Molly sipped her Dr. Pepper as she waited at a table in the Food Court for her best friends. Jamestown Mall was busy with shoppers bustling about on this first Saturday of November. Molly had stood in line at the burger place for a cheeseburger, fries, and a soft drink because it was shorter than the Chinese food line that Bev and Harold were still standing in. They were getting closer to ordering their food. She watched them laughing as they talked to each other. Harold wore a hoodie that was unzipped. It was dark blue that he had over a forest green sweatshirt and blue jeans. Bev had a light blue coat, zipped up partially, with a hood, fur-lined, that bobbed up and down as she laughed. Molly shook her head. Bev is always cold. Molly was getting hot, so she unzipped her jean jacket revealing a loose fitting sweatshirt that hung over her shoulders.
Molly’s friends were finally placing their orders at the window and had moved down the line to pay for it. She looked around the room. A small merry-go-round spun slowly around in the center of the room. A line of small kids and their parents were waiting to get on the colorful horses that slowly went up and down on the carnival ride. Picnic tables surrounded it in a concentric pattern until it reached the main hallway that led to the shops of the mall. A small ice cream stand was on the edge of the tables and a pretzel stand was nearby. Molly’s eyes fell on a woman who was waiting to order a pretzel. She was a plump woman wearing a long, dark gray coat with her back to Molly. Her dark blond hair fell to her shoulders and she was talking to a man, slightly taller than her. He had gray, almost white hair that was neatly cut. He had a beard, snow white, and it was also neatly trimmed. He looked at the woman and smiled as she was telling him a story. Molly couldn’t see her face very well, but she noticed a big brown purse hanging from the woman’s shoulder. Molly thought that it wasn’t exactly a purse, but a huge bag and it looked familiar.
“Hi,” Bev said as she sat next to Molly placing her tray on the table. “Can I have a fry?”
Molly smiled at her friend as Harold sat down across from her. He reached out and took a fry off of Molly’s tray. She playfully pushed his hand away.
“I’ve been thinking about the case,” Molly said as she began to nibble on a fry.
“It’s been a month,” Harold said as he removed the lid from the Styrofoam container in front of him. “I don’t know if we will ever find out whodunnit.”
“What else can we do?” Bev said as she picked up the plastic fork from her tray and stuck it into chicken lo mein.
“I wonder what Holmes would do?” Harold added as he stuck his fork into his General Tso’s pork fried rice.
Molly lifted her cheeseburger to her mouth and looked toward the pretzel booth. The couple she had noticed was gone. She wondered what was familiar about the woman.
“Shall we go to the fall play tonight?” Bev broke her train of thought.
“Play?” Harold answered Bev’s question. “What play?”
“Yes, the drama club is performing a Shakespeare play, The Comedy of Errors,” Bev said as she sipped from her cup. “I’d like to go.”
“Sounds fun,” Moly said. “How do we get there?”
Molly’s father happily agreed to take them to and from the play. The three friends hurried to the front door through the cold wind. They entered the school and stood just inside the door in the gym lobby once again. Molly thought to herself that the gym is used for every activity that SLMS puts on. They scurried to the line that formed into the gym itself. Two tables were set up to the left of the entrance. The closest table to the door sat a student and next to him sat Mrs. Young. On the front of the table a poster was taped, and it said, A Comedy of Errors, a fund-raiser for the Drama Club. Admission – $2.00. Molly recognized the boy. It was Ron, and she couldn’t remember his last name, but he was in her math class. She stepped closer to the table and she looked at the second table. It had a variety of boxes of candy, chocolate bars and licorice, and soda cans carefully displayed in a bucket of ice. Another poster was taped to the front of that table that simply said, Concessions – 50 cents. Two girls were behind the table waiting on customers. She recognized one of them.
“Harold,” Molly tugged on his elbow. “Isn’t that June?”
“Yeah.”
“Your own sister and you didn’t know about a play tonight?” Bev asked him.
“I forgot,” Harold waved to his sister who just noticed them standing in line.
June smiled and waved to the three of them. Molly waved back. She liked June. She was so the opposite of Harold. Where Harold was laid back and quiet, which Molly was one of the things she liked about him, June was noisy and very talkative.
“Hi, Molly,” Ron’s voice turned Molly’s head to face him. “Do you have two bucks?”
“Hi, Ron. Here you go,” Molly handed over the two dollar bills she had crunched in her hand.
“I hope you like Shakespeare,” Ron said to her taking the money from her and placed it in an off brown metal box.
“So you are in the Drama Club. Do you act?” Molly asked him.
“I would like to, but I painted the backdrop for this play so take a look at it. You better move on; you are holding up the line. I’ll talk to you later.”
“Hello, Mrs. Young,” Molly said as she stepped away from the table.
“Hello, dearie,” Mrs. Young said to her. “Enjoy the show.”
Molly nodded to her and moved forward toward the door, wondering where her two buddies went off to. She stepped aside and looked around the room. The line of students behind her had about five people in it. Three more were at the concession table. The rest of the space was empty. She turned to look at the clock that was mounted above the doorway and it read almost ten minutes to six. The door opened and Bev stuck her head out obviously looking for her. She waved to Molly to join her.
Molly stepped toward her and casually glanced toward Ron again and something attracted her attention. A brown handbag hung over the back of Mrs. Young’s chair.
“Sorry,” Molly said. “I was catching up with Ron.”
“Harold has saved us seats,” Bev said to her. “We are sitting in the middle seats of the third row.”
Molly looked at how the gym was set up for the play. A huge accordion style wall spanned across half of the gym. It was so big that a doorway was placed in it for people to go through to get to the other side. At the door another student, a girl, dressed in the dress code of the time of William Shakespeare, green tights, fluffy sleeves, and a hat with a feather in it. Following Bev, she was stopped at the door by the girl who handed her a playbill. She took a look at it. The outside was a duplication of the original announcement of the play, except for the label that announced, SLMS presents – Shakespeare’s Comedy of Errors, Below the announcement, a picture of two identical people dressed like the girl at the door. Their hands were on their knees and they were staring at each other. Bev pulled at Molly to follow her.
This part of the gym was set up with about ten rows of chairs divided into three sections of five seats per row. Bev led her to the first aisle. They turned and walked to the third row of the middle aisle and there, three seats in, sat Harold. No one was sitting in the row but Harold. Bev went first and sat on the other side of Harold. Molly sat beside him and looked around her. The stage was at eye level and they could see the stage lights shining on the dark maroon curtain that fell across it. Behind her, sitting mainly in the middle section and in the aisle edges of the of the outer sections, were a mixture of students and adults. Molly estimated there were about 80% of the seats were filled. She spotted an adult couple was walking down the aisle and they stopped at her row.
“Excuse me,” the man said to her. “Can you move in a seat so we could sit together?”
“Sure,” Molly as she stood up. She waited for Harold and Bev to move over a seat and then she sat down again.
“The woman came into the aisle first. “Thanks. Our daughter is in the play and we want to get a good view. These are great seats.”
“They are,” Molly said to her. “And what character is she playing?”
“She is playing Emilia, the mother of the twins.”
“Twins?” Molly said.
“Ah, you don’t know Shakespeare,” the woman said smiling at her. “I won’t tell. So pay attention to the story and you will see.”
The overhead lights blinked twice and finally dimmed to black. Soft music began to play over the speaker system and the curtain slid stage right across the stage.
The play was separated with an intermission after the third act of five and the three friends enjoyed a soda and a candy bar in the lobby. At the end of the play and the final curtain, the houselights went up and a voice came over the speaker system thanking them for attending and reminding them that there were two more showings of the play on the following day. Molly was grateful it was over. As she stood up, the woman beside her asked, “What do you think of Shakespeare?”
“It was an interesting story but hard to understand because of the way they were speaking,” Molly said as they entered the aisle. “Your daughter is very pretty.”
“Why, thank you. Shakespeare is hard to understand, at first, but then it gets mesmerizing. I really enjoy it,” the woman smiled at her. “Well, excuse me. We have to run to see our daughter. Nice meeting you.”
“You, too,” Molly called after her,
Harold had gone ahead of the two girls and was waiting for them at the door. He handed them each a soda can and a chocolate bar, turned on his heels and headed toward the door marked Men in Gym Hall. June stopped him before he reached it and said something to him. Molly watched as Harold pointed to them and June hurried toward them.
When she stopped in front of them, she looked around the room where clumps of people stood around the actors of the play.
“What’s the matter?” Bev asked June who looked wild eyed staring about the room.
“I’m waiting for Harold,” she said. “then I will tell you.”
“What happened?” Molly stepped closer to her. “Are you hurt?”
“No,” June answered. “Where is Harold?”
“There he is,” Bev pointed him out when she saw him push through a group of people holding flowers.
“Did she tell you?” Harold asked them when he stepped into the group of three.
“Tell us what>” Molly asked looking at June.
June looked at the three of them and began to whisper, “We’ve been robbed!”
To be continued…
My First Stories 