13 on Halloween (Shadow Series #1)

by Laura A. H. Elliott

  “Come on,” I say. “They’ll be here any minute.”

  “Where’s your summer clothes?” Ally says.

  I pull out a big, zipped-up bag full of shorts and tank tops and swim suits. They smell like sunshine and Coppertone and flip-flops and cute lifeguards. Lifeguards I have a crush on, even though they’re the same age as Mitch, even older.

  “This is perfect,” Ally picks out a golden halter-top and some yellow spandex-shorts and hands them to me. I slide them on and they hug my skin. I pull the sheer yellow, silky belly dancing pants over my shorts. And the fabric and the way it falls over my skin makes me feel delicate. Different. Pretty. The best part is when I slide the snake bracelet up over my elbow and it clings to my upper arm on my bare skin in a very grown-up way. I’ve never felt pretty or grown-up before.

  “Now, makeup.” Ally says.

  I sit in front of the magic mirror my grandpa gave me and want to watch Ally work her magic but she tells me to close my eyes.

  “So it’s like this. The dark color always goes in the crease.” She brushes over my eyelid and it feels good and weird all at the same time. She’s got a soft touch but I blink like a maniac anyway. It kills me to keep my eyes shut. I want to see. “The highlight is the lightest shade and you always put that at your brow line.” She say’s brow line like she’s some great make-up artist. “Ok, open,” she says.

  When I do, Ally’s dipping a brush into different colors and shifting her weight from one foot to the other, super into the whole eye-shadow thing.

  And my eyes don’t look like my eyes anymore. But when it comes to the mascara she says, “Here, you do it. It’s hard for me to do it on you. Just remember slow and straight.”

  I grab the wand, and try to work the brush over my lashes without poking out my eyeball. But I’m all over the place, and my hand slips. I paint a big, freakish black streak across my cheek mid-hiccup.

  I hate, absolutely hate hiccups and if I have them when the party starts I’ll have to hide in the bathroom until they’re gone because I can’t let anyone hear the I sound I make when I hiccup. It’s not natural.

  “Here,” Ally takes back the mascara brush and grabs a Q-tip out of her makeup bag. She uses it to swipe away the black smudges I made under my eyes. Then she dabs the cotton tip with water and pats the spot where I hiccupped my face black. She tells me to look up and my eye burns when she swipes under the bottom lashes with a pencil.

  “Ta-DA!”

  Wow. I don’t look like me.

  “What do you think?”

  I am a peacock. “I, uh,“ can’t speak.

  “I like that jade eyeliner on you, it brings out your eyes. They look so, I don’t know, different,” Ally says.

  “I know, right? Mom would die. Dad would keel over.”

  “Well, they aren’t here are they?” Ally says, giving me a look like I’m a genius and proud of me for pulling off my first birthday party while my parents are away. “You do lip gloss and I’ll do my eye shadow.”

  And then the doorbell rings. It rings again.

  I can’t move from the magic mirror. I always thought what a nightmare it would be to throw a party and have no one show up. That would be peacock-killing. Peacocks always have people come to their parties. And then I wonder why all those peacocks said yes. I have a hard time breathing. I can’t budge from my spot on the floor. Why do they all want to come? The makeup on my face melts a little more with every one of my heart beats.

  “Earth to Roxie? Come on,” Ally says. She grabs my hand and we fly downstairs and stop so fast we almost trip and fall into the front door.

  The bell rings again, this time it isn’t trick-or-treaters. I can tell from the wiggly windows we have on either side of the front door. Whoever-it-is are too big for trick-or-treaters.

  “Do I look ok?” I ask Ally right after the bell rings again.

  “You look great.” She smiles, proud of her handiwork.

  Ally nods and bites her lip. I put my hand on the doorknob and open the door. In walks Adrianne and Hayden and their entire flock. All twelve of them.

  Adrianne is everything I’m not. Cool. Blonde. All Skipper about everything. Super tall. Even though right then when they walk through my front door I can sort of tell that Hayden and I make a better couple. He’s the perfect height. I could wear heels and he’d still be taller. Our hair’s almost the same color, only his brown hair has this just-got-back-from-Florida shine to it. But, everyone knows peacocks only like peacocks.

  “Nice spider,” Adrianne says, smiling at Ally.

  Chapter 4

  “Ah, come on in, you guys hungry?” I say cursing myself for not heating up the pizzas by now. Forgetting everything. All I have to offer is warm Red Bull and frozen pizza. Party fail.

  “Nah,” Adrianne says, examining the spider, the huge nemesis of black boas and blown-up creepy spider-i-ness winces at her touch. Like it knows something about her. Something bad. Like it doesn’t want to be near her.

  Ally sort-of knife punches her stomach with her fingertips when Adrianne turns down the offer. Something Ally unconsciously does all the time now when she gets nervous. Which is almost like every other second. And it’s kind of creepier than the spider because she uses her fingertips as a gauge to check and see if she’s gained a gram, or whatever the smallest most miniscule amount is, since the last time she knifed herself with her fingertips. I look around at all the peacocks, well, the girls anyway. They don’t look like they eat much pizza.

  “Did you bring it?” Adrianne asks Hayden.

  Hayden nods and reaches into his leather jacket and slowly pulls out a long, narrow black package wrapped in a purple-and-black bow. A big purple-and-black bow. And I generally don’t think of putting purple and black together but all of a sudden they are my two favorite colors. Peacocks are the kind of people that do exactly the right thing. Even unexpected things.

  “Roxie,” Adrianne says my name like she’s casting a spell or is in-character as either my mother after she finds me wearing make-up for the very first time, or the Wicked Witch of the West. “We brought you a little present, but you can’t open it until we say so.”

  Ok. A group present is cool. Especially from a bunch of peacocks. But now I can’t take my eyes off the present. I want to know what’s inside. I have to know what’s inside. Bad. Until I stare into Hayden’s eyes. I shake a little when I take the present out of Hayden’s hands. He makes me think about peacock mating rituals.

  You don’t know about peacock mating rituals?

  They are as amazing as the creatures themselves. Peacocks have long, shiny tails that cover more than sixty percent of their body. They fan their pretty feathers to attract females in a dating dance, or peacock mating dance. Yeah, that’s what I said. They do a dating dance. Cool, huh? I love to dance. I’d love to see peacocks dance to Techno.

  Experts think females, which are called peahens––blech––pick their mates based on size, color and feather quality. Feathers are big in the peacock world. Very. Big. Peacocks typically have blue and green feathers with patterns at the top that look like eyes. The peacock spreads his feathers and struts his stuff to charm his beloved peahen. I guess hair is a lot like feathers. Hayden has the best hair. So it’s no wonder I’m attracted to him because of the color and quality of his hair.

  Peacocks aren't the only ones in the wild with interesting mating rituals. Male hippos fling their poop to romance their ladies. Mosquitoes sing to females with their wings. And some scientists say dinosaurs. Yeah, right? Dinosaurs had fancy dating rituals. Pterosaurs, a kind of flying lizard, attracted girlfriends with magnificent bulging chests, showing off their sail-like wings and stretched-out skin. I’m kind of doing the same thing in my belly dancing outfit.

  “You guys going to give me a hint?” I ask when I realize they’re all staring at me, waiting for me to say something. Anything. Like, maybe thank you. But, I’m a little too flabbergasted to say thank you. A little to wound up in the worlds of mati
ng rituals to notice how not-like-a-peacock I am. Especially when I’m not really sure what is inside the purple-and-black ribboned box.

  It’s not like I’m shallow or anything. I know I should just say thank you, but the spider is super creepy and it makes me feel creepy and so do the flying pterosaurs in my mind and their stretch-out skin over boney, veiny wings and I just want to be sure that the thing in the box is a good-kind-of-gift, not a joke-kind-of-gift, or worse, a lame-kind-of-gift before I thank them. That it isn’t something condescending or something they re-gifted because, not being a peacock I’d never know I got dissed anyway. I blame my inability to utter a freaking word on the creep-factor of Halloween. Otherwise-sane people do lots of bizarre things because of the creep-factor of Halloween. And I blame it on not trusting peacocks, not totally. Not yet.

  “No. It’s your birthday. It’s got to be a surprise,” Adrianne says smiling. Her surprisingly mousey brown eyes shift to Hayden’s green ones. I never noticed Adrianne’s mousey brown eyes before. I wonder if Hayden notices my jade eyeliner.

  Romulus laughs. Yeah, I know. It’s kind of a big name for a kid who isn’t even a teenager yet. He’s sort of dark dork. Dark hair, dark eyes, he likes dark clothes, even in summer. So Romulus is sort of perfect for him.

  Peacocks never have regular names. Peacocks are never regular. They don’t wear regular clothes. They don’t say things in regular ways. And, they always have new ways to torment the unregular. The non-regular. Well, you know what I mean. They are all Adrianne and Hayden and Marissa and Romulus and Yad and Evie and Ferdinand and Sebastian and Arianna and Kelsey. Ann and Sue and Tim are for anti-peacocks. If your mom picks those names when you’re born, forget it. You’re doomed. At least mom was a little bit cool along with being a little bit wild–which I had no clue about until the belly dancing costume. I have an X in my name. So you can’t rule me out of Peacockdom. I have a sort-of peacock name. And the best part is that I have dirt on Mitch. And peacocks always have dirt on people, especially their brothers. That’s probably the first two rules of peacocks. One, they never have regular names. And two, they always have dirt on people.

  “Where’s your dock?” Hayden asks, most definitely the polar opposite of Romulus. Hayden’s gorgeous even when he’s all sweaty on the soccer field. I mean there are people like that. They call them peacocks. And, unlike Romulus, even in the winter it looks like the sun shines on Hayden. I think I noticed that in fifth grade. Before middle school.

  “Huh?” I say because I’m too blown away by Hayden actually talking to me to process what he says.

  Adrianne holds out her iPhone and shakes it. “Your dock?”

  Ally elbows me. “Oh, yeah, I’ll get it,” I say like I actually own one and won’t have to break into Fort Knox to get my brother’s. I mean at least Mitch isn’t home, but still. Adrianne rolls her eyes. She’s thinking I should have thought of that before––that being music, what is the single most important thing to kids who go to Oakdale Middle School, at least what I always thought was the single most important thing to kids who go to Oakdale Middle School. Especially by the look in Adrianne and Marissa’s eyes when she said dock. Marissa is Adrianne’s twin in pretty much every way down to the perfect skin and size 0 jeans.

  So, I creep upstairs knowing how hard it’ll be to get my hands on the dock. Mitch has all things electronic and computer for that matter and if he knew I’m about to walk into his lair to try to retrieve his precious dock he’d definitely kill me.

  But I don’t care. Don’t get me wrong, I’ll shudder at the smells I’ll be smelling, that is if I’m able to break the code. Mitch is preparing to be Homeland Security Czar and has everything in his room on lock-down. At least that’s what Brian tells me and I have to take his word for it since I haven’t been in Mitch’s room since I was two. And even then it grossed me out. Clothes freaking everywhere. I’m no Queen of Clean, and neither is Ally, but Mom and Dad are and Mitch had old food and dirty plates and there was always this smell. Blech. This horrible smell. It worked. Mitch is a freaking genius. I never wanted to go in his room ever, ever again.

  But this is different. This is about me and my new peacock status and nothing is going to get in the way of that. Nothing. I don’t even bother with Mitch’s room because he has the same lock on it that our garage door does and there is no way I’ll guess the combo. No. Way. So I pray Brian has the dock in his room. No luck.

  Brian is oddly neat. I have no idea why. Because of the two of my brothers, if you look at Brian you’ll just think his room is messy. And when you look at Mitch you think his is clean. I can’t explain it. That’s just the way it is. And it is easy to spot all the stuff in Brian’s room because most of it sits on the shelf that rings it––baseball mitts and baseballs, piles of magazines, science notebooks, Star Wars and Star Trek characters, miniature antique cars, airplane models, books, books, and more books, and fishing stuff.

  I let out a sigh. Of course I can’t find a simple piece of technology that will make my party. Of course I didn’t think to swipe the dock before the party started just like I am having a party and didn’t think about my costume. Costume. Did the peacocks even wear any? I swear I didn’t even notice. Note to self––try and not be completely lame the next time you have a party. It took me thirteen years to have this one, who knows how long it will be before I have another. Especially if my brothers get home. Especially if I get caught with Mitch’s dock in my red-hot hands. Especially if my parents find out what’s happening here tonight.

  “Get a freaking grip, would you?” I say to myself. I have to try to punch in numbers to get into Mitch’s fortress. And if I’m lucky, and if it’s my turn to be a peacock, then I’ll break his code. I try to be totally Zen about it. Not that I know a lot about Zen. Zen isn’t as big in the suburbs of Chicago as it is in, oh say, the Redwood forests of California. But I like the idea of Zen. It seems natural. A wild thing. Not suburban at all.

  I looked Zen up one time on the Internet and found out––As a matter of tradition, the establishment of Zen is credited to the Persian or South Indian prince-turned-monk Bodhidharma, who came to China to teach a "special transmission outside scriptures, not founded in words or letters.” Which is crazy, like talking with your mind or something. It creeps me out. If Zen isn’t with me, then I’ll be destined to live a life of obscurity from now through the end of high school since my party will totally blow. I tap random buttons on the keyboard lock on the wall beside Mitch’s bedroom door. I begin with the numbers you might think I’d enter, his birth date, but as I press a few random numbers the door gives way when I lean into it. Mitch hadn’t even closed it. He hadn’t even locked it. Mitch has lost his mind.

  What would Mitch have to do on Halloween night that would make him one––take Brian, and two––leave his bedroom door unlocked so I could steal whatever I wanted? I take two steps into Mitch’s bedroom and gasp. He’d entered his black-slash-stainless-steel period. Everything all James-Bond-cool and clean, amazingly clean. Just-wiped-down clean. Doesn’t-want-to-leave-any-evidence-behind clean. Only a few t-shirts and a pair of sweat pants lay on the floor by his unmade bed, but that’s beyond-clean in Mitchland. And there, on his huge computer screen, what he uses as a TV, is a picture of––Adrianne’s sister? Yes. Lola’s picture sits on the TV screen. She’s splashing in a pool in the smallest red bikini I’ve ever seen. Mitch and Lola. No way.

  I grab the dock and thank the Peacock God of Popularity and Mitch for leaving the door unlocked and giving me my shot at having a decent birthday party. I stop at the door and take another look at Lola––her long blonde hair, her I-don’t-need-to-buy-any-makeup beauty, her straight white teeth and perfect body. Just like Adrianne. They could be twins. And, speaking of twins, that’s when I notice. Judging from Lola, Adrianne will probably be the most popular girl in our class, because girls with big boobs usually are for at least a while. If what happened to last year’s eighth graders is any indicator.

  I look down at
my chest. Beyond flat. And that’s when I notice the room doesn’t smell like I remembered it used to, a combination of last week’s meatloaf and farts. It smells like perfume, but not perfume. It smells like Dad, but not like Dad. A bluish cologne bottle sits on Mitch’s desk. Right by a crumpled paper bag which is right by the dock. I read the label. Cool Water. Really? I grab the paper bag wanting and not-wanting to know what’s inside. I un-crinkle the bag which is totally, disappointingly empty, except for a small receipt. I pull it out and see in black-and-white what I know from the smell. He has a date. I know he has a date. But, why would Mitch take Brian?

  I get the heck out of there clutching the dock. I pull my ipod out of my back pocket and search for my technodancefantasyparty playlist and press play. My playlist is equal parts techno and 80s. Weeks before I made all the invitations, I made a mix of my favorite party music, lots of dance music. I made my invitations to the mix. I knew, I just knew that all the peacocks would love my music.