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“She’s a great pupil,” Luke said, dropping a palm on top of my head and rubbing my hair.
“Felt like a real fucking spider,” Gabriel said. He grunted loudly and then popped the top of his pumpkin back into place. “But Sang, if you trust me with your pumpkin, you should head outside and start on the yard with someone. Give me room to work. You can come back in and help me carve once I do the outlines.”
“I need a shower now,” Luke said. He skipped around me, poking Gabriel in the side as he went by. Gabriel tried to slap him back, but Luke dodged and then raced to Mr. Griffin’s bedroom and shut the door behind himself.
“Sang,” Victor said. “Want help with the outside decorations?”
“Yes,” I said, “I don’t know what to do.”
“I left the outside decorations in the garage,” Dr. Green said.
“And there’s more in Victor’s trunk,” Gabriel said. He pulled a chair up and stared at the pumpkins, smoothing his hands over the surface. “Princesses are fucking difficult.”
“Not really,” Victor said quietly, and then winked at me. “You just need to know how to talk to them.”
My cheeks heated.
Yet amid all the Halloween chaos, I was already feeling amazing. Before I went outside with Victor, Nathan was already working on a zombie on his pumpkin, and Dr. Green was gutting two more. I suspected the others would be here soon.
Halloween together.
Tombstones
Nathan’s front yard was barren of Halloween decorations, unlike our neighbors, who had pumpkins, skeleton figures on the sidewalk and witches hanging from doors. Kota’s house even had spider webs amid the bushes and hanging from the porch.
Victor stood with me, looking at the flat expanse of yard we had to work with.
“Okay, Princess,” he said. He had his hands on his hips at first, but slowly he worked his hand toward my back, holding onto me warmly. He pointed with his other hand toward the yard. “We’ve got to set up a zombie graveyard, apparently. Gabriel’s orders. I’ve got the tombstones. Dr. Green has the zombies. I think the point is to scare the kids. They’ll have to be brave to get to the front door and get their candy reward.”
“Who is going to be here to pass out candy?” I asked. “We’ve got to go to the homecoming dance.”
“We’ll just leave a bowl by the front door this time,” Victor said. “That might be a good idea. Usually Dr. Green and Mr. Blackbourne will do it.”
“What do you guys do?” I asked.
“Go trick-or-treating, of course,” he said. “Have to keep that up while you can. Let’s get started.”
It took us a good deal of time to decorate the yard. The sun started to warm things up a bit. I was doing stuff barefoot and kneeling in the grass, getting the pajama bottoms and the T-shirt all dirty. Probably a good thing I hadn’t bothered with a bath yet. There really was a lot to do for Halloween. I hadn’t realized how much I had missed.
By the end, Victor and I had a couple of rows of tombstones, each with a funny phrase like, “Joke’s over, now let me out.” and “R. U. Next.” and “Openings Available, Apply Inside”. The front of the tombstones were littered with plastic skulls and zombies trying to crawl out of the ground. I did the tombstones and the skulls, because the zombie parts were very gross-looking.
“Who made the tombstones?” I asked.
“North built them,” Victor said, readjusting a zombie arm poking out of the ground in front of a tomb. “And Silas painted the phrases.”
I smiled big, reading the tombstones again, trying to picture saying them in his voice. It made me giggle.
Victor wiped at his brow with the back of his arm and gazed at me, the fire in his brown eyes flickering. “Going to be ready for tonight?” he asked.
I smiled and nodded. “I’m nervous, though,” I said. “I mean, with what we’re supposed to do.”
“I think we’re all nervous,” he said. “Probably why Kota and Mr. Blackbourne were insistent we spend time together today.”
“They said so?” I asked.
He stood fully, dusting off his hands on his pants before he strolled toward me. He reached out for my hand. His longer fingers threaded between mine and he tugged, guiding me toward the road. “Let’s check out our handiwork.”
He continued to hold onto my hand as we stood on the road, checking the results. His thumb traced the back of my palm, starting in small circles, and then following the bones in my hand, as if tracing each one that he could reach. Each movement of his thumb tugged my heart with it. I was excited being with him, doing this together.
We looked out toward the graveyard, standing close together. Since the sun was out, it didn’t look so scary, but I imagined at night, it would look really spooky.
Victor started to move his arm, and released my hand to put his arm around my shoulders. “Not a bad job,” he said. “We make awesome graveyard builders.”
I started to pull away from him, smiling. “I’m all sweaty,” I said.
“So am I,” he said, and he tugged me in closer, pressing his side into mine. “Sweaty together.”
I giggled. Victor could be funny, once you got him away from the others. Despite being the well-bred, rich kid among the rest of them, he never seemed to mind working hard. Maybe it was that Academy influence. Whatever it was, I liked it.
Kota and Nathan emerged from the house, followed by Dr. Green, carrying pumpkins. Kota’s spider was joined by Nathan’s zombie, and Dr. Green’s had a Japanese mask, with horns and a tongue out.
“Hey!” Nathan called after he put his pumpkin down. He waved. “Get your pumpkin finished! The others will be here soon and we’ll have to get dressed.”
Victor sighed. “One day, Princess,” he said in a low voice. “Maybe next year, we’ll go somewhere else for Halloween. We’ll let other people decorate, and we will relax and have fun instead of all this work.”
“I like it,” I said quietly.
“If you like this, just wait until Christmas,” he said, turning to me, his fire eyes lit up to a blaze. “Or Thanksgiving. I hope you like football. We play football at Thanksgiving.”
My mouth popped open. “Really?”
“Right here in the yard,” he said. He tugged me around the neck toward the house. “Let’s go, Princess. More to do...”
Preparation
Hours flew by in the early afternoon. Gabriel blasted Halloween music. I followed his instruction on my pumpkin, carving out a dress with different types of moons. I couldn’t tell how it would look in the end, and he said I wouldn’t get to see it in action until tonight in the dark with a candle inside. He and Luke carved out the other princess dresses, littered with stars and suns.
After we were done with the pumpkins, North arrived with Silas. North wore the usual black T-shirt and jeans. His eyes had circles underneath like he’d been up all night, but he otherwise seemed fine.
Silas, however, had deeper black circles. His blue T-shirt and jeans were wrinkled. The usual slight smile on his face wasn’t there as he walked in. He was expressionless.
I hovered behind Kota as North dropped a box of sandwiches and packages of potato chips on the counter. “Eat when you can,” North said. “We’re not getting much else until the dance tonight.”
“How are you, Silas?” Kota asked. The room stilled. Everyone turned toward North and Silas.
Silas hunched his shoulders at his name. His head lifted, and he caught me behind Kota’s shoulder.
I stared at him, his big brown eyes, black hair hanging across his forehead. It was such a long, shared moment, with me afraid he’d say he was horrible or had some bad news.
In a flash, I tried to smile in a sympathetic way. I wasn’t sure if it came across more of a grimace, but I was trying to be encouraging. Quietly, I was asking him things the others were probably wanting to know. Will everything be okay?
Silas’s eyebrows scrunched together at first, looking puzzled, but then the corner of his mouth
lifted, revealing white teeth that stood out from his olive complexion. “I’ll live. I’m good, I think. Just tired.”
“No time to nap,” Kota said. “Will you make it tonight?”
Silas nodded. “I’ll drink some coffee.”
“And carve your fucking pumpkin,” Gabriel said, pointing to the few that were left. “Hurry.”
North groaned and placed his palm against his eye. “We don’t have time for this shit.”
“We’ve got time,” Gabriel said. He grabbed two of the sandwiches and then snapped his fingers at me. “But we’ve got to get started. Kota, we’re going to borrow your bedroom.”
Kota perked up and started jogging after us. “Hang on, I’ve got to walk in with you. I’ll have to explain...”
“Well hurry up,” Gabriel said, not stopping. “She’s still got to take a bath and the others have to start getting ready, too.” He looked at Victor. “Starting with you. Shower. Now.”
“Sure thing, boss,” Victor said, smirking. He winked at me and went to the food to fish out a package of potato chips before he went for the bathroom.
Gabriel passed one of the sandwiches to me, encouraging me to eat while we raced over to Kota’s house. I was swallowing down the last bit as we took the door inside the garage, following Kota in. Kota motioned for us to hurry along upstairs. “I’ll tell her what you’re doing,” he said. “Otherwise we’ll be stuck downstairs a while because she’ll want to ask questions.”
We nodded and I followed Gabriel up to Kota’s bedroom.
The moment we were upstairs, Gabriel patted me on the butt and shooed me into the bathroom. “No funny stuff,” he said. “Clean up in there. Don’t wash your hair. I’ll do it.”
I was familiar with this routine. “I can wash my hair,” I said. “It might be faster.”
“I’ll do it,” he said. “I don’t get enough time with you as it is. I can at least do that.”
Was that the reason?
I hurried with a bath as fast as possible, basically scooping up water as it flowed from the faucet and washing up before it had time to fill. I did a quick shave, washed my face and body, and was out in a few minutes. I might have missed a few spots, but I was trying to hurry.
