A Halloween costume says a lot about a person. We’re not little kids anymore, with our parents dressing us in store-bought costumes that reveal their hopes and expectations as we run around the neighborhood as little doctors, pro-athletes, and brides. I feel sorry for my mom. She never got off easy. When Luke was younger, he was into natural disasters and insisted on being a tornado for Halloween. Then he got into space and astronomy, and Mom went to work on a solar system costume, complete with orbiting Styrofoam planets.
It was a relief by the time I was old enough to request a costume, because I was happy to wear Mark’s and Luke’s hand-me-down sports uniforms for Halloween. A football, baseball, soccer player—it didn’t matter to me as long as I got to carry a candy bag and a ball.
Which is why it doesn’t surprise me that Olivia Fletcher ditched the angel costume she wore the other day at school and tonight, struts around in a red satin devil’s outfit, carrying a pitchfork and bossing everyone around. Even Ibby’s cat, Cheshire, scurries out of Olivia’s way.
Ibby, Bo, and I did most of the planning and work for tonight, but it’s Olivia who positions herself at the front door to collect the three-dollar admission fee and acts like having the haunted house was all her idea and effort. I feel like borrowing her pitchfork and butting her out of the way but decide that ignoring her is probably the best policy.
I walk around taking in the transformation. I have to hand it to the Blooms because the Halloween decorations fit their castle-like home perfectly. The pictures on the wall hang crooked and upside down, with silky cobwebs trailing everywhere. The lights are dim and spooky music plays in the background. A black carpet winds its way through the living room, dining room, and downstairs into the basement, where the Frankenstein beanbag toss, a toilet paper mummy wrap, and Guess the Gruesome Goo are set up around the room.
Ibby mans the goo station, where she has a bowl of spaghetti, which she insists is intestines, grapes for eyeballs, and a wobbly Jell-O–mold brain. She informs visitors that they’re on their way to a transplant operation being performed at midnight at a witches’ warren.
By ten p.m., it feels like the entire school is here. Mrs. Bloom seems to be holding up pretty well. The only thing that gives away her anxiety is the voice pitched five octaves above normal and the fact that she’s wringing her hands, probably wishing that we’d all turn into pumpkins at the stroke of midnight and roll out of sight.
We don’t make it to midnight.
Around ten thirty, I’m wandering around, looking for Ibby’s missing cat, calling, “Chesie, Chesie, Chesie.” Ibby named Cheshire after the vanishing cat in Alice in Wonderland, and Chesie’s wasted no time disappearing tonight, with the doors opening and closing every time a parent drops off a trick-or-treater.
Peering under an old pine tree in the backyard, I’m thinking that if losing Chesie for a few hours is the worst thing that happens tonight, we made out pretty good, when suddenly, all hell breaks loose. I race toward the sounds of crashing furniture and screaming coming from the basement, where Bo and Joey Montanado are trying to wrestle each other to the floor.
“What happened?” I shout to Katie, who tries to hop out of the way as the boys stumble, tumble, and twist up the stairs and out onto the Blooms’ back patio.
“Joey threw the intestines at Bo, and then Bo grabbed the brain—watch out, Tess!”
I leap out of the way as they come crashing back toward us.
As Joey and Bo roll off the patio and into the flowerbeds, I’m afraid they might smash one of Mrs. Bloom’s garden gnomes. I make a grab for Bo, but it’s difficult to get at him in his mammo box, which is crushed and mangled from the fight.
Besides, my own costume doesn’t afford much mobility—a homemade outfit that I threw together at the last minute, fashioned entirely of duct tape—a tribute to my dad, who uses it as an all-purpose fix-it around our home. And not too shabby if I do say so myself. Maybe if I took an inch or so off the sleeves, I could duct-tape Joey and Bo’s arms to their sides and end this thing. And while I’m at it, I’ll tape their trashy mouths shut, too. If Mrs. Bloom hears this language, she’ll enroll Ibs in a private girls’ school tomorrow.
Any minute now, I expect her to appear in her Queen Elizabeth costume and shout, “Off with their heads!”
“Bo!” I shout. “Cut it out, you’re going to break something!”
I guess when you’re busy trying to beat the crap out of someone, you’re not about to take orders from duct-tape girl.
Joey tries desperately to land some wild punches. He hits nothing but cardboard.
There’s definitely more to this than Jell-O brains and spaghetti intestines. I bet it has to do with Bo offering Olivia a free mammogram earlier this evening if she’d stick her you-know-whats in the holes of his costume. Joey and Olivia have been on-again-off-again going out since sixth grade.
Lucky for the cardboard box. Although it restricts Bo’s arms somewhat, it offers him protection against Joey’s punches.
In the midst of all this commotion, I spy Cheshire darting across the back lawn and into the basement, carrying something in her mouth. One problem solved. Now, how do I get these two to break it up?
“They’re trashing the backyard,” Katie yells.
At the side of the house, there’s a garden hose coiled over a wrought-iron hook. I dash for the faucet and turn it on full force. Grabbing the spray nozzle, I set it on jet stream. Ready, aim—fire!
A blast of cold water hits Bo and Joey. They fall back, stunned and soaking, to separate corners of the garden just as Ibby runs up the basement steps and onto the stone patio. “Oh, nooo!” she cries.
The garden beds are trampled and a gnome lies in pieces on the patio.
“Sorry, Ibs,” pants Bo, standing there in his soggy box and spaghetti-smeared hair. He picks up a fragment of pottery from the gnome’s red hat. “I’ll try to glue it back together or buy your mom a new one. It’s just that that stupid a—”
But Joey’s nowhere in sight.
“He ran around front,” says Katie.
“It’s okay,” says Ibby. “But we better hide it until it’s fixed.”
We help gather up the pieces and stick them underneath a leafy hydrangea that’s dried on the stalk. “Did you find Cheshire?” she asks.
“I saw her during the fight. She ran back inside the house.”
“Good.” Ibby sighs with relief. “I was worried we’d never find her.”
I hesitate. “Um … Cheshire had something in her mouth.”
Ibby looks horrified, but I’m not surprised. Every time I see my neighbor’s cat, Spooks, he’s hunting chipmunks or birds, and once, he even tangled with a baby skunk, which earned him a tomato-juice bath.
“A mouse?” asks Ibby.
“Bigger.”
Ibby groans. “My mother’s going to freak! Oh, Tess, this is so not turning out the way I imagined—the basement is trashed, Mr. Brownie’s head is crushed—”
“Mr. Brownie?”
“My mother names the gnomes.” She looks around, surveying the flowerbeds, and sighs, “And most of the plants are destroyed.”
I pat her back. “Sorry, Ibs. Don’t worry about the mess. Bo and I will get the soccer teams to help—”
Katie comes racing around the corner and practically crashes into us as she slips on the wet grass.
“You better come quick, you guys! Bo and Joey are at it again, only this time, they’re smashing pumpkins in the street!”
Poor Ibs looks so frightened. This night is spinning out of control. Like Metz always says, “Objects in motion stay in motion.”
Ibby and I run to the street and can’t believe the scene in front of us. If carving pumpkins gave me the dry heaves earlier today, then surely this disgusting mess is enough to make anyone puke.
Bo, Joey, Brittany, and some other kids are in the middle of the street in front of the Blooms’ house. The fluorescent streetlights hum and cast a ghoulish glow on everyone as they grab pumpkins from the front lawn and smash them on the asphalt road.
Laughing and screaming, everyone slips and slides on pumpkin guts.
Bo runs and then belly flops headfirst, his costume a slimy mess, as he skids the length of the street, stopping only when he hits the sewer grate next to the curb.
Without saying a single word, Ibby turns and walks back toward the house.
I’m torn. The good-friend part of me wants to follow Ibby and tell her everything’s going to be all right. But the loves-mud-soccer part wants to join in the pumpkin bash. I grab a small pumpkin from the front lawn and roll it at Bo like it’s a bowling ball. “Knock it off, Bo!” I shout. It hits him in the foot and he falls. Strike!
Laughing, he vows revenge.
Brittany, dressed as a Goth chick, beats him to it when she throws some pumpkin guts at my face. I feel the large white seeds sticking to my cheeks. I smell pumpkin innards again and feel my stomach begin to churn. Wiping the sticky seeds away with the back of my hand, I consider my choices—puke or play?
Just then, Alex slides by my feet, using the lid of one of the Blooms’ garbage cans. “Yippeeeeeyah!” he shouts.
Definitely play. I don’t want to miss out on the fun!
Smash! Smash! Smash! Pumpkins hit the pavement, exploding their gooey mess everywhere. Olivia comes running out to the street and screeches from the sidewalk, “You pigs are ruining the party!”
Katie nails her on the side of the head with some pumpkin shmam and Olivia retreats back into the house waving her pitchfork, her pointy devil’s tail twitching behind her.
My duct tape costume, combined with the pumpkin filling, offers excellent sliding opportunity. Reminds me of another one of Metz’s lessons on friction, but I can’t think of the scientific law right now, with all the chaos and commotion around me.
I catch a glimpse of Bo’s bubble-headed bikers standing on the sidewalk, open-mouthed and staring. They’ve come to collect on the candy I owe them. The runny-nosed one points me out in the crowd. I don’t need to be a lip reader to understand what he’s saying. “Bet you this is all her fault!”
My fault? I look around at the destruction. The street looks like it’s coated with pumpkin pie filling. Ibby’s parents are going to kill her. What about all the beautifully carved pumpkins? What about my Save Sports pumpkins?
Dressed as Noah, Georgie Taxus stands on the sidewalk holding them in his arms as if he were saving the baby gourds from an apocalyptic flood—exactly what we’re going to need to wash this mess away. “So you wanna save sports?” he cries. Smash-bash-crash! The bitty pumpkins hit the street and shatter into a hundred pulpy pieces.
Georgie looks so pleased with himself that I laugh out loud—until I spy Ibby scurrying down the driveway, carrying a shield in front of her.
“Oh, no!” I cry.
Ibs looks like a fierce lioness stalking her prey. What is she doing? I check out the craziness all around and wish that there were some way I could protect her.
She hesitates at the sidewalk with the saucer-sled raised high and blue plastic grocery bags covering the paws of her lion costume.
Bo sees her and stops mashing stringy pumpkin guts into Alex’s punk spiked hair.
Katie asks, “What’s up with the bags, Ibs?”
Ibby looks at all of us with a determined expression on her face and shouts, “Happy Halloween!” and launches herself into the middle of the road on her shield. She slides for a good twenty feet before she comes to rest just around the cul-de-sac bend.
Everyone whoops and hollers, “Way to go, Ibby!”
I slip and stumble toward her and finally crawl the last couple of yards on my hands and knees. I’m laughing so hard, I think I pee in my pants. When I reach Ibby, I wrap my slimy duct-tape arms around her and give her the biggest hug.
And even after the police officers show up and one asks, “Haven’t we met before, Miss Munro?” and we stand sorry and subdued in front of Mrs. Bloom, and Cheshire strolls in and drops a present of a live mole on the white carpet at her feet, and I promise to spend the entire next day and every day cleaning up the mess from our first and last Halloween bash and to replace the gnome and replant the flowers and rethink my actions and readjust my attitude.… I know without a doubt that it was all worth it!