A Rare and Beautiful Thing by Emery C. Walters

Author:Emery C. Walters [Walters, Emery C.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Queerteen Press
Published: 2015-10-08T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 3: Ghosts

Next there was Halloween. There were parties to go to, candy to nab, costumes to be thought of. Did we go to a lot of trouble, the four of us? Well, sort of. In the past, Mom or Dad took Nell and me out trick or treating, usually in store-bought costumes, sometimes in old clothes or thrift store finds. The past two years I’d taken Nell out on my own. This year I’d been asked to babysit Curly, because his parents had been invited to a party. There was no way I was going to stay home and miss everything, nor did I want to make him miss everything either. He was only eleven. I had a feeling this was going to be a party of six at this rate, not the four I had initially hoped for. Somehow, though, we’d manage. I didn’t see how I could enjoy myself anyhow if I knew Curly was stuck home with my parents watching him, which is what would have happened if I had turned down the job, or even if Nell was trying to find something to do. What if she picked a jerk like whatshisname again to go around with?

So all of us went out for sodas on the Saturday before Halloween, even Curly and Nell. Everyone had a different idea of what to be: zombies, vampires, ghosts, cats, and duh, frogs. Nell was the one who put it all together. There was this book out, being made into a movie, called The Glastonbury Gate. It was the most popular book ever, way better than the last couple of teenage thrill stories. Anyhow, Nell got all excited and said, “Let’s all come as one of the characters from the story! There are only six main ones so that’s perfect.” She was beaming as we all agreed. It was a genius idea and we all started talking at once, thinking that if we did it right, we could have the whole cast.

Curly, however, though he liked the idea and loved the book, said, “I’m going to come as the cat. You know, that one that opened the gate to Hell beneath the castle.” And he was not to be persuaded otherwise. That left us one character short, the ghost of Ashton, Merlin’s grandson, but it still sounded like a great idea. He would be missing, but we could do the rest. Curly wouldn’t have made a good Ashton anyhow, he wasn’t handsome enough yet, and he certainly wasn’t dead either.

Suddenly it seemed like that’s what we had all wanted to do all along. Plus the costumes could range from whatever we had around the house to store-bought. I ended up taking Nell to the thrift store. Curly’s parents, out of guilt probably, bought him a brand new all black cat costume, complete with tail and ears, and I didn’t know what Van, Ada, and Annabelle were going to do or where they’d get theirs. Halloween had always been, to me, a time when I could be my true self.

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