by P. J. Night
“What? No chocolate-dipped marshmallow pumpkins for Mom and Dad’s Pumpkin?” Maya exclaimed. “That should be against the law!”
“Totally.”
“You’re still going to get dressed up, right?” Maya said.
“Absolutely,” Ashley replied right away. “Heaton Corners has its traditions and I have mine . . . and that includes Halloween. But I need to get started on my costume tonight, because, you know, they definitely don’t sell Halloween costumes here. I think I finally figured out how to attach the—”
“Stop, stop, stop!” Maya begged, clapping her hands over her ears. “I got your text about it, and, seriously, that is all I need to know. No details, no pictures, no nothing. It’s way too creepy.”
“Hello? It’s Halloween. That’s the whole point!” But Ashley had to smile. If she had freaked out Maya with a simple text about her costume idea, then Ashley knew she was on the right track.
“And something else special is coming up, I know,” Maya said, quickly changing the subject. “Ash, I’m so sorry. I really wanted to come home for your birthday, but I have a midterm the next day. I’ve got to stay here and study my head off.”
“That’s cool. I understand,” Ashley said—but she couldn’t help thinking how absolutely amazing it would’ve been if Maya could have come home to help celebrate her birthday.
“I’m going to send you an extra-special present,” Maya promised her.
“Ooh, what? What?”
“Uh-uh,” Maya said, shaking her head. “It’s a surprise. You’ll just have to wait.”
“Oh fine.” Ashley sighed. “You’re still coming home for Thanksgiving, right?”
“If they celebrate it in Heaton Corners!” Maya joked. “But seriously, I will so be there. I can’t wait to see the new house and the farm and everything. Will we have to harvest our own cranberries from some bog or something?”
“Hey, be careful you don’t give Mom any ideas!” Ashley giggled.
Maya looked at her watch. “I should probably get going soon, little sis.”
“One more thing, Maya? There’s one other kind of weird thing I’ve noticed around here.”
“What’s that?”
“It’s this mysterious symbol,” Ashley said. “It looks like a sideways eight. Here, I’ll show you.”
Ashley quickly scrawled the symbol on a page of her notebook and held it up to the camera for Maya to see.
“Oh, that?” Maya said right away. “That’s not mysterious. It’s a lemniscate.”
“A lemnon-what?”
“A lemniscate,” Maya repeated. “The symbol for infinity. It’s all over my calculus textbook.”
“Oh,” Ashley said, feeling a little silly for thinking there was something special about the symbol.
“I mean, it’s almost a lemniscate,” Maya continued as she peered at the screen. “A real lemniscate doesn’t have that thick lump in the middle of it. Where’d you see it?”
“Just a couple places.” Ashley shrugged. “Like, there was one on our mailbox post before it got painted over.”
“Graffiti, Heaton Corners–style.” Maya laughed. “Sounds pretty tame, honestly.”
“Yeah, maybe by Chicago standards,” Ashley said. “But it’s weird for here. I mean, everybody has a perfect little white fence, these cute little flower boxes, American flags fluttering in the breeze. It’s kind of hard to believe that anybody here would be into graffiti.”
“You’d be surprised,” Maya said. “Small towns aren’t that different from big cities. People are people, you know?”
“I guess.”
“Listen, Ash, I really gotta go. I’m meeting some people at the library for study group,” Maya said. “Let’s chat again soon, okay?”
“Any time,” Ashley said. “Seriously, any time you want. I miss you so much. So, so, so, so, sooooooooooooo much.”
“I miss you too,” Maya said, blowing a bunch of kisses at her computer. “Text me whenever, okay?”
“I will. Talk to you soon,” Ashley replied, blowing some kisses back at Maya.
Bliiip!
Maya’s window went black an instant before it disappeared, and Ashley missed her sister more than ever as she stared at the blank screen. She picked up her pen and started doodling on a page of her notebook, scrawling the same image over and over as her mind wandered.
Only later did Ashley realize that she’d filled the page with dozens of lemniscates.
The next day, Wednesday, Ashley stopped by her locker to grab her lunch before she met Mary Beth and the rest of the girls in the cafeteria. But her locker was not the way she had left it.
There was a brown paper bag taped to it. The bag bulged slightly at the bottom, as if it had something heavy inside it, and whoever had taped it to Ashley’s locker had used a lot of tape, as if they’d wanted to make sure the bag wouldn’t fall off. It took her forever to remove all the tape, her anticipation growing so strong that her hands shook a little bit when she finally pulled down the bag.
The bag crinkled as she unfolded the flap and peeked inside. Ashley didn’t know what, exactly, she expected to see, but she couldn’t have been more surprised to find a single apple at the bottom of the bag. There was no note, no name, just a perfectly round, perfectly red apple. Ashley pulled the apple out of the bag and held it close to her face, feeling the glossy skin and smelling its faint, sweet scent. It really was a beautiful apple—heavy and fresh, without a single flaw or blemish.
Who left me this apple? she wondered.
But already Ashley had her suspicions. After all, who in Heaton Corners lived on an actual apple orchard? A wide smile stretched across her face as she imagined Joey picking out the best apple he could find before school. Joey, sneaking over to her locker while everyone else was in class. Joey, using half a role of tape to make sure that the apple wouldn’t fall to the floor before Ashley could find it.
They hadn’t really talked since the weirdness at the Harvest Days Festival, but sometimes Ashley still felt like Joey was looking at her.
At least, she wished that he was still looking at her.
Maybe this is a sign, she thought. Maybe this is a sign from him that he’s sorry. Maybe we can just forget that whole thing.
Ashley was still grinning when she got to the cafeteria. She was feeling great about Heaton Corners. So what if the people here were a little weird about Halloween? She had a crush on the cutest boy ever, and she suspected he had a crush on her too. And she had an awesome group of friends who were waving to her excitedly from their usual table.
“Ash! What took you so long?” Danielle asked, scooting over to make room for Ashley on the long wooden bench.
“No reason,” Ashley said with a shrug, and winked at Mary Beth. Mary Beth might not always get along with her cousin, but Ashley couldn’t wait to gush about Joey with her later. Maybe her mom would let Mary Beth sleep over this weekend.
And then, in a flash of inspiration, Ashley had a brilliant idea. It was so obvious. Why hadn’t she thought of it before?
“So I was wondering,” Ashley began. “About Halloween? See, it’s not just my favorite holiday—it’s also my birthday.”
“Why didn’t you say anything before?” asked Danielle.
“Oh, well, I don’t know,” Ashley began. “I’m new and I didn’t want you guys to feel like you have to celebrate with me—”
“But we’d love to,” Stephanie interrupted.
“Well in that case,” said Ashley, and then she just launched into it, “do you guys want to come over to my house for a birthday sleepover party? On Halloween? We can go trick-or-treating, and no one will even have to know.”
Mary Beth spoke first. “That. Is. Brilliant.” Danielle and Stephanie nodded excitedly.
“Yay!” Ashley squealed.
“I won’t have to beg my mom to let me go trick-or-treating,” Mary Beth continued. “I’ll just tell her I’m coming to your birthday party.”
“It’s not even a lie,” Ashley said
.
“No, definitely not,” said Mary Beth. “But if my mom finds out, she will ground me so hard, you’ll probably never see me again.”
“Well, if this is your last party ever, we’d better make it count.” Danielle giggled.
“And speaking of making it count . . . we need to talk costumes!” Ashley announced. “I have one rule, okay? Anything goes—but it has to be scary. None of this fancy movie star or frilly princess stuff.”
Mary Beth pulled her notebook out of her backpack and started sketching. “So . . . scary costumes,” she began. “Like, a witch would be okay, right?”
“You could make it really scary,” Stephanie said. “Like, horrible claw hands with long nails and a face full of warts!”
Mary Beth wrinkled her nose. “I don’t know if I want a face full of warts,” she replied.
“What about a vampire?” Danielle suggested. “But you would need some blood.”
“There are tons of easy fake-blood recipes on the Internet,” Ashley advised.
“That’s great, but our families aren’t hooked up to the Internet, remember?” Danielle replied.
Ashley couldn’t believe she forgot. It was another strange thing about Heaton Corners. It was so totally off the map that other than on a few computers in the school library, most people in Heaton Corners didn’t use the Internet.
“Don’t worry,” she assured her friend. “We can look them up on my computer.”
“Make the fangs sharper!” Stephanie said as Mary Beth drew a vampire in her notebook.
Ashley grinned as her friends started talking over one another, completely carried away by their excitement. She reached into her lunch bag and pulled out the apple that had been left at her locker. After rubbing the apple on her sleeve, Ashley took a big bite. It was just as delicious as it looked.
Then she glanced up and saw Joey walking across the cafeteria—walking right toward her—with a big smile on his face. The timing was no coincidence, Ashley realized. It was almost as if he’d been waiting to make sure she got the apple. She smiled back at him as he approached.
“Make the eye sockets bigger!” Danielle cried. “That skull should look really, really horrible and scary!”
Her timing couldn’t have been worse, because at that very moment, Joey arrived at their table. The smile immediately faded from his face as he glanced at Mary Beth’s notebook.
“What is this?” he asked in a low voice. “Is this for Halloween?”
None of the girls answered him. Ashley couldn’t even look at him.
“What’s the matter with you?” Joey asked. He didn’t raise his voice, but there was a tone of revulsion in it that made Ashley shiver. “Why are you doing this? I already told you—”
“Why do you even care?” Ashley interrupted him as she dropped her half-eaten apple on the table. “What’s wrong with this place?”
“Come on, Mary Beth,” Joey said, almost pleading. “You know—I mean, at least your mom must know—”
Mary Beth looked at him like she had no idea what he was talking about, and Ashley was pretty sure she didn’t.
Joey clenched the edge of the table with both hands and held on so tightly that his knuckles turned white. “Well, if you’re going to be stupid about it, I’m going to—I’m going to have to—have to tell someone.”
Mary Beth burst out laughing. “Really? Who are you going to tell, Chuckles? Are you going to tell your stepmommy?”
The other girls started to giggle—even Ashley. Joey gave her a long, hurt look before he turned and walked away. The sight of his shoulders, all slumped and defeated, made her wish she could follow him. She wished there was something she could say—or do—to make him feel better.
“Hey,” she said, turning to Mary Beth and trying to change the subject. “Why did you call him Chuckles? Is that some kind of nickname?”
“Oh, Ash, the story is so funny,” Danielle began.
“Ugh, no,” Mary Beth said. “Please don’t tell it right now. I will totally lose my appetite.”
“Better eat fast, because I think Ashley deserves to know,” Danielle replied.
“It’s a good one,” added Stephanie.
“Go on, tell me already,” Ashley said impatiently.
“Back when we were in fourth grade, Joey’s parents had a barn dance one winter,” Danielle began. “The whole town was invited, and it was really nice—the barn was done up with all these twinkly lights, and there was a ton of food. . . . ”
“Stew and dumplings and brown bread and, like, eight kinds of pie!” Stephanie chimed in.
“So for a while, at the start, all the kids were playing snow tag in the moonlight,” Danielle continued. “It was really fun until we got too cold, so then we all went inside, and everybody was starving because we’d been running around in the snow, so we were all eating, and Joey was totally pigging out. And then Mr. Wagner got up and started telling jokes, and Joey started laughing really hard—”
“He was in the middle of a piece of pie,” Stephanie remembered. “And he started to choke on it a little, and then—”
“He puked!” Danielle cried. “All over himself, with the whole entire town watching.”
“Ugh,” Mary Beth said, looking a little sick. “It was soooo gross.”
“But also hilarious,” Danielle added. “Because he’d been eating so much, you know, and laughing so hard, and his big brother, Pete, yells, ‘Whoa there, Chuckles!’”
“’Cause he upchucked,” Stephanie explained. “And also ’cause he was laughing, I guess.”
“Everybody called him Chuckles for the longest time,” Mary Beth said. “People finally moved on last year, I guess.”
“But a story like that will follow you around forever in Heaton Corners,” Danielle said. “Honestly, they’ll probably still be talking about it at his wedding someday.”
Ashley tried to smile, but she didn’t think the story was that funny. Poor Joey, she thought, sneaking a glance at him across the cafeteria. He was staring into space with such a deeply troubled expression on his face that she was filled with regret for laughing along with her friends.
It’s not my fault, she thought. Why is he so obsessed about us going trick-or-treating? He needs to chill out. It’s just for fun.
Ashley shoved the rest of the apple into her lunch bag.
She wasn’t hungry anymore.
CHAPTER 6
“Ugh—oof—there we go.” Mrs. McDowell grunted as she used all her strength to shove open the barn door. “We really need to replace these hinges. This door barely opens!”
But Ashley had more important things on her mind. “Did you find it?” she asked eagerly.
“You bet I did,” Mrs. McDowell replied as she dropped an enormous cardboard box at Ashley’s feet. “Of course it was jammed into the very back of the attic, but I braved the spiders just for you.”
“Yay! Thanks, Mom, you’re the best!” Ashley cried as she opened up the box. Years and years of Halloween decorations were stored in it—everything she would need to get the barn ready for the spookiest Halloween party ever.
“More like you’re the best,” Mrs. McDowell replied, reaching out to ruffle Ashley’s hair. “I can’t believe you’ve spent your entire birthday cleaning out the barn.”
Ashley shrugged. “It was no big deal. I just wanted to get everything ready for tonight.”
“Well, it looks great in here,” Mrs. McDowell replied, glancing from the freshly swept floor to the neatly stacked hay bales. “What can I do to help?”
“What time is it?”
Mrs. McDowell glanced at her watch. “Almost four. Dad’s leaving to pick up the pizzas in about twenty minutes. Your friends are coming at six, right?”
“Right.”
“That doesn’t leave a lot of time for decorating and changing into your costume,” Mrs. McDowell said, looking concerned.
“We’re all going to put on our costumes together,” Ashley said quickly. “So we can help
each other get ready.”
“Oh, okay,” replied Mrs. McDowell. “Want some help with the decorating?”
“Sure,” Ashley said. She knocked the box over so that plastic spiders, creepy masks, and fake tombstones spilled all over the barn floor. “Let’s do it!”
By the time Ashley and Mrs. McDowell finished decorating the barn, it was completely transformed. Gauzy spiderwebs on the walls fluttered with the slightest breeze, and Ashley had used reams of tattered gray fabric to partition off a small circle in the middle of the barn. The fabric was so threadbare in parts that it looked like an ancient shroud. There were jack-o’-lanterns, each carved with a gruesome face, arranged against the walls. When Ashley turned on the battery-operated candles inside them, they flickered so unevenly that they cast spooky shadows over the entire barn. She shivered with delight as she realized that this barn was probably the spookiest place she’d ever been in her life—which made it the perfect setting for a Halloween sleepover party!
“Really outstanding, Pumpkin,” Mrs. McDowell said as she looked around the barn. “I think your friends are going to love it! Now, are you sure you want to sleep out here?”
“Definitely,” Ashley said.
“It might get pretty chilly.”
“We can handle it,” Ashley replied.
“Okay, well, if you change your mind, you can come in at any point. I’ll leave the back door unlocked. And you know there’s going to be a ton of scary movies on TV tonight. Might be fun to watch one really late. Just don’t pick something too scary.”
“Ahh! It’s almost six!” Ashley said as she glanced at her phone. “Do you think Dad’s back with the pizzas?”
“Probably,” Mrs. McDowell said. “I’m pretty sure I heard the truck a few minutes ago. Let’s get back to the house before your friends arrive.”
When Ashley walked into the kitchen, the delicious smell of pizza was so strong that her mouth started to water.
“Hey, birthday girl!” Mr. McDowell called out. “I got you a special birthday surprise.”
“What? What?” Ashley asked eagerly.
Mr. McDowell pointed to a plastic bag on the counter. “See for yourself!”