CHAPTER 18

“THAT HOUSE IS all-the-way Halloweened out!” I tell Dan as I point at this brownstone building. It’s the day after me and Wes hung out. “That house wins.”

We’re walking and ranking buildings with the dopest Halloween decorations.

“Give me reasons why,” he says.

“Boom. To start, see that scary-scary witch in the window?”

“Yeah.”

“Check out her hands and face. Her lizardy fingers with the long, sharp nails curling back like hawk claws grabbing prey? And the light shining on her half-rotted green face? Sonnnn!”

“Yo!” Dan cups his fist to his mouth. “She is scary!”

“Bam,” I say. “But peep her bulging eyes staring at what she’s about to grab.”

Dan squints. “Is that a kid in front of her?”

“Yup. And terrified, right?”

“That’s wiiiild. He’s about to become dinner!”

I put on a scary witch voice: “C’mere, little boy. You tasty-looking!”

“This whole house is OD scary.”

We keep on, taking turns pointing out more.

Dan: “The whole thing is in cobwebs.”

Me: “Cut-off heads hanging from different windows.”

Dan: “Human-size zombies in her gate.”

Me: “The signs saying, ‘This way to the afterlife.’”

“Yep. That house is the scariest.” Dan sighs. “I wish Halloween was every day. I like that the whole world acts like us on Halloween. They get into fantasy stuff and act like your bracelet.”

I look down at my WHAT LANE? bracelet. “What you mean?”

“The whole year, everyone acts one way. In one lane. But for Halloween, everyone is in different lanes, being whoever or whatever they want to be.”

“Facts.”

We pass the comic store, and spooky Halloween masks stare at us through the window.

“Hold up,” I tell Dan.

Some comic stores be like, Look, don’t touch. Not this place. It’s lit. The owner doesn’t care if we stay for hours reading too many comics to name. He even lets us play with stuff. Once, me and Dan tried on Star Wars robes and dueled in the comic aisles with lightsabers, making sound effects.

Only thing the owner says every now and then is “You break it, you bought it.”

We go in and Dan tries on a werewolf mask. “Grrrr . . .”

I point. “The front of the mask’s face is all crushed in. Our faces almost ended up looking that way.”

He pulls it off. “When?”

“In the factory. When Chad snapped photos of us at the top of the conveyor belt.” I point at the mask’s crushed-in face. “That would’ve been us.”

Dan twists his lips to the side and gets kind of quiet. “Yeah.”

I say, “We could’ve gotten hurt-hurt.”

He hangs the mask back on its hook. “For real.” The way he soft-says it, I know he agrees, even though he wishes he didn’t.

I’ve been wondering things.

This is a moment: I feel it—I can do my New Year’s resolution or be the little nine-year-old me and not speak up. I look at him, wondering if I should. Whatevs.

“Dan, you ever go with the crowd and do something and think it’s fun, then after you think back, you feel differently?”

“Yeah. You know I felt that about when we raced up those conveyor belts.”

“Can I speak my mind? Keep it a hundred?”

He nods.

“Did it look like I was having fun when I climbed that fence after Christopher did?”

“Yeah, like Miles when he flipped off that building, all free and happy.”

“I was, but wasn’t. I was trying to prove I wasn’t in one lane. That I could be in Christopher’s. But really, I did it for Chad.”

His face wrinkles, confused. “Chad? He didn’t even climb that fence.”

“Yeah, but he was the one to dare me. And then on the conveyor belt too. I talked to Jeremiah a little about it that day. We felt grimy because we were really just in Chad’s lane. So we weren’t free at all.”

Dan nods slowly, over and over. “Chad’s lane . . .” He points at the werewolf mask’s crushed-in face and chuckles a not-funny laugh. “End up messed up in Chad’s lane.”