[All Lines spoken by Anna-Georgina Plume, Voiced by Victoria Dickman-Burnett, stage directions and other sound notes in brakets ]

Part 1

Ellis East Elementary Walk through 

May 18th

The Kitchen

The kitchen is a large, open room with a high ceiling. Parallel to the north wall, which is between this room and the principal’s office is the metal lunch counter with glass windows, which spans three quarters of the room from the west wall. In the corner between the office wall and the counter is a commercial refrigerator that used to hold the milk for student lunches. All of the appliances in the kitchen are industrial stainless steel, polished to the point I can see my reflection.

When the school was in operation, students would line up along the wall and proceed down the counter back to the door as they received their trays. There is a considerable amount of open space behind the lunch counter. Along the remaining walls, there are cabinets, two commercial ovens, two commercial refrigerators, one commercial freezer, and a smaller, home use oven in the back corner, furthest from the door. In the middle of this open space, there is a high stainless-steel table for food prep, several racks to hold trays of food, and a 1950s style formica kitchen table with six chairs in a red and white color scheme that matches the red and white stripes on the top of the table.

Part 2

[Spoken as if Anna-Georgina is exhausted and doesn’t feel very well]

Audio Diary of Dr. Anna-Georgina Plume, 

I’m not sure of the date and time. Recorded from my guest bedroom, formerly classroom 2-A due to painting in my bedroom.

I woke up this morning running a fever with a splitting headache. The room is spinning right now, and I have to close my eyes and rest on the pillow to make this entry.  Billy is at a conference in Chicago for the next week. Mom is taking care of the dogs while I rest, so it’s just me and Rooibos. She’s clearly a healer cat--in fact, she hasn’t left my side since I woke up sick. My parents wanted me to stay in my old bedroom until I get better, but it’s quieter here, so I’m just going to sleep this off. Talking has worn me out, going back to sleep.

Part 3

[Sleepily] Me again… it looks to be noon. Still in bed. Fever dreams are weird. I just had one where… you know, I just forgot. What do you think, Rooibos? Up for another nap?

Part 4

[The following repeats about 5 times, first sequentially, then overlapping with each other, sometimes in stereo with the overlap, so it is heard in different ears. It is spoken in Anna-Georgina’s voice from when she was reading the letter from Mr. Zaffre in Episode 1.6]

Also don't prioritize the basement.

Part 5

Rooibos-- there are two of you?

[pause, sounds of items being moved around]

Wait, where did the second cat go? 

Part 6

[piano playing softly in the background for about a minute before fading to carousel]

Part 7

Audio Diary of Dr. Anna-Georgina Plume

June 23rd, I think…  Still recording in the guest bedroom..

It’s early in the morning. I’m feeling a little better today, but I’m going to take it easily.  Mom must have stopped by at some point while I was out of it and tucked me in. Note to self-when able to look at screens again without feeling like my head is splitting in half, order her a floral arrangement.

I woke up having recovered a very vivid, forgotten memory of another adventure George and I had in first grade.

Behind the school, to the south, is thick woods--mostly maple and walnut trees on the outer parts of the forest, with more spruce and pine the further in you go. It belongs to the town, and there are a number of trails running through it with varying levels of difficulty. While we would hike some of the easier trails in phys ed each year or do nature walks for science class, we were not allowed to go back there during recess. 

Yet one day, I’m going to say in mid-October because the leaves were turning and we were doing Halloween activities in class, George told me he wanted to show me something. I, of course, assumed we were going to the eastern tree line, but he took me to the back gate, which wasn’t locked, despite the fact that it was school policy to keep it locked.

I protested that we would get in trouble, but he insisted that no one would notice. He led me to the central trailhead. The central trail was one forbidden to students. It has too many steep inclines and there is a stream to ford in the middle of it with stepping stones too far apart for children. I expressed hesitation again, but he reassured me that everything would be fine. 

We followed the trail until it forked, where we took a right. It was some of the most beautiful scenery I’ve encountered. The pine trees filled the air with a crisp scent, and our path was covered with a soft carpet of needles, seemingly untouched by the rest of the world. The trail forked a couple more times, and we always took the right path. George intuitively knew where we were going, pulling me along behind him. Finally, we found ourselves on a narrow trail that seemed to be spiraling inwards to a central point.  

We reached the end of the trail to find a giant tree, with a large knothole. The hole itself was too high for us to reach. In hindsight, it wouldn’t be too tall for an adult to reach it, but remember, we were in first grade. George climbed up on a large, low branch to get to the knothole. The branch creaked a little and then suddenly snapped. Almost before I knew what was happening, George was trapped underneath it. He was unnaturally calm as he told me to get help.

I ran back to the school, falling a few times on the steep parts of the trail, skinning my knee and bruising my arm, but I never got seriously hurt in the process. While I never got lost on the way back, even as I ran, it seemed to take significantly longer to get back to the school than the trip into the woods had taken. When I got back, there was a crowd of people gathered by the edge of the woods. Teachers, the principal, some official looking men in suits.  The fire department had even started to form a search party. 

 My parents were first relieved I was safe and then angry that I had wandered in the woods alone. I kept telling them I wasn’t alone, but they said George didn’t count. I told the head of the search party that George had been hurt and how to find him. He sent the EMTs back there, but they couldn’t seem to find him, or the tree itself. 

They gave up the search, in hindsight, a little too quickly. I remember the fire chief saying that he had only been told about one child in the woods, so I guess they didn’t believe me. 

The next morning, George was at the front gate looking for me. When I asked him how he got out of the woods, he didn’t seem to know what I was talking about, but he also seemed unharmed, so I didn’t press the matter further.

Part 8

Audio diary of Anna-Georgina Plume, June 23rd

Feeling a little better after the last nap. I might be able to read something for a bit--just going to venture down the hall to the library. [shuffling of slippers sound as A-G walks] Melinda Basil’s boxes are there. 

Just going to stand up. Holding onto the wooden ledge of the chalkboard… It's very smoothly polished.

[door opens, shuffling continues]

Halfway there, pleased to report I am only a little lightheaded.  

Might as well start at the beginning. This is the box labeled 1885-1910. [sounds of rummaging through a box]

This looks to be some sort of journal. It’s quarto-sized, bound in blue leather, with marbled end pages in a similar color scheme. It’s definitely old, but is in good condition. I can’t say more until I examine it further.

Ah, there is a card inside: Journal of Lucy A. Hobbes, founder of the Ellis Field Normal School and student of progressive education. Donated to the library after it was found in a box of documents in the school building in 2012. Authenticated by M. Basil on July 24th, 2012. 

Well, this is certainly a starting point.

Part 9

Ellis East Elementary Walk through,

 May 18 

I am stepping behind the lunch counter now.  On this side are the warming trays where the food was kept after it was prepared. Everything appears to be in working order. Obviously, this setup is not original to the 1885 iteration of the building, though the location of the kitchen relative to where the students ate their lunches is a good example of preserving architecture and working within the space rather than fully renovating. 

The kitchen looks to have been most recently updated in the 1990s, though I imagine there were earlier updates as the needs of the educators using the building changed over the years. The walls of the kitchen are painted a faint green most often associated with the 1950s. The room offers layers of the school’s past and the generations of people who have lived, worked, and grown in the space.

 The cabinet doors are light wood with a shiny finish, and all but one of them is closed. The open cabinet is empty. Apart from the absence of food and personal items, the room is arranged as if the kitchen staff merely walked out in the middle of the day, leaving trays stacked on one end of the lunch counter and papers scattered on the kitchen table.  

Most of the papers are menus and inventories, but there is also a sheet of notebook paper with a blue ink drawing of x with a circle around it. Having finished in the kitchen, I want to continue this train of thought to the cafeteria.  In this building, the cafeteria was on the stage, so I will continue down the back hallway.

End Credits

Lavender Evening Fog is a fiction podcast. This episode was 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. The voice of Anna-Georgina Plume is Victoria Dickman-Burnett. The Lavender Evening Fog logo was designed by Alicyn Dickman and our Season 2 concept art was designed by Matt Lowe.  This episode is brought to you by the unease of being a stranger in a strange place. This episode pairs well with a Vanilla Earl Grey.