by Tim Lockette
“You’re coming with us, then,” I said to Reagan. “You’re going to come and trick-or-treat with us.”
“I don’t know,” Reagan said. “I still think it’s kid stuff.”
“Come on,” I said. “You know you want to.”
“I’m not wearing a costume,” she said.
“Just linger in the back and pretend you’re my big sister,” I said. “You’re so much taller than me anyway. I’ll give you half my candy if you come.”
“I’ll think about it,” she said. “Meanwhile, you need to think about what you’re going to be for Halloween.”
Just then, I felt a buzz in my pocket. I fished out my cell phone and leaned against my locker to hide it from the teachers.
Do you ever feel those phantom buzzes? You think your phone’s ringing when it’s not? There was nothing on my phone, not even an annoying message from Princess P. She’d gone completely silent since we cleared Jethro’s name, and yet I found myself expecting a message from her, checking my phone every few hours to see what kind of abuse she had for me today.
I scrolled back through the old messages Princess P had sent me.
Princess_P: Pudgy little girl with an annoying voice. You’ll die alone.
Princess_P: You should work on saving farm animals. You’re such a little piglet.
Princess_P: Oink oink nobody loves me.
Why hadn’t I erased these already? Taking occasional glances around to look for teachers, I erased Princess_P’s messages one by one. I hadn’t responded to a message from her in weeks. I wished there was a way I could show her up, a way to prove I wasn’t really bothered by her, without meeting her on her chosen battlefield.
Then I had an idea.
“I’ve decided,” I told Reagan. “I know what I’m going to be for Halloween.”
Taleesa is kind of an expert on body acceptance. You know, the whole idea of accepting your body in the size and shape that it is. She’s written more than a dozen articles about body acceptance for magazines. Funny, but most of those magazines are the ones that have all the photos of skinny-minnie models in them. Still, Taleesa knows as much about the topic as anybody I know.
“You’re the one who decides when you’re overweight,” Taleesa said. “If you can’t run and play the way you’d like to, if you get out of breath before you want to, it’s time to lose weight. There are people who’ll think you’re beautiful no matter how big you get, and there are people who will call you fat no matter how skinny you get. The right weight isn’t about looks, it’s about being able to do what you want.”
I never fully understood that until I tried on my Halloween pig suit.
In my family, we go all out for Halloween. So when I told Taleesa I wanted to be a cute pig, she drove all the way to Panama City for the perfect costume. A bright pink mascot outfit full of stuffing. Pudgy stuffed legs, cute three-fingered cartoon hands at the ends of the sleeves. It zipped up in the back, and climbing into it was kind of like burying your face in a beanbag chair—a beanbag chair that smelled like the sweat of all the people who’d rented the costume before.
As soon as Taleesa zipped me up, I thought about her advice on how to know you need to lose weight. In the pig suit, I was definitely too big. I couldn’t put my arms down all the way. I couldn’t see my feet. Getting out of the bathroom was hard: there was barely enough room for my pig body to wiggle through the open door.
But man, was I cute! The suit was perfectly cartoony, with a big stuffed pig head with a face hole that allowed me to breathe well and make expressions and roll my eyes at people. (There was a pig nose I could have worn, but I liked having my own face in the pig body.) I stood a long time in the mirror, enjoying the mascotty cuteness of every move I made in this outfit. Dancing the Charleston, doing the Cabbage Patch. Pointing, with my three-fingered fabric hooves, was especially adorable.
“Take that, Sexy Barmaid costume!” I shouted, pointing. “Take that, Sexy Pirate! Take that, Naughty Librarian!”
Take that, Princess P!
Still, I could keep up the act only for a little bit at a time. It was so hard to move, and Halloween costumes aren’t made for southern Alabama. It was seventy degrees outside on Halloween afternoon in Houmahatchee, and under all the stuffing, I was sweating like . . . well, a pig.
I couldn’t even reach my own chest. Taleesa had to pin on the finishing touch: a sign that read “NOT HAM.” On the back, another: “PIGS ARE FRIENDS, NOT FOOD.” Taleesa laughed when I picked up my cell phone and stuffed it into the pig head next to my face, the only place I could carry it.
“How are you even going to use that with pig hooves?” she asked.
We left Dad behind to deal with the bagheads, and we piled into the car. Or tried to. I couldn’t get my seat belt around my big belly without help. Taleesa, decked out as a Spanish countess from an opera, had to make several tries to get her skirts into the driver’s seat. Martinez shouldn’t have had a problem, but he refused to take off his old-timey sea captain hat even in the car. Reagan, the only person not wearing a costume, had to sit in the back and watch him struggle to sit up straight.
“Just take off your giant hat, there, Cap’n Crunch,” she said.
“I’m not Cap’n Crunch,” he said. “I’m an admiral. Get it right. I’m Admiral Peale.”
“Music!” I shouted, pointing to the radio. For some reason, being dressed as a cuddly thing made me feel the power to be bratty and demanding. “I want ‘Monster Mash!’”
Taleesa flipped through the stations. Somebody preaching a sermon. Country music. Football talk. And then: “. . . coming home from our house Christmas Eve. You may say there’s no such thing as Santa, but, as for me and Grandpa, we believe.”
“No way,” Martinez said. “Christmas music? On Halloween?”
“They get earlier every year,” Taleesa said. “Don’t be a hater. Christmas music is great. Christmas is the only time most Americans listen to jazz.”
“Oooh, leave it on there,” Reagan said. “Maybe they’ll play the Charlie Brown stuff.”
“Or maybe they’ll play The Song,” Taleesa said, looking over at me with a devilish look. “If they do, Reagan will have to dance with us.”
“Dance, what? I ain’t dancing,” Reagan said.
“It’s a family tradition,” I explained. “Every year, we wait to hear the first broadcast of the best, most rockinest Christmas song ever recorded.” I paused to see if Reagan could guess it.
“Ummm, ‘All I Want For Christmas is You’ by Mariah Carey?” Reagan said.
“Yes! See, everybody agrees! And we have this tradition: the first time we hear that song, we stop what we’re doing and dance. We could be fleeing our burning house, and we’d still stop and dance,” I said.
“I’ll stop this car if I hear it,” Taleesa said. “And we’ll all get out.”
Reagan slumped in her seat. “Oh, no. This sounds really cheesy. Change the channel.”
“Come on,” I said. “You have to do it. Just wait; it won’t take long.”
We drove over to Marjory Estates, Houmahatchee’s one really fancy neighborhood. Well, I guess the historic district where we live looks fancy, but it’s just normal people who live there. Marjory Estates is one of those places with big houses and little trees, with a gate at the entrance to the neighborhood. The richest people in town live there, and rich people have the best candy.
It was already dark when we piled out of the car and started moving with the crowd from door to door. The candy-givers didn’t quite know what to make of us. Well, they knew what to make of me.
“Look, it’s Napoleon, and Pat Benatar, and a pig!” said one woman who handed out fistfuls of little chocolate candy bars.
“It’s Andrew Jackson, and the lady from The LEGO Movie, and a pig!” said a gentle old man with big glasses, who invited us to sort through the can
dy bowl and take just what we want.
“LEGO Movie,” Reagan huffed. “Why does everybody think I’m in costume?”
“Oh, Phillip,” said Glasses Man’s wife, nudging him on the shoulder. “Can’t you see this one’s not in costume? She’s the mom.”
I got a good laugh out of that one. For the rest of the way through Marjory Estates, I clung to Reagan’s shoulder. “You’re so cool, Mom, you look like Pat Benatar, whoever that is,” I said.
Reagan wasn’t listening. She kept looking over her shoulder. “Something’s wrong,” she said. “See that ugly brown car back there? With the guy in the hat in it? He’s just sitting there, but he hasn’t let any trick-or-treaters in or out. Creepy.”
“You’re just being paranoid, Mom,” I said. “Life is not a judgment house.”
“Don’t be offensive,” Reagan said. “You realize that’s offensive? And I’m serious, that guy is creepy.”
I looked back at the brown car, but couldn’t see the guy inside, because just as I looked back, the guy turned on his lights and started his engine. Hm.
“Well, let’s catch up with Taleesa and Martinez,” I said. “Just in case.”
We cleaned out Marjory Estates and soon we were back in the car, trolling for new neighborhoods to plunder. Finally, we stopped on Kilby Street, near the historic district, which was lined with old creaky houses like ours, but even smaller. They always put out good Halloween decorations here, and the street was lined with kids.
“Baghead alert,” I said as we emerged onto the sidewalk. “I see one or two big kids out already. They may have picked this neighborhood clean before we got here.”
“Hat Guy alert,” Reagan whispered to me. “The brown car is here again. I think he’s following us.”
“I wouldn’t worry about it,” I said. “Everybody’s visiting the same few neighborhoods. You’re paranoid, I tell you.”
Somebody in the neighborhood was offering a backyard haunted house, which Martinez just had to wait in line for.
“But we’re missing all the candy,” I whined.
“You guys are big enough to go by yourselves,” Taleesa said. “I’ll stay here with him. But promise me you’ll stay together. And promise me you’ll only go to the end of the street.”
“No problem,” I said, and Reagan and I took off.
And then we heard it. A mom, parked on the street and waiting for her kids, had the Christmas station on. It was The Song. I don’t want a lot for Christmas. There is just one thing I need.
I started shaking my piggy fanny.
“Come on, Reagan!” I said. “You gotta dance!” I whipped out all the pig-suit dancing moves I’d tried in the bathroom. I’m pretty sure I saw people from school driving by. I thought I even saw Premsyl, riding in the back seat of the Braxtons’ car, with Braces Girl, on their way to the Halloween Dance. I shot my hoof in the air and shouted. Pig suits and Mariah Carey make everything better.
Reagan stood there with her arms crossed. I was just getting going when the mom with the radio drove away.
“Man, Reagan,” I said. “For an outlaw, you’re no fun. Can’t you dance and be crazy?”
I tried to get Reagan to pretend to be my mom at a couple of houses, but I guess the folks there knew me already: they called me Colonel. We were on the way to our third house when I heard a deafening blast of music in my ear.
“Ugh,” I said. “I should have turned the ringer off before I stuck my phone in this pig hat.” I fished out the phone and handed it to Reagan. “Can you turn it on? I can’t do it with pig hands.”
Reagan pressed the screen and handed the phone back to me.
“Hello, are you the girl who’s looking for the lost dog?” said a man’s voice on the other end. “The one with the signs everywhere?”
“That’s me,” I said.
“Well, I saw him just now, like a minute or two ago, on Kilby Street,” the man said.
My heart leaped. We could get Easy back!
“I’m on Kilby right now,” I said. “Where did you see him? Where are you?”
“Oh, I drove on by five minutes ago,” the man said. “But he was down at the end of the street. Over in the woods near the Ridley house at the dead end.”
I looked down the street, then down the street the other way. Kilby dead-ended into a darkened old abandoned two-story house. On either side, tufts of forest.
“I bet if you hurry, you could still find him there,” the man said. I thanked him and hung up.
“Reagan, I’ve got a caller who says Easy is right over there in the woods next to that house. Let’s go!”
I ran as fast as I could, spilling candy behind me. I tumbled over and fell on my piggy knees, then got up and ran faster, leaving my candy bag behind. I was out of breath by the time we got to the dead end.
“EASY!” I shouted. “EDWARD! Come here, boy!”
I hadn’t given up on my dog. Now that he was cleared of unprovoked biting, he could be adopted out to some family and live the rest of his life in peace—if we could just find him.
“Reagan, I’ll look in the woods on this side, you search that side,” I said.
“We’re not supposed to split up,” Reagan said.
“It’s an emergency,” I said. “Just do it. Go on!”
I plunged into the woods on my side, shouting for Easy. I had planned to turn on the flashlight on my phone, but my piggy hands wouldn’t let me. I just pressed ahead, batting aside branches and shouting for my dog.
And then I stopped to listen for him.
I could hear Reagan on the other side of the house, calling Easy’s name. Very distantly, I could hear the sound of organ music from the haunted house down the street.
And then I heard something moving in the leaves. I knew from the start that it wasn’t Easy. It was a person. You could tell they were human footsteps. Crunch, crunch crunch.
That was when I realized what I’d done. I was that girl, the one who stupidly wandered off alone into the dark on Halloween, where some strange man lay in wait. Those stories, the ones you read in the newspaper, are true. And I was about to become one of them.
I was pretty deep in the woods. It was so dark, all I could see was the outlines of leaves on the trees silhouetted against the dim orange glow from the streetlights. But I could see the outline of the man as he stepped forward. A man in a ball cap, just like Reagan had said. And when he took off his ball cap to wipe his brow, I could see a halo of white hair outlined in that light.
Cloudy Hair! I took a couple of steps backward, hoping to blend into the trees and hide myself, I guess. Though it was so dark, I had no idea what kind of dark I was stepping out of and what kind of dark I was stepping into. I must have made a rustling noise, because I could see Gary Dudley’s head suddenly turn my way.
Have you ever felt real fear? I mean, a kind that turns you inside out, in an instant? I felt as though someone had poured some kind of hot acid into my body. I felt sick but unable to barf. I felt capable of running a thousand miles but somehow unable to take a step.
In an instant, Cloudy Hair was on me. His arm around my neck, one of his feet trying to sweep my feet out from under me.
“You little piggy, let’s see how you squeal when I slit your throat!” he said.
It was then that I caught a dull flash of light. In his free hand, Cloudy Hair had a knife.
I really don’t know how I got free of him. The pig suit was so thick, it was hard for me to tell when he had hold of me and when he didn’t. But I did get free, rolled to the right for a few turns to get fully clear of Cloudy Hair, then sprang up and ran. I bet I’ve never run like that before in my life: full tilt into complete darkness, tripping over roots and popping back up again, slamming into branches and going right on like a machine. In my mind, Cloudy Hair was just inches behind me, and there was no time to stop and ch
eck if I was right.
Finally I ran out of the woods and into some light. The back of some kind of store. There was one dim streetlight, a pair of dumpsters, and a little alleyway between the back of the store and a cinder-block wall. I took off at a sprint down the alley, thinking I could run around to the front of the store and be among people again.
Wrong.
Passing the dumpsters, I came to a dead end. More wall, cinder block on all three sides. Just as I realized my predicament, I tripped and tumbled.
Cloudy Hair was there, at the entrance to the alley. With a gun. And wild, wide eyes.
“Go ahead and scream, piggy,” he said. “It’s Halloween. Nobody will take you seriously.”
Okay, lawyer, I thought. Talk your way out of this one. What do you say?
“Don’t shoot me,” I said, simply. “Please don’t shoot me.”
And then all the fear inside me broke. I started weeping. Snotty, sloppy crying. Thoughts flashed through my mind. Dad handing me McNutters for the first time, Martinez in the car with his video game, Taleesa helping me put on my pig suit. All of that, all those memories, would vanish forever if he pulled the trigger. Death, and the permanence of it, is a hard thing to take in all at once.
“Please, mister,” I said. “Don’t kill me.”
“Well, now I have to, don’t I?” Cloudy Hair said. “Not only are you testifying against me in one murder, but now you can testify that I did this, too. Sorry, you’ve gotta go.”
“Anything,” I said. “I’ll do anything.”
“Really?” Cloudy Hair replied, still pointing the gun at me. “What if I ask you to take it all back? Tell the grand jury you don’t really think I did it. Can you do that?”
I nodded. I’m sorry, readers, but that’s what I did. A man pulled a gun on me and I promised to take back the most important thing I’ve ever said.
“Promise me you’ll testify against Jethro? Say that he put you up to accusing me? Say that you were afraid of him?”
I nodded, still weeping, on my hands and knees. “Say it!” Cloudy Hair shouted.
“I promise,” I said.
Cloudy Hair smirked.