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“You don’t embarrass me! You annoy me. You irritate me. You drive me up the damn wall. But OK, wait, the vampire thing, that did embarrass me a little bit. But still, I don’t hate you.”
Awkward silence. I looked into the future and saw the two of us, fighting and sniping at each other like Grandma Ruthie and Aunt Jettie. Though, obviously, I was immortal, ageless, and way hotter than septuagenarian Jenny. I didn’t want that. I chose not to have that kind of relationship with her. But I didn’t know how to fix it.
Fortunately, Jenny did.
“So, I hurt your feelings?” she asked, the corners of her mouth lifting slightly.
“Well, you don’t have to look so dang pleased about it,” I muttered.>God help us all.
The spookiest thing about this extravaganza was all of the women in matching pink sweatshirts manically scrambling to make the parking lot into a Halloween casbah, each terrified that Head Courtney would find her efforts wanting and put her on cleanup duty. Given Head Courtney’s less-than-enthusiastic response to the prize boxes I was unloading from Big Bertha and the fact that the rest of the Courtneys had shunned me following my “outing,” I already knew who was going to be manning that stupid push broom all night.
Gabriel had wanted to accompany me to the carnival, but I asked him not to come, just in case I ended up stuck in the dunking booth. I didn’t want him to witness my humiliation. Fortunately, this carnival didn’t have dunking booths. Or clowns, which, for me, was another bright side.
Andrea was covering the shop for me while I served my carnival sentence. She and Dick would have the place to themselves for the evening. Emery had announced his intentions to attend a Christian-themed haunted house called “Hell House” weeks before. Emery had been spending less and less time at the shop lately. Andrea hoped that meant he’d found a girl to go to prayer meetings with.
We didn’t have time to overanalyze that possibility—or to consider warning the girl—because we were expecting a big Halloween-night crowd. Adults seeking a safely scary atmosphere. Teenagers looking for supplies to summon the Blair Witch. Having Emery standing in the aisles, trying to hand the customers religious tracts, would probably spoil the ambience.
Andrea was dressed up like Glinda the Good Witch, covered in pink sparkles from head to toe. The voluminous tulle skirt of her rented costume barely fit behind the coffee bar. Somehow she’d managed to talk Dick into wearing a Scarecrow costume. He looked like an extremely embarrassed Raggedy Andy doll and planned to stay in the stockroom for most of the night.
“Quit trying to put off going to the carnival,” Andrea had told me, filling a bowl with those rock-hard peanut taffy candies wrapped in orange wax paper. “We’ll be fine here.”
“I’m going, I’m going,” I muttered, sliding into my Pepto Bismol pink Chamber of Commerce sweatshirt.
“And I hope that you realize that as a witch, I am claiming double overtime for you making me work on a religious holiday,” she said, gesturing to her girlie ensemble.
“Watch it, or I’ll drop a house on you.” I sneered as I walked out the door.
Since Jenny had yet to show up, Nice Courtney was helping me unload and distribute the prizes to the various game booths. Zeb was pitching in, too, but I think he was just there to get first crack at the funnel cakes. Imagine how sad he was when he found out that this wasn’t that kind of carnival. The closest thing he could get to junk food was a sugar-free caramel apple. Nonetheless, he’d promised to come running, yelling that Jolene was in labor and we had to leave right away, if things got bad with the Courtneys.
“Well, it’s still pretty much a high school parking lot,” I said, hefting a box of free tote bags out of the trunk. “But I’m sure after everything is inflated, it will be a magical autumn wonderland.”
“Just keep telling yourself that.” Nice Courtney snickered. “Where do you want the popcorn balls?”
“Wherever Head Courtney won’t see them,” I muttered, throwing a blanket over the individually wrapped offerings from the A&P. “Don’t you know this is a no-carb charity carnival?”
Nice Courtney giggled. “I’ll smuggle them to the kids under the guise of giving them their complimentary hand sanitizer.”
“I’ve had a bad influence on you,” I said, gasping in mock surprise. When I made my escape from the chamber, I hoped that Nice Courtney and I could keep in touch. If nothing else, she’d proven to me that just because people are shiny and preppy, that didn’t make them automatically evil. It was entirely a matter of choice. She’d single-handedly undone a lot of damage that had been inflicted in high school.
“Jane!” Judging from the look on Jenny’s face as she barreled across the parking lot, I guess she’d heard about my visit with Grandma Ruthie. And being Grandma’s favorite and confidante, it was up to her to set me straight.
Speaking of shiny and evil personal choices.
“Oh, what now?” I muttered.
“Who do you think you are? Are you out of your mind, scaring Grandma like that?” she yelled, her face only inches from mine. “How could you do that to your own grandmother?”
“Let me get this straight. You’re yelling at me for my behavior during a conversation with Grandma Ruthie, in which Grandma Ruthie yelled at me for how I behaved during a conversation with you?” I sighed. “Do you two organize a ‘be a pain in Jane’s ass’ schedule?”
“She could have had a heart attack!” Jenny insisted.
“Oh, please, Ruthie’s an unstoppable force of nature, like the Black Plague or Richard Simmons.”
“That’s it,” Jenny growled through her clenched teeth. “Stay away from my family. Mama, Daddy, Grandma, the kids, everybody. You obviously don’t care about us or what we think. So, just stay away from us.”
“I know you’ve been lobbying for this since the day I was brought home from the hospital, but you can’t kick me out of our family, Jen,” I told her.
“It’s not ‘our family,’” she spat. “It’s mine.”
