Page 9 of A Hot Sauce Halloween

Vincent abandons his box and crosses his arms. “Okay…” he says. “But you didn’t hear this from me.”

I take a step closer.

“Back when we were kids, Anna loved Halloween,” he begins. “She made her own costumes, spent weeks planning and plotting out her trick-or-treating route. It was a big deal. Then, when she was ten…”

I lean forward, hanging on every word. “What?”

He lowers his voice a bit. “Our mom took us to this pumpkin patch just outside of town,” he continues. “It had this amazing cornfield and a huge maze shaped from hay for kids to run around in. I was pretty young, so I stayed with Mom, but Anna ran off ahead. Mom and I went through the maze, came out the other end, but Anna wasn’t there. We sat down and waited. An hour went by. Still no Anna.”

“She got lost in the maze?” I ask.

“A bunch of bigger kids cornered her in a dead end,” he says. “She tried to run around them but they wouldn’t let her leave. They mocked and teased her… until she peed herself.”

My jaw drops. “Assholes.”

“Yeah. They finally took off and got banned from the pumpkin patch, but… Anna was never the same after that.” He sighs. “Every year since then, she’s completely ignored Halloween. Pretends like it doesn’t exist. The memory is just too embarrassing for her.”

I shake my head. “Wow.”

“She won’t have anything to do with scarecrows either,” he adds. “Won’t watch The Wizard of Oz. Hates mazes, cornfields… Really, anything having to do with corn at all. Have you ever seen her eat corn?”

I gasp in realization. “No…”

He nods with a furrowed brow. “It shaped her into who she is today. Even crows. Do you know what a group of crows is called, Jake?”

“A murder,” I answer, my eyes wide.

Vincent turns back to his box. “And now you know.”

I stand still, replaying the whole thing in my head again. It’s like I just heard the secret origin story for my favorite superhero. Everything suddenly makes sense. Anna Silva comes full circle.

Tommy pokes his head in from the bar. “Hey, you got those spiderwebs?” he asks me.

I flinch out of it. “Yeah! I’ll be right there.” He leaves and I turn back to Vincent. “Thank you,” I tell him.

He shrugs. “Remember… you didn’t hear it from me.”

“Right. Of course.”

I pick up the box and slowly follow Tommy back out onto the main floor. He grabs a bar stool and sets it down in the corner.

“I have a thing with heights…” he says, pointing up. “Do you mind?”

“No, I can do it,” I say, handing him the box of webs and the staple gun.

I step up and balance on the stool before turning back to take the staple gun from him.

Tommy grabs a wad of webs and holds it up to me. “Hey, Milo, can I ask you something?” he says.

“Jake,”I correct him.

“Oh.”He bites down. “Right. Sorry. I should definitely be used to that by now.”

“It’s all right,” I say. “Feels weird for me sometimes, too. What’s up?”

“I need someone to talk about girls with.”

I glance down at him. “Girls?”

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