We had to walk down cold cinder block stairs to the Big Girls’ Bathroom. In elementary school, the girls had two bathrooms: one before and one after our periods. The basement bathroom was the period bathroom, and it was also haunted.

Angela and Gabriela walked ahead of me, giggling as they held hands. It was Halloween, and the festival was happening outside. Angela was a cat and Gabriela was a mermaid. While Angela’s family was in longshoring and could afford a store-bought costume, she preferred her Nana’s creations. Angela wore a headband with pink ears and a tail sewn onto the back of a belt. Gabriela’s store-bought costume was bright and shiny in the sunlight.

I was She-Ra, a warrior princess from my favorite cartoon. Normally, I was a fortune teller, which meant wearing my mom’s hemmed hippie clothes from when she was a teenager. The year before, my dad left and never came back. Mom felt guilty and scrounged up the money by selling Princess House crystal. For the costume, she was able to get it at an employee discount from her co-worker’s teenage son, who worked at Target. It was nice of Mom to try to get me extra things, but it’s not what I really wanted.

I looked down and realized I had left my fake sword in the classroom.

“Come on,” Angela said.

The staircase smelled like mildew and there were wet spots from a leak somewhere. Angela and Gabriela turned the corner and they pushed the heavy double doors to the Big Girl Bathroom. The doors slammed shut at the top of the stairs behind me.

I stood in the doorway of the bathroom, a row of sinks to my left. They had old rubber stoppers speckled with mold. The bathroom stalls stood tall. The fluorescent lights hummed. Sunshine pierced through the glass windows near the top of the walls. We were below ground level and the passing feet of those in the costume parade blocked and unblocked the sunlight.

Most students at our school couldn’t afford a costume. Every Halloween, we spent an hour in class making masks out of paper. We colored and cut out a witch, a ghost, Dracula, or Frankenstein’s creation, and then attached a string, but only the kids without costumes wore them so they could be in the parade. They walked slowly, with their shoulders hunched, because they hated their paper masks. It became a parade showing how poor they were.

Gabriela had one hand on the light switch and the other on her hip.

“You guys ready?” she asked, with one eyebrow raised.

I nodded and stood next to Angela, facing the mirror. I was bigger and taller than them, but that didn’t mean I was any less scared.

“Here we go,” Gabriela said, shutting off the lights. She stood between Angela and me, grabbing both of our sweaty hands.

“We have to say Bloody Llorona’s name. I’ll say it first. Then Angela will say it with me, and then all three of us will say it together. If you say Bloody Llorona’s name three times in the mirror, she’ll show you what you’re too afraid to see. And if you conquer your fear, she won’t drown you in her tears and take you as her ghost child,” Gabriela said.

Angela and I looked at each other and probably thought the same thing: Gabriela was merging La Llorona with Bloody Mary, which somehow made it less believable.

“It has to be in sync. Otherwise, it won’t work,” Gabriela said.

The bathroom responded with a dripping sound. I breathed deeply.

“Bloody Llorona,” Gabriela chanted.

Drip.

“Bloody Llorona,” Gabriela and Angela chanted.

Drip.

“Bloody Llorona,” we chanted.

Drip. Drip. Drip.

The blood ran in my ears. Nothing happened. We let go of each other’s hands.

Then, I couldn’t see. I looked up toward the little windows, and it felt as if they were never there. There was no light. My heart beat fast. I stretched my arms out and reached for my friends. The dripping sound turned into running water and drowned out our screams.

My gaze landed on one of the mirrors. The mirror was lit up from within and it illuminated my pale face. The room had turned black, but there I was, a ten-year-old girl with golden hair under a winged helmet, a white dress, and no sword. Mirror-me put her hand on her belly and then lifted it, leaving behind a sooty handprint on her white dress. Dark smoke swirled around me, and I heard a hiss.

The shadowy face of a woman appeared with black pupils. Her mouth opened, and she wailed. Out of her open mouth came a black serpent, flicking its tongue. The woman disintegrated as if she were nothing more than a costume, a skin, and all that was left was the serpent.

“One of you will die, one of you will disappear, and one of you will know no peace,” it hissed in a male voice.

I looked down; the handprint was on my dress and no longer in the reflection. I rubbed it until the streaks of soot disappeared.

My eyes blurred and then came back into focus. All the faucets in the bathroom had turned on by themselves, and the sinks overflowed with water.

The serpent in the mirror was gone.

Angela screamed; her voice cracked. I ran to the light switch to save us. Angela shook Gabriela’s shoulders, but she wouldn’t move; her face was turned to the wall. There was a stain on Gabriela’s bottom, a bloom of red blood on the green mermaid’s tail. Her period had leaked.

The scales of Gabriela’s costume shimmered in the light coming from the tiny windows above. The light was back.

I ran from the bathroom, leaving my friends behind to find a teacher’s aide. On the playground, the asphalt steamed in the heat. I shielded my eyes with my arm against the brightness of the sun.

Author’s note: This flash fiction was inspired by playing the mirror game during lunch in the early ’90s. The basement bathroom was mostly unused because everyone was scared of it. I went to a predominantly Latino elementary school, where our version of the game involved summoning La Llorona instead of Bloody Mary. I believe it was something the girls at my school came up with, rather than a widespread cultural tradition. After chanting her name three times, I ran to the schoolyard lunch tables. Minutes later, I heard screams. A group of girls carried one girl out, her eyes wide with shock. A teacher’s aide rushed her to the school nurse. No one knew exactly what she saw, only that she claimed La Llorona appeared in the mirror after the lights turned off by themselves. This moment stayed with me for many years and became the inciting incident for my first novel.”