Sometimes, when I’m upset with people, I pretend they don’t exist, because that’s easier than dealing with the problem. Then, eventually, I’ve pretended for so long that it sort of becomes true, and it’s like that person isn’t real to me anymore. Maybe that would have happened with Enzo after our fight. If things had gone a little differently, a few years down the line, someone might’ve said, Remember that guy, Enzo Calvetti? and I’d be like, Enzo who? and even though it might seem like I was faking, I wouldn’t be. It would for real take me a second to remember that—for a little while—he’d been important to me.
That didn’t happen though. I wanted to believe it was because there was something special about Enzo, but I probably just forgave him because he showed up at the diner on Halloween.
I was already feeling sorry for myself, which I’d mentioned to Vernon, like, eighteen times.
“Only because it’s my favorite holiday,” I said again.
Vernon didn’t get mad or tell me I was boring him. He was doing a Sudoku puzzle and pretty much ignoring me. Every once in a while, he’d start to bob his head up and down like a chicken, and I thought maybe that was his old-man version of indicating he agreed with everything I said.
“Do you know how many kids at my school don’t care about Halloween?” I asked, wiping down the counter for about the fifth time that hour. “But they still have parties to go to tonight. How is that fair?”
Vernon bobbed his head.
I threw down the dish rag and poured myself a cup of coffee. Last month, I’d started to drink my coffee black because that’s how Enzo drank it. He said anyone who used cream and sugar probably didn’t like the taste of coffee, so what was the point of drinking it? I wanted him to think I was cool, that I was artsy like him, that I was a person who got coffee. So I swore off cream and sugar and tried not to wince at the bitterness when I took a sip, as if I were doing a shot of whiskey or something. That night, on Halloween, the bitterness tasted good. The coffee was too hot—it burned my throat all the way down, and that was good too.
Mr. Walczak was hardly ever around. He owned the Sunshine Café, but he didn’t know what it was like to spend all day there. That’s why he thought some ideas were good, even though they weren’t. Like the Halloween mix CD that we’d been playing all month. Really, it was just horror movie music, “Monster Mash,” and a few tracks of spooky sounds like chains rattling and owls hooting. The first time I heard it at the beginning of October, I thought it was kind of cool and festive, which was probably what Mr. Walczak intended. But when I realized there were only about ten songs on the CD, not even an hour of music, it lost its charm.
I felt like maybe, probably, I was about to go crazy.
Particularly when on Halloween, my favorite night, instead of doing something scary and fun and adventurous, I was working in a crappy diner, listening to stupid ghosts whooooing on repeat, drinking black coffee that I didn’t even like, and feeling pathetic and unappreciated in my hippie costume. The costume had been inspired by Sundog and put together mostly from my mom’s closet, except for the beads, which I’d borrowed from Marigold. Sundog had laughed when he saw my outfit, but not like he was making fun of me. He said soon enough, I’d be joining their prayer circle.
My hair was parted in the middle, and I was wearing Mom’s old jeans that were only a little too big and had patches sewn all over them. I had moccasins on my feet, because my mom said that’s pretty much all she wore when she was my age. They were real moccasins with leather bottoms, and I liked how silently I could creep around in them.
The truth was, I was pretty pleased with my costume. I felt authentic. Totally more awesome than anyone walking around in a mass-produced, tie-dyed hippie costume bought from the drug store. My outfit came from real hippies after all. But what did it matter that I had a cool costume if only Vernon saw it? He didn’t really notice it anyway.
I pouted and drank coffee, and the theme from The Exorcist was playing, and that’s when the chime on the door rang. I looked up to see who’d come in. It was Enzo.
He wasn’t wearing a costume. He was just dressed as himself, looking nervous, carrying a large, flat package wrapped in newspaper under one arm.
“Hey,” he said, pushing his hair from his eyes with his free hand. “I called your house, and your dad said you were working.”
“He was right. Here I am.”
“I can see that.”
We stood awkwardly on opposite sides of the diner like there was a line drawn on the ground that neither of us could step over. The horror movie music wasn’t helping the tension between us. I wanted to know what Enzo was doing there. I wanted him to leave. I wanted him to know I wanted him to leave. But I also wanted him to stay.
“So, uh, I like your costume,” he said, walking over to me.
“Thanks,” I said.
“Lizzie used to wear a headband like that all the time.”
The headband, a scarf really, had been my own touch, not an accessory from my mom or Sundog or the rest of the hippie crew. I wondered if I’d become so connected with Lizzie in the recent months that I instinctively made the same choices she did and if that would bring me closer to her, maybe close enough to find her.