The night after the Candy Corn Carnival, I heard shouting and knocking. I went to the door and looked through the peephole. The Grump from next door was standing there. Monkeylad was next to him with something gross in his mouth.
“That dog stole my cake,” said the Grump. “This is the last straw. If you don’t do something about that dog, I will call the authorities.”
“I’m so sorry, Mr.…,” my mom said. I didn’t feel so bad about calling him the Grump if she didn’t even know his name.
I felt like a Grump, too. Monkeylad had tried to help me, but I couldn’t eat that piece of cake he’d brought. It had dog teeth marks all over it.
Angelina and her friends were going to have a Halloween party at Twinkle Knoll’s house. Twinkle Knoll has five brothers and sisters who all look just like her, each one year older and one head taller than the next, with big, perfectly round blue eyes and long blond hair.
Their parents let them have parties, watch TV all the time, and eat as much candy as they want. Obviously their house is a perfect place to hang out at on Halloween. There’s no so-called Halloween Fairy there to steal your hard-earned Halloween candy. Not like at my house, where she lurks in the corners, ready and waiting with her dreaded Lurning Bush school-supply store gift certificates to trade for your candy.
First of all, you can’t make up for stolen candy with school supplies, and second of all, why would you misspell the name of a place where kids were supposed to go to learn? The little buddies would get confused. And what did that name mean, anyway?
Just then, my mom came out of her room wearing THE WINGS.
One Halloween she’d dressed up as a fairy with these big wings that looked like the feathers came from real pigeons, a wreath of fake pink flowers on her head, and an old lace dress that kept getting tangled and torn on the branches when she took me out trick-or-treating. She had to turn sideways to let the kids pass her on the sidewalk because the wings were so huge. One year she was an angel wearing the same wings. One year she was a butterfly. Yep, same pigeon-feather wings.
And this year she had on an orange-and-black outfit with orange-and-black-striped stockings and the same wings.
“Guess who I am?” my mom asked.
She was the Halloween Fairy, but I couldn’t bring myself to say it.
“Are you ready?”
I didn’t want to go trick-or-treating with her, but it would have been worse to stay home and give out candy to Rocko Hoggen and Leif Zuniga and Serena Perl, who were probably all trick-or-treating together dressed in matching zombie outfits. So I made my mom promise to keep her distance and pretend she wasn’t with me if we ran into anyone I knew.
Before we left, Monkeylad was having one of his demon possessions. His eyes were rolling up in his head and had turned blue.
“We need to exercise the demon so he doesn’t attack trick-or-treaters at the door,” I told my mom.
“You mean exorcise?” she said, laughing.
“That’s what I said,” I said.
She bent down really slowly, holding out a Chix Stix treat, caught Monkeylad, and Velcroed on his hot-dog bun. As soon as it was on, he sat down and looked up at her with twinkling black puppy eyes. It was like magic.
“This hot-dog bun was worth the investment,” my mom said. Monkeylad had worn it a few times already, but it was harder to put on now since he’d gotten a little chubby around the middle.
I had to admit, he did look kind of cute as a hot dog. And it would be much harder for him to escape and steal meat while wearing that thing.
Our neighborhood was lit up with orange jack-o’-lantern lights, and there were vats of dry ice and dangling skeletons and blow-up witches and cobwebs getting caught over my mouth, and it was all pretty cool, in spite of my mom’s wings and my dog in his too-small bun.
As I was walking along the street, I saw Joe Knapp from school. Joe Knapp wears big glasses with thick lenses. His name is embroidered on his jackets and his backpack. His lunch box and backpack match; they are both in the shape of books. So I wasn’t surprised to see that for Halloween he was dressed as a dictionary. His dad was dressed as a giant baby in fuzzy footsie pajamas. I didn’t feel as embarrassed about my mom’s wings after that. Joe waved to me but then ducked his head, maybe when he realized that I was looking at his dad.
I filled a pillowcase with candy and was really excited to go home and eat some. I figured my mom might be nicer this year, because of all the hardship I had recently endured, and maybe let me eat a few extra pieces and keep the rest for the following weekends. Actually, if we followed her two-pieces-per-weekend rule, the candy would last me for a year’s worth of weekends. I could almost taste the hard sugar crackling against my teeth and the chocolate melting on my tongue.
But when we got home, Mom said, “Time for the Halloween Fairy.”
I looked at her with dread.
“You can keep three pieces for tonight, okay?” she added, smiling like she was doing me a big favor.
“Seriously, Mom? Seriously? You’ve got to be kidding me, Mom?” I was so upset I was talking in question marks like she did.
“Okay, would you like five pieces? The Halloween Fairy will give you a gift certificate if you leave her the rest, okay, Ben?” She picked up a basket she’d set by the door. “Would you like an apple?”
Hadn’t she heard that you can’t give out apples for Halloween? No one in their right mind gave out apples! I had barely eaten any candy, and I felt like I was going to throw up.
I was trying not to cry.
“What five pieces do you want, Ben?” my mom asked.
I picked the biggest candy bars and stuffed them into my mouth. I didn’t even enjoy them. The whole night was ruined.
And if you think that was bad, wait till you hear what happened next. The doorbell rang, and my mom ran to answer it. She was holding the apple basket, and her wings were getting caught on furniture and dripping feathers everywhere. Monkeylad was following her in his hot-dog bun. I heard her talking to the kids at the door, and then she called out, “Ben, can you come here?”
I don’t know why I did it. I was like a robot. I walked slowly toward the door, and there were three trick-or-treaters standing on the step. There was a boy dressed as a werewolf, a girl dressed as a vampire with tiny plastic fangs and a red velvet cape, and a kid with the same costume as mine. Only better. It was the version with the beating, bleeding heart and the blood that spurted out and dripped down the mask face when you squeezed the pump. And the kid? It was Rocko Hoggen. He was with Leif Zuniga and Serena Perl.
“Hi, Ben,” Serena said. She had glitter around her eyes, and it sparkled in the porch light. “I didn’t know you lived here. Your dog is cute. Are you okay?”
“Hey,” I said, looking down at my feet, away from her glitter eyes, away from her dimples, away from her braids, away from her fangs.
A cop came up behind them. He was over six feet tall and bald. “Excuse me, ma’am, are you handing out apples to these kids?”
My mom took a step back and almost dropped the apple basket.
The man laughed and adjusted his black stretch pants. “Just kidding. I’m not really a cop. But some kids are going to use the apples to bomb cars. You really can’t give out apples on Halloween anymore,” he said.
“Well, at least they’re healthy,” my mom said. “You gave me a little scare there. I think our kids know each other?”
“I’m Peter Hoggen,” the cop said. “Nice to meet you.”
My mom shook his hand and smiled. “I’m Ben’s mom,” she said. “Basically I just go by that now. Ben’s Mom. Angelina’s Mom.”
“Looks like our boys have the same costume, Ben’s Mom,” Peter Hoggen said. “Almost.”
Rocko pressed the button that made his heart light up and seep blood.
Was I in a bad monster movie? Was I in ten-year-old-boy hell? No, I was in my own miserable life.
“Are you sure you don’t want an apple?” my mom asked.
The cop had already walked away, waving his hand over his head and chuckling to himself. “An apple a day doesn’t keep the cops away on Halloween.”
“Uh, that’s okay,” Rocko said to my mom’s apple. “Our bags are kind of full. Bye, Ben. Nice costume. Hope that cakewalk cake was good.”
“Bye, Ben,” said Leif Zuniga. “See you in class.”
Serena Perl looked back at me and flashed her little fangs with a worried look in her eyes before she disappeared into the fog that had crept up like a ghost.
I ran into the bathroom and looked at myself. My eyes showed through the mask. The eyeliner Angelina had applied to make me look scarier was streaked from my tears. And Serena Perl had seen.
* * *
My mom tried to talk to me while I lay in bed with the sheet over my face.
“Are you a ghost?” she said.
I didn’t answer.
“Should we cut out some eyes so you can be a ghost?”
I threw the sheet off. “I told you I’m not five years old anymore, Mom.”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I know you’re too old to believe in the Halloween Fairy. That’s why I dressed up as her, because it’s part of the joke. And I’m sorry I gave out apples, too. I promise I won’t do that again.”
I didn’t say anything back to her.
“But I still don’t want you to eat too much candy.”
Now I really wasn’t going to speak.
In the morning there was a piece of paper under my pillow. Guess what it was? A gift certificate to the Lurning Bush school-supply store. There were a few pigeon feathers scattered on the sheet beside it.