When Light Left Us by Leah Thomas

Author:Leah Thomas
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

7

OUTSIDE

Maggie watched a procession of ghouls march by.

Teachers had been stationed all along the parade route to ensure children and parents didn’t misbehave, didn’t run ahead or wrestle each other over Reese’s Pieces. They didn’t need any hospitalizations this year. You really had to watch out for parents.

Trunk-or-treating started an hour before school ended. Half the teachers were on candy duty, and needed time to relocate their students to other classrooms, prepare goods for the taking, and arrange their cars. A large, protective circle now spanned the whole faculty lot, trunks facing inward, open and ripe for candy picking. Near the front of the lot, Principal Olsen guided parent volunteers into open spaces.

For many kids, this would be their only Halloweening. In broad daylight, under the eyes of adults. Maggie understood wanting the candy without the night.

Milo said “real” trick-or-treating had to be at nighttime, because how could you make friends with any ghosts otherwise?

Milo delighted in his role as candy distributor. Maggie watched him portion out treats like a champion diplomat. She knew it was less about being fair than being accurate—Milo couldn’t eat M&M’s without separating them by color first.

“He’s growing up, huh?” Mr. Morris called, from one trunk over. “Trunk” might not have been the word. Mr. Morris was a man who thought a big truck put him closer to the sky. Maggie hated how you could never see over those things on the freeway, how they sometimes blocked out the sun.

“Yeah, he is. There’s not really any other way to grow.”

“Only wideways.” He patted his beer belly.

Maggie almost smiled. Mr. Morris’s goofiness made him great with temperamental kids. You couldn’t throw a tantrum with him waggling his eyebrows at you.

“How about Hank? He in high school yet?”

“He’s a senior now.”

Mr. Morris crossed himself. “Guess it’s about time to bury me.”

Now Maggie did smile.

“Go for it,” Mr. Morris told three incoming kindergartners, who gleefully grabbed fistfuls of Tootsie Rolls from his bowl. “Actually, Maggie—”

A nearby ghost gasped. “MAGGIE! MS. VASQUEZ’S NAME IS MAGGIE!”

Mr. Morris covered his mouth. “Kids, that’s top-secret information. Can you keep it that way?”

The little ghost nodded conspiratorially.

“Ms. VASQUEZ,” Mr. Morris amended, “do you have plans this evening?”

For the life of her, Maggie couldn’t recall his first name. “Well, Milo has demanded we go trick-or-treating.”

“Of course he wants the genuine article. But if Hank’s basically old enough to run for president, couldn’t he be persuaded into dragging Milo around for an hour?”

Hank couldn’t be. Hank couldn’t glance at Milo.

“Andreya and I are hosting our annual costume party. You killed it a few years back.” Maggie had killed something, all right, although of course half the attendees were already dead, zombies being a perpetual default among last-minute costumers.

Milo and Ana didn’t realize their love for the macabre was Maggie’s. As a teen she fell in love with Nosferatu and Dead Alive in equal measure. Maggie and her friends used to sleep in graveyards, carried sharpened stakes in their backpacks for vampire slaying.

“Didn’t you come as the Fly last year? Ha! Your Goldblum laugh was spot on.

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