Page 53 of Dropping the Ball

“Come on and I’ll finish your Halloween orientation.” We walk back to the chairs. “Pick a seat. A neighborhood like this, youwant to sit out and enjoy the show. Otherwise, you’re running to the door every two minutes.”

She claims the left chair, and I take the other one, setting a battery-operated lantern on the ground between us and turning it on. “You need enough light to enjoy the costume parade.” I set the open box of candy bars on her lap and open another box for mine. “Have your candy ready to go. You’ll have to choose your handout philosophy.”

“My handout philosophy? As the interim head of a nonprofit, I’m pro-handout.”

I love that she’s so quick. I’d always sensed that she held back far more than she shared in class discussions. Sometimes I’d catch a glint in her eye or a twitch at the corner of her mouth as she listened and watched, and I’d wished I was in on her private jokes. I’d had no doubt they were funny. For those couple of months where we’d almost hung out, every now and then she’d crack one for me, and I learned another secret almost no one at Hillview knew: Kaitlyn Armstrong was the funniest kid in school.

“Settle down, grease monkey. Are you going to drop each candy bar into each bag yourself? Or will you hold out the box and let them choose?”

“Well, Batman, this sounds like psychological profiling.”

“I can tell you what you’re going to choose. I’m texting you. Don’t look until I tell you.” I tap out a message and send it. In Batman’s voice I say, “Iamthe world’s greatest detective.”

A gaggle of boys who look like they would absolutely be smashing pumpkins if their parents weren’t right behind them come up the driveway. They’re at the pillowcase age where they’d rather be caught dead than carrying a Halloween tote, and they’re all in NFL jerseys and eye black.

“Watch this,” I tell her. “They’re wearing the fifth grade special, the minimum costume you can wear and still expectcandy. They will mumble, not make eye contact, talk only to each other until their parents make them say thank you, which they will yell over their shoulder while they race each other to the sidewalk.”

They reach us in a jostling squad of crew socks and skinny elbows. “Trick or treat,” a couple of them mumble, eyes on the candy bars. Kaitlyn pauses before extending the box. There are a few exultant calls of “Bro!” or “Yes!” as they reach over and around each other, hands scrabbling. Within a few seconds, they spin and split for the sidewalk, yelling “Thanks” over their shoulders when one of the adults reminds them, and I turn to look at Kaitlyn.

She looks from them to her box and starts trying to reorganize it. “It looks like it was attacked by badgers.”

“Check your phone.”

“Oh, yeah.” She pulls her phone from the cupholder and reads her text. “‘You want to drop the candy bars yourself. You don’t want me to guess right so you let them pick their own. You regret it.’”

She sets her phone down and relaxes into her chair. “Good to know we’ve reached the disrespect-your-boss phase of this project.”

I can’t answer until I hand out candy bars to a brother and sister dressed as Spiderman and Black Widow.

“You’re not my boss,” I say as they leave. “You’re my client.”

“Which means I can fire you.”

“You won’t.”

She sighs. “I won’t.”

“In fact, if I quit you would be—”

“Sunk faster than that preschool pirate could yell ‘poop deck’?”

“Well said.”

“Let’s not fire each other,” she says.

“Deal. But only because I already deposited the check.”

“Works for me.”

We greet more and more trick-or-treaters. At first, I have enough time to finish explaining the rules for Halloween, including the selection of beverages in the cooler ranging from apple cider to hard cider, the foam jack-o-lantern I brought as an emergency measure because “you should always have real ones unless you waited too long before they sold out,” and a spray can of black hair color, which I hand to her.

She flinches away from it like it’s a hot coal. “I can’t put that in my hair. It won’t wash out.”

“It’s for your cat. So we can have a black cat. It’ll give us some ambiance since you don’t have a full setup.”

Kaitlyn shoots straight up in her chair but has to drop four candy bars into the bags of a ghost, a fairy, a strawberry, and a Jedi before she can object. “Daisy Buchanan wouldnever,” she says. “Are you crazy?”

I take the cap off and press the nozzle. She squeaks and tries to wedge herself into the back of her chair before she realizes it’s only hissing air.

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