"What are you wearing for Halloween?" asked my friend Kinnie excitedly, brushing her bangs (which this week were dyed purple) out of her face. "My mom's helping me make a costume. I'm-"
"Wait, no no... let me guess. You're going to be an ALIEN!" said our friend Josh, laughing at her. Kinnie is always, every year, without exception, an alien for Halloween. It's been like this for years: each year a different suit (yellow, purple, orange polka-dotted...), but each year, without fail, an alien.
What she said next made my jaw drop to the floor.
"Actually, I've decided to be the Statue of Liberty this year." Then, with a farewell wave, she left me and Josh standing on the front staircase of the school like retarded goldfish.
As soon as he had regained the ability of speech, Josh asked me, "What just happened? Is she serious?"
I could only shrug and wonder what tonight's Halloween party would bring.
Josh Sherman and I have been neighbors for years now, so we always get into our Halloween costumes at his house. This year he was going as a vampire. Milly (my sixteen year old sister) was going to her friend Melissa's party as a cat that somewhat lacked paws. Or, for that matter, fur.
"What's that thing on your head?" I asked her as we headed over to Josh's house to help him and his two siblings to get ready for trick-or-treating.
"Ears, obviously," she said, like it was the clearest thing in the world. I muttered something about diseased pieces of cabbage stuck to a hair accessory as we knocked on the Shermans' door. Josh opened it. His black velvet cape was hanging haphazardly from one shoulder, and half of his face was bone-white while the other half was his normal skin tone.
"Milly! Tessa! Thank goodness you're here! I need help. Brandon can't get his T-Rex tail on straight, Tracy won't let anyone braid her hair for the princess costume, and my parents are gone because Sheldon fell down and sprained his wrist!"
Josh let us into his chaotic house. His family weighs in at nine members, including his parents, the baby twins, his three younger sibs, plus their two pets (a guinea pig and a dog) and Josh himself. Needless to say, the cacophony of the Shermans' family can be ear-shattering, and there's things lying around everywhere. On our way to the playroom, Melissa and I stepped over several Barbie dolls, a broken bicycle wheel, and a spilled glass of Coke.
Brandon, who was five, kept stepping on his T-Rex tail and it wouldn't stay on straight. After I had rigged up a tail holder with some string and Milly had successfully braided Tracy's hair, we headed out to trick-or-treat.
"Alright," I said to Brandon, "We can do two more houses and then you gotta get home to your mom, okay?" He nodded solemnly. Brandon was an extremely well-behaved five-year-old, but he had a tendency to trip over anything that was within three feet of him. He had already fallen down three times tonight.
"Yeah," said Kinnie. She had turned up, in full Statue of Liberty regalia, to help me take Brandon around the neighborhood. Her copper-colored sheet ('I don't want to be the rusty version, I want to be the real Lady Liberty' was her response when anyone commented on the color) was losing its stiffness and her torch, which she had long ago tired of holding above her head, hung on a string around her neck.
Our last trick-or-treating house belonged to the Roshvilles. They were a family even bigger than Josh's, with ten kids ranging from age 2 to 25. Their driveway and lawn were strewn with toys, wheeled forms of transportation, and the occasional wooden plank (used for tree house construction).
As we were walking up the driveway, a black cat walked across it.
"Kitty!" shouted Brandon and started running after it.
Unfortunately, the Roshvilles' front lawn was a danger zone. As he ran towards the midnight-colored cat, Brandon tripped over a mini hula-hoop and stepped right onto a board, which happened to be supporting a bucket full of water.
The bucket, propelled by the board, flew slowly into the air. It landed (in a most comical fashion) right on Kinnie's head, drenching her in muddy water.
Kinnie has always had an apt sense of theatrical timing. Standing there, with a bucket over her head and dripping with a dirty liquid, the next words out of her mouth were, "I think I'm going as an alien next year."
Suddenly we realized that Brandon had hurt himself on the board. We made 'uh-oh' faces at each other and quickly called Mrs. Sherman.
We rushed him to the emergency room. It turns out he broke his ankle when he tripped over the hula-hoop and had to put a cast put on. He cried a lot at first. But don't worry, he loves the cast now- hops around all day trying to get people to sign it.
Halloween in my hometown is most certainly never a boring occasion.
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