’ office, and the  basement, but it also means that the library still has an entire card catalogue and a large  assortment of old books, and the music room has a grand piano, which I was informed that the  school was unable to remove, because no one quite knows how it got up there in the first place.  Everything seems in good working condition, though, so I don’t think I’ll need to throw much  away. I will need to remove the old curtains in the teacher’s lounge and a few of the classrooms.  There are some assorted chairs, which, based on their color scheme, I assume are from the 1970s.  SO much avocado [shudders audibly]. I’ll probably put them in the basement for now.  

I’m not one hundred percent sure what each room will be used for, but I definitely know that the  old girls’ restroom will be converted into a large full bath, my old first grade classroom will be  my home office, and my old third grade classroom will be my bedroom. Of course, all of my  books will go in the library.  

Some notes for my to-do list: 

Call the public library and see what records they have about the school.

Look into local fencing companies. While the whole schoolyard is fenced, I don’t necessarily  want the dogs to run unsupervised around the entire property, so I will need to have a smaller  fenced area for them. I think I’ll put them in the smaller side yard, by the west door. 

Also, as I was walking through the school library, I found an old vellum envelope under my hand  when I rested it on the front desk. It looks like a bunch of junk… some cut out letters from  different papers, which appear to be different ages. They look to be from a few newspapers and  magazines, with a range of typefaces and degrees of yellowing. I must have unconsciously put it  in my pocket. I’ll look more closely later and report back.  

Audio diary of Dr. Anna-Georgina Plume, May 19th, 4:30 pm 

There is a scene from my time at the school that keeps playing out in my mind. One morning in  the spring, there was a sudden thunderstorm. They made us all, the entire school, sit along the  walls of the first-floor vestibule. I don’t know how old I was, but we were sitting on the wall by  the kindergarten classroom, so that makes me think I was in kindergarten. The power went out  and the older kids started chanting “cancel school.” 

I’ve never been afraid of storms. I liked it. The darkness, the break in the routine, the gathering  together. Maybe that lack of fear explains what happened next. 

The teachers were walking up and down the hall, with flashlights, and when no one was looking,  I got it in my head to go up to the library and see if Nana was there. She wasn’t the school  librarian at the time, she had retired and was working part time for the community library,  ironically in the same place she worked for 35 years. But she was friends with the school 

librarian, so sometimes she would visit during the day. I kept thinking she may be up there, even  though Mr. Zaffre was downstairs among the teachers. So, I slipped away.  

I was not even worried for her, I just thought we would watch the rain through the library  windows. Yet, when I was about halfway up the stairs, she found me. She gently walked me  back down with all of the other students and wordlessly slipped away. Later when she came over  for dinner that night, she never mentioned it. I assume she didn’t want to get me in trouble, so we  didn’t talk about it for years.  

Isn’t memory a funny thing? It occurs to me now, this day was so out of the ordinary for me at  the time, and yet I might be the only one who remembers it. Nana didn’t remember it, that’s for  sure. I mentioned it about ten years later, when I was in high school. It was another stormy day,  

and I was over at her house and we were having tea and I told her that I always thought of that  day at the school whenever we have a storm like this. She said she didn’t remember being in the  school during the storm, but that a memory like this would stand out more for a child.

Audio Diary of Dr. Anna-Georgina Plume, May 19th, 7:07 pm 

Something else about the school that is probably worth mentioning. There is now [pause as if  trying to figure out how to best say it] a fully operationally Victorian-era carousel in the  gymnasium. It is, I guess, a Looff… which I’m told is a big deal. Apparently, the principal’s late  grandfather restored it as a hobby and after he died, they were unsure what to do with it, so they  put it in the gym. [muttered] heaven knows how. It takes up virtually the whole gym floor, and I  am assured it works and I will be given full paperwork and certificates of authenticity. It is  apparently all hand-carved and hand painted, and the inner mechanical workings are all up to  date, [muttered] whatever that means. As previously stated, a condition of the sale is that I must  accept the school as is with all items in it, though I was given information about someone who  they [spoken sharply, as if to imply doubts] think may be able to remove the carousel. That said,  the thing is quite beautiful, and I don’t really have any use for the gym, so I may let it stay, as it’s  really not hurting anyone.  

Maryanne did mention some electrical disturbances involving the carousel, which is apparently  plugged in because no one feels as if they can unplug it, because they don’t know how its  electrical system works. They’ve been turning off the power to that part of the school to the best  of their knowledge, but it does not seem to… take. So, I guess I’ll need to get an electrical  inspector out there to determine what is going on there.  

Even though I don’t intend to sell it, I should probably also have it appraised and maybe see if I  can find someone who knows how to operate the thing so that I can, at the very least feel safe in  unplugging it without worrying about damage to the system. I am almost confident that we are  all very likely worrying too much about this, but at the same time, the system does seem very  technical, so it will be worth looking into.

Audio Diary of Dr. Anna-Georgina Plume, May 19th, 10:30 pm 

[Yawns.] Well, I’ve talked to my mother. I think we’ve more or less… resolved. [beat] I don’t  know if resolved is the right word. I don’t know what we are. But she admitted she was wrong to  doubt me, that I always manage to make things work, that I was an adult who was capable of  making my own decisions, and that if anyone could pull off living in an old school, it would be  me. 

[deadpan] 

So basically, Dad talked to her. 

At any rate, I’m too tired to borrow conflict where there is none, so I’m not going to worry about  (yawns out the last few words) that for now. I’m going to go through some updates before bed. 

First: I called the main branch of the county library. They’ve got records on the school, and can  connect me to people at the historical society and local government who might as well. One Ms.  Melinda Basil will be gathering the documents at the library and have them ready for me to pick  up in a few days. 

Finally, the envelope… It’s strange. I spent about 15 minutes trying to arrange the letters and I  can’t quite make sense of them. They spell out “cubbyholes.” Who would go to the trouble of  putting that in an envelope? Maybe some kind of children’s mystery game? Except there are no  

cubbies in the school, to my knowledge. Maybe I’ll check the lockers? Is it weird that I even care  about this? Like, the two possible options, laid out before me is that this is a children’s game or I  am finding meaning in a random pile of trash. Neither is a great look for me.

[to self] You’re overwhelmed because a lot is happening. You’re finding things to distract you  from your monograph. You should be sleeping right now. You should be writing, in general.  

[Yawn] 

Anyway, tomorrow, I need to call the home inspector, the electrician, and look up a carousel  expert online, because this is apparently my life.  

Ellis East Elementary School Walk through, 

May 18th 

The first set of parallel doors were two first grade classrooms when I was a student here. About  twenty feet beyond this set of classroom doors are the doors is the second set, and another 20 feet  beyond them, the flooring of the hallway changes from wood to granite, denoting the back half  of the school where the office, gymnasium, kitchen, and cafeteria stage are located. The ceiling  gets slightly lower at this point, though it is still high by modern standards. But I am getting  ahead of myself. Before we continue to the back half of the school, let us explore the classrooms.  The only natural place to start is on my right, in the kindergarten classroom.  

End Credits

Lavender Evening Fog is a fiction podcast written by Victoria Dickman-Burnett, directed by Ben  Baird, and produced mixed and edited by Nick Federinko. Executive Producers are Ben Baird  and Victoria Dickman-Burnett and the voice of Anna-Georgina Plume is Victoria Dickman Burnett. The Lavender Evening Fog logo was designed by Alicyn Dickman. Special thanks to Katie Austin for technical consulting on this episode. This episode is brought to you by the  recurring dream you’ve had since childhood, which is somehow both unsettling and comforting.  This episode pairs well with an herbal tea blend of grapefruit zest, candied ginger, and  cranberry.