Page 68 of A Very No Strings Halloween
“Aww, hell yeah, dude!” I hear Murph say, completely misinterpreting that I mean actual candy. But I appreciate the positive vibes anyway.
I just might need them.
SIXTEEN
Donna
MEMENTO MORI MAIL
“Trick or treat!” a little girl, probably around seven years old, shouts at me, holding a pillowcase open. I guess she’s starting at the top floor of our building and working her way down because there isn’t a lot of candy in that pillowcase yet. Her parents are standing about twenty feet away, down the hall. She’s so excited to be on this free junk food-gathering journey, I could just cry.
Enjoy this special time in your life, little girl. Memento mori. Enjoy the transient nature of these earthly pleasures, for one day we will die!
“Well, hello there! Happy Halloween!” I say to her, perhaps a tad too enthusiastically. I am genuinely excited to be alive and not working on Halloween night and definitely not overcompensating for beingdead inside because Billy actually went to the Halloween party that I told him to go to.
Chelsea holds up the big bowl of candy for me to grab a handful and leans in to mutter, “Take it down a notch, champ. You’re scarin’ the kids.” She’s here because her husband is on a business trip and she didn’t want to be at her house alone. And because I sounded so morose when she called me this afternoon that she didn’t wantmeto be alone. She was wearing a pointy witch hat earlier, but it made her scalp itchy so now she just looks like a woman in a black cardigan.
“Are you supposed to be Ginny Weasley?” the trick-or-treater asks me as I drop three fun-size chocolate bars and a bag of chips into her pillowcase.
I choose not to take offense at the “supposed to be” part of the question, as I am fully aware that I just look like a redhead in a sexy schoolgirl costume that barely fits anymore. This was from five years ago, which was the last time I had Halloween off. I was half hoping that Billy would somehow see me in it on his way out, get such a huge boner he wouldn’t fit out the door, and have to stay to give out candy with me. But without the boner, of course. Because I would have taken care of it for him. But that is not how this night is progressing.
“I sure am! And I’m not even wearing a wig. You are such a pretty Barbie!” I tell the girl.
“I’m Elle Woods,” she informs me. “From an oldmovie calledLegally Blondethat my mom always watches.”
This revelation leads Chelsea to demonstrate the Bend and Snap, and it leads me to want to lock the door, eat the rest of the candy, plus some apple strudels, and then cry myself to sleep because Reese Witherspoon played Elle Woods and that reminds me ofFear, which reminds me of Billy railing me at the house that time and how he’ll probably be railing someone else tonight.
But it’s fine. “We’re all gonna die anyway.”
Chelsea and the little girl and her parents all stare at me.
“Oh shit, did I say that out loud?” I cover my mouth. “Shit. Sorry!” I say to the girl and grimace at her parents, who look a lot cooler than they are, apparently, so maybe they shouldn’t be living in Jamaica Plain because we swear here. “Nobody you know is going to die any time soon,” I assure the little girl. “Have a fun night!”
“Okay, you’re done.” Chelsea pushes me back from the door and shuts it before I explain to the child that it is inevitable that everyone she knowswilldie eventually, so she shouldn’t get too attached to anyone, especially not a boy who makes her feel really good in lots of different ways. “Why don’t you just call him, huh? You’re the one who told him to go to the party!”
“What’s the point? We’re all gonna?—”
“If you say we’re gonna die again, I swear to God, you will die by my hand tonight.”
I smack my lips together. “I’m not gonna call him. He deserves to have a girlfriend who doesn’t work twelve-hour shifts or have a haunted house that needs major renovation work.”
“You are out of your friggin’ mind,” she says. “If I bought a haunted house that needed renovation work done, Joel would file for divorce in a heartbeat.”
“That’s not true.”
“No, it’s not, but my point is your guy was willing to help you fix up that house—he did a friggin’ séance with you, okay?”
“Because he thought we were role-playing,” I say, rolling my eyes.
“And he flew your grandparents in from Philly for a Tomcats game.”
“That was really sweet. But he was just trying to impress me because I was his dating coach.”
“Right. And he just offered to hand out candy to trick-or-treaters with you because—what? He wanted to practice being someone else’s husband? Come on. You wanna talk about how short life is? It is way too short for you to act like a dumbass just because you were once engaged to a totally different guy who turned out to be a dumbass. Y’know?”
I groan. That was so harsh. “You’re starting to make sense now, dammit.”
“Just call Billy and stop being a dum-dum.”
