Where’s the glossy one?” Maude asks next Tuesday, stepping out from between the bookshelves and making me jump. I look up from the book I’m reading, The History of Trepan’s Grove. The gilded hands of the clock hanging crooked from a rafter over us read 5:45 p.m.
“I guess she’s not coming,” I answer, closing the book I just finished and adding it the stack. I have to say I’m a little bummed.
“She stood you up?” Maude asks, sitting down cross-legged on the cushion next to me, and setting down the almost-empty bottle of purple Fizzy Fuzz I brought for her when I arrived.
I shrug. “I guess? Maybe she changed her mind and went to a Halloween party or something.”
“Not you, though?” Maude asks.
“I have work to do,” I respond. “You know, colonial women and all that.”
“Wait,” I say, thinking of something. “Don’t you have people to hang out with? I mean, I bet kids from your grade are in town this weekend.”
“I’m sure they are. That doesn’t mean I’m going to call them.”
“Why not?”
“It’s complicated.”
I narrow my eyes at her.
“What?” she asks.
“I’m just trying to decide if you’re old enough to say ‘It’s complicated.’ That’s one of those things parents say when they don’t want to bother explaining something to you.”
“Exactly,” she says, looking satisfied.
There is a ruckus beyond the bookshelves, and we both look up as Zooey emerges.
“Sorry I’m late,” she says, dropping her stuff. “I had to go home and help Ryan with his Halloween costume because my mom was running late. What’s up?”
“We didn’t think you were coming,” Maude says.
Zooey flashes me an offended look. “I told you I’d be here, and I am. And”—she shifts into a grin—“I brought treats!” From behind her back, she produces an orange plastic jack-o’-lantern bowl full of Halloween candy and plops down on the floor, nudging the candy bowl toward Maude and me.
An hour later, we are all sprawled out on the oversize pillows in the little nook. I’m on my belly, chewing on a Starburst and silently lamenting the lack of anything in any of these books having to do with jinx breaking. Maude is beside me, on her back, one leg crossed over the other, nearing the end of her book on string theory. Zooey lies on the other side on her belly, writing down notes in her notebook from what she’s reading.
Maude’s the one who looks at the clock and says, “Whoa, it’s past seven. I’ve got to close up. Management hasn’t approved overtime.”
“I kind of thought my first Halloween in Trepan’s Grove would be more … Halloweeny.”
“How do you mean?” Zooey asks.
I sit up. “I don’t know. In the city, we would trick-or-treat at the stores on the avenue, or if you had a friend who lived in a fancy apartment building, like my friend Rae, you could trick-or-treat in there. I always wanted to do the sort of trick-or-treating you see in the movies, going house to house with a bunch of other kids. This town seems made for that, especially around the common.”
“Why don’t you two go out with your school chums?” Maude asks, standing and doing a theatrical stretch.
Zooey reaches out to nudge the bowl of candy toward me. “I’m on social hiatus.”
“And I’m between friends,” I add.
We both look over at Maude, who, looking surprised to be put on the spot, shrugs and says, “Speak for yourselves. I have a rich and robust social life outside of the historical society. I’m just … ”
“On hiatus?” Zooey asks.
“Between friends?” I offer.
There’s this, like … moment, this silent beat, and then we all start cracking up laughing. Maude and I laugh so hard we have to take our glasses off, which makes Zooey howl, but then—get this—it turns out Zooey’s a snort laugher! And the first time she does it, it’s this little delicate snort that would maybe come out of a cartoon piglet wearing a tutu, but it’s still so shocking that everybody just FREEZES for a second. Zooey claps a hand over her mouth, her eyes wide and totally horrified, and then she starts, like, quaking and then sucks in this ENORMOUS snort that sends us all into hysterics.
“Come with me,” Maude says, wiping her eyes and sliding her glasses back on. We follow her between the bookshelves, over the long rug, and down another set of bookshelves, each of us still bursting out with giggles every so often. Maude leads us to a small closet in the back corner of the attic and opens it to reveal rows of hanging black garments encased in plastic. “One of the churches stores their choir robes here,” she says.
Which is why, twenty minutes later, the three of us are picking up the hems of our long black robes as we trot up the front steps of the pretty purple house across from the Chin statue. Zooey reaches out and rings the bell, and we stand there giggling until a woman answers the door and tips her head to the side as she examines us.
We look back at her in silence until one of us remembers to shout, “Oh! Trick or treat!”
“And who might you be?” she asks, her face a combo of amused and disapproving as she drops a single mini chocolate candy into the blue paper Trading Post bags Trudy gave us downstairs, on the condition that we return with Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups for her.
“We’re Ruth Bader Ginsburg,” Maude says in her low voice, straightening the white paper-towel collar around her neck.
The woman blinks at us, and then cracks up. “Well, in that case!” and she plunks down a handful of candy in each of our bags.
We weave in and out of joyful crowds of costumed kids all much younger than us and hit every single one of the houses up one side of the common, until we get to the white-trimmed gray house at the very top. Its windows are aglow from the first wide picture windows to the gable on the fourth floor, where Piper and I used to sit and stare out at the common, waiting for something interesting to happen.
“I’ll do it,” Zooey says, moving by me, even though it’s my turn to ring the bell.
Piper opens the door, wearing a very faded Captain America costume, takes one look at us, and shouts, “MOM, IT’S A WHOLE BUNCH OF RUTH BADER GINSBURGS!” She opens the door wider and I see Ms. Packenbush leaning over the kitchen island, a pile of paperwork in front of her. She looks down the hall toward the front door, then lifts her reading glasses to the top of her head and lets out a whoop of laughter. In a moment, she’s standing in front of us with her phone, taking a million pictures, saying she wants to show the students in her law class tomorrow.
Then she looks more closely at us and for a second I think, She is going to remember me! but she says, “Maude! I didn’t know you were in town! Piper, go get your sister. Paola would love to see you!”
Piper disappears and I look after her, see a scary movie paused on the television in their cozy den, the outline of Celeste’s curly hair lit up by her phone as she types into it. I can tell by the tilt of her head and the way she’s pressing hard that she’s angry about something. Piper returns a moment later with her older sister Paola, who has her hair pulled up in a messy ponytail and is wearing a pair of pink-striped long johns that would probably fit her younger sister perfectly but make Paola look like her long limbs are about to bust out of them.
“MAUDE!” Paola shouts, pulling her into a hug. “Holy crow, it’s been YEARS!”
Maude looks completely at a loss as she pulls away from Paola’s hug. She finally says in a low voice, “I’ve been away.”
Paola says, “Oh, Maudlin!” and it sounds like she is halfway between laughing and crying. “I’ve missed you! Do you want to come up? Oh my gosh, Petra is going to DIE when she finds out I saw you!”
Throughout this whole exchange, Zooey and I are standing there awkwardly in our scratchy paper-towel collars, holding our bags of candy. It is so weird to see someone be so friendly and affectionate with Maude. I realize I’d never seen her interact with anyone outside of me and Zooey.
“Hey, Zooey,” Piper says. “Do you and your friend want to come in?” She gives me a small smile and my heart leaps. YES! Yes, I do want to come in! Even if you don’t remember me.
Zooey makes an angry sound in her throat and says tightly, “That’s all right. We’ve got some more houses to hit.” I blink at her but realize it would be kind of weird if I stayed without her, so I mumble good-bye to Piper, give one last longing look inside her adorable house, and follow Zooey down the steps.
“You didn’t want to stay?” I ask when I catch up.
“Nope,” she says as we join a pack of witches crossing to the other side of the common.
“Why not?” I ask, an odd feeling in my stomach.
She swings around to face me, and the pack of witches trots up the front walk of a tall house, leaving us alone under a streetlamp. “Why would you want to stay? She barely said a word to you.”
I’m caught off guard by the question. “Just thought it would be fun, that’s all.”
Zooey makes a snorting sound, but not like the one she makes when she’s laughing. “Fun. Right.” We step aside so the returning witches can pass, and walk silently up the path. It’s not as fun this time to tell the person at the door who we are. I think it’s our lack of enthusiasm that makes the man say, “A little old for this, aren’t you, ladies?”
When we get back to the sidewalk, Zooey says, “Look, I’m trying to make it a point not to be friends with people who are jerks. I think you should, too.”
“Piper’s not a jerk,” I say, my lower lip quivering. I wish I could tell Zooey the truth. I really do.
Her anger seems to deflate a bit. “Everyone’s a jerk sometimes, Hattie.”
Things are a little icy between us until we get to the Dentist’s House, where my mom and dad are chatting and laughing on the front porch with the couple who owns the house next door, a bowl of colorful toothbrushes wrapped in cellophane on the railing. There is a giant coffeepot full of hot cider, a stack of paper cups next to it on a wooden side table. Mom’s dressed up like a witch, and Dad has taken his gorilla mask off so he’s just an exceptionally furry-except-his-face dude.
He comes loping over to us, making a gorilla face and grunting, pretending to pick a bug from Zooey’s hair and eating it. She laughs, even lets out a little snort.
“Ugh, Dad !” I groan.
Zooey gives me a sideways It’s okay smile and puts her arm around me as we pose against the railing for pictures.