AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Right. Who didn’t answer. Because she was most likely too busy making sure therealcriminals didn’t hurt themselves running away, like always. Another reminder from Kenny I didn’t need right now. This is what I get for giving them a five-minute head start.
“This time really wasn’t my fault.”
“Fine. Then whose fault was it?” Kenny looks up from his crossword long enough to raise an eyebrow at me.
All I can do is bite my tongue, and he knows it. He knows I’ll never snitch on the guilty parties. Heredity isn’t the only reason I often find myself in trouble.
Kenny goes back to his crossword, while I let go of the bars and start pacing the small space I was tossed into a few hours ago, like a caged animal. My heart rate kicks back up a notch. I’m having trouble taking a deep breath, and I have to wipe my sweaty palms off on my jeans and think happy thoughts before this panic attack gets out of control.
I hate being confined. And Ireallyhate small spaces and have a touch of claustrophobia. Which is pretty laughable, considering how many times I’ve knowingly made the choice to do something that would put me in this small, confined space with no window to the outside world. Bitching at Kenny was a nice distraction for a little while, but if I have to stay in here much longer, I might start screaming. Or crying. Which is just not something a Tanner woman does. We get angry, and we rage. We do not cry.
I know it’s my own fault for not keeping a better eye on my younger sister and cousin. They usually don’t start with their bullshit until well into the middle of the night. But Penny and Ginger were more fired up than ever this evening and came in hot fifteen minutes into the start of October Eve. I normally have more time to enjoy the fun on my favorite night of the year, before I inevitably wind up getting in trouble covering for them. This year, I missed the fireworks, I missed the lighting of the town square, and I missed the countdown to midnight and the slow ascent of the huge, light-up pumpkin, where everyone shouts, cheers, and clinks glasses of candy corn martinis when the lighted pumpkin reaches the top of the fifty-foot pole it’s attached to.
And my number-one grievance—I missed eating my weight in pumpkin funnel cakes the bakery only makes this one night of the year. I am going to hold onto this current annoyance with Penny and Ginger until the day I die for that alone. But they are only one more offense away from getting their own personalized jail chairs, and I won’t let that happen.
“You can’t keep covering for them, Sidney,” Kenny speaks quietly, eyes still focused on his puzzle, making my mouth immediately dry up after drooling over the memory of pumpkin funnel cakes. “I get why you did it when they were younger, but they are twenty-year-old adults now, who are responsible for their own choices. And they do not make good ones.”
All valid points, but old habits die hard. I’ve been covering for them since they were twelve, I was eighteen, and our fathers died on a fishing trip out of town together. The girls showed their grief and anger by way of disappearing from the funeral to set fire to the fishing boat that had been shipped back and parked in the middle of our driveway.
My dad and uncle are gone, my mom and aunt are just as crazy as Ginger and Penny, and if I don’t keep them out of trouble, no one else will. One of these days, they will outgrow this rebellious nature and the need to seek revenge on any man who has ever done a woman wrong. Which never fails to go completely haywire in some way, like it did earlier tonight. They don’t believe in making a plan. They only believe in making someone pay.
“You’re not the only one annoyed being stuck in here while everyone else is having fun,” Kenny continues. “One of the stars from the movie that was filmed here was going to be signing autographs at the bookstore, and I missed it. She’s one of the only autographs I haven’t gotten yet.”
“Stephanie Long?”
Kenny shakes his head when I name the lead actress.
“Robin Jenkins?”
His head whips back and forth again when I name the actress who played the best friend of the lead. We repeat the process while I rattle off the small handful of other actresses that starred in the movie, who all died quick, gruesome deaths while running away from the killer in slow motion, with their boobs almost bouncing out of their tops.
“No, none of those. It was Cheerleader Number Four, who was the prettiest one out of all the cheerleaders who died, and now my scrapbook is ruined,” Kenny complains overdramatically with a huff and a scowl in my direction, like my night hasn’t gonewayworse than his.
“You do know Cheerleader Number Four is probably like, seventy years old by now and won’t be wearing a skimpy cheerleading uniform so you can ogle her saggy boobs, right?”
“Why do you always have to ruin everything?” Kenny sets aside his crossword puzzle to flip through a few phone messages on his desk, muttering under his breath about another October Eve down the drain because of the crazy Tanner women.
October Eve, the night of September 30th, is sacred in the town of Harvest Grove, population: really fucking small. Right smack in the middle of the Midwest where nothing exciting ever happens, a campy horror movie calledThe Babysitter’s Last Halloweenwas filmed here, back in the early ’70s. It was never a big hit at the box office, but over the years, it’s gained a hoard of cult-like followers that just continues to grow with each new generation. They cosplay the movie, they travel the world attending comic-cons that feature the movie, and every October, many of them come to Harvest Grove to take pictures and videos at each location where the movie was filmed.
Which is how our sleepy town turned into a Halloween tourist attraction that lasts from October 1stto the 31stevery year. All of the homes, as well as the businesses, go over the top decorating for the holiday. They all make changes to their offerings to include Halloween-related items. Vendors set up tables in town to sell movie-related merchandise. There’s a tour that runs a few times daily, on which guests are guided through town to see all the locations where the movie was filmed.Andthere are Halloween-themed events scheduled all throughout the month for people to enjoy, no matter when they make it here.
There is nothing better than October Eve, when our quiet town comes to life to kick off the start of a new tourist season. And here I am, stuck in a tiny room, with a man who won’t even give me the courtesy of a good fight to distract me from trying not to hyperventilate when it feels like the walls are closing in with each hour that passes.
“Stop trying to act like you’re mad about missing the party. You’re just madhe’snot in town yet to bail you out.”
My pacing comes to an abrupt halt when Kenny reminds me about the real reason October Eve became my favorite night of the year not that long ago, quickly beating out the actual night of Halloween. My heart starts racing a little faster as I slump down into my chair—and not because of a panic attack this time. It’s not like I ever asked to be rescued from being locked up; it just happened six years ago by chance, and it’s become a wholethingnow, year after year. It’s basically tradition at this point. A tradition I look forward to like a pathetic idiot. One that would make the women in my family disown me if they knew how little sleep I got last night because of my excitement over a man, and how many times I changed my outfit before leaving the house earlier.
I’m not ashamed to admit the fact that he’s late is the real reason I’m so agitated right now. If he’s even so much as five minutes late getting into town, I start to worry ifthisis the year he finally decided not to come back. Ifthisis the October he realized this town, and all the people in it, just aren’t worth the aggravation. He’s now two hours and fifty-seven minutes late, and I hate how scared and nervous it makes me feel.
“What are the charges this time?”
Like my brain was able to conjure him just by thinking about him, that deep, no-nonsense voice I haven’t heard in a year fills the quiet room. Hearing his voice again after so long is like drinking a mug of hot apple cider on a cold autumn evening, warming me up from the inside out and making me forget all about my current troubles.
My head whips up from where I’ve been staring at an old burn mark in the carpet that never got fixed when my mother wasn’t properly frisked before one of her nights in here almost twenty years ago. A smile stretches across my face when our eyes meet, even though I’m seriously annoyed with him right now for making me worry. And even more annoyed by how much I no longer feel like panicking just by seeing him again and being able to breathe the same air as him.
My best friend for the entire month of October for the last six years, Ford Prescott, stands in front of Kenny’s desk. His six-foot-four body towers over it in a pair of dark jeans that hug his tree-trunk thighs, with the bottoms shoved into a pair of work boots, and a brown, long-sleeved Henley molded to the muscles of his upper body. With his arms crossed in front of him and the usual glower of annoyance on his face, his blue eyes slowly trail over me from head to toe, and I ignore the wave of heat that flares over my body in their wake.
He’s just making sure I’m okay and not injured in any way, like a good friend. But my stomach still flops just like it always does the first time I get a good look at him again after a year without seeing him. I blindly get up from my chair, moving back over to the cell door to wrap my hands around the bars, just to be a few feet closer to him.
