All Hallows' Eve (8 page)

Don't tell me Mrs. Bianchi didn't count on that.

"It's rough for her," my mother would defend her, "with no husband and having to work two jobs." She didn't seem to mind Mrs. Bianchi taking advantage of her, and she didn't seem to mind Nikki taking advantage of me.

And poor fatherless, friendless Nikki. Who only had me.

Not counting my parents, of course, who always took her side.

"Ooh, I've never seen such a beautiful doll," Nikki would say, and my mother would nudge me, hard, until I would say, "Oh well, I hardly ever play with her anymore. Would you like her?"

Nikki never turned down anything my mother forced me to offer to her, no matter how grudgingly I made that offer.

Or, "Ooh, that sweater is so soft. And it matches perfectly the stripe in that skirt my mother just got me at the consignment shop. You're so lucky. It's tough to get matching pieces secondhand."

Always in front of my mother, Mrs. We-Must-Be-Aware-of-Our-Standing-and-Our-Obligations-in-the-Community. Mrs. Soft-Touch. Mrs. Easy-Mark.

Nikki always wanted to do whatever I was doing, be with who I was with. When we were younger, it was flattering, and I admit there was a certain fascination for me to be at the Bianchis, since Mrs. Bianchi believes the food pyramid consists of pizza, root beer, and chocolate, and in every other way, too, is just about as opposite my mother as two people can be. But after a while, Nikki became almost a stalker. She joined the choir just because I did, and the chess club, and the volleyball team. She'd ask to copy my homework; and if I didn't let her, it meant she'd get detention; and then I'd have to stay after, too, since we rode together, so what was the point of saying no?

Last year, after Chuckie Zarpentine and I had worked together for a week on our final joint economics report, then skated together for four couples-only numbers at Krista Orsini's roller-skating birthday party, and I was just waiting for him to invite me to the Last-Chance-Before-Summer Dance, Nikki went ahead and asked him to go with her. Like she hadn't heard me saying, "Oh, I hope he asks me," every time he walked by for about two months.

I refused to talk to her for a week, then she showed up at our house, crying and claiming she'd had no idea I'd been interested in Chuckie, offering to break up with him, and begging to be friends again.

Did my father, who may be brilliant as a tax auditor, a church alderman, and a world-class Scrabble master catch on that she apologized only
after
the dance?

That was when he invited her, yet again, to Darien Lake with us.

Now that I'm dead, I find myself kind of floating rather aimlessly.

If there are other dead people around, I'm not aware of them. And living people seem totally unaware of me.

The first person I tried to talk to after the accident was—of course—Aimee Ann, since she is, was, and always will be my best friend. I was sure if any two people could connect the world of the living with the world of the dead, it would be us.

Nothing.

I tried my mother, both before and after she was told of my death.

Nothing there, either.

I tried my deadbeat father.

No wonder my mother left the creep.

I even tried the guy who had run me over with his car.

What's the good of being a ghost if you can't even haunt the person who killed you on Halloween night?!

There's nothing—besides me—in the world of the dead. And in the world of the living, I can pass through walls, but I also pass through anything I try to pick up—unless I give it my absolute, total, don't-even-
think
-about-thinking-of-anything-else(!) concentration.

But I can be single-minded.

It's one of my best attributes.

I concentrated with all my being.

When a ghost tells you that, she is not speaking figuratively.

I concentrated with all my being, and—eventually—I was able to pick up this picture that my mother had tucked into the coffin with me.

I was able to take the picture out of my dead hands and up into my spirit hands.

I am bringing it to Aimee Ann to comfort her in her sorrow. To let her know that not even death can separate us.

I didn't mean to kill Nikki.

We were walking home from Celeste Camillo's Halloween party because Mrs. Bianchi was supposed to pick us up, but—surprise!—she hadn't shown up. Meanwhile, my parents were at a tax auditors' Halloween party for my father's company (one can only imagine how much fun
that
was), and it was too embarrassing—half an hour after everyone else had left and Celeste was sitting on the couch yawning so hard her jaw was cracking—to ask her to roust her parents out of bed and drive us the few blocks to our houses.

Nikki was wearing an outfit that was supposed to make her look like a rock star, because that was what I had told her
I
was going as. But I've known Nikki for ten years, so I saw
that
coming, and all along I'd been planning on dressing like an Egyptian princess, which I'd seen in the window of a costume rental place. But when I showed it to my mother, she said it was too expensive and I could put together a princess costume from some of the fabrics she had stockpiled for projects she'd never gotten to.

Princess,
of course, is totally different from
Egyptian princess,
but my mother pretended to be oblivious to the nuances.

So I went dressed as trailer-park trash, which meant, basically, I dressed like Nikki, which—I know, I know—was cruel, and I'm totally ashamed of myself. But in my own defense I can honestly say that anyone can always count on Nikki, also, to be oblivious to nuances.

I even wore the Mickey Mouse shirt, and my only excuse is that I was in a foul mood because of my mother's lack of Halloween spirit.

So there we were, walking home together at almost one o'clock in the morning, and Nikki was going on and on about what a great time we always have at Darien Lake.

She had pulled out of her purse that snapshot she carries everywhere and was telling me—yet again—how much alike we are. As if! She said, as she does each time she shows the picture to anyone, "My mother has to take my word for it which of us is which."

Yeah, right, Mrs. Bianchi. I'm the one with the pained expression because your daughter's got her arm around my neck in a stranglehold that would make the World Wrestling Federation proud. I'm the one with the green complexion because no matter how many times I tell Nikki, "Nikki, I don't like Ferris wheels because I can't stand heights," she always insists that I got over my fear of heights last time and tells me what a really great time we had, and my parents say, "Oh, go on with her—rides are more fun for two than alone," and she drags me on, and I spend the next two hours feeling ready to puke.

So there we were on Halloween night, walking home in the cold and the dark, and I was thinking I probably should have peed before leaving Celeste's, and Nikki was chattering on and on and on about how great the Ferris wheel at Darien Lake is because it goes
so
high up you can see just about all of the park spread out below you.

"Nikki," I said, talking over her because when she gets on a roll she doesn't even stop to take a breath, "I hate Ferris wheels."

"No, you don't," she corrected me. "They're fun." She was walking on the edge of the curb, balancing herself like a tightrope walker. She said, "People need to get their adrenaline going once in a while. Ferris wheels are a good kind of scare."

"Like this?" I said. And I shoved her. I thought she'd totter on the curb, her adrenaline going.

In the darkest recesses of my heart, I even suspected that, taken unawares, she might fall off.

I never saw the car.

I never,
ever
saw that car.

And I'd give anything—anything—to take that moment back.

Of course I know Aimee Ann didn't want to hurt me. Best friends don't want to hurt each other!

That's why with total, absolute concentration I've worked so hard until I've been able to move the picture from my coffin to the stairs by her bedroom.

She'll bend down to see what it is, and she'll know I've forgiven her.

Then with total, absolute concentration, I'll push her.

And then I won't be alone anymore. We'll be together forever and always.

Just the way best friends are meant to be!

The moon wasn't up yet, and out here in the country, the night was darker than it ever got in the city. Brian turned on the overhead light and glanced again at the directions to Kyla Zolla's house.

"She might have just said, Drive till you get to East Nowhere," he grumbled to himself, "then keep on driving till you run out of gas or fall off the edge of the earth, whichever comes second."

If he had looked at the directions during study hall, when she'd passed the note to him, he might have known to suggest that she get a family member to drive her to school for the Halloween dance. One should always be leery of a set of directions that includes county route numbers instead of street names, and that says things like, "Pass by the Feed and Tractor store, then turn right at the first
paved
road." And "If you get to the falling-down barn with the old sign that says
GUTHRIE'S POULTRY
, you've gone too far."

Sure enough, Brian saw the
GUTHRIE'S POULTRY
sign. Sighing, he made a U-turn, hardly having to slow down at all since there was no other traffic in sight.

"This better be worth it," he muttered. He had to turn on the light again to see his watch. He hadn't figured out yet how to set the car's clock, which wasn't just off by the hour, like it was from a different time zone, but was wrong when it came to the minutes, too. The good thing about the car was that it was a red Camaro. Never mind that it was almost as old as Brian. Red Camaros are total chick magnets.

Seven thirty. He'd told Kyla he'd pick her up at a quarter after seven.

It was her own fault for living so far out in the sticks. Who'd have thought the school district extended this far into the wilderness?

Brian found the paved road and turned down it, his headlights sweeping over the stubble of the field. It was October 31, and in upstate New York, you couldn't count on there not being a killing frost by the end of October, so most of the farmers had finished their harvesting—reaping—whatever it was farmers did that meant the produce was all out of the fields and in those nice little containers at the supermarket.

Brian passed by the traffic sign that showed a curve in the road, almost missed the forty-five-miles-per-hour sign that was his next landmark, then turned into what appeared to be a narrow unpaved road—but which, if Kyla's directions could be trusted, was really a long, windy driveway.

Finally, he came to the house—saggy porch, mud-splattered old pickup of indeterminate color, propane tanks. Yup. He had arrived.

He seriously considered just tapping the horn, but since this was his first date with Kyla, he figured he'd better go to the door and ring the bell. When he'd been going out with Maranda, he'd once beeped for her, and her parents had been dead-set against him ever since.

You'd think, though, seeing as how he
was
late, that Kyla
might
have been waiting for him.

Brian got out of the car. He'd forgotten how cold it was. His breath smoked in the air as he climbed the porch stairs and rang the doorbell. If there wasn't at least a dusting of snow by morning, there would definitely be a frost.

The light went out in the window, which Brian hoped meant Kyla was about to come outside and not force him into a meeting with The Parents.

In the sky, a multitude of stars twinkled merrily but did nothing toward brightening the night.

Brian stamped his feet impatiently for warmth and just barely restrained himself from muttering out loud, "C'mon, c'mon, c'mon."

The door opened slowly and with a squeak.

A woman and a man stood there. In the light of the candle she held, Brian saw she had waist-length dark hair, and she was dressed in a long, black gown; the guy had hair that was slicked back, and he was wearing a black tuxedo and a black cape with red satin lining. The man rested his hand on the doorjamb, showing fingers with long, clawlike nails.

Brian took a step backward, startled—he told himself—by the fact that they weren't Kyla, and not by their pale faces and their fangs.

"Velcome to our house," the man said in a thick accent from somewhere between Hollywood and Transylvania. "Come in and let us drink your blood."

From inside the house Kyla's voice called out, "Brian? Don't let my parents freak you out. They aren't usually this weird."

Also sporting an accent of some kind or another, Mrs. Zolla said in a throaty voice, "Trick or treat."

How. Totally. Lame.

"Um," Brian said. "Yeah."

Even Maranda's family, which included six or seven kids younger than Maranda, didn't go this overboard about Halloween.

"Vhere is your costume?" the man—Kyla's dad—demanded. Neither of them had made any move to invite Brian in off the porch. "Don't you know vhat night this is?"

Brian pointed to his T-shirt, which was black. Of course, he'd probably have worn the shirt even if it wasn't Halloween, but nobody else had to know that.

Kyla's parents stayed rooted in the doorway. "Ah," the mother said in her gravelly voice that sounded more Russian than Transylvanian, "he is wearing disguise of American teenage boy. Beneath disguise, he is fifty-two-year-old South American dictator."

Momentarily minus the accent, the father said, "He better not be if he expects to take
our
daughter out." He grinned, either to indicate he was joking or to show off his fangs. And he wiggled his clawed fingers on the doorjamb to make sure Brian noticed.

You can't hold people accountable for their dorky parents,
Brian reminded himself. On the other hand, he was ready to get back into his car, when Kyla's voice called, "Mom? Don't let Dad scare him away. I'll be down in a minute, Bri."