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Bex laughed, teeth flashing white in the darkness, and I tilted my flashlight up towards her face to experience the rare sight. Unfortunately for me, that gave an actor the opportunity to jump out from behind the row of dolls lining the ceiling, revving his chainsaw as he chased me screaming through the last couple of rooms and toward the exit.
I burst through the hanging flaps of the makeshift door leading out of the haunted house, relief flooding through me when the chainsaw guy turned and made his way back into the house. Hands on my knees, I inhaled deeply to catch my breath, a few excited, but slightly panicked laughs bursting from my chest. Bex stood next to me, watching me warily, having chased after me with long strides as I sprinted away from the chainsaw.
“Let’s do the next one,” I breathed between gasps for air, watching as Bex’s eyes lit with something that felt a lot like pride.
The second house was a doctor’s office, the actors carrying giant needles and performing surgeries that, considering my mom was a doctor, I knew weren’t best practice. The third was filled with zombies, and a few zombie clowns, which made me think they were just taking advantage of costumes from past years.
Either way, I spent a majority of the night with my hands clamped over my eyes, peeking between my fingers as I followed close behind Bex, who didn’t flinch once. Usually, once the first couple of actors saw Bex was unresponsive to their attempts, they went after easier prey. Namely: me. I kept bolting, which only made the actors chase me, so Bex eventually tucked my hand into hers.
“To keep you from flying too far away, little bird,” she explained at my startled look. Not that I needed an explanation; I was all too happy to grip her calloused hand in mine. She kept me grounded, pulling me back by her side when I attempted to flee and forcing me to straighten my spine and face my fears head on. Plus, I just liked holding her hand.
Standing in line for the last - and longest, as Bex had explained - portion of the haunted farm experience, I couldn’t help but feel a mixture of excitement and disappointment. Excitement for what I’d gathered was Bex’s favorite part of the night, her grip on my hand pulsing in an excited tic I wasn’t sure she was aware of. Disappointed because after this, it’d be over. I had no hope that this small pocket of peace and fun would extend past tonight.
Well, that was a lie. I had hope. I had nothingbuthope, a character flaw I’d always been aware of. But it had never hurt me as much as I knew it would this time, as my innocent crush from the first moment I saw Bex flared back to life. Apparently, all it took was a few days of tenuous friendship and holding hands at a haunted house to win me over. Or maybe I’d been won over for a while, and this was the first time I’d been willing to admit it to myself.
A large tractor rumbled to a stop in front of us, forcing me from my thoughts. Bex seemed to have been deep in thought as well, her hands twisting through the ends of her hair in a motion I knew she did when she was frustrated. Or annoyed. Or maybe anxious. I wasn’t entirely sure of the underlying emotion, but I knew she did it often around me, and I worried that I’d done something wrong throughout the course of the night.
But Bex just pulled her hair into a quick bun, ignoring the tangled strands, and twined her hand back in mine as we shuffled onto the hay-lined trailer alongside a dozen or so other people. Everyone turned their flashlights off at the urging of the employees, and we rode across the dirt roads leading through the farm. The cold October air whipped my hair into Bex’s face, and I laughed at her frown, tucking the long strands under the collar of my sweater to protect her. Then I tilted my head back, looking at the hundreds of stars I never got to see living in the city.
“I love being able to see the stars,” I told Bex. I kept my eyes on the sky, but I felt her shift as she tilted her head back to look alongside me.
“It's a lot easier to see them out here.”
“Yeah,” I sighed wistfully. “One day, when my business really takes off or I marry rich,” I joked, nudging Bex with a smile before continuing, “I’ll buy a house out of the city. Not this far out, but somewhere close to Ames and Alex. With enough land that I can grow flowers for the shop and sit outside and look at the stars.”
I turned toward Bex, the moon providing just enough light for me to find her eyes on mine. “What do you think?” I asked, unable to keep myself from looking for just a hint that this small tendril of connection between us would remain after she wasn’t required to watch me, when the time was up on her promise to be my friend. “Will you come visit?”
“Sure, Wren,” she whispered, tilting her head back to look at the stars, preventing me from reading her face as she said, “I’ll be there.”
The tractor came to a stop at the edge of a cornfield, a small pathway cutting through the dried stalks. We all filed off the trailer, hay crunching under our feet until we stumbled our way over to the opening in the corn stalks. With our flashlights turned back on, we started off single-file through the winding path, stopping at the end of the line that was a dozen or so people long.
The small trail forced me just behind Bex, and I couldn’t help but finally get a closer look at the fine-line tattoo stretching across the majority of her back. Turning my flashlight on her, I let out a quiet gasp of surprise when I finally recognized the shapes curving across the skin of her spine, from her left hip to her right shoulder, my hand reaching out without my permission to trace the lines.
Bex startled slightly at the touch but didn’t stop me, and I continued my slow perusal of the art etched into her skin. I was suddenly reminded of my conversation with Ames, my confidence in her attraction toward me after Bex watched me that night, and my decision to treat Bex like an itch to be scratched. I lightened my touch until it was featherlight against her skin, smiling when goosebumps rose to the surface.
“Aster…Poppy…Anemone…Peony…Rose…Dahlia,” I whispered as I touched each flower, tracing the familiar shapes of the petals. My fingers finally coasted along the top of her back, where her tattoo ended on the curve of her neck and shoulder. I scratched my fingernail there gently, surprised and elated when she shivered.
She turned around, a soft glare on her face as if she’d caught on to my antics. She was wearing her thick-soled boots, meaning she towered over me by almost a foot. I always thought she wore them to intimidate me, but the joke was on her because it just made me hot. I licked my lips, Bex’s eyes flicking there as her jaw tightened.
Behind her, the line had moved up, and I realized we were the only ones left on the small path, save for the bored employee who urged us on with a flick of her wrist. We continued on the dirt path through the woods, Bex’s hand still gripped in mine. I’d grabbed it shamelessly, unwilling to give up whatever physical contact she’d allow. There was a small shed in the distance, haunting music carrying on the breeze, and I realized this night was coming to an end. So I forced myself to blurt the words that had been floating in the back of my mind all night.
“Why are you being so nice to me?” I asked, picking at the cracks in her armor, the small bits of emotion she’d shown me tonight.
“Because I feel bad about how I’ve treated you. How I’ve been bullying you.”
The admission caught me off guard, and I wondered if she no longer felt like I didn’t belong. If she changed her mind about me. Her response bolstered my confidence, and I stepped closer to Bex, almost stumbling over my words in my impatience.
“What if I told you that I like it?” I could hear how breathy my voice sounded as I pitched my voice low, “That I like when you bully me, threaten me, scare me.”
Bex’s mouth worked on a response, but before she could decide on what to say, I walked into the haunted house, pulling Bex behind me before the door shut behind us with a loud slam.
Like most of the other haunted houses, actors jumped out at varying times to scare the shit out of me. And even though none of the houses had lights save for the flashlights carried by the guests, this one felt scarier. Darker. Like our flashlights barely illuminated enough space for us to take more than a step at a time.
After a couple minutes, we squeezed through a doorway to find ourselves in a tight hallway, various branches leading in different directions. I tensed, waiting for an actor to jump out and chase us down one of the hallways, but when no one popped out, I breathed a sigh of relief, grateful for the reprieve of a dark maze. Until Bex’s hand suddenly dropped mine, my flashlight was jerked out of my hand, and we were plunged into darkness.
“Bex?” I cried, groping for her hand, her sweater, anything to grab onto.
Hands gripped my hips, pushing me toward a branch of the maze that quickly led to a dead-end. I started to scream, but a hand clamped over my mouth, keeping me silent. The familiarity of the fingers covering my lips had me relaxing, and I reached out a hand, feeling the soft knit of Bex’s sweater.
