“I can’t have this thing on my face all night. I’m goin’ dressed as a Greek Goddess, Aphrodite. This will completely ruin my costume.”
“You should’ve been more careful.” Emily dug around in her little silver purse some more. She dumped her purse on the ground under her locker, lip gloss and nail polish bottles rolling around on the floor. “It has to be here.”
“What are you talkin’ about?” Charlotte asked.
“The makeup I used this mornin’, it’s not here.” By now, Emily was attracting an audience; people were stopping to see what was going on. A Sharpie rolled out of Emily’s purse into the middle of the hall.
“You used Sharpie, too?”
“Of course I didn’t!” Emily shrieked, rubbing her face frantically. But the black moon only grew bigger and blacker like the others. “What the hell is goin’ on?”
“I know I have mine,” Charlotte said, turning the lock on her locker door. She opened the door and stood there for a few seconds, staring inside.
“What is it?” Savannah demanded. Charlotte pulled her hand back out of her locker. She was holding a Sharpie.
Link shook his pom-pom. “Cheerleaders rock!”
I looked at Lena.
Sharpie?
A mischievous smile spread across her face.
I thought you said you couldn’t control your powers.
Beginner’s luck.
By the end of the day, everyone at Jackson was talking about the cheer squad. Apparently, every one of the cheerleaders who dressed up as Lena had somehow used a Sharpie to draw the innocuous crescent moon on her face, instead of eyeliner. Cheerleaders. The jokes were endless.
All of them would be walking around school and the rest of town, singing in the church youth choirs, and cheering at the games, with Sharpie on their cheeks for the next few days, until it faded away. Mrs.
Lincoln and Mrs. Snow were going to have a fit.
I just wished I could be there to see it.
After school, I walked Lena back to her car, which was really just an excuse to try to hold her hand a little longer. The intense physical feelings I had when I touched her weren’t the deterrent you might have expected. No matter what it felt like, whether I was burning or blowing out light bulbs or getting struck by lightning, I had to be close to her. It was like eating, or breathing. I didn’t have a choice. And that was scarier than a month of Halloweens, and it was killing me.
“What are you doing tonight?” As she spoke, she pulled her hand absentmindedly through her hair. She was sitting on the hood of the hearse and I was standing in front of her.
“I thought maybe you’d come over, and we’d stay home and answer the door for trick-or-treaters. You can help me watch the lawn to make sure no one burns a cross on it.” I tried not to think too clearly about the rest of my plan, which involved Lena and our couch and old movies and Amma being gone for the night.
“I can’t. It’s a High Holiday. I have relatives coming in from all over. Uncle M won’t let me out of the house for five minutes, not to mention the danger. I’d never open my door to strangers on a night of such Dark power.”
“I never thought of it that way.” Until now.
By the time I got home, Amma was getting ready to leave. She was boiling a chicken on the stove and mixing biscuit batter with her hands, “the only way any self-respectin’ woman makes her biscuits.” I looked at the pot suspiciously, wondering if this meal was going to make it to our dinner table or the Greats’.
I pinched some dough, and she caught my hand.
“P. U. R. L. O. I. N. E. R.” I smiled.
“As in, keep your thievin’ hands off a my biscuits, Ethan Wate. I’ve got hungry people to feed.” Guess I wouldn’t be eating chicken and biscuits tonight.
Amma always went home on Halloween. She said it was a special night at church, but my mom used to say it was just a good night for business. What better night to have your cards read than Halloween?
You weren’t going to get quite the same crowd on Easter or Valentine’s Day.
But in light of recent events, I wondered if there wasn’t another reason. Maybe it was a good night for reading chicken bones in the graveyard, too. I couldn’t ask, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to know. I missed Amma, missed talking to her, missed trusting her. If she felt the difference, she didn’t let on.
Maybe she just thought I was growing up, or maybe I was.
“You goin’ to that party over at the Snows’?”
“No, I’m just gonna stay home this year.”
She raised an eyebrow, but she wasn’t going to ask. She already knew why I wasn’t going. “You make your bed, you better be ready to lie in it.”
I didn’t say anything. I knew better. She wasn’t expecting a response.
“I’m fixin’ to go in a few minutes. You answer the door for those young’uns when they come around.
Your daddy’s busy workin’.” Like my dad was going to come out of his self-imposed exile to answer the door for trick-or-treaters.