The Halloween Moon

by Joseph Fink

  Sasha helped her brother into his car seat, and then, with a last round of goodbyes, the Min family went home and now it was just the two of them. They walked in an easy quiet to Agustín’s house. Like the rest of the neighborhood, it had reverted to its old self. The few gravestones in the recently mowed front yard each said “Sample” again. They went around the back of the house to his mother’s workshop, where the lights were on. Through the window, they could see his mother asleep at her worktable, breathing slow and easy against a headstone with only the words “JOHN CARP” carved into it so far.

  “She’s safe,” Agustín said. For the first time all night, he untensed his shoulders.

  “She’s safe,” Esther confirmed.

  “I guess you should go home,” Agustín said. “Seems like a long time since we left our homes at the start of the night.”

  “It’s probably been days, hasn’t it? Weeks maybe.”

  “Only a few hours for everybody else.”

  “Who cares about everybody else?” she said. “Let’s take a walk first. I’m not ready to pretend this didn’t happen. I’m not ready to be with people who don’t remember any of it.”

  “I’d love to. Where should we go?”

  She took his hand. They walked down into the canyon. The darkness of it held no fear for her anymore. She knew what was in that darkness. It was the passage of time. It was herself changing. What was in the darkness was only the rest of the world, and she could handle the world.

  They made their way up to the ledge where a couple hours before—or maybe a couple weeks before, who knew—they had desperately tried to think of a way to free their friends and family. Now it looked like what it was, a bit of public park surrounded by cacti and the plant called mule fat. She laughed a little when she remembered the name, taught to her by her dad so long ago.

  They sat on the grass and looked up at the moon, which was now in the center of the sky, small and white.

  “I don’t think I’ll ever find the moon romantic again,” Agustín said.

  “You used to find the moon romantic?” she said, giggling a little. He rolled his eyes.

  There was a pause. Neither of them looked at each other. She hadn’t been alone with him since the Dream.

  “When we were put into the Dream, do you think we shared a dream?” she said.

  “Do you mean did we all have the same dream?”

  “Yeah, or were they separate dreams? Were they like dreams we have normally?”

  “You’re asking,” he said without looking at her, “if the version of the people you know in those dreams were actually those people, or just your own mind imagining those people.”

  “Yeah,” she said. She turned and he did too, and they finally met each other’s eyes.

  “And if the things that happened for you with those people in those dreams happened for them too?” he said.

  “Yes,” she whispered.

  “The house with the party in it,” he said, and she felt her heart fizz into a joyful vapor.

  “Two people going upstairs,” she said.

  “Esther Gold, I said it once in a dream, but I’m happy to say it again here. I like—”

  She kissed him before he could finish his sentence. She didn’t need to hear it. They had already told each other once, in a dream. Now she wanted this to happen for real, right now, here in this world. They kissed for a long time, and when they stopped they weren’t friends. Friends was no longer the word for what they were.

  For an hour, they stayed. They didn’t talk. Occasionally they kissed. But mostly they watched time blissfully move, until the stars faded into the light blue sky, until the sun turned the clouds pink, until morning came at last.

  ESTHER’S PARENTS WERE NOT HAPPY. From their point of view they had woken up on a normal weekday, in the early morning, to the sound of their daughter coming home. She had tried to be as quiet as possible, but her parents had been asleep for a long time and it didn’t take much to wake them up.

  “What in the world were you thinking?” her dad said. His hair was a mess, and his face was creased where it had pressed against the pillow. “I half expected you to sneak out for trick-or-treating, not that I’m happy about that, but then to stay out all night? On a school night?”

  “Are you trying to punish us?” her mom yelled. “Is that what this was? You wanted to punish us by making us worry?”

  She looked at her angry parents and felt such happiness in finally seeing them again. She didn’t know how to make her feelings match theirs. Everything they understood about the world was different than what she understood about it. So she just decided to be honest.

  “It’s so, so good to see you guys,” she said. She hauled them into a big hug. “I’m so glad. I’m so glad.”

  Her parents looked at each other. Both of them were still furious, but it didn’t seem possible to continue on their current trajectory given what was happening here.

  “Are you okay, honey?” her mom said. “Did something happen?”

  “You can talk to us,” her dad said. “We’re not that angry.”

  “We’re incredibly angry,” her mom corrected. “But you can still talk to us.”

  For a moment, Esther thought about trying to explain. She thought about telling the story. It wasn’t a serious thought. It was only holding an impossibility in her head, just to see what it looked like, before letting it go.

  “I’m fine,” she said. “It was nothing. I’m just glad to see you. It’s been a long night.”

  She held her parents for a while longer, not wanting to let go. They stood there, letting her hold them for as long as she needed. Finally she stepped back.

  The velocity of their anger had been slowed, and there didn’t seem to be much left to work with. Her dad sighed. “Well, you’ve still very much disappointed us,” he said.

  “You’re grounded, I hope you know that,” her mom said, but without much force behind her voice.

  Their anger was renewed an hour later when Ben stumbled in from a party that had ended when the first light of the morning had shaken all of the high schoolers out of their reverie.

  “I can explain,” he said inaccurately.

  Esther was glad to see her brother, and also glad to have her parents’ anger directed at someone else for a bit. As her parents shouted, she quietly got her things together for school. By the time they were done, she was dressed, with the heavy backpack of textbooks on her back.

  The phone rang. It was the police, calling to inform parents of the extent of the damages to the canyon. Not merely the little clearing where the teenagers usually partied, but a huge camp, entire bushes torn out and stomping down of the ground. There was even some kind of throne that had been half burned. The police department of such a quiet town had never seen a party of this size before, and they didn’t like it. Esther’s parents didn’t like it either.

  After that, the tone of her parents’ words to Ben went up a notch, and Esther thought it was better to slip out. This all would be figured out eventually. As long as time kept moving, as long as everyone kept growing older, then eventually all of this would be in the past. She closed the front door quietly behind her and made her way to school.

  ANOTHER ORDINARY DAY of ordinary school. All this normalcy seemed totally wrong to Esther. The distance between this day and yesterday was life-changing for her, but for the rest of the world it was only another day.

  As school let out, she and Agustín and Sasha walked out of the gate together, waving to Mrs. Min in her waiting minivan.

  “All three of you today?” Mrs. Min said hopefully. Edward, in his car seat in the back, picked up one of his trucks to throw and then thought better of it, cradling the little car in both of his little hands.

  “Actually, Mom,” Sasha said, “I think we’re all going to walk home.” She started walking while her mom was still trying to recover from her shock enough to refuse, and so Esther and Agustín shrugged and followed after her. By the time M
rs. Min was opening her mouth to say, “Absolutely not!” Sasha was already in the rearview mirror, turning the corner to the street.

  “Okay,” Mrs. Min said. “Okay. Maybe just for today. Okay.” She felt guilty about not picking Sasha up the night before, and so she wasn’t ready for the kind of fight this was clearly going to be.

  “Where do you even live, Sasha?” Esther said as they walked across the park. She and Agustín were holding hands, something they had done all day, to much comment from everyone in school. The general sentiment seemed to hover between “well, yeah” and “FINALLY.”

  “Carriage House Lane,” Sasha said.

  “Wait, really?” Esther said. “That’s five blocks from my house. Why have I never seen you around before? And why was your mom trying to pick you up last night so close to where you live?”

  “Well,” Sasha said, “if my mom is so overprotective that she’ll pick me up five blocks from my house, that kind of answers the question of why you never saw me around.”

  Esther let the subject lie, and they turned and started taking the long way home, the one that avoided the canyon. They had all had enough of that place for the moment.

  “Speaking of which,” Esther said to Agustín. “Is your mom okay?”

  “Sleepy, but she can’t figure out why. I told her that I think she’s working too hard. I offered to help her so she can get stuff done in time, and in exchange we’ll pick a couple nights a week to hang out.”

  “Aww,” said Sasha. “That’s kind of sweet.”

  “It’s very sweet,” said Agustín. “I’m a sweet kid.”

  “So, high school next year,” Esther said.

  “Yeah,” said Sasha.

  “Yeah,” said Agustín.

  They were quiet for a minute. Kids from the elementary school went running by them, yelling.

  “I think it might be fun,” Esther said. “Or not fun, but . . .”

  “But something big we get to do together?” Sasha said.

  “Yeah, it’s a big change, and it’s a big change that we all make. That feels good. It feels good going into high school with a friend like you, Sasha, and . . .” She looked at Agustín.

  “And a boyfriend,” he said. “You can say it.”

  “Oh my god, I’m going to be the third wheel, aren’t I?” Sasha said. Then she groaned. “I already am, aren’t I?”

  Esther took Sasha’s hand with her other one.

  “We don’t have to make it like that. We all survived last night. We did it together. We’ll do high school together too. Three friends.”

  Sasha squeezed her hand.

  “I like that,” she said.

  “Two of whom also kiss each other a bunch,” Esther said.

  “Well, it started out good,” Sasha said, taking her hand back.

  “Like a lot,” Esther continued.

  “Okay, okay,” Sasha said, covering her ears.

  “I don’t know what’s bothering you,” Agustín said. “All of this has sounded great to me so far.”

  They passed adults in their driveways washing cars, walking their dogs, unloading groceries. Kids on their way home from school, excited to break into stashes of candy from last night. Not one of them knew what had happened. It was only another day of Southern California sunshine. The palm fronds on the trees along the street rattled in the wind, sounding exactly like rain falling. It was the closest thing to rain this town got for most of the year.

  “Do you think we’ll actually stay friends in high school?” Sasha asked quietly.

  “Yes,” Esther said. “I’m sure of it.”

  She wasn’t sure, but she wanted to be.

  “So are we going trick-or-treating again next year?” Agustín said.

  Esther thought about it. She wanted to go trick-or-treating. But she knew that didn’t mean she had to do it.

  “No,” Esther said. “I think I’m too old for that now. I’ll find other ways to celebrate. Anyway, you don’t like Halloween.”

  “I don’t. But I like that you like it.”

  “I’m done with trick-or-treating forever,” Sasha said. “I won’t even let my kids do it when I grow up.”

  They laughed.

  “Hey,” Esther said. “Speaking of which, can we make a quick detour?”

  The two of them followed her as she turned on to Meadowlark, down the street to Mr. Winchell’s house. He was outside, prying the plastic gravestones out of the dirt. A pile of dismantled zombie dummies sat next to the side gate.

  “Hi, Mr. Winchell.”

  “Hey, Esther,” he said. “Sorry I missed you last night. I think I dozed off or something. I don’t really remember. Had some wild dreams, though.”

  “It’s okay, Mr. Winchell. But I wanted to ask you something.”

  “Shoot.”

  “Do you think I could help you decorate next year? It looks like fun.”

  He smiled and put his hands on his hips. “Well, sure. You’ll have to ask your parents, but that’d be great, Esther. I’d be happy to teach you some tricks of the trade.”

  “That would be wonderful,” she said. “That would be wonderful.”

  From there, life went on. Esther was grounded for a while. Then she wasn’t. Ben was grounded for longer. Then he wasn’t. Sharon wouldn’t stop telling people about this weird dream she had, but no one could understand her description of it, and they all stopped listening. Mr. Gabler fixed teeth, and in the evenings he sat with Mrs. Gabler, watching entire seasons of TV shows at a time. Mr. Nathaniel washed his car and his sidewalk. On their walks home, Esther and her friends avoided him, crossing the street rather than getting close to the water from his hose. They never had learned who Mr. Nathaniel was, but if even the queen had been scared of him, Esther thought that she never wanted to know. Esther visited Grandma Debbie every weekend, even if Grandma didn’t always recognize her. Esther would tell her ideas she had for new costumes, or the plots of horror movies she had seen, and Grandma Debbie would smile, and Esther felt that some part of her still understood. Esther’s mom decided to go to graduate school. She was tired of being stressed about a job she didn’t like. She wanted to be stressed about a job she liked. And Esther’s dad sat down at a piano and started playing a song, a beautiful song he had never heard before, a song he was pretty sure he had written in a dream.

  Esther Gold liked Halloween. She didn’t love it anymore. She just liked it a lot.

  Maybe you love Halloween. Maybe you dress up every year and put a lot of time and care into your costume. Maybe you watch scary movies and then can’t sleep, but also can’t resist watching more. Maybe candy corn tastes better to you than other candy, not because it tastes better (it doesn’t) but because it tastes like a moment in time, like a season.

  Maybe you think you love Halloween more than Esther Gold does.

  And maybe you do.

  Acknowledgments

  Thank you to Meg Bashwiner and Jeffrey Cranor and Glen David Gold for reading early drafts of this book and giving good advice on how to make it a much better book than it was before.

  Thank you to my parents Kathy and Ron Fink, who taught me a love of reading at an early age, and who took me to the movies on Halloween night so they didn’t have to take me trick-or-treating. Thank you to my sister, Anna Pow, with whom I spent a childhood sharing and borrowing and discussing our favorite books.

  Thank you to the Willapa Bay AiR program, which allowed me to sit in a little cabin on the coast of Washington for a month and write the rough draft of this book. It was a wonderful experience, and this book wouldn’t exist without it. Check it out at www.willapabayair.org.

  Thank you to the authors who I read when I was younger, and who taught me with their example how to write a book like this, most especially Bruce Coville, Jean Craighead George, Lois Lowry, Louis Sachar, Zilpha Keatley Snyder, and Jerry Spinelli.

  Thank you to my editors Alexandra Cooper and Andrew Eliopulos, and the entire team at Quill Tree Books.

  And, o
f course, a giant thank-you to Jodi Reamer, without whom none of this would be possible. Someday you and I will ride Splash Mountain, I promise.

  About the Author

  Photo by Nina Subin

  JOSEPH FINK lives in the Hudson River Valley with his wife. Every year, they buy a few new pieces of Halloween decorations for their front yard. They aspire to someday be “that house” on their street.

  Discover great authors, exclusive offers, and more at hc.com.

  Copyright

  Quill Tree Books is an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.

  THE HALLOWEEN MOON. Copyright © 2021 by Joseph Fink. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

  www.harpercollinschildrens.com

  Cover art © 2021 by MATT SAUNDERS

  Cover design by CATHERINE SAN JUAN

  * * *

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2021935342

  Digital Edition JULY 2021 ISBN: 978-0-06-302099-3

  Print ISBN: 978-0-06-302097-9

  * * *

  2122232425PC/LSCH10987654321

  FIRST EDITION

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