“This is what you get when you don’t change your mind at the last minute,” I tell her. “A costume like this takes weeks of preparation and skill. You scared?”
“Why would I be scared of a boy covered in duct tape, holding an old steering wheel?”
“Maybe you should have used more of the wounds and less of the tape,” says Charlie with a sigh. “Look at us. This is going to be the worst Halloween ever.”
We start three streets away. By the time we reach the end of the block, our bags are almost a quarter full. Charlie’s pessimism was clearly unfounded. We may be stuck with four little kids, but we’re still getting results. I almost forget about Elizabeth until she whispers in my ear.
“Don’t take so many Snickers bars. You know I hate them.”
At the next house, the door opens before we get a chance to ring the bell. Out come a Dracula, two Grim Reapers, and the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Their garbage bags are bulging, and it’s not even six thirty.
“Your costumes stink,” they say as they brush past.
The old couple inside look traumatized. Their floor is littered with empty candy wrappers.
“I’m afraid we’re all out of treats,” says the old lady. “I love your mailman costume.”
Charlie laughs so hard I think he’ll wet his pants.
Then she smiles at him. “And you, young lady, what are you supposed to be?”
From that moment on, every house we try has already been cleaned out of candy. The ghouls always seem to have been there first. Laura can’t hold back the tears.
“Let’s just go home,” says Charlie. “Under the circumstances, we’ve done pretty well.”
I hoist Smelly Vincent over my shoulder, and he promptly falls asleep. He’s much heavier than he looks, and he starts to drool down my neck. The twins are so tired that they’ve stopped fighting and have started sucking their thumbs.
Laura is still sniffling. “I want more candy. I need more candy.”
It’s totally dark now, and the people in some of the houses have turned out their lights, pretending they’re not in. But just as we reach the edge of our cul-de-sac, seven black shapes pounce from behind Hedge Man’s garage. We’re surrounded.
“Hand over your bags, and no one gets hurt.”
It’s one of the Grim Reapers we passed earlier. The tallest of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse swaggers over to Laura and snatches her bag out of her hand. She’s so stunned, she’s speechless.
“Come on, guys, she’s just a little kid,” I say.
The Dracula turns to me. “What’s with the baby, loser? Is that part of your costume?”
He smells of deodorant and sour-cream-and-onion potato chips. Everyone bursts into tears at once, including Charlie. As the tallest Horseman is grabbing the rest of the bags, one by one, Smelly Vincent is gently lifted from my shoulder.
“Elizabeth?” I whisper.
“Shhhhh.”
In front of my eyes, the baby floats forward, his drool glistening in the moonlight and his Roman toga billowing in the wind. He wakes up and starts to scream. No wonder. It must be pretty freaky to be lifted up by an invisible person.
The Halloween ambushers turn even whiter than their makeup; drop all the loot, including their own; and, to everyone’s surprise, run away.
“Who’s scared now?” yells Charlie. “Happy Halloween!”
“Think that will be enough candy for you, Laura?” asks Elizabeth.
By the time Harassed Mother finishes her paperwork, all the bags have been emptied, categorized, and counted: 642 assorted chocolate bars, 65 packets of M&M’s, and 175 bags of jelly beans.
“I feel sick,” says Laura.
“Me too,” says Charlie.
Charlie and I have worked out a theory. The more candy you have, the less you want to eat it.
“You can have it all,” says Elizabeth as she heads out the front door. “But you still owe me big-time.”
Even though Charlie and I only have a short walk home, there’s something creepy in the air. Suddenly, out of the darkness, a bodiless Grim Reaper mask flies toward us. We both scream.
“Elizabeth!” I howl.
“Gotcha, wimps.”
I walk Charlie to his front door. It seems only polite, under the circumstances.
“Sorry, Charlie. Sorry about tonight.”
“What do you mean? This has been the best Halloween ever!”
He whacks me on the shoulder, and we’re suddenly both splattered in fake blood.
“What was that?” I ask.
“My exploding vein-popping mechanism. I totally forgot to use it. Do you like it? How about we use it next year? We can be the Exploding-Blood Brothers.”
“It’s awesome,” I say.
“Well?” he asks expectantly.
I suddenly feel a little sad. I would like to say sure, why not. But I don’t want to promise Charlie anything. If my plan doesn’t work out and my family behaves the way they usually do, the chances of me still being here next Halloween are virtually zip.
“Maybe,” I tell him. “Maybe …”
Chapter Six
As I said, I used to wish that my dad worked in an office all week. And that my mom spent all day at home in an apron baking pies and making her own bread. Yes, I was desperate for the kind of family that organized perfect picnics on perfect summer days: happy, ordinary, and respectable. But then I grew up and realized that my family is like most other families, a combination of totally weird and absolutely unique. Although mine might be tipping the scales in the weird department.
Take Dad. When he isn’t fine dining, he’s rehearsing. He plays lead guitar for a retro punk band he formed called the Spits. The band members may change but the racket they make always stays the same. It would be less embarrassing if Dad would lose the ripped T-shirt and crummy plastic jeans. Mom says it’s sexy. I say it’s in very poor taste. That’s the whole point, stupid, says my sister.
To Elizabeth’s horror, Dad has signed up the Spits to be in the school talent contest. She’s spent the last week begging him to withdraw.
“I may look old to you,” he tells her. “But in here”—and he thumps his chest—“I’m seventeen.”
That chest, I tell you, has seen a lot of thumping.
A cushion flies through the air. Dad tries to dodge it, but it hits him square in the stomach.
“Right,” my sister says. “But you have the reflexes of someone who’s eighty-two.”
“I don’t know why you didn’t sign up yourself, honey,” Mom tells Elizabeth. “You have such a beautiful singing voice.”
“I don’t think so,” she says.
“Sure you do, honey,” Dad agrees. “Why don’t you help me load the car? And then you could come and watch the gig. It’ll be a hoot.”
“I wouldn’t be seen dead with you looking like that,” she says. “Dad, I’d never be able to show my face in school again.”
“Ha!” I blurt.
This comes out of my mouth completely involuntarily. I follow it with a fake cough, but Elizabeth isn’t buying it.
The pain is instantaneous: two hands wrap around my arm, followed by sharp twists in opposite directions. Always deadly. Always effective.
Dad grabs a microphone stand and is on the way out to the car. As usual, he sees nothing.
“Aaaah!” I yell.
“Rooms, both of you,” says Mom, who has over-heard the whole thing. “Now.”
“That’s not fair,” I reply. It’s my stock response. It never changes anything.
“Rooms!” shouts Mom.
From my bedroom window, I watch my dad load the car alone. As he’s closing the trunk, Mom calls to him.
“Honey,” she says. “A quick word?”
Mom’s quick words are never quick. I sneak out to the top of the stairs to try and overhear, but they close the door. I think she’s worried that Grovesdale Junior High isn’t ready for an act of Dad’s “caliber.” Twenty minutes later, the do
or flies open again.
“It will all be fine,” says Dad. “Don’t worry.”
“So you guarantee: no stage diving, no guitar smashing, and you’ll keep it all PG,” says Mom.
“Why don’t I be a roadie?” I suggest. “That way I can keep an eye on him from backstage.”
“I don’t think that will stop him,” whispers Mom. “But you have my permission to pull the plug if it gets to be too much.”
We meet the rest of the band in the school parking lot. Boy, do they look sad. If my dad is seventeen going on eighty-two, the other guys are fifty going on one hundred. I always hate seeing them in their outfits; they look like shrink-wrapped prunes.
“We’re gonna rock their socks right off,” says Rod, the bass player. I stifle a snicker. His socks are of a particularly unappealing fluorescent toweling variety.
And then catastrophe strikes. Dad opens the trunk. It’s empty. No guitars, no microphones, no nothing. The show is about to start. The Spits are on second. They stare at Dad. Dad shakes his head in disbelief.
“It was all in there,” he insists. “I loaded it myself.”
They all stare into the trunk as if everything will rematerialize if only they look hard enough.
“What’s that?” asks Rod.
A note is attached to the floor with masking tape.
“Sorry. I just couldn’t let this happen,” reads Rod.
You can imagine what happens next. The other band members start to shout, using words that are absolutely off-limits for a school parking lot. You’d have thought they were playing Radio City Music Hall in New York City, not the auditorium of a small suburban junior high school. And then they all storm off, back to their dented little Ford Fiestas.
“Wow,” Dad says. “Elizabeth really didn’t want me to play this gig. Maybe she’s not happy here. Do you think it’s the school? Or maybe it’s this town?”
He sits on the curb, his head in his hands.
“You’re just going to give up?” I ask. “You’re going to quit? The whole evening’s been planned out. The programs have already been printed.”
“But what can I do without my guitar?” he asks.
“Don’t you have anything at all?”
He looks in his pockets and pulls out a kazoo.
“I have this,” he says, “but there’s no way I can sing and play at the same time.”
The auditorium is standing room only. As the curtain goes up, I wonder if I’ve made a horrible mistake. But you know what? Once I start playing, it’s actually kind of fun. By the end we are totally rocking, in a kazooish kind of way.
Our rendition of “La Bamba” comes in second place. We were robbed. Oscar White from the eighth grade wins. His “tap dancing” was a total joke, but the judges were swayed by the enormous effort he obviously put into his ridiculously sparkly costume.
“That was a blast,” someone from my class calls out as we walk back to the car.
“Thanks,” I say. I have a short but convincing vision of becoming the most popular boy in my class.
“Celebratory fast food?” Dad offers.
“Absolutely,” I reply.
I climb into the front seat, and Dad gets behind the wheel.
“You looked like a jerk, Frank,” comes a voice from the back.
“Elizabeth! So you saw us play?” Dad asks.
“Hey, aren’t you mad at her?” I ask.
“But it was fun.” He laughs. “And maybe the school wasn’t ready for the Spits, anyway.”
“See?” Elizabeth agrees. “I did this family a favor.”
“I wouldn’t go that far,” Dad says. “So how about that burger?”
“I hate that kind of food,” my sister replies. “Can’t we go somewhere else?”
“Not fair,” I say. “You don’t get to choose.”
To stop the bickering, Dad takes us to his favorite Japanese restaurant. He knows we both love sushi.
On the way home, Dad hums our winning tune.
“Come on, Frank,” he says. “Once more, for old time’s sake.”
We both sing at the top of our lungs. Even Elizabeth joins in.
“Mom was right,” I tell her, “you do have a good voice. Why don’t you enter next year?”
There’s a silence, and I can tell everyone’s thinking the same thing. This family doesn’t really do long-term planning.
Chapter Seven
It’s a cloudless fall day, the kind of day when boys like me should be out playing baseball, with their dads cheering them on from the bleachers. But I’m not that kind of boy and my dad’s not that kind of dad. Mom’s baking white-chocolate muffins, the not-for-you-so-don’t-eat-them kind, and singing along to the radio. The tree house is almost finished, but Charlie isn’t around to work on it. And so Bob and I are making a skateboard ramp out of cinder blocks and old wood. Then we rake up all the leaves and fly off the ramp into the piles. Totally radical stuff. It is, in other words, a perfect day.
“What a perfect day,” I start to sing.
“It would be if you weren’t around to spoil my view,” says Elizabeth. “You’re all covered in leaves. How do you know you haven’t rolled in any dog poop? You certainly smell as if you did. You too, Bob.”
Bob barks twice. Sometimes I wonder what life would be like without my sister. Just me and Mom and Dad. And Bob (who, of course, wouldn’t dream of pooping in our leaves). It would be a restful, beautiful life. No drama, no tantrums, no sarcastic comments coming out of thin air. I would be an only child, in the loving arms of my devoted parents.
Bob is staring up at me, and I know what he’s thinking: “Dream on, kid.”
As if on cue, Dad begins to yell.
“Everybody, family meeting, my office, now!”
Dad’s “office” is a small space on the landing at the top of the stairs. There’s a table and one bookshelf, but most of his stuff is pinned up on the walls or piled up on the floor. We sit on the stairs while he addresses us from his secondhand swivel chair.
“I’d just like to remind you guys that nobody touches anything in my work space.”
You’d think by the way he says it that his office is six times the size, has a view of the Empire State Building, and comes with a secretary. In reality, it’s something to trip over on the way to the bathroom.
“I recently lost some very important documents,” he says with a serious expression.
“Don’t look in my direction, Dad,” says Elizabeth. “Mom found that check in your coat pocket.”
Dad clears his throat. “Nevertheless, all I’m saying is that I have a career to think about. This may look like junk to you, but it’s all part of my ongoing research.”
A laminated menu floats in midair.
“I know, I know, I review restaurants.” Dad sighs and rubs his eyes. “But this is only a temporary measure. Today, the relative merits of shrimp cocktail. Tomorrow, the unraveling of a political scandal. Anyway, just don’t touch my stuff. Okay?”
When Dad was a kid, he dreamed of becoming a first-rate investigative reporter—the Sherlock Holmes of the newspaper world. He’s still waiting for his big break. It’s not that he doesn’t try. Dad’s constantly digging around, following leads, and asking difficult questions, and he is always, always just on the brink of front-page news. And yet it never seems to happen. Impossible deadlines, unreliable sources, changes in newspaper editors … but mostly, I have to say, it’s the constant moving that gets in the way. In other words, Elizabeth.
“Is this meeting over?” asks Elizabeth.
“Yes, this meeting is now adjourned. I have some work to do. Then it’s off to Chow Man Fat for dinner. It’s a midnight deadline, kids, so I’d appreciate it if you’d stay out of my hair.”
“Didn’t that place just close down?” Elizabeth asks as she heads down the stairs.
“If it had closed down,” he says, “would I be reviewing it? Duh!”
I shudder. I hate it when Dad uses the same expressions I do. I
t just doesn’t sound cool. It would be like me telling him to stop being “inappropriate.”
Bob and I are lying on my bed reading the latest Dog World (he likes the pictures) when I see a slight flicker of color on the wall. It must be the reflection of the sunlight streaming through the trees outside. Then I notice one of my Star Wars figures is moving. I pretend to read, but over the top of my comic I watch the figures on my shelf change places. Elizabeth is just trying to start something. She knows how much time I spent bidding for those guys on eBay.
“Elizabeth, is your life so empty that you can think of nothing better to do than shift figures around on a shelf?”
“I found this on the floor in the hall,” she says. “And I was just putting it back for you. Lighten up!”
“Yeah, right.”
Before she has time to deny it, Mom shouts up the stairs. “Elizabeth, will you stop messing with the window? It took me all morning to write these invitations and now they’ve blown all over the floor.”
Suddenly Dad’s voice booms down the hallway. “Elizabeth, where’s my tape? Honestly, this is getting ridiculous.”
I look over and see the tape from Dad’s desk on my worktable, where I left it. I’m thinking about keeping my mouth shut.
“Why is everything always my fault?” Elizabeth yells. “If something goes wrong or gets lost or gets broken in this house, everybody always assumes it’s me!”
“That’s so not true. Just think about it for a minute!” I yell back. “I’m the one who gets blamed for everything around here. You always make sure of that. Admit it, Elizabeth.”
My door slams, and she thunders down the hall and out the front door.
As you’ve probably guessed by now, my sister is a number one storm-outer, a first-class slammer, an excellent sulker. I sometimes wonder what she does when she leaves. Does she sit on park benches next to people whose problems make hers look trivial? Or does she go to expensive shops and leave her fingerprints on all the things kids are not supposed to touch? Or does she just walk around looking in people’s windows? She never says what she’s been doing but whatever it is, it seems to work. She usually returns thirty minutes later, walking in as if nothing had happened.
My Invisible Sister Page 4