Halloween falls on a Friday, and everyone looking for a real good time has made the hour drive to New Orleans, while everyone else is going to Melinda Harold’s masquerade party. That actually makes it sound much classier than it is. Really, it’s a huge party Melinda’s parents have been having for at least a decade now, and the perk is that the adults are too drunk to care how drunk all their kids are.
I sit on the bathroom counter watching Hattie carefully apply fake white, feathery eyelashes. She’s dressed as an angel, I think, in a short lacy nightgown that isn’t the kind of thing you actually sleep in and cascades over her bump.
“You sure you don’t want to come with us?”
I think back to the last huge party I went to and how well that went for me. “Positive.” Originally, we were supposed to hang out with Ruth and Saul, but Saul pulled out at the last minute. Whatever reason he ditched us for, Ruth wasn’t happy about it, so she opted to stay home. Left with the choice between Hattie and Tyler or my couch, I will always choose my couch.
“Babe!” Tyler yells from the living room.
“Babe!” I mimic.
Hattie rolls her eyes. “Y’all gotta learn to like each other.” She steps back and takes one final look at herself before applying a coat of icy-pink lip gloss. Turning to the side, she examines her hem. “Do I look too pregnant in this?”
“You are pregnant.”
She groans. “Let’s go! Put on your costume, Tyler!”
Tyler shuffles down the hallway. He wears his usual uniform—slightly too tight skinny jeans and a heavy metal band T-shirt.
Hattie hands him the red cape hanging from the bathroom door and the headband with devil’s horns.
“Do I have to wear the headband?” he asks.
“Babe, it’s a couple’s costume. Without the horns, you look like some weirdo in a cape.”
Tyler huffs as he pushes the headband into his purposely greasy hair. “Let’s roll, Mama.”
Him calling my sister Mama makes my stomach turn.
I shoo them both out the door and hand Hattie her jean jacket, because I am cold just looking at her. The weather down here is sporadic at best, but tonight actually feels like Halloween, with wind rustling through the trees.
The minute the door shuts behind them, I do a little victory dance.
I never have the place to myself. Or at least I feel like I don’t. Maybe it’s because our place is less than seven hundred square feet with four grown adults and one baby on the way, but some days it feels like my little smidgen of a bedroom is disappearing. Especially with Hattie always sleeping in my bed.
In the kitchen, I dump the bags of candy my dad picked up into one giant mixing bowl and then hunt down the cat ears I’ve worn every year since seventh grade. After slipping on my favorite flannel shirt and coating my legs with bug spray, I sit out on our front steps and wait for the trick-or-treaters.
As I pull out all the Tootsie Rolls for myself, it’s a pretty steady parade of neighborhood kids. Some actually have good costumes, but most wear hand-me-downs or a mash-up of found objects. I know a lot of families go to nicer, bigger neighborhoods to trick-or-treat, but a lot of people who live here don’t really have a way of getting around other than their feet.
Around nine, and as the stream of trick-or-treaters is thinning, I get a text from Freddie saying he just got out of work and that he’s coming over with pizza.
I hand out candy to a few ninth graders before calling it a night and heading inside with my bowl of mostly Tootsie Rolls.
Walking through my front door, I realize that Freddie’s never seen the inside of our trailer, and for a moment I look around and see our place for what feels like the first time. One plaid couch and a puke-brown recliner complement the puke-beige carpet. Peeling linoleum in the kitchen. Dingy white cabinets. A low-hanging ceiling that bows in the center. Discarded hotel artwork from Dad’s job.
I’m not embarrassed, or at least I tell myself I’m not. There are times when my life feels like a shrinking box that only money can expand, but most days it is a simple life that we’ve worked hard to maintain.
Before Freddie shows up, I decide to do the dishes to hopefully reduce some of the clutter.
Freddie arrives, balancing a large pepperoni-and-mushroom pizza in one hand and two DVDs in the other and wearing a T-shirt that says This Is My Halloween Costume.
“Gimme, gimme, gimme!” I say, taking the pizza from him.
“Nice cat ears.” He kicks his shoes off and plops down on the couch like he’s been here a thousand times, not even blinking at the fact that we don’t have a kitchen table. “Okay,” he says, holding up each DVD case. “We’ve got possessed dolls or murderous hillbillies.”
“I’ll take murderous hillbillies. Do you think we need plates?”
“Nah,” he says. “Just eat out of the box.”
“Sounds good.” I grab a half-full liter of Dr Pepper from the fridge for us to share and put in the DVD.
We sit hip to hip on the couch with the pizza box balancing on our knees as we pass the soda back and forth. Freddie’s body is warm, and he still smells like chlorine from this morning. We’ve been swimming almost every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. I’m trying not to get too used to the routine, because I know that when Freddie leaves for school, I’ll be going back to my usual life, which doesn’t include a pool membership.
With the only light coming from the TV, we sit in a shadow of blue and stuff ourselves full of pizza. The movie is unnecessarily gory and kills everyone who is not blond and big-boobed in rapid succession.
“The black guy always gets it first,” says Freddie. “I just want to see a movie that does, like, the ultimate fake-out and brings the black guy back to life.”
“Or what if he was alive the whole time and crawled back to where his friends were and saved their asses at the very last minute?”
He chuckles. “The black guy saves the day.”
What I think, but don’t say, is that Freddie has saved almost all my days since he reappeared in my life a few months ago.
We push the pizza box to the side and move on to my bowl of Tootsie Rolls. We watch the rest of the movie, taking bets on who will be next to die.
When my dad comes home from his shift at the hotel, he waves hello. “You get any trick-or-treaters?”
“Yeah, a bunch of neighborhood kids.” I motion to the pizza. “We got some leftovers if you want them.” He’s so bad at remembering to take lunch breaks, and none of the management at the hotel is in any hurry to remind him.
“Can’t say I’ve ever turned down pizza.” He gladly takes our leftovers before stumbling to bed. I’ll never figure out how it is that some people can work so hard and get paid so little, while so many people who are paid the most hardly work at all.
We put in the next movie, and before long our shoulders slump and our heads sink into our chests, and we’re both asleep.
I wake briefly when my sister and Tyler come in. Tyler is drunk. I can tell by the sound of his shuffling feet. I keep my eyes barely closed as Hattie turns off the TV and throws a blanket over the two of us.
And that’s when, in his sleep, Freddie pulls me close to him like a rag doll. Sleep is this fuzzy cloud hanging low around my head. I could force myself to wake up all the way and scoot to the other end of the couch. Or even tell Freddie he should go home. But I don’t. Because just the feeling of being touched—being held—is the release of a pent-up sigh.
A few hours later, I wake to the sound of sizzling. With the blanket wrapped tightly around my shoulders like someone’s tucked me in, I peek over the back of the couch to find Freddie in my shitty little kitchen with its peeling linoleum, making eggs in an old frying pan, one that’s not nearly as nice as his at home. He’s the first person, I think, who I’ve not been related to, who has found a way to fit into my world—my world that has always felt so much smaller and less important than everyone else’s.