Toil & Trouble: A Know Not Why Halloween (Mis)adventure (10 page)

Howie presses the chainsaw button reluctantly.

Rrrrr!

+

Not a single adult buys anything. Kristy can’t really
blame them.

All of the children have been wandering the aisle
maze for maybe the past ten minutes. The parents stand awkwardly
around the corners of the store. Annie Fabray just stands there in
her devil horns. The strobe light makes her smirking face look
truly demonic. Kristy wishes she had never even brought up her
stupid blog.

The room has gone completely silent, except for
Arthur’s way-too-creepy version of “We Are Never Ever Getting Back
Together.” It’s supposed to be an anthem of triumph, not
despair.

Occasionally, a shriek of pure terror rises up from
inside the aisles. Sometimes after this happens, a kid rushes out
of the aisles and over to their parents, crying.

This is the worst.

Howie comes up next to her. “Okay, I can’t do this
anymore. Making kids cry just isn’t as rewarding as I always
thought it would be.”

Kristy can tell he said it to make her laugh, but she
can’t muster it.

He goes serious. “Kristy. What are we gonna do? We—we
gotta fix this, right?”

"I told you,” Kristy says. It’s all she has the
energy for. “I told you this would happen.”

Howie keeps talking, but for once, she doesn’t quite
feel like listening to him.

She doesn’t feel like being here at all.

And so she goes to the kitchen.

She decides to have a cup of hot cocoa. Hot cocoa,
she’s always believed, can make anything better.

Even when the air is full of the bone-chilling sound
of shrieking children.

Kristy sighs, pulls her favorite mug from the
cupboard (it’s covered in little smiling cows grazing in a field),
and starts rummaging around the tea shelf for instant hot cocoa
packets.

Then she realizes that she’s not alone.

But, like, not in a scary haunted house way.

Just a crying kid way.

She turns to see Tyler sitting at the kitchen table,
his head resting on the table over his crossed arms, his little
shoulders shaking.

“Hey Tyler. Whatcha doin’?”

“Nothing,” Tyler sniffles, looking up at her.

She courteously pretends not to see as he wipes his
tears off his cheeks.

“I’m gonna have some hot cocoa. You want some?”

Tyler nods. “Okay.”

+

There are some kids who are still lingering outside
of the aisle maze. Cora decides to give them a little scare.

She prepares to jump out at the kiddos, but she gets
beat to it: Frankenstein’s monster (creature) bursts through the
front door, extra hideous in the aggressively flashing light.

The kids all start screaming hysterically. They zoom
across the room, smushing sausages under their feet as they go.
It’s pretty gnarly.

“Boo!” Cora says when they reach her. But, like,
comfortingly, she likes to think.

Apparently not. The kids just start shrieking and run
away.

Oops.

“Holy shit,” Cora says admiringly, bounding over to
Heather. She admires the fake but very convincingly
infected-looking stitches drawn all over her face. “You look
disgusting. Having your hair loose like normal makes it so much
worse for some reason.”

“I know, right?” Heather says, and tosses her hair
like she’s starring in the shampoo commercial from hell.

An approaching kid bursts into tears.

Aw, crap.

“Hey, it’s okay,” Cora says. “It’s okay.”

“Aaaahhhh!” screams the kid, who apparently isn’t
into being comforted by a bloody-fanged werewolf.

“Really great work you’re doing here,” Heather
says.

“Fuck you,” Cora says jovially.

Heather smirks and rolls her eyes, and just like
that, Cora is afraid that this might be the beginning of a
beautiful something.

+

Kristy finishes making the hot cocoa, then unearths a
slightly stale bag of mini marshmallows. “How many marshmallows do
you want?”

“My mom doesn’t let us have that kind,” Tyler
says.

“Are you allergic?”

“No. She just likes to make them from scratch. She
says store-bought marshmallows are trashy.” He makes a face. “Hers
always turn out kind of weird.”

Kristy smiles at him. “How about this is our little
secret, then?”

After a moment, Tyler smiles back slightly.
“Cool.”

They both put marshmallows in their cocoa in
silence.

Then Tyler says, “I hate this party.” His voice
wavers precariously.

“It is kinda hectic, huh?” Kristy agrees.

“You didn’t do it right.”

I’m sorry,
Kristy almost says—but then she
realizes that she’s not. Not at all, really. Sure, it’s not
entirely Tyler’s fault that a team of adults ran with his awful
ideas, but he was the one who came up with those ideas in the first
place.

She thinks of what Reddy said. Sometimes you just
have to let people dig themselves into holes.

“You sure?” she says instead. “What did we leave
out?”

“Nothing,” Tyler says after a few seconds. “But—”

Kristy blows on her hot cocoa, and lets him find his
way to what he wants to say.

“I thought it would be cool,” he says at last.
“Halloween is supposed to be scary. I didn’t want to just do baby
stuff. I’m ten, you know. But I didn’t think that many people were
gonna start crying.”

“I’m twenty,” Kristy says, “and I think all of us
like baby stuff sometimes.”

“I guess,” Tyler says casually. Frowning, he adds, “A
zombie lady yelled at me about patriot key. What is that?”

Kristy tries not to laugh. “You mean patriarchy?”

Tyler nods, shrugging.

“That’s my friend Amber. I think she was mad about
the sexy mummy costume. It could be perceived as pretty
disrespectful, you know.”

“Then why did that guy do it too? I didn’t ask for
that
.”

Kristy allows herself a little laugh. “That was my
boyfriend. He was trying to make me feel better.”

“You were sad about it?” Tyler says
uncomfortably.

“It wasn’t a costume I would have picked on my
own.”

“Sorry,” Tyler says, embarrassed, and stares down
into his cocoa. “My brother said Halloween parties have to have hot
girls or they’re stupid.”

“How old is your brother?”

“Fifteen.”

“Well, I don’t think his rules apply for a kid
party,” Kristy says gently.

“Oh.” Tyler looks up at her guiltily. “Are you
cold?”

“A little.”

“You can wear my coat if you want. My mom has it, but
I could go get it.”

Kristy smiles. “That’s okay. I brought something to
change into, actually.”

“Oh. That’s good.”

He goes back to his cocoa. He seems calmer, but he’s
still sniffling a little.

“Tyler,” Kristy says after a moment, “what do you say
we mix this party up a little bit?”

“How?” Tyler asks.

Kristy smiles, and feels a little flush of pride for
being the kind of person who keeps a princess dress in her car in
case of emergencies.

+

Arthur is in the middle of singing a version of “We
Are Never Ever Ever Getting Back Together” so bleak that he’s even
making himself uncomfortable.

A weeping little girl dressed like a cupcake kicks
him in the shins as he passes by her. “Stop it! You sound creepy!
Taylor wouldn’t like it!
She wouldn’t like it.
”

Arthur plays on, mostly because he is quite convinced
that he’s died inside, but then he hears Howie call his name from
across the room.

Arthur looks up. Howie is, for some reason, wearing
his reindeer antlers from last year’s fateful Christmas
extravaganza. He’s standing beside Amber, who looks even more
terrifying than she had that time Arthur unwisely dismissed
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
as “vapid” on the basis of the
title.

Howie looks at Arthur with an expression of such
intensity that somehow, impossibly, Arthur knows at once what he
needs.

And so Arthur abandons his melancholy
troubadouring.

Good riddance, Taylor,
Arthur thinks—and then
feels a little ashamed of himself. She really does seem like a very
nice person.

He walks over to the stereo.

He presses ‘Play.’

And then Howie and Amber begin their choreographed
routine to “The Monster Mash.”

“Oh,” Arthur murmurs, grimly hypnotized, “dear
God.”

+

It would be better if the lights were still off.
They’re not. Mitch didn’t waste any time in hustling over to the
light switch and
let there be light
-ing up this sad place.
Technically, it was a good move. The sound of terrified shrieking
fades away as soon as the strobe-light-speckled darkness
disappears. The kids all emerge from their mazey prison.

Unfortunately, now everyone is staring right at Howie
and Amber, with exactly no distractions.

And so here they are, in the unforgiving fluorescent
light, dancing.

Howie definitely used to feel a lot cooler when the
audience consisted of only Amber’s mom. And even she was kind of
judgy.

He goes through the moves like a depressed robot.

Ghost shimmy, ghost shimmy, werewolf arms, werewolf
arms. Zombie twirl, zombie twirl, ZOMBIE TWIRL, vampire ballerina
lift—

Why did Howie never question the existence of the
vampire ballerina lift before??

“If you drop me,” Amber viciously whispers as he
sweeps her gracefully into the air – or, well, tries, “I’ll kill
you.”

“Yeah, uh, that would be a mercy killing,” Howie
whispers back as he pantomimes biting her neck.

“I know,” Amber says miserably.

He lowers her back down onto the ground, and she
staggers dramatically. Is it because she’s pretending to be someone
who just lost a lot of blood, or because the humiliation is too
hard to bear upright? Frankly, it’s impossible to tell.

They launch into yet more zombie twirling.

So much zombie twirling.

+

“Oh wow,” Heather says. “This is so bad.”

“Right?” Cora says, overjoyed as she watches Howie
and Amber. Honestly, this is hands down the best thing to happen
all night. This is taking her love of “The Monster Mash” to
entirely new levels.

Then some disrespectful little jerk makes a very
unwise choice, and interrupts Cora’s viewing of the performance of
the century.

“You—you—you’re so ugly!” says a little girl dressed
like a cupcake, pointing up at Heather.

“Wow,” Heather says. “Rude much?”

“So uuuglyyyy!” persists the girl.

“It’s just makeup. Stop whining.”

“But makeup is supposed to make you pretty,” protests
the little cupcake.

Heather leans down and whispers, “You should see me
without it.”

The little cupcake lets out a squeak of horror and
scampers off.

Cora can’t help laughing at that.

“Okay,” Heather says, “you are way too happy about me
scaring that little kid. Sociopath.”

“Takes one to know one,” Cora answers sweetly.

They both go back to watching the most magnificent
and terrible dance the world has ever known. Cora is like
ninety-five percent transfixed by the badness. The other five
percent is strangely, tinglingly aware of Heather’s arm just barely
touching hers.

+

The world becomes a blur.

Life loses all meaning.

It isn’t so hard to twirl like a zombie in such
existential conditions.

And then ...

In what feels like two (or twelve) hours ...

The song finally, finally, fucking
finally
comes to an end.

Unfortunately, that means that Howie has to really
look at the faces of the people who have just witnessed this.

He does.

Every single person, from the tiniest of kiddos to
the tallest of parents, is sporting an expression of total
blankness.

Well, except Mitch, who’s grinning like Christmas has
come early.

And Cora might be making an encouraging face, but
really, under the werewolf mask, there’s no way to tell.

The song starts up all over again. Shockingly, no one
demands a repeat performance. Arthur hurries over to the CD player
and turns it off.