People really didn’t know what to make of Milo. This was nothing new.
But now he wore a hoodie, and headphones, and his mother’s attempt at Día de los Muertos sugar skull makeup!
Penny was dressed as a mime. She took the job very, very seriously. In the van she told Milo that if he wanted to talk to her, he had to do it with his hands. Mr. Dawson signed that it would be good practice.
At a house on Hamilton Street, Milo convinced a man in devil horns to hand him three rolls of Smarties instead of just one. He told the devil that there were only fifteen Smarties tablets in a roll. And Milo had more than fifteen teeth! The third roll, he explained, was for emotional damages.
It was maybe abstract. But the devil caved!
Do you need three? Penny asked, as they trundled from that house to the next.
One for Hank, one for Ana, one for you!
This house had a long sidewalk lined with pumpkins. Penny did the knocking in her once-white gloves, now pinkish with Blow Pop debris.
An elderly woman praised Jesus when Penny greeted her with a flat invisible wall and Milo hollered, “WE ARE HERE TO BROKER PEACEFUL TRADE NEGOTIATIONS!”
Milo guessed the shock didn’t have much to do with him looking ghoulish. It was Halloween, and two of the other six ASL kids carried rubber machetes!
But! This was Gailsberg, the next town over. None of these people knew Milo. Mr. Dawson had driven here to meet his sister, Penny’s aunt Judy. She was their other chaperone.
This neighborhood was a treasure trove. X marks the spot! Because here was where all the Gailsberg teachers lived, and these teachers saved their candy gold for the nighttime witching hour. The decorations were also A+++. So far Milo had counted four hanging men and a gazillion (give or take a ga-) jack-o’-lanterns!
Milo and Penny led the line of Eustace invaders with pride, following the trail of a pair of knowledgeable Gailsberg locals dressed as Mario and Luigi. Every time those two spun away from a porch, Milo’s eyes went right to their matching mustaches.
Dad had a mustache like that. But Luz never did.
Mario and Luigi kept coming back, leaving and coming back.
As the hour vanished, the faces along this street became familiar. More than once they spotted a tall werewolf with two trash bags full of candy (how?). They passed the same seven Disney princesses. Milo kept giggling at a boy dressed as a sushi roll.
He was halfway through hearing the twelve minutes of Sigur Rós’s “Untitled #8” when Penny snapped her fingers! She pointed at empty air behind them.
The other Eustace invaders had been scooped back into the van.
“But there’s still one more house.”
Mr. Dawson honked the horn. Clearly he thought the fun had ended.
Couldn’t Mr. Dawson see the purple glow of a black light on the side of this garage? There was at least a little Halloween spirit in this house!
“We have to finish.”
Never say Penny didn’t like a challenge. She liked Milo, of all people.
She signed a quick One more! to her dad.
They hurried past an overturned bicycle and a faded lawn pinwheel to the front step. There wasn’t a welcome mat. Milo could see the outline of where one used to be.
Penny went in for the knock, then froze inside her mime box.
Milo cleared his throat for his final performance.
The porch light came on, a dull moth-calling orange. When the door opened, the light wasn’t strong enough to illuminate the man’s features.
“Oh, god, is it Halloween?” He sounded a bit out of it. “Sorry, kids.”
Milo pulled off his headphones.
From inside the house a woman called, “That’s not the police, is it?”
“Nah. A mime and a zombie. Honey, we got any candy or cookies or something?”
“I’m a skeleton,” Milo corrected. The man wasn’t listening—he was peering down a brown hallway, toward the woman’s voice, the echo of the evening news.
Milo felt Penny’s eyes all over him. Maybe she was surprised because his headphones were off.
“Sorry, I’m not sure we have anything for you.” But the man held up a finger. “Or wait—wait here a second.”
Mr. Dawson’s horn sounded again. Penny tugged on Milo’s hand.
“Come on.” The mime act fell away. “We don’t need anything from this guy.”
Milo really thought he did, though.
The man returned. He held out an open pack of spearmint gum and flicked a strip into each of their pillowcases.
“Think of it as an ex-spearmint!” Milo thought the man sounded very, very pleased with himself. His face made no sense at all. “That’ll do ya, boys and ghouls!”
The man closed the door.
Penny tugged on Milo’s hand again.
They got as far as the bicycle before Milo stopped. He dropped his pillowcase. Candy scattered over his shoes. Fun-size Milky Ways were lost between stalks of grass.
“Milo?” Penny didn’t sound annoyed. She sounded far away.
This bicycle terrified Milo. Who had been riding it?
The thought popped a balloon inside his chest.
Milo didn’t care that his headphones were completely off. He didn’t care that the album had ended. He didn’t care that his makeup started running down his face or that Penny was shaking him, trying to pull him away from the bicycle. He wouldn’t let go of the seat and the handlebars scraped the sidewalk. When Penny yanked on him, somehow the bike got tangled in their feet and both of them hit concrete.
Next thing Milo knew, Penny was crying and she’d scraped up her stripy arm pretty good.
He still couldn’t let go of the bicycle.
Mr. Dawson had to pry it out of his hands before he could lift Milo up, put him inside the van, and strap him into his seat.
All the kids stared at him.
“What did that man do?” Mr. Dawson wasn’t signing now. He held Milo’s shoulders. Aunt Judy pulled out her phone, ready to dial whoever grown-ups call when a boy, definitely not a grown-up but a hopeless, useless boy, can’t even breathe right.
Why did the balloon in his chest have to pop?
“Deep breaths, Milo. Tell me what he did.”
“He left,” Milo said. Maybe once, maybe ten thousand times.
This man had a mustache like Mario and Luigi’s, except it was more like Dad’s!
This man had a face with a smile as wide as his shoulders, just like Hank!
He had eyes that shone bright even when they were tired, like Ana’s!
He made punny jokes, just like Milo.
And most important, this man had a voice that sounded like nobody’s but one person’s in the world. Milo knew, because he’d been trying to hear it for years.
Milo waited for the balloon to reinflate. He breathed through his nose, tried to be an adult. There was some actual detecting to do here. That was all.
Maybe Milo really should have worn the clothes from his birthday party. Then maybe Dad would have recognized his youngest son, haunting his doorstep.
But maybe Milo wasn’t Dad’s youngest son.
Milo didn’t know who that bike belonged to.