Page 22

“Happy Halloween, kid,” Shane said brightly, handing her a mug. Laney had emerged in her camo leggings and a big black Poison! Live in Concert tee.

She bristled, like always, at being called a kid. But she accepted the cup of coffee with an annoyed look on her face.

“So? What’s the plan for tonight?” she asked.

“You tell me. Do you guys go trick or treating? Or are you too cool for that now?”

Dustin’s head snapped up, his eyes shining with excitement.

“Oooookaaaaay… trick or treating it is," Shane said with a laugh. "What do you want to be?”

Dustin scuttled away and returned holding a grim reaper costume with blackout mesh over the face.

“What about you?” Dustin asked Shane.

“Oh. Um, can’t I just wear this?” he gestured to his plain black sweatshirt. Dustin vigorously shook his head, turning to Laney for help.

Laney looked him up and down and that too-small-skin feeling he couldn't seem to shake around her prickled all over.

“No, you can’t wear that. But I have an idea.”

Shane was mildly concerned, but Laney seemed excited so he ran with it. It was nice, to see them acting like kids. He’d been at their house for almost a month with no sign of an adult. Their mother had been mentioned now and then, but nobody had bothered to check in on them, make sure they had food, make sure the bills were paid… He wasn’t even sure anyone other than him and Laney knew Dustin had broken his leg.

The cast had come off a few days ago. They’d had to take the bus, and he’d been a little worried that Dustin wouldn’t be able to do it, but the kid was surprisingly resilient. Laney had ducked out of school for the day to come with them. They seemed to know where they were going, and greeted the receptionist by name which he didn’t like. How often did they have to visit the damn ortho office? But Laney had silenced him with a look, so he kept quiet.

They deserved to be kids for a night, they were too grown up for their age.

And not grown up enough.

Laney returned home from school a little later than usual, with a plastic bag full of Halloween makeup.

“Where did you get that?”

“I hustled it,” she said. He snorted. She probably did.

She emptied it onto the counter; prosthetic fangs that adhered right to your canines, a professional-looking palate of white and grey makeup, a bag of sponges… and a tube of fake blood.

Shane arched an eyebrow at her. “You want me to be a vampire? Really? Don’t you think you’re taking your Buffy obsession a little far?”

“No,” she said curtly, but she was blushing a little. “I’m going to be the vampire. You’re going to be something else.”

Several hours later, she had emerged from the basement in a ridiculous fuzzy bathrobe which starkly contrasted her face; she’d painted it to look like the literal incarnation of death.

She was sickly pale, with dark shadows under her eyes. His stomach clenched a little, thinking about the real bruises she’d sported that had finally faded. Her cheekbones looked sharp, jutting out from her face, shadows underneath them making her look sunken and hollow. Her eyebrows were thick and dark, as were her lashes, and her lips had been painted blood red. She’d slicked back her short hair in a kind of shiny pompadour.

Polkadot fuzzy robe aside, she looked… epic.

“Now you,” she said, poking Shane’s chest. “Eyes closed.”

Shane obeyed and didn’t say a word as her fingers snaked through his hair, his scalp tingling, and she tugged his head to the side exposing his neck. His pulse pumped at the rough contact, but he sat as still as he could while she poked and prodded at him to the occasional crinkling sound of packaging and the prickly feeling of a paintbrush on his skin. Then he felt the cool, sweeping sensation of something sticky on his neck. He wrinkled his nose but allowed it. Finally, he felt two streams of thick liquid running onto his collarbone.

“What in the actual fuck are you doing,” he asked, sliding off the chair to check the mirrored doors in the hall where he stopped dead. Her makeup skills were apparently as impeccable as her hair styling abilities, because he was sporting a horrifyingly real-looking neck wound, two large puncture marks on the vein surrounded by the outline of a teeth imprint, with two trickles of dark red blood oozing out.

She was standing behind him in the mirror, looking very pleased with herself, but he barely noticed her face and froze as she had dropped the robe and tossed it into the living room.

“What?” she asked, looking at him in the mirror, smiling brightly, eyes full of mischief. Two very realistic fangs protruded out of her mouth and dug into her lower lip.

He’d seen how girls dressed on Halloween. Little maid outfits, slutty nurses, playboy bunnies… Unable to tear his eyes away from her, he almost wished she was dressed like that instead.

She was wearing tight black hot pants tucked into calf-high shitkickers with silver buckles. Her loose black shirt seemed to have been cut in half because he could see at least four inches of flat, pale skin between the rise of her pants and the hem of her shirt, a silver chain ending in a large, tear-shaped ruby red gem dangling from her belly button. And she was wearing a tightly fitted women’s leather motorcycle jacket, with the collar popped like that damned Dracula cape.

“Laney,” he choked out while turning to face her, his voice hoarse, “you can’t wear that.”

She frowned. “Why not?”

Because you’re going to kill me.

“Because it’s too cold.”

She shrugged and zipped up the coat.

Not. Helping.

“You ready Dusty?” she called, brushing past him.

His hands were shaking.

Dustin bounded down the hall, cloaked entirely in black with a scythe over his shoulder, and she yanked the door open before calling behind her “You coming?”

Probably. Later. In the shower.

He felt like such a fucking dick, but trailed after them, shutting the door behind him and wishing – for the first time – that he’d never followed her home.